Comments on F18 Install

I generally keep an open mind to change and roll with the punches. However, this go around I did not get a warm fuzzy for the new installer. My guess is that with this installer they were trying to reduce the number of screens you have to traverse through to perform an installation. I felt they succeeded to some extent, but also feel they may have tried to do too much all at once. Here are some of the things I ran into during my install.

The first issue I ran into was that the installer did not see my monitor through my KVM switch. I did not realize this was the problem until later when trying to figure out why X was not coming up. I've had this KVM switch for quite a few years and this is the first time this has ever happened. My workaround was to perform an install using VNC. I needed a graphical install so I could do a custom layout. Text install has not supported setting up a custom layout for some time now.

Once the installer came up I had to figure out how to select the partition where I wanted F18 to reside. I talked about this in another post, so at this point I'll just say it wasn't very straight forward.

The installation seemed to go smoothly after that. Anyone else have another opinion or gotcha to share?

I backed out of the installation a couple of times before getting through it. The Fedora installation guide helped me out a lot. My biggest complaint is not being able to install grub to a partition anymore.

I like to start with a clean install, on a separate HD. Past experience tought me that this is the least troublesome path to take. It was so in this case.
The F18 installation was smooth, recognized all my hardware correctly, including an IP printer. My only mistake was to install Gnome3. It contained a number of confusing changes, as well as omissions. Too bad, as
I am curious about the concept, but it just isn't ready yet as far as I can tell.

czl, that is probably the best way to go, clean install on a separate hard drive. In my case, I did a clean install, but on a hard drive with a few other distros present. It worked out, but I did think that things were a bit tricky with this new installer.

As for GNOME 3 and GNOME Shell, to each their own. I first started using it in Fedora 16 and liked it then. Went with KDE in F17, then back to GNOME Shell in F18. My opinion is that it's "ready" if you're ready for it. But that's just my opinion; obviously, many people would disagree!

Originally Posted by m.a.l.'s pa My opinion is that it's "ready" if you're ready for it. But that's just my opinion; obviously, many people would disagree!

It's a valid point. It seems like many old time Linux people hate the concept, and unfortunately it poses problems for less experienced users like me, because of the constant changes. There are easier distro's than Fedora for newbies.

I do like the concept, but I just wish that it at least showed you the final layout before saving the configuration. Aside from that, I installed it on two machines, one in dual-boot mode with UEFI enabled. I don't know why everyone was freaking out about it deleting partitions. It only deletes them when you tell it to.