Switch to Fedora?

[CocoAUS]

I've been looking at switching to Fedora 7 (http://digg.com/linux_unix/Fedora_7_LiveCD_available_plus_new_features_in_Tes ting_build_1). When I tried Fedora Core 6, yum was incredibly slow, the default Gnome was horrible, and I had to download 5 or 6 CD's just to install. The new Fedora 7, though, has a LiveCD available, and they've apparently been working on the slowness of yum.

Does anyone have any experience or suggestions here? I expect mostly pro-Ubuntu comments since this is ubuntuforums, but I know I can get some hard facts and objectivity, too.

[K.Mandla]

I can't speak to Fedora aside from a brief stint with FC5, so I won't comment either way. I'm going to shift your thread to Other OS Talk, because I'm sure there are FC proponents and opponents there who can help with your question. ;)

[Henry Rayker]

I've been considering switching to Fedora. I installed FC6, but Yum is INCREDIBLY slow...however, the wireless support trumps Ubuntu by a far measure.

[nibsa1242]

My experience with Fedora is that it takes an awful lot more work with it to make things work. I used to used it back during FC4 because of the Ubuntu install bug on some (mostly ATI) hardware where X would crash during the live CD and since I didn't have a functioning computer I couldn't figure out the work around. I've used FC6 and even the live CD since then. My experience is that FCx simply makes me do too much work to get things running.

I used to have the time to play around with everything, but lately I want something that just works, or if it doesn't just work I want some way to make it work fast. Ubuntu gives me that. FCx doesn't (or at least doesn't yet). Also, due to the recent popularity of Ubuntu its very easy to use Google to find answers to any questions one might have, and in fact much easier IMHO then finding answers to FCx questions.

You might like it though. Install it and play around with it and see what you think. Its also helpful for those situations where you have to use software that refuses to play nicely with anything that isn't Red Hat based. My uni used to release such closed source software to access its VPN, so I had to either use FCx/CentOS/Red Hat, MacOS, or Win XP to use the essential VPN.

[CocoAUS]

How about packages? From what I can tell, Fedora tends to have more updated packages (Listen .5, new Gaim beta builds, etc) than Ubuntu. I'm still worried about yum being as slow as it was last time I tried it, but perhaps there are other positives that outweigh this negative?

[coffeecat]

I had to download 5 or 6 CD's just to install.

Not entirely true - or, rather, it depends what you want to install initially. I only needed CDs 1 and 2 for FC6, and that's all I downloaded, to do a default Gnome install. Then I added the extra packages I wanted from the repositories. I believe the same was true of FC5 - but I'm going from memory here.

Yes yum is slow, but there are two issues here. There's yum itself and then there are the Fedora repositories. Sometimes they're very slow, but if you're lucky they can be almost as fast as the Ubuntu ones.

But I still prefer Ubuntu's package management overall.

[Detonate]

If you are going to try FC7, I would suggest waiting until T3 at least. Maybe even the final. T1 and T2 (just released) will be very buggy, and cetainly not what you would want for a production machine. I like Fedora, have used FC4, FC5, and FC6. I will try FC7 when it is released. It is more work to get it setup, but after that it is great. Also has a great support forum at

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/

Go over there and browse. Might get a lot of answers to your questions.

[Henry Rayker]

Yeah, I'm waiting for FC7 final...I'm going to keep FC6 around for some playing around...but YUM's slow nature really cheeses me off... =\

[Detonate]

You might try the "Smart" package manager. Much faster than Yum.

[CocoAUS]

What about Aptitude? I've heard you can install it on Fedora. Will that speed up program installation at all?

FYI, Fedora 7 doesn't have "Core" in its name, because the Core and Extras repos have been merged.

[igknighted]

It's OK. Personally I like yum. Apparently it has been sped up, but I don't care. The speed was never an issue to me. It does its job well, and if it takes an extra 30 seconds while I'm off surfing the web anyways, so what. I have found apt4rpm to be more of a pain to use than yum. I have synaptic installed, used it once, and haven't touched it since. I don't recall taking note of the speed either way, so i would guess it is comparable.

[CocoAUS]

Some more specific questions:

For codecs in Ubuntu, I simply install the codecs and they work in most all the players. From Fedorafaq.org, it seems like each player would need its own plugin for something as basic as mp3 support. Is this the sort of thing I should expect in switching to Fedora?

[igknighted]

Some more specific questions:

For codecs in Ubuntu, I simply install the codecs and they work in most all the players. From Fedorafaq.org, it seems like each player would need its own plugin for something as basic as mp3 support. Is this the sort of thing I should expect in switching to Fedora?

Nope, they work the same. In ubuntu there is automatix, and no equivelent in FC6 (although I think it is planned for F7... at least for codecs). I think Ubuntu only uses gstreamer based products. Fedora has mainly gstreamer, but also some xine, the option for mplayer, and also vlc. Its just a different base, but to get the same programs working in Ubuntu you use the same steps.

[karellen]

I've used FC5 for 5 months and I generally liked it, it was stable and reliable, but yum was slow compared to apt-get/aptitude. I don't know anything about FC6 because I didn't try it

[KoRnholio]

Nope, they work the same. In ubuntu there is automatix, and no equivelent in FC6

http://easylinux.info/wiki/Fedora_frog

The download page says its for FC5, but I had no problems using it on my FC6 install. Everything went much smoother than Automatix ever has.