Hi, I have been using slackware till now, wanted to try a new distro since now most of them has these cool desktop effects.
My system specs is:
Intel 845G chipset, 256MB RAM, Pentium 4 2.4Ghz, 40GB HDD

I installed FC6 with / & /home as seperate ext3 partition.
Now, I don't feel fedora slow on my system, even the desktop effects work fine. The only time I get irritated with it is during installation of any package.

>Why is installation of any fedora package is so slow, i.e., during the "resolving dependency" part. I install using that software installer. Not any particular package but generally. Slackware packages had this tgz format and any package install wouldn't take more than 5 seconds.

>I heard this somewhere, now im seeing, FC has no mp3 support by default.

>I thought any packages that were in freshrpms.net that were Meant for FC6 would successfully install in an FC6 without any problems, but even then I do get a lot of failed dependency.

I don't want spark off any flamewar but these were the questions that popped as soon as i tried fedora
OR
it may even be some misconfiguration in my system but plz let me know

You have to download the mp3 plugin.

Fedora's package system is more advanced than Slackware's - it recognises dependencies between packages.

If you use YUM, it resolves dependencies, and automatically installs them for you. Yum also scans the repositories that it uses each time you install a package so that it will always get the latest version available. This is what takes the time when you install a package.

RPM packages are at a lower level than YUM. YUM installs RPMs. RPM packages do have dependencies, but does not resolve them - it just tells you what they are. Packages from freshrpms.net and other sources will work perfectly with the appropriate version of Fedora, however you will need to manually resolve the dependencies.

I suggest using YUM, since it automatically resolves dependencies.

As for MP3 support, seach google for this. It is quite easy to add support for MP3, just install the relevant codecs.

I hope this helps
--Ian

Add the livna.org repository:

Then try installing mp3 plugin with yum.

Thanx for the replies, guess I have to spend a few more time with this, then I'll get the hang of it.

http://www.gagme.com/greg/linux/fc6-tips.php ENJOY

The best thing IMO is to add the fedora extras and the livna.org repositories ONLY
You should not just add any repository you find because soem of them are conflicting and updating packages from one may break things for the other.

There are many guides out there to show you how to add those repositories

By the way, RPM management is hopeless without yum. It might have been tolerable maybe 2 years ago but now its almost impossible to add anything non trivial without having to update-install a dozen other packages. So yum is a must

For a healthy system, immediately after installing FC6, and before looking for other repositories for software, from root, or regular user run yum -y update.

This update command will fetch many many updates, and could take hours.

Then add yumex as yum install yumex.

After that you may add the freshrpms repository. And use it and Fedora repositories to search for additional software that you would like installed. That is most easily done with yumex.

Fedora updates take a long time is due to its checking and testing. It has to check for:

pre-requisites (are they there),
conflicts (are there conflicts),
find the co-requisites (other software).

Then and only then when it is sure that the program or package is safe to install, will it run a test of some sort and on succeeding, do the copy from the cached files to the target directories.

By this process, installs do take much longer, but there is less likelyhood of things going wrong.

After all this, you can visit livna.org and check things out.

Do not keep livna repository search always enabled, as from time to time there are conflicts between livna stuff and Fedora stuff. By that I mean that after installing a livna upgrade or similar activity, the conflicts problems may arise when trying to upgrade from the Fedora website.




Leslie

Freshrpms is another good repo, mostly concentrating on the multimedia and gaming side of things.

I have all of them installed, and havent come across any errors or conflicts so far.

I beleive that inorder to get mp3 support in Linux you need the libmad libaray. You mighrt also want to give mepis a try seeing as the fact that it has syvaptin as the default package manager, or proform a sudo yum inastall synaptic because yum is a pain in the ass.

Quoting from rpm.livna.org:
"rpm.livna.org is a community maintained add-on repository for Fedora Core that provides many useful packages that can not be distributed in Fedora Core or Fedora Extras for one reason or another, including multimedia applications such as xine and VideoLanClient, video drivers for ATI and Nvidia cards and firmware for common wireless cards."

The RPMs from livna is guaranteed to be compatible with packages from Fedora Core and Extras repository. RPMs from other sites like http://freshrpms.net/ will have compatibility issues with RPMs from the official Core and Extras repository. So it is not recommended to use any non official repository other than rpm.livna.org

Re livna. It is true what they say, that their distributions are Fedora compatible. However, once you have a livna package or update installed, if Fedora comes along with their update, which may be better, the Fedora package will not install. Tough but true. Therefore, in conclusion, be aware that livna packages will run under Fedora, but you will have to rely on livna for all descendents of that package.

Re multi-media, since Livna specializes in those MMedia that Distributions cannot include, it is safe to install these. I have those installed on my system and enjoy their processing of multi-media downloads that I receive in my emails, etc.