I've used Fedora Core 1 in the past, but for various reasons switched to mandrake 9.2, and now 10.0 But, again for various reasons, I'm curious about the current status of the Fedora project.

Is the new FC test 2 usable for an enjoyable daily computing experience?
Can I upgrade the packages with yum or apt as the days go by, eventually ending up with what is basically Fedora Core 2?

I'm horribly confused with APT and YUM, are the two somehow competing or just co-existing?
I've used apt in RH9 and FC1, and know the drill there, but is yum somehow different? I'm thinking of a scenario with different repositories with different software available, resulting in horrible mess of packages conflicting and basically messing up everything.
If I could only go with one with Fedora, which one would it be?

What is this I hear about PGP and it making life difficult for Fedora users?

And last, but honestly not least, something only Mandrake has accomplished so far:
I live in Finland, I speak the finnish language and I have a keyboard with a finnish keymap.
But I prefer my OS in english. This seems to confuse just about every Linux distro out there, particularily RH/Fedora. I want to type weird scandinavian letters (ä å ö ü) so that people in the other end of the internet see them as I do.
All was good if I chose the finnish language in the Fedora install, but then I got these horrible translated menus in KDE and Gnome, by no means do I mean to disrespect the work of the i18n team, but I just can't live with them. If I chose the english language, then the letters are messed up either only in the console, or everywhere.
If I edit the /etc/sysconfig/i18n (if I remembered that correctly) I can get correct letters in XChat, but never in console.
I could go on like this for a good while, but someone in a similiar situation might be able to give me a simple yes or no, does it work?

I have FC2-T2 running on my laptop. It's my daily internet-access machine. I haven't had any problems that made me go back to FC1.

That being said, it is a testing version. They come out with updates everyday. Sometimes a hundred or more. If you don't like keeping it updated, then you might want to wait until the final comes out next month.

Apt and yum do the same thing... They are package managers. You can use either to keep you system updated, or install new programs, or remove old ones. They keep tabs on a server or two on the internet, which supply the packages. When you install anything, it looks at the dependencies you need, and tries to fill them. Since both run through the RPM database on your computer, you can have both installed and use either at anytime.

If you install a test version, it will update to the final. You'll just need to run yum or apt or up2date, and it will update whatever it needs.

I'm not sure what you've heard about PGP problems. I don't run it, so I don't have any experience with it. You could have a spot of trouble if you don't have the keys installed for updating... But that's a simple fix.

And, I've no info on playing with the languages. Hopefully, somebody else will come along with an answer.

I just edited my FC2 /etc/sysconfig/i18n file to look like this:

LANG="fi_FI"
SUPPORTED="fi_FI:en_US"
LC_CTYPE="fi_F@euro"

It worked for console, but Apache web server is still not showing scandinavian letters correctly.
Ok, "ä" would fix that but it is not enough as I cannot expect users to input scandinavian letters
that way. On Mandrake this works like a charm.

did u edit the httpd.conf to change defualt charset or remove defult charset?
it is not distro based isue. just add "#" symbol before "AddDefaultCharset ...." line in httpd.conf. so apache will use the charset which is defined in html codes.

good luck.

I've found yum to be going the same way as up2date, due to the number of times it has to re-download a file due to fact it either hangs for five minutes at a time if I use the net at all or the MD5 sum on the downloaded file doesn't match and so is discarded.

Ok I'm a 3 week old noob to linux. I have Debian up and running at home, running really well mind you. It seems that everywhere I go I always see a red hat/fedora rpm to download, and sometimes a mandrake version as well, but I never see anything for Debian. The .deb packages just seem few far and inbetween, so I'm thinking of going with mandrake or fedora(more twards fedora) but I really love apt in Debian. Is fedora and mandrake both using a apt package system? If so how are they compaired to apt and do they have the same amount of packages availible? As soon as Fedora 3 final hits I'm snagging it, but I like the looks of mandrake 10.1 final, it's just (not cheap but just no money to spend on it) you have to pay to get it. This is why I'm leaning to Fedora3 so maybe someone can help me out with the fedora/mandrake apt, yum, thing. thanks and sorry for the noob Q.

reddragon...
Apt is available for most major distro's i believe. i have been using fc1&2 for a while now and find my needs nicely handled by apt (except for a few oddball packages i want to install occasionally). i really really really love just being able to type: apt-get update and then apt-get upgrade. done and done!
fc2 final is pretty nice, especially with a nice light wm to make things fast (using xfce here) might wanna look into it!

FC3 is supposed to be out on monday so I think I'll norton ghost my machine onto some DVD's and then install FC3 when I get it. I like Debian and went with Debian because ofthe apt prog. Beinga noob I needed as much help as I could get, but then I find that there are never any major program releases that make installation easier for debian and the programs that are availible from Debians resources are older. I did (remind you I'm a three week old noob) get the ATI drivers from ATI up and running, but I cannot get my printer to share to an XP machine and I cannot get linked programs to stay either(like mp3 opens a KDE player and I want XMMS, nut the XMMS link wont stayit reverts back to the KDE default)

So if you use apt in FC2 then I'll definatly try out FC3. Also what is this YUM I keep hearing about.

on FC2 u can install synapic which is apt -update/-install for FC2...
with a GUI which acts like a big add/remove program menu
try here for it

http://tinyurl.com/5jxkk

didn't I just see this?? Oh yea in the other post

yum is a similar program to apt and up2date. they *basically* all do the same sort of thing, which is to keep track of and manage packages for you.

however, if you are only 3 weeks into your addiction, you may want to consider getting fc2 final instead of fc3, as the newer fc releases are sometimes buggy in ways that would frustrate the hair off a new linux user. fc2 has had a little more time to mature, and might provide better results for you as a learning distro.

after that, the only limit is your imagination...

So does FC2 have 2.6.8 as i heard it's a better kernal and that is why I'm running it now. Also Fedora's site doesn't have a whole lot of info about what is in the packages, unless I missed it. right now i'm running the Sarge Vrs. of Debian which is considered a bad idea for noobs, but I've been lucky with google by my side. Being 3 weeks old as of tomorrow and getting back to my good old OS days has really helped me in my IT job, everything there is point'n click and can really dumb you down so my switch to Linux at home has really made me feel that I'm getting somewhere with my put'r. Also if i load up FC2 i can just up2date to FC3 when i'm ready to rock, at least I think that's how that works. right now I'm ghosting my machine so if I mess up the FCx install then i can get back to a usable image.

Here's the FC2 package list http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/package-list/ the link may change to FC3 after Monday, don't know.

Also the current FC2 kernel is indeed 2.6.8 . http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pu...pdates/2/i386/

Using up2date will get you the 2.6.8. The FC2 install will have the older kernel.

Cheers.