Is fedora 7 worth giving a try?

[srt5]

I guess this is the right place to be asking this....

I've been using Linux for about three years now. My first distro was Red Hat for the simple reason that it was supplied with a text book and I wanted to know what Linux was about so I thought why not! However it felt quite dated, and after reading a magazine, I decided to give Suse a try, which I used for a while then read about the rise of Ubuntu and decided to see why there was so much hype over it.

I have now been using Ubuntu as my primary OS for almost two years, and having needed to work "under-the-hood" to solve a few problems in the past, I feel comfortable that I understand (at least to some extent) how the disrtro works - I guess you could say that I've become used to it :)

Anyway, I'm eager to explore other non-debian distros, and the obvious choice (at least from distrowatch) would be Fedora. Now I've heard many good things about fedora core 6, but from what i've read on these forums about fedora 7 there doesn't seem to be much "enthusiasm" for it? Several people have said that there is nothing special in this release and documentation for fedora is still quite poor.

The questions that I'd like to put to you guys are:


what have your experiences of fedora 7 been like?
Is there any real advantage of using fedora over ubuntu? or indeed non-debian over debian?
Are problems such as configuring wireless adapters as easy to fix as Ubuntu?
What made you turn to fedora?


Thanks :)

[ThinkBuntu]

Consider these questions before switching, always: What does your current distro leave you wanting? Will the new one provide it? Will What do you stand to gain from switching? Will these gains outweigh the time spent adapting to the new distro, troubleshooting new problems, or configuring your distro in general?

[igknighted]

I guess this is the right place to be asking this....

I've been using Linux for about three years now. My first distro was Red Hat for the simple reason that it was supplied with a text book and I wanted to know what Linux was about so I thought why not! However it felt quite dated, and after reading a magazine, I decided to give Suse a try, which I used for a while then read about the rise of Ubuntu and decided to see why there was so much hype over it.

I have now been using Ubuntu as my primary OS for almost two years, and having needed to work "under-the-hood" to solve a few problems in the past, I feel comfortable that I understand (at least to some extent) how the disrtro works - I guess you could say that I've become used to it :)

Anyway, I'm eager to explore other non-debian distros, and the obvious choice (at least from distrowatch) would be Fedora. Now I've heard many good things about fedora core 6, but from what i've read on these forums about fedora 7 there doesn't seem to be much "enthusiasm" for it? Several people have said that there is nothing special in this release and documentation for fedora is still quite poor.

The questions that I'd like to put to you guys are:


what have your experiences of fedora 7 been like?
Is there any real advantage of using fedora over ubuntu? or indeed non-debian over debian?
Are problems such as configuring wireless adapters as easy to fix as Ubuntu?
What made you turn to fedora?


Thanks :)

1) Very solid. Some proprietary things (wifi for one) are more difficult than in Ubuntu due to Fedora's unwillingness to put in non-free things that Ubuntu does (a good thing, IMO). The repo's have been sped up in Fedora 7, the artwork is fantastic as always, and newer versions of stuff are always nice :).

2) Preference. Ubuntu does some things well, but Fedora is a little more refined. Nicer GUI modifications, prettier artwork, etc. Overall though, Gnome on linux is very similar no matter what distro you use. Basically Debian is one "branch" of linux. Non Debian distro's offer the same apps, but instead of using "apt-get" you use "yum" (in the case of Fedora). Yum doesn't work as quickly as apt, but my personal opinion is that it does a more complete job (and gives you more options). The rpm installer is much better than dpkg as well. Overall, neither is "better", they are just different.

3) Depends what wireless adapter you have. I have Atheros and it worked OOTB on Ubuntu, and worked on Fedora after following a guide. Not as easy, but thats because of the non-free. If you use ndiswrapper, then your experience will likely be the same on both.

4) I used Fedora for a long time because the GUI was very pretty and the tweaks (like double clicking an executable file to run it) were very nice. Plus I prefer the Fedora installer and package management tools.

