PDA

View Full Version : The story of Fedora 9



NullHead
May 15th, 2008, 05:58 PM
I got this in an e-mail earlier today from thelinuxstore.ca and I liked it ... so I thought I'd share it with everyone.

============
An ancient text prophesised this day would come, detailing the fate of all who are willing to accept what is offered to them.

And that day has come: the Computer said "I will convert these unbelievers, and now that I have Sulphur it will be easy." At that, the heavens opened and burning Sulphur descended upon all the world, taking on many different forms.

First to hit were the live USB keys. The heathens cried out for mercy, but were powerless to resist. The sticks were damn persistent and non-destructively formatted - non-destructively! They showed up everywhere, casting out demons from computers infected by the dark one of the interwebs and rescuing lost data from the influence of the evil crackers.

Then, when they thought it couldn't get any worse, the whole world was cast into shadow. Lit only by the dim light from their computer screens, they discovered a mysterious message scrolling across: "K K K K K K K 4 4 4 4 4 4". The screens flickered, and the light flooded out so that the shadow was lifted. After their eyes had adjusted they saw something so beautiful, teeming with so much potential that they began to break down. KDE 4 was on their desktops!

The descent gathered pace; next to hit the ground was FreeIPA. At first this puzzled what remained of the heathens, but then they realized...they realized that it was going to make system administrators lives a lot easier! A web interface and command line tools, interacting with Windows domains and Active Directories? It was all getting too much for them. Conversions were happening faster and faster, only aided by mobile broadband, static IP addresses, and much much more in NetworkManager.

Now, only a few doubters remained and what pushed them over the edge? The community, stupid! Tirelessly working to push out great code, great documentation and great artwork, inviting everyone to join where ever they were in the name of freedom.

And the Computer, seeing that his work was accomplished and it was good, decided to rest. Pointing his browser at the Fedora mirrors, he switched off his monitor and waited for his Sulphur to return to him through the internet tubes, ready to enjoy another great release from the Fedora Project.
===========

I'm not sure who wrote it, but I thought it was cool. Share what you think of it. :)

seatex
May 15th, 2008, 06:43 PM
Well, I don't think KDE 4 is worth getting that juiced over - yet. I hope it will be though, once it is ready to replace 3.59.

eragon100
May 15th, 2008, 06:52 PM
Lol !

Luke has no name
May 15th, 2008, 06:53 PM
I was totally unimpressed by Fedora's text-installer back on 8. Maybe I'm just biased. KDE 4 didn't impress me either, even on Kubuntu 8. <3 Gnome (for the most part). I might have to try F9 out some time, if only to get some good ideas on what to implement here.

intense.ego
May 15th, 2008, 09:40 PM
There is a GNOME Spin, version 2.22, I believe. So anyone who doesn't like KDE could you use that instead.

seatex
May 15th, 2008, 09:48 PM
There is a GNOME Spin, version 2.22, I believe. So anyone who doesn't like KDE could you use that instead.

And what would I gain vs. ubuntu 8.04 (64-bit)?

Seventh Reign
May 15th, 2008, 10:21 PM
Personally .. and its only an Opinion .. I think KDE4 is hideous. I'm all for the Dark look, but they seriously need to fix that god-aweful Clock. It would be so much better if they mimic'd the Slickness theme from PCLos-Gnome in a KDE Format.

karellen
May 15th, 2008, 10:40 PM
you know, KDE4 is not Fedora ;)

SomeGuyDude
May 15th, 2008, 10:59 PM
Fedora 9 had a lot of nice things. But the hilariously stupid difficulty necessary to get even basic tasks done (such as make the touchpad work as a touchpad) meant I tossed it out.

msrinath80
May 15th, 2008, 11:12 PM
The disabled tap-to-click feature was not Fedora's mistake. It has been accepted as the default upstream. I would not be surprised if Ubuntu implemented it from the next release onward. But knowing Ubuntu, I am sure they will provide an option during the install on whether or not you want it enabled.

I've personally dumped Hardy in favor of Fedora 9 simply because Fedora supports all my hardware features without any problems.

Check out the Fedora 9 thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=792890

loell
May 15th, 2008, 11:13 PM
I've heard good things about fedora 9,

let me share a snippet.

a mini release party was held in Manila recently for the Philippine locos.

