TechieMoe.com

Introduction:

Fedora is one of the top five most popular distributions on DistroWatch.com. It has a very large user base and its developers are both Redhat employees and volunteers. It has a reputation as being the first to try new things. This is both a good and bad thing.

When the new things work, they're a boon. When they don't, they're a liability. Unlike its cousin Redhat Enterprise Linux, Fedora changes rapidly and often dramatically from one release to the next.

I bring this up because even though I don't use it as my main OS, I'm always excited to look at the newest version of Fedora. There's almost always some "Gee, whiz!" thing they've thrown in there. It doesn't necessarily always work, but it's cool to play with.

To prevent getting egg on my face by rushing this rant out and running the risk of a silly mistake, I've taken my time and done several installs with various options to get a better feel for what it can do on my hardware.

Install 1 (Gnome):

Anaconda, the Fedora/Redhat installer, hasn't really changed much over the years. Its interface has become slightly more rounded, but the basic functionality is the same. If you've installed Fedoras 6-8, you know what to expect.

I went through the usual time zone and language settings and then was brought to the partitioner. I was given the option to encrypt the disk, which is something I don't remember seeing in previous releases. In my initial install I didn't choose this option.

I noticed that during the install I wasn't given the option of whether or not to enable SELinux. Usually I choose to disable this, since when I first tried it several Fedoras ago it just got in the way. First impressions like that die hard.

I chose the "Office and Productivity" and "Software Development" options, leaving everything else alone. I looked at the "customize now" options on my second install.

If you don't set any custom package options, you get Gnome as your default desktop. I noticed (as I do every Fedora release) that the default Nautilus setting for new windows is to create a new one every time I click on something.

I say this every time, but I'll say it again: I hate spatial browsing. I don't care if someone somewhere says it's "more natural" and supposedly better for my productivity. This is a feature that I turn off immediately every time I come in contact with it. It just annoys me.

One thing I noticed (or rather *didn't* notice) just playing around was SELinux. I confirmed with the "SELinux Management" utility that it was indeed running on my desktop, but I didn't have any issues doing anything because of it. That's a marked improvement from the last time I used it.

I'll be the first to admit I don't know much about SELinux aside from the fact that it was designed by the US National Security Agency and it's supposed to make your desktop more secure. How? Well, Wikipedia has some details on that. I can't say I necessarily understand them all.

From what I do understand, SELinux helps keep applications and users from acquiring more system privileges than they need, which is a common thread among viruses for other operating systems. I see that as a good thing. Fedora 9's implementation of it doesn't seem to get in my way. That is also a good thing.

When looking through my Session preferences for things I could turn off, I ran into one called "kerneloops applet." A Google search told me this was sort of a crash feedback agent that collects kernel "oopses." I got a chuckle out of that.

They've broken up the configuration utilities in the System->Preferences menu, which I generally regard as a good thing. However, I don't understand the logic of some of their groupings.

The utility to change the screen resolution, for instance, is under "Hardware." When searching for it initially, I looked in "Look and Feel." That's where the desktop effects are configured, so in my logic, the screen resolution would go there too.

Some other applications were moved around in the menus as well. Terminal (one of the first apps I usually reach for) was moved from the usual Gnome spot in "Accessories" to the bottom menu under "System Tools." I'm not saying I necessarily disagree with this placement, but it was different from where my mouse hand wanted to go. I found myself automatically hitting "Accessories" a lot.

The "b43-fwcutter" program was installed, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to use it. Ndiswrapper wasn't installed. The network configuration dialog let me add my card, and it detected it as a wlan device, but there was no option to install drivers for it anywhere I could see.

Before embarking on this rant, I did some reading about the issues I was likely to have getting Nvidia drivers installed in Fedora 9. Whether it's the new version of the Linux kernel, or a beta version of Xorg (as one blog rumored), something in Fedora 9 certainly doesn't like the current stable (and beta) Nvidia drivers.

I wasn't able to verify this on my machine because I couldn't get the kernel headers installed. When I opened Add/Remove software I got an error: "Cannot retrieve repository metadata (repomd.xml) for repository updates." I searched on that error and one post said to try "yum clean all."

I did that, then inserted my Fedora DVD and searched for "kernel." At first I thought it worked because packages came up. They claimed to already be installed. I searched for a few other things and I received the same repository error.