Overall, theres no harm in trying. There is a gnome and a KDE liveCD for Fedora, give them a try and see what you think. In some ways it is much nicer than Ubuntu and it is harder in others. Fedora is more of a "bleeding edge" distro. They tend to upgrade packages mid-relese, which Ubuntu does not. They also upgrade the kernel a lot. If you want to stay up to date, give Fedora a shot. If you like to have a more constant environment, but still want a red-hat type system, try out CentOS 5, it is a rebranded RHEL5. OpenSUSE is what I am using now, I feel like it is the pinnacle of what linux can be right now. Very nice RPM based distro, also worth a shot (but still do try Fedora, its great).

[srt5]

1) Very solid. Some proprietary things (wifi for one) are more difficult than in Ubuntu due to Fedora's unwillingness to put in non-free things that Ubuntu does (a good thing, IMO). The repo's have been sped up in Fedora 7, the artwork is fantastic as always, and newer versions of stuff are always nice :).

2) Preference. Ubuntu does some things well, but Fedora is a little more refined. Nicer GUI modifications, prettier artwork, etc. Overall though, Gnome on linux is very similar no matter what distro you use. Basically Debian is one "branch" of linux. Non Debian distro's offer the same apps, but instead of using "apt-get" you use "yum" (in the case of Fedora). Yum doesn't work as quickly as apt, but my personal opinion is that it does a more complete job (and gives you more options). The rpm installer is much better than dpkg as well. Overall, neither is "better", they are just different.

3) Depends what wireless adapter you have. I have Atheros and it worked OOTB on Ubuntu, and worked on Fedora after following a guide. Not as easy, but thats because of the non-free. If you use ndiswrapper, then your experience will likely be the same on both.

4) I used Fedora for a long time because the GUI was very pretty and the tweaks (like double clicking an executable file to run it) were very nice. Plus I prefer the Fedora installer and package management tools.

Overall, theres no harm in trying. There is a gnome and a KDE liveCD for Fedora, give them a try and see what you think. In some ways it is much nicer than Ubuntu and it is harder in others. Fedora is more of a "bleeding edge" distro. They tend to upgrade packages mid-relese, which Ubuntu does not. They also upgrade the kernel a lot. If you want to stay up to date, give Fedora a shot. If you like to have a more constant environment, but still want a red-hat type system, try out CentOS 5, it is a rebranded RHEL5. OpenSUSE is what I am using now, I feel like it is the pinnacle of what linux can be right now. Very nice RPM based distro, also worth a shot (but still do try Fedora, its great).

Thanks for the replies :) I do not really stand to lose anything at the moment by switching tp a new distro. I have a few weeks to spare before starting a new job where I will be required to work with Vista (blergh! :() But at home I am 100% Linux and it's curiosity more than anything that drives my Linux exploration.

Thanks for answering my questions. I am a programmer, so my main priority is to simply have a decent system which is stable and connected to the internet. I am unfortunate to have the infamous Broadcom wireless cards built into my laptop, so I suspect that I will probably end up having to go down the ndiswrapper route with this.

I don't care much about fancy graphics, I installed Beryl but got kinda bored with it after a while and find that the standard Gnome desktop is just fine for me. Plus there's always gnome-look :)

Thanks for the advice, I may try installing Fedora tommorrow, it's going to take me the best part of a day to download the DVD iso most probably!!!

How good is the documentation? Also if i run into any problems - will this forum answer questions about fedora? :) The Ubuntu community is the best I've come across!!

Cheers

[dakini]

I just installed Fedora 7 last evening. So far I've found:

1) The install was routine (I used the live cd).

2) There are a number of detailed tutorials on the net for installing the required codecs. I was able to get up to speed in a very short time. It really is no more difficult to get everything you need than on Ubuntu.

3) As mentioned the artwork is polished and the fonts look good as well.

4) I find package installation and updates to be slower than debian-based systems, but nothing terrible and everything worked fine.

5) So far I'm finding Fedora to be an enjoyable experience and I appreciate learning more about rpm-based commands. But I can't really say that I find it better or worse than a number of other operating systems that I've used, at least at the superficial level.

