Linux Format forums

Re: Fedora Core 4 review

AudioMove — Wed Jul 27, 2005 2:55 am

Author: AudioMove

Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2005 2:55 am

<rant>
Ive been using FC4 for awhile now, been using FC since since the beginning was using RH before that. I most say i found the review was a bit harsh i also got from it that it wasnt newbie friendly enough when its not supposed to be. With FC quick release schedule which is about to end i think you cant expect what you normally would see in a new distro release so you gotta balance it up against FC3 and how long its been since.

I think compiling against GCC4 is great and it may not be much now regarding performance but it most of been one massive job and should be given some serios credit for that. I dont think updates of php and mysql as their the norm and i dont really count them as their expected.

Regarding extras i luv the idea and hopefully i dont know wheather it would be possible but if everything could go in their one day to make all application and plugins easily available like mp3 support etc would be great so peeps would just have to grab everything from their and i dont really see getting stuff from extras a problem or a bad thing that should go against fedora as most peeps use repos like dries, freshrpms etc...

Anyway summing up FC4 is a good release and they've also done alot of work on the boot time which helps. I dont think anyone using FC4 will be jumping back to FC3 any time soon and with the quick release cycles that most mean something.

</rant>

Re: Fedora Core 4 review

A-Wing — Thu Jul 14, 2005 5:46 pm

Author: A-Wing

Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2005 5:46 pm

I kinda see Fedora as a great office desktop and a good development platform. We use it on our servers (hosting servers) but it is heavily cusomised with security enhancements and packages.
I think the reason why the php4 - 5 upgrade was delayed was due to the fact that many PHP4 scripts originally didn't work in PHP5 (we still use PHP4 on our web servers), now many projects have made their scripts compatible the PHP5 upgrade makes sense. The late MySQL upgrade however I have no idea, on our SQL servers it was the first thing I rebuilt with previous Fedoras.
Maybe they did spend too much time patching everything to make it work with GCC4 and too little time with new features. Its a pity 5 is going to be delayed so long as I have been looking forward to that since I heard some of the included features.
In hindsight I'd say that Fedora 4 does seem more of a intrum release, getting the technology ready to work for 5.
I think I need to let my wife to be (on Saturday) try it to gauge a proper ease of use

Re: Fedora Core 4 review

Marrea — Thu Jul 14, 2005 4:06 pm

Author: Marrea

Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2005 4:06 pm

There's a particular book called "Linux for Non-Geeks" which largely deals with Fedora and I found I could for example download and install programs simply by following the detailed instructions set out there without really having to understand too much about what exactly was going on. It's very much in the style of
1. go to such and such a website
2. navigate to such and such a page
3. click on the icon at the top of the page
4. click on the file called such and such
5. save it to your desktop.
Etc., etc. A real idiot's guide if you like. Perfect for newbies.

I have fairly limited requirements from any Linux distro, as I only use stand alone "personal desktop" machines for web-surfing, e-mail, office and music/video programs, so I can't really comment on some of the more advanced features which you guys are far more knowledgeable about than I am. But then a lot of newbies probably don't want to go much further than the things I use Linux for, and I think Fedora is perfect for those.

Re: Fedora Core 4 review

M-Saunders — Thu Jul 14, 2005 3:44 pm

Author: M-Saunders

Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2005 3:44 pm

Marrea wrote:

For the simple reason there are more books on Red Hat/Fedora than any other distro so there is a vast information resource for people to refer to.

True, although there are a lot of books on assembler, and Oracle, and TCP/IP, and VMS (if you look hard enough!). But that doesn't mean they're easy things to use... Still, just to chip in my two Space Credits: IMHO, Fedora's config tools are initially sweet in that they're small and do one job, but I agree with Andy and co. that they should've improved as the years roll on. Tighter integration between them would be welcome.

Whacha going to do, eh? (If Natty wakes, obscure eastern pop music fans)

M

Re: Fedora Core 4 review

Marrea — Thu Jul 14, 2005 3:29 pm

Author: Marrea

Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2005 3:29 pm

Re the point that has been made about Fedora not being suitable for newbies, I wouldn't agree with this. Why? For the simple reason there are more books on Red Hat/Fedora than any other distro so there is a vast information resource for people to refer to. My main distro is SuSE, but I also used FC2 for some time and I found it just as easy/easier to use than SuSE - purely because I had so much documentation readily available.

I've been using Linux for over two years now, but I still regard myself pretty much in the "newbie" bracket.

I haven't as yet tried FC4 because I'm having difficulty installing it. My video card (Trident Cyberblade in a Toshiba laptop) doesn't like it and I am suffering from the "frozen white screen" at the beginning of installation. I believe there are workarounds but I have not yet had time to try and sort this out. But I'm very anxious to give FC4 a whirl as soon as I can.

Re: Fedora Core 4 review

Nobber — Thu Jul 14, 2005 3:07 pm

Author: Nobber

Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2005 3:07 pm

I didn't mean to imply that Andy thinks Fedora sucks as a whole - which is why I made a point of saying "distro release" instead of just "distro". However, I still think that contributing to a book that focuses on a particular distro release you find especially disappointing must leave you with mixed feelings. Eh? (Disclaimer: IANAA - I Am Not An Author!)