MP3/WMV/MPG playback wasn't installed. No surprise there. I got a nasty error message rather than the helpful dialog Ubuntu gives you.

Install 2 (KDE 4.0):

My second time through I decided to change things up a bit. Fedora, true to form, is one of the first (if not the first) major distribution release to include the next generation of KDE. I was curious to see how it worked.

Since I was already changing things I decided this time to check the "Encrypt System" option on the install. I was asked for a passphrase and warned that changes were about to be written to the disk. That was it.

As I mentioned before, you have to specifically request a different desktop in Fedora 9's installer. I chose "customize now," checked KDE and unchecked Gnome. I dug into the Development section and chose to install "Fedora Eclipse" and "Java Development."

One thing to note: if you want an all-KDE system you'll need to do more than uncheck Gnome. I had to uncheck a number of other packages such as Gnome Development, Gnome games, and NetworkManager-gnome in the sub-menus as well.

I did a dozen or so other little alterations to the package scheme that I won't go into. It was mostly just to remove what I didn't need and add what I thought I did. The advantage to a DVD-based release shone through here; there was a lot of stuff to choose from.

Upon reboot I was asked for my LUKS passphrase. I have no idea what "LUKS" stands for but I assumed it was the encryption passphrase I created in the install. It was.

After login I was brought to the KDE 4 desktop. There's a clear visual disconnect between the stuff that's been redone (the desktop, kicker menu panel) and the stuff that hasn't (icons for the notification applets).

The KDE applications menu doesn't really make much sense to me. It just came across as clumsy. I reverted it back to the KDE 3.5 style.

Another thing I don't understand (and this is true for Vista and Mac OS X as well) is the concept of "widgets" or "gadgets" or "plasmoids." They're little programs that run on your desktop. That I get. Why anyone would want such useless clutter is what I don't get. Oh well, to each their own.

During the course of this rant I re-installed several times. During one of those installs (after I did the encrypted install with KDE 4) I came across this dialog asking for my encryption password. This is interesting.

I assume I was asked this in case I wanted to modify my existing installation, and it wouldn't matter if I just wanted to clean install. I went ahead and entered the password anyway.

Software Selection:

In my first run selecting just Office and Software Development the software installed was pretty modest. The usual Gnome games and utilities were present (Firefox, Pidgin, GIMP) as well as OpenOffice.

GCC 4.3 and a version of Java were included. It wasn't the "official" Sun release, but it was a version of the OpenJDK. Sun has made significant efforts in the past year or so to get Java completely GPL-released, therefore allowing it to be a first-class citizen on legally-conservative distributions like Ubuntu and Fedora.

The last time I played with the open-source implementations of Java was a little over a year ago, and I found them to be not quite far along enough for my work (which relies heavily on the Swing graphics libraries). I was curious to see how far OpenJDK had come, so in my second run-through I installed "Fedora Eclipse" and fired it up.

I received this error when I tried to open Eclipse. The program closed after I clicked OK. It only showed up the first time I launched it. This was on the KDE install. I tried it on the Gnome install just to be sure. It showed up there as well.

UPDATE - I was informed today by someone with a redhat.com email (May 22, 2008) that I'm not the only one who encountered this problem, and it's actually a reported bug. Good to hear it's being worked on.

Conclusion:

I was bothered by the odd behavior of the Add/Remove programs utility. It didn't work as I expected offline using the DVD as a repository (actually, it didn't work at all).

Using the default Gnome desktop, Fedora 9 generally felt solid and polished. Previous versions of Fedora have generally been hit or miss in this respect, so it's good to find a Fedora release that actually feels like a stable one. Install/uninstall aside, I got the feeling that most things worked well.

Although it was fun to play around with KDE 4.0, the desktop itself just felt unfinished. Some graphics for some applications were updated, while others were not. It really felt more like it had been pieced together from two very different releases (3.5 and 4.0) into some sort of ugly hybrid. I can't see myself using it for anything serious until a few more versions down the road, if at all. It's a good thing Fedora included other options for desktops.

Until either Fedora or Nvidia figures out a compromise, I'm stuck playing Mahjongg and Tetravex on the desktop. The usual lack of multimedia codecs is also a hindrance, albeit an expected one. Someone with a net connection could likely remedy the latter fairly easily.