[odiseo77]

what have your experiences of fedora 7 been like?
Is there any real advantage of using fedora over ubuntu? or indeed non-debian over debian?
Are problems such as configuring wireless adapters as easy to fix as Ubuntu?
What made you turn to fedora?

Thanks :)

1.-I haven't tried FC7, but I tried FC 3, 4 and 6 and in my opinion, is not as good as Ubuntu: yum, the FC apt-get equivalent is slow as hell because it fetches the list of available packages every single time you download a package; yumex, the synaptic equivalent is also very slow (its a graphical frontend for yum) and slows down the system a lot, sometimes freezes momentary, etc.

2.-I don't think there's a real advantage on using FC over Ubuntu; IMO debian-based distros are faster, more versatile and have the advantage of having a huge amount of packages available in the repositories.

3.- I connect to internet using an edimax wireless card which uses the ralink rt2500 chipset (which has open source drivers for linux) and it was a pain to set it up on FC6 (ubunutu has more support for hardware than FC, in my experience).

4.- hmmm, nothing, I stick with debian-based distros (though I have to admit, I really liked openSUSE 10.2 when I tried it) :)

P.S.: Of course, I'm talking from my experience, as they say YMMV; I'd suggest you to stick with ubuntu/kubuntu/xubuntu or debian.

Regards.

[igknighted]

Thanks for the replies :) I do not really stand to lose anything at the moment by switching tp a new distro. I have a few weeks to spare before starting a new job where I will be required to work with Vista (blergh! :() But at home I am 100% Linux and it's curiosity more than anything that drives my Linux exploration.

Thanks for answering my questions. I am a programmer, so my main priority is to simply have a decent system which is stable and connected to the internet. I am unfortunate to have the infamous Broadcom wireless cards built into my laptop, so I suspect that I will probably end up having to go down the ndiswrapper route with this.

I don't care much about fancy graphics, I installed Beryl but got kinda bored with it after a while and find that the standard Gnome desktop is just fine for me. Plus there's always gnome-look :)

Thanks for the advice, I may try installing Fedora tommorrow, it's going to take me the best part of a day to download the DVD iso most probably!!!

How good is the documentation? Also if i run into any problems - will this forum answer questions about fedora? :) The Ubuntu community is the best I've come across!!

Cheers

Documentation is pretty good. The Fedora FAQ has yet to be updated to my knowledge, but even the older documention (FC6,5 etc.) should work (just change the appropriate digit to 7). You can try here for forum support, but as you can see responses in the other OS talk can be slow. I would recommend http://forum.fedoraforum.org for your forum support. It's not as "fun" of a community, but in many ways as far as technical support goes it is better than even ubuntuforums. Good luck!

[czechman86]

I know its a little late to jump into this discussion, but I have a rather humorous experience with Fedora (- the core) 7. I tried it, and half way through the installer, it said that I had no HD in my computer. This was after it had verified what I wanted to install with it, and also was half way through this installation process. Then, out of the blue ERROR: NO HARD DISK DETECTED.

From my attempts, I would say stick with Ubuntu and you will be happy!

[igknighted]

I know its a little late to jump into this discussion, but I have a rather humorous experience with Fedora (- the core) 7. I tried it, and half way through the installer, it said that I had no HD in my computer. This was after it had verified what I wanted to install with it, and also was half way through this installation process. Then, out of the blue ERROR: NO HARD DISK DETECTED.

From my attempts, I would say stick with Ubuntu and you will be happy!

*cough* bad burn *cough*, although that is a funny story.

[czechman86]

*cough* bad burn *cough*, although that is a funny story.

Perhaps it was a bad burn. I have been having significant problems with my DVD burner as of recently. The Fedora ISO wasnt the only one that has had a possible improper burn recently. On the plus side though, I now have enough coasters to throw a very decent Ukrainian vodka party. :D

@igknighted
I see that you are part of the Fedora team. I am still interested in Trying this OS, however, I do not want to burn another 4 gig coaster. Does Fedora issue a 660 mb iso for PPC? I have looked for one, and have not been able to find it as of yet. Thanks for your help!

