TechieMoe.com

Introduction:

Fedora and I go way back. I was there when it was born (before that even, with its grandpa Redhat 7.3) and I've seen its whole sordid childhood. It's done some dirty things. It's disappointed me time and time again. I keep hoping one day it will wake up sober. Perhaps 8 will do it?

Install:

The Anaconda installer hasn't really changed much over the years, but in this release it did gain a bit more softness around its edges, literally. Everything looked slightly rounded off.

I picked my language, time zone, and keyboard layout then partitioning options. The next screen gave me software choices.

I chose "Office Productivity" and "Software Development" but left the "Web Server" option unchecked. There was an option to customize it, but I just went with the defaults this time around.

Something was missing when I booted up. Oh yes, "firstboot." This is the program that usually runs (you guessed it) the first time you start up the system and lets you perform the last few configuration tasks such as setting up a regular user. Instead I was given the logon prompt. Whoops.

I signed in with root user (thank goodness I'd at least been able to set THAT up during the install) and I was given a warning that I was running X as a privileged user. This is a nice touch but I was annoyed that I had to do it because Fedora itself screwed something up.

I tried to manually run firstboot. I was given a python error. "/usr/bin/python2: bad interpreter." I was off to a stellar start. Perhaps this error was the reason firstboot hadn't run in the first place. I decided to add my user manually with the "Users and Groups" application in the System menu. I launched it. And waited. And waited some more. Nothing happened.

I added a user from the command line with useradd. This shouldn't be necessary. I can't say I'm surprised at this lack of quality control, considering Fedora's history. I've not had a functional release of this distribution since Core 3. Do they even employ quality control anymore?

I was finally able to log in with a regular user. If I didn't know better, I'd swear I was looking at Ubuntu's desktop. Aside from the little Fedora "F" and change in color scheme, the default GUI looks and acts exactly the same.

I say "exactly" the same, but there are a few minor differences. Fedora has taken a set of relatively uncluttered menus in the "System" drop-down and cluttered them up.

One entire sub-menu was dedicated a single entry. Is that really necessary? Why not just put them all in one menu and let *me* figure out whether a program relates to "Hardware" or "Look and Feel"?

It didn't actually act the same way either. In Ubuntu, menu options actually worked. I immediately wanted to de-clutter the System menu, so I picked the "Main Menu" option. Alacarte is the program that handles this. I know this because the error message that said "Could not launch menu item" mentioned it by name.

Were I planning on actually using this distribution, I would have quit right now. However to satisfy my morbid curiousity I trudged on. My scanner worked, as did my flash drive. MP3s did not, nor did MPG/WMV movies. I was not surprised.

It's worth noting that although Ubuntu and others have woken up and realized no one likes the Gnome default "open everything in a new window" option for Nautilus, the Fedora camp seems to have lost the memo. Every time I opened something in the file browser it created a new window, ala Windows 95. Joy.

I was unable to build my Nvidia drivers. I got an error to that effect. I looked in the log and it said "Kernel configuration is invalid." I could have told you that. Seriously. First thing that popped into my head.

Software Selection:

The software in the default install is pretty much identical to that of an Ubuntu install, which makes me wonder why Fedora ships on a 3.3GB DVD image instead of Ubuntu's single CD. Apparently all those extra bugs take up a load of space. The only notable difference was the inclusion of SELinux, which I never use anyway.

I was a little confused when I checked the Java version installed and it said "Java 1.7.0." Last I checked the last official release from Sun was 1.6. Then I noticed the second line: IcedTea Runtime Environment. Lovely, no Sun VM. Considering how pretty much the entire Java language is open source now, I appreciate when distributions include a proper VM, and not some GNU hack.

Who's it best for?

I saw no appreciable improvement over a distribution like Ubuntu, even with an extra 2.6GB of stuff. It was also twice as buggy as Ubuntu. Perhaps Fedora developers don't mind including serious workflow bugs in their "final" release. I do, and until they get their act together I won't be using or recommending Fedora.

On top of the bugs, I just can't help but feel like Fedora needs a nice big dose of Gas-X to deal with its increasing bloat. What gets installed that takes up that much space? Who knows? Perhaps it's a super-special curve-creating engine that makes all the windows look like they're made out of fondant icing. Then again, maybe I was just hungry when I wrote this.

::UPDATE:: Ok, so some of you took issue with the fact that I didn't search the disc looking for just what extra stuff came with Fedora 8. To you I say, respectfully, I don't care. Sure, it might have 3 different desktop environments. If none of them can play so much as one MP3 file, it makes no difference to me. I have specific things I look for. Fedora 8 failed those things.

To those of you who ask "If you hate Fedora so much, why do you keep trying it?" You have a valid question. I do these rants for the entertainment value it gives myself and a handful of people on the net. If I happen to find that a distribution I hate has improved in its latest release, all the better.