Considering Fedora, A few Questions?
 

I want a bleeding edge distro and according to distro watch Fedora seems to be just the ticket.

Couple of questions or myths to clear up.

I hear that fedora is rapidly updating all the time for example from Fedora3 to Fedora4 is there an EASY way to upgrade from Fedora 3 to Fedora 4? Or does it require a complete reinstall?

I have heard that Fedora is one of the slower Linux distro's, is there any truth to this?

I have heard that Red Hat is a RAT of a company and should be avoided, why? Any basis to this?

I have heard that it is a highly unstable Linux distro and is not for the Linux beginner, Is Fedora highly unstable? Do I need to be a linux master to use it?

Thanks
Kezz

i am a newbie, i started off with fedora core 2

i pulled out my hair for about a month, because i am basically computer illeterate

but, i now have fedora core 3 and am truly enjoying my computer, much more than i did with windows xp

i cant answer your other questions, i dont know how a distro can be a "RAT" anything

Re: Considering Fedora, A few Questions?
 

that's right! *thumbs up*
I would recommend a complete reinstall in that particular case because of new gnome, gcc 4.0, kernel, php, apache and so on but in general this is not necessary
totally nonsense regarding full-featured distros
this depends on the point of view if you feel used when you help RedHat with your feedback to produce commercial stuff but don't forget they are sponsoring MY FAVOURITE redhat fedora linux project and you can use their online tutorials at least so it's kind of balanced anyway their commercial stuff is concentrated on you (your enterprise) buying support not the distro RHEL itself in a way..
I don't think it's not for newbies but it's normal to have issues with every distro tons of forums mailing lists... do you think they are all about fedora? or most about it? NO! the thingy is that it's YES not considered stable or production usage applicable in my opinion it's stable enought for production just don't use the wrong versions of packages - especially my last answer needs a bit of add-ons from more experienced with production usage - but for my home system running many daemons - ssh,web,and so on.. it never stops operating only if I play too much aroung with it... hope this helps you have a clear view and regarding ease of use in generall you click 2-3 things and you have it all up&running especially my tools are out-of-the-box - Firefox, apache, Thunderbird there's an easy multimedia install faq - which is RedHat's policy about mp3.. not their best side but anyway two lines of CLI (or even two clicks from GUI) can get you mp3 support and DivX/Xvid..

hi,

well to add a few comments on fedora core 3,

Good Ones
==========

1) Fedora is a gud Work Station and as well as Server too
2) It has nice applications given to the end-user
3) Fast booting
4) Gud hardware detection
5) nVidia Video Card support

Bad Ones
========

1) Requires minimum of 256 MB Ram
2) Sound Driver gives u a lot of problem even after installed and manually have to configure many sound options
3) Fedora is slow in the sense if u RAM below 128 MB
4) There is no mp3 support and the VCD players do not work properly

there are still many goods and bads abt Fedora,but if u rate Fedora Totally,i would tell,

1) upgrade ur RAM to 128 MB DDR-RAM
2) install fc-3
3) get XMMS or XINE for Video and MP3 Support
4) thats it!...u have BLEEDING EDGE DISTRO!
5) do not touch the sound-card configuration unless ur expert!

with regards,
C.C.Chakkaradeep

A few thoughts;
I want a bleeding edge distro and according to distro watch Fedora seems to be just the ticket.

It's pretty bleeding edge (except for support for .mp3), but this makes it less stable than, for instance RHEL. But having used it for several years (since red hat 5.1) I have had no instability problems with fedora.

I hear that fedora is rapidly updating all the time for example from Fedora3 to Fedora4 is there an EASY way to upgrade from Fedora 3 to Fedora 4? Or does it require a complete reinstall?

The release cycle is six months or so, core 4 is currently for testing only and should be released in september. Upgrading does NOT require reinstalling. I went from 2 to 3 through YUM. This page explains how, mine was seamless. http://www.brandonhutchinson.com/Upg..._with_yum.html

I have heard that Fedora is one of the slower Linux distro's, is there any truth to this?

I don't have experience with other distros (other than command line Debian).

I have heard that Red Hat is a RAT of a company and should be avoided, why? Any basis to this?

I don't know what that means, it's vague. But it's undoubtedly nonsense. They have a reputation as a good company to work for. If the proof is in the pudding, consider that fedora is the most popular distribution. And community supported!!

I have heard that it is a highly unstable Linux distro and is not for the Linux beginner, Is Fedora highly unstable? Do I need to be a linux master to use it?

I administer a core 3 machine at an adult education centre here in Vancouver and people who normally use Windows will use fedora, primarily for internet access. They could do a lot of other things eg. save .doc or .xls files,
but for that they move to a windows computer. Stability is not an issue. Only one of the computers in our learning centre runs with linux, so when I see inexpierienced computer users at my baby, I know they had a choice. Again stabiltiy (with core 3) is not an issue.

Hope this helps, Kurt

I found Fedora to be easy to install and use.
SuSE ( the only real competition ) trashed my hard drive and has an ugly, hard to use installer.

A lot of the bad things you hear about RedHat are written/spoken by networking fanatics who put down Fedora for 'political' rather than engineering reasons.

RedHat were the first Linux distro to go 'corporate' ( charge money!!! ) . It is still Linux and is still essentially free but to some members of the linux community they are seen as no better then Microsoft.

I think SuSe is definitely not competition for Redhat/Fedora, rather OpenBSD-top security, Debian in a way and Slackware for complete-as-possible-Unix-like-system-maintained-by-one-person - which is cool in a way too

Kezzer--
I'm just a linux rookie, and i went with fedora right out of the gate, because it's attached to redhat(support was foremost on my mind, and fedora has alot of it). I now have it running on 3 machines at home(one workstation, one file server, one web) and have found it to be fast(it supports my 2 cpu boxes which are pent pro's) and solid. I haven't had any out of the blue problems(that i didn't cause that is) and like it fine. Even on my old hardware with a gui running(or worse yet VNC across my network) i still find the machines to be snappy...As an experiment, i'm going to put gentoo on a box too to see if i can get it working(oughtta be good for a few laughs, i figure ;) ) By general feel, i would say redhat is certainly no slower than the MS os's that were running on these boxes(and it lots of ways faster), though i do have to admit it takes a minute or so longer to boot, but it doesn't require rebooting nearly as often :) take for example my file server...I installed a pretty bare system(cd's 1 and 2 only), added samba, a couple other things, and imported my gpg keys then did a 'yum update' and let'er rip. bout an hour later(and some 200+ updates) it's done and all the while i was copying files to it via samba, not one hiccup was noticed, no reboots needed, and i kept on doin my thing. I'm sure fc is not for everyone, but i think it's pretty neat and as close to user friendly as linux gets. One thing i learned quick was that the Redhat update network is of no competition to yum using the yum.conf i got from www.fedorafaq.com. the "puppy" rocks ;)

oh yeah one more thing-- as a linux rookie I can say that man, locate, and apropros are life savers :)

what is apropos?

Johnny--
apropros is the *coolest* command for a greenie like me. If you know what you want to do(let's say check disk usage) but don't know the exact command, you can do an "apropros disk usage" at the cl and it will search the system(man pages i think) to look for commands relating to disk usage, and voila, there was the command i forgot "df -u"(used to do light solaris admin work but that was almost 10 years ago and i've forgot some stuff). I think i found it in either a Sams book or a book by Chris Negus, i can't recall now.

ed--
just found this link in google, scroll down to "documentation utilities" section ;)

http://home.cogeco.ca/~ve3ll/linuxutl.htm