And guess what, windows and fedora can connect to the wifi without a hassle but Hardy heron can't, of course everybody chuckled. :) a gathering for hardy heron but fedora took the spotlight? that doesn't mean hardy heron is to be blamed, the reason could be something else not related to hardy but here you can see how fedora have improved lately.

Arthur Archnix
May 15th, 2008, 11:17 PM
F9 is a slick distro. Ubuntu can learn from them about what releasing a professional looking distro really means. So many positives I don't know where to begin, but ultimately, it was the negatives that led me back to Gutsy.

1. Fonts are much improved. Completely usable. But not Gutsy or Hardy smooth.

2. Yumex is ... what synaptic would be if it behaved poorly. Like refreshing itself very slowly. Only checking depencies once you commit to removal. And not unchecking selections if you decide you don't like what will be removed. Case in point, I used yumex to remove like a thousand chinese and asian language fonts (checkmark, check mark, checkmark) then checked release notes (I'd already read them online). Yumex calculated dependencies and told me I was about to remove every app on my system but locate. Uncheck every item. Check them one at a time to see which is the offender causing the system to disapear in dependency hell. Turns out, after thirty minutes of trial and error, it was release notes. Don't you dare remove those release notes! Everything depends upon the release notes!

3. Their new thing, package kit is neat and has the potential to be as good as synaptic in a few months to a year. The inability to select more than one package for installation or removal means its not really ready for prime-time in my view.

On the plus side, it was rock solid, beautiful out of the ... err.. box, and fairly fast. I'm thinking about putting it on my girlfriends laptop because of its awesome vpn setup (useful for connecting to her work) support for her phone right at install time and the fact that she doesn't care to every look under the hood and be bothered by the fact that her system has come pre-installed with more language font files than currently exist on the planet.

And I say this after having pretty much thrown hardy out the window in disgust. Great job Fedora. I'll stick with my gutsy Gutsy.

SomeGuyDude
May 15th, 2008, 11:21 PM
YUM also has one of the worst habits: you can't just pick a whole lot of packages to install/upgrade and then hit it at the end while you go and do something else. Instead, if you click on something and select "install", it does it immediately.

mmb1
May 16th, 2008, 12:53 AM
I'm looking forward to trying Fedora 9, but I don't have high expectations for KDE 4 based on what I've heard. Hopefully I'll be pleasantly surprised.

NullHead
May 16th, 2008, 03:03 AM
I'm downloading it now. I dare not remove ubuntu from my system, for it's apart of my life now ... I simply can't live with out it :popcorn:

I'll probably run it in a VM witch actually isn't to bad now a days ... I can run Debian with all the gnome stuff in a VM, on my laptop .. a pentium M with 512 mb of ram, and it runs great :D

As for kde4 I really haven't tried it out yet ... so I can't really know what to expect, but being a VERY big gnome fan ... I suppose I'll have the wrong mindset when using kde4.

SomeGuyDude
May 16th, 2008, 03:07 AM
I'm looking forward to trying Fedora 9, but I don't have high expectations for KDE 4 based on what I've heard. Hopefully I'll be pleasantly surprised.

If you want KDE, hold out for OpenSUSE 11. 10.3 had the best integration of KDE 3.5 of any distro I've used, I'd imagine 11 will use KDE4 even better.

uraldinho
May 16th, 2008, 05:29 AM
1. Fedora is a fine distro. I can't criticise it tiny little bit. I find it to be more usable out of the box than ubuntu. But then, the last fedora I installed was 5CDs and ubuntu 1. As some commented, it's not only about the amount of programs, but about the fonts, graphics, etc. I just prefer fedora's default settings over ubuntu's.

But then again, i'm on ubuntu now.

2. KDE4: It does look nice. When it's ready, i will be making the switch. I tried it on hardy, but I don't use it just yet. I found the control menu to be insufficient, it's not customisable enough for me yet. Also most of the KDE programs do not have KDE4 versions yet.

Overall, I'd say it looks good, but it's not ready.

intense.ego
May 16th, 2008, 07:08 AM
And what would I gain vs. ubuntu 8.04 (64-bit)?

I don't know, I haven't tried it yet. I'm just letting people know that Fedora could have GNOME instead. Many people said they were turned off by KDE4, so I wanted to make sure that was not the only reason they didn't try Fedora 9.

PryGuy
May 16th, 2008, 07:09 AM
By the way, I downloaded Fedora 9 yesterday... Wanted to drop a line about it, will make a new post. Will dig it more. yum is still awful compared to apt.