[ButteBlues]

Perhaps it was a bad burn. I have been having significant problems with my DVD burner as of recently. The Fedora ISO wasnt the only one that has had a possible improper burn recently. On the plus side though, I now have enough coasters to throw a very decent Ukrainian vodka party. :D

@igknighted
I see that you are part of the Fedora team. I am still interested in Trying this OS, however, I do not want to burn another 4 gig coaster. Does Fedora issue a 660 mb iso for PPC? I have looked for one, and have not been able to find it as of yet. Thanks for your help!
I've not been able to find a Fedora-7-Live-ppc, sorry.

In either case, make sure you burn it at >= 4x speed for best results.

[igknighted]

Perhaps it was a bad burn. I have been having significant problems with my DVD burner as of recently. The Fedora ISO wasnt the only one that has had a possible improper burn recently. On the plus side though, I now have enough coasters to throw a very decent Ukrainian vodka party. :D

@igknighted
I see that you are part of the Fedora team. I am still interested in Trying this OS, however, I do not want to burn another 4 gig coaster. Does Fedora issue a 660 mb iso for PPC? I have looked for one, and have not been able to find it as of yet. Thanks for your help!

Sorry, the official liveCDs are only for x86 and x86_64. You might look at the respins, someone might have made up a PPC iso.

[slimdog360]

I tried the i686 kde live cd yesterday. I still havent given it a great go yet but some of its features are great.

[vignesh]

I started out as Fedora core 3 user.. then gave ubuntu a try when warty released.I usually have both on my system.Fedora 7 is really worth trying..Its really nice.The major things are the single cd installer and merger of the repos.

[ddrplayer512]

Question 1

Fedora 7 has been absolutely fantastic on my laptop. I dual-boot this laptop with windows vista and I use it quite a lot. Out of all the distros, I've seem to have liked Fedora.

Question 2

Not really. I would say if you have been using Debian for a long time, you might like to use Debian-based distros like Ubuntu. There's probably some small differences under the hood, so if you want to learn more about Linux, I guess you could try RPM-based distros like Fedora, CentOS, or open SUSE.

Question 3

In my personal experience, it made no difference which one handled wireless better. I was lucky enough to be using a laptop with a wireless card with instant support in many distros. The wireless support was excellent both Ubuntu and Fedora.

Question 4

I first tried Linux through buying a book, which came with the ISOs of several distros but had the ability to boot into the Fedora installation without burning CDs. So I installed Fedora 5 on my previous laptop. It didn't go so well, so I tried Ubuntu. I haven't tried Fedora for a long time after that, but Fedora in my mind looked the most professional. And Ubuntu seemed to hide everything from you (Just in my mind!). That got stuck in my head. So when I tried Ubuntu again after a period of not trying Linux and then a sudden revival of interest in Linux came. I STILL did not really catch on to it, Fedora 7 had come out only a little while ago, so I tried the Live CD installer and I immediately fell in love with it!

I hope that answered your questions adequately.:p

Sincerely,

ddrplayer512

[CM Xtasy]

Can you use Wine on Fedora Core 7?

[ButteBlues]

Can you use Wine on Fedora Core 7?
Yeah. It's in livna repositories.

[bobbocanfly]

I used Fedora Core 6 for about a month and loved it. The only reason i changed was because MySQL Server wouldnt accept my new root password, so i was locked out of it.

I am currently downloading Fedora 7, which i am going to bung on a 10-25gb partition and just mess about with. The artwork isnt as good as the Fedora DNA (Which was nothing short of *amazing*) but still looks much better than Ubuntu does (by default).

Edit: Typing this from my fresh copy of Fedora 7. Its pretty good, very stable and despite the hot air balloons, looks very nice. I have customed it with the Fedora Core 6 Wallpaper and GDM Theme and my GTK-Nova theme and its amazing! Not as user friendly as Ubuntu (i had to manually edit the Grub menu.lst to dual boot, which im sure a lot of newbs dual booting with Windows would not be prepared to do)) but i got there in the end.