Installing Fedora Core 4

Today I reinstalled FC4 on my scratch partitions. (Kanotix is still my main distro.) I think I'll stick with it for a while.

Why Fedora, and not any of the multitudes of other distros I've tried? Because it's got a ton of end-user documentation available; because it's probably "the" distro people think of when they hear "Linux;" and because it's got a pretty good base of software available. Besides, why play with K/Ubuntu when you've already got a Debian-based distro installed?

It's still strange to me that Red Hat won't even include NTFS and MP3 support. Why doesn't some non-profit legal defense fund exist that'll swing into action to defend Linux providers if there's actually any legal repercussions? Why do most other distros provide this support out of the box, but not Red Hat? Merely saying "patents" doesn't explain it.

Fedora Core 4 install notes

• It's still got problems with Audigy sound cards. Although the card is correctly detected, you still have to go into an ALSA mixer (like KMix) and make sure the A/D output is turned off and that all the volume controls are raised.
• Red Hat Network Configuration (K menu > System Settings): Don't use GPG verification (on the Retrieval/Installation tab), or you'll have to sit there and push "Yes" each time Up2date asks if you want to install an unsigned package.
• In order to switch from gdm to kdm, edit /etc/sysconfig/desktop:
  
  
  Code:

  DESKTOP="KDE"
  DISPLAYMANAGER="KDE"

• In order to turn off the default kdm theme and allow root logins, edit /etc/X11/xdm/kdmrc (what an odd place for it to live). Note that there are two places to edit to allow root logins.
• Thank God for the the Unofficial Fedora FAQ (and for Yum Extender). Most of what anyone will want -- the NTFS module; MP3 support; Flash support; Java; etc. -- is covered there.
• Oddly, one is forced to manually add one's partitions to /etc/fstab. For example:
  
  
  Code:

  /dev/hda1		/media/hda1		ntfs	ro,umask=022	0 0
  /dev/hdb4		/media/hdb4		vfat	rw,shortname=mixed,utf8,uid=500,gid=500 0 0

  (The uid and gid are those of my normal user, so I can read and write to the partition. A FAT32 partition is a good way to transfer files between Linux and Windows.)
• Nuke that annoying Autorun enabler in ~/.kde/Autostart -- it makes the system hang for a bit right after I log in