Re: Fedora Core 4 review

Hudzilla — Thu Jul 14, 2005 2:24 pm

Author: Hudzilla

Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2005 2:24 pm

'lo all,

I figured I should wade in and say a few words, just because I find it hard to stay out of flame wars. Woohoo!

i) I talked to Andrew about the 4/10 score when the review was written, and after a long discussion he said he definitely wanted to stick by it. It wasn't an off-hand thought or a typo.

ii) I totally think Fedora is a desktop distribution. As Andrew says, it goes into RHEL for use as RHEL WS and RHEL Desktop, both of which are not aimed at servers. Please keep in mind that Fedora was called Red Hat Linux only a few years ago, and sold in bookstores the world over.

iii) GCC 4 does not, as yet, bring about any substantial speed improvements to the best of my knowledge. This is supported not only by our extensive tests (see the feature in LXF66), but also by others (see http://www.coyotegulch.com/reviews/gcc4/ for the quote "Is GCC 4.0 better than its predecessors? In terms of raw numbers, the answer is a definite "no".") That said - and this is important - I still think GCC 4 is a great release. It has built the foundation for a number of further optimisations that will come in the future, so I expect FC5 to really be able to make the most of it.

iv) The jumps from MySQL 3 to 4 and from PHP 4 to 5 are most welcome, but these are just version bumps. I am honestly sick of distros that do little beyond updating their packages, and version number superiority just doesn't impress me any more. Of course I'm glad to have more people using PHP 5, but to be honest it's way, way overdue - PHP 5.0 was released on the same day as FC3 Test 1, yet (presumably to avoid breakage in RHEL 4) didn't find its way into that release. I don't think Red Hat deserves any kudos for leaving PHP 5 so long...

v) Obviously it's not possible for Andrew to accurately predict the release of FC5!

Regarding the overall scores, I would still have scored Fedora higher if I were reviewing it myself. I too am thoroughly annoyed at the lack of configuration tools - and indeed the lack of any real innovation - but I would still probably have scored it 5/10. As I wrote in my column a few issues ago, we re-adjusted all our scores to really mean what they say - 5/10 is "average", meaning that the majority of distros out there should get that score. I consider FC4 very average as a desktop distro. On the flip side, I would never, ever use it as a server distro either, simply because it doesn't provide a good enough security infrastructure for my requirements.

Nobber: it's not the case that Andrew doesn't care about Fedora. If that were true, he wouldn't run it on so many machines. Instead, I think the negative review is more of a reflection on the general disappointment of the release - it's not what it could (should) have been, particularly given the long lead time before RHEL5 is frozen.

So, to sum up: I think 4/10 is low, but Andrew's the expert. Like Andrew I've been using Fedora for a number of years, and have been using FC4 since before Test 1 - but I would still have given it 5/10 rather than 4/10. The points you've raised are valid, and I'd like to think that Andrew will take onboard all you've said and let that give him a fresh perspective when reviewing products in the future. He has reviewed Fedora for us for several releases now, and has a Fedora book out with his name on, so there can really be no question of bias - what is he biased in favour of, exactly?!

Take care,

Paul

Re: Fedora Core 4 review

Andy — Thu Jul 14, 2005 1:45 pm

Author: Andy

Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2005 1:45 pm

Hi Guys,

Sorry for the delay in posting my response - I have a 5 week old baby that is consuming a lot of my time (and most of my sleep) away from work - it's all good though

Anyway, let's answer a few questions:

I've been using Fedora Core since it's release, and Red Hat Linux for many years previously. Each release of Fedora Core has become better and better - more functionality has been added, software has been upgraded etc etc.

What has also happened is that core components have not been improved in any way and have been left behind or overlooked - am I really happy still to use the GUI tools I used two or three years ago? You may argue that YAST is a bloated beast of an application, but at least they have the options to do things. I pointed towards the continued development of utilities that are built into GNOME as a possible way of Fedora addressing the problem and time will tell if this is the case.

As for your point about Fedora not being for newbies - I totally agree... I would never advise that someone who has absolutely no experience of Linux or UNIX chooses Fedora. Mandriva or Ubuntu yes, but not Fedora. But also look at Fedora - what is it's raison d'etre? Answer: to act as a sandpit for Red Hat to test new features that may or may not get included into RHEL. Given that RHEL is supposed to be suitable for deployment on desktop machines, one would have thought that usability and (limited) configuration would become easier and more straightforward - I have seen limited evidence that any work has been done in Fedora itself to make this happen.

Nobber - thanks for the plug I wasn't going to bring it up, but it is also a key part of my review - having tracked FC4 through it's development as part of Rawhide and into the official test releases and onto the final release, I have been using it on and off for the last seven months. It's given me a chance to dig deep into the software and ultimately in the current climate I find it somewhat lacking compared to the configurability of SUSE or the general user-friendliness of Ubuntu.

I agree with you on the GCC comment - perhaps gamble was not the best word to use in this instance, although it is a step out into new territory. Any new technology has risks attributed to it, and I agree that Red Hat would not have allowed its inclusion if it was terribly unstable. Give it time and we'll see what happens - I only hope it goes well.

The whole Extras repos is something else that is underway at the moment - the ultimate aim is to reduce Fedora Core to just that - a core base of software. I didn't say that there was anything specifically wrong about the Extras approach - what I said was that there were fierce expressions of opinions (read flame-wars) in the Fedora Development and Testing mailing lists. What I'd ultimately like to see is something along the lines of the RHEL line-up, where you have Fedora Desktop, a Fedora ES and a Fedora AS; people could just download the CD's they want and off they go - anything extra would be retrieved via Extras.

You are correct - the FC5 annoucement was after this review went to press, so I couldn't do anything about that... I did read rumblings about people wanting to extend the cycle, but no commitments.

Finally - awarding 3 under ease of use. Defining ease of use is a fairly subjective thing. Harking back to Nick and Rebecca's GUI/CLI article I know I can do a lot of the configuration by hand at the command line. Do I want to? That's another thing. The simple fact is that whilst SUSE, Mandriva and even Ubuntu have moved on with ease of use, Fedora is stumbling forward.

Nobber - don't mis-understand me... I do care a lot for Fedora Core, and if anything I should be biased in it's favour. But with FC4 I am seeing it more as an interim release in the run up to FC5 which promises to be a great release.

Anyway - I like this kind of interaction - after all, the forums are an extension of the magazine and it's great to get feedback and debate the various points of reviews.

Now back to bed....

Andy

Re: Fedora Core 4 review

A-Wing — Thu Jul 14, 2005 1:35 pm

Author: A-Wing

Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2005 1:35 pm

mugstar wrote:

DistroWatch seem to have found the review itself newsworthy:
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=current#1

And if you look in the comments, several people share my views (and there are a few having problems installing).

Re: Fedora Core 4 review

mugstar — Thu Jul 14, 2005 1:06 pm

Author: mugstar

Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2005 1:06 pm

DistroWatch seem to have found the review itself newsworthy:
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=current#1

Re: Fedora Core 4 review

Nobber — Thu Jul 14, 2005 11:53 am

Author: Nobber

Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2005 11:53 am

Also interesting: Andy Hudson is co-author of the book Red Hat Fedora 4 Unleashed. How must it feel to contribute to a book on a distro release you don't care much for?

Re: Fedora Core 4 review

M-Saunders — Thu Jul 14, 2005 11:51 am

Author: M-Saunders

Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2005 11:51 am

A-Wing wrote:

And todays newsletter seems to contradict the review a little too

In what way? If you're referring to the news item where it says:

"Early reports suggest it's a solid release."

Bear in mind that was written a few weeks ago, and it's just noting that some initial feedback around the Net was pretty positive. Then people started to use it more thoroughly, more demandingly, and problems surfaced.

M

Re: Fedora Core 4 review

A-Wing — Thu Jul 14, 2005 11:06 am

Author: A-Wing

Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2005 11:06 am

And todays newsletter seems to contradict the review a little too

Re: Fedora Core 4 review

A-Wing — Wed Jul 13, 2005 5:04 pm

Author: A-Wing

Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2005 5:04 pm

First point, you are attacking Fedora as if it is a distro for newbies, it isn't and doesn't even pretend to be. Which kinda leads to my second point, the GUI config, if you click the Desktop button on the top bar, bingo you have your GUI config. Its no YaST but it i very functional. But since Fedora isn't for newbies it is not essential anyway.
GCC 4: early reports do show a speed increase, I can't say for certain here as 3 didn't really run slow doing anything for me. The other big advantage is security, GCC 4 has techniques to help prevent buffer overflows in code. Makeing code compile in GCC4 is no easy task, there are a lot of programs that use out of spec techniques which now are not valid, the Fedora project has had to fix a lot of code for other projects. I really wouldn't call GCC a gamble either, RedHat have a lot to do with the GCC project and they wouldn't have switch to it without extensive testing. I think you'll agree it is quite stable.
I don't think there is anything wrong with Fedora Extras program, it is quite understable that people don't want to download 9GB of data as is the case for Debian (not that I have any problem with Debian). Most users I know use apt repositories anyway with many more packages than extras. I think I read somewhere that there are plans to put extras on CD/ISO as well but I can't confirm that as I don't pay attention to the lists that often.
You have missed the huge jump from mysql 3.23 to 4.1 and php 4.3 to 5 which many people have wanted for a long time. Many of the changes are for things you don't generally see on the GUI front, a lot of work has gone in there.
I really can't find any justification for a 3 under ease of use.
Another correction which may not have been announced when you wrote the article is you said core 5 would be Q4 this year, its acually going to be Q1 next year, there will be a 9 month gap.
I trust Fedora Core 4 on my desktops and servers just as I have on 3, the quality and stability gets better each time, it has not gotten worse so I can't see any justification for such a low scoring review.

*rant over*

Re: Fedora Core 4 review

A-Wing — Wed Jul 13, 2005 11:04 am

Author: A-Wing

Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2005 11:04 am

I haven't got my mag with me at work, I'll post about it when I get home tonight.