Linux just gets sexier and sexier, and Fedora 11 just joined
Ubuntu 9.04 in the ranks of super modern Linux distros released this year. Fedora doesn't have all the desktop refinements of Ubuntu, or the wild popularity, but it does act as the underpinnings of
Intel's Moblin, and the
Sugar OS, and doesn't shy away from the future. Fedora 11 makes the bleeding edge ext4 filesystem the default for installs, which speeds performance and improves data integrity -- Ubuntu offers ext4 as an option, but some application incompatibilities have caused data loss problems, so hopefully Fedora has overcome that. Fedora 11 also has boot times in its sights, with a goal to be at the login screen in 20 seconds, new versions of GNOME and KDE desktop environments (GNOME is default, but KDE 4.2 is looking great) and plenty of other minor and major tweaks. Sure, it's still Linux: most folks who expect to just swap out their Windows environment wholesale are sure to be sorely disappointed, but it's clear the steady march of progress continues unabated -- and hey, it's good enough for Intel and
the children.
posted June 9th 2009 8:20PM
Yes..... OpenSuse FTW.
Their version of KDE 4.1.3 had many backports of 4.2
Then you have the optimized version of OOo, yast has become as fast as synaptic, and it has more developer friendly features installed by default (more than Fedora and no question Ubuntu).
I tried Ubuntu 9 and a coworker just installed Fedora11, sure it may not be simpler than Ubuntu or boot faster than Fedora, but from a developer's point of view, OpenSuse has the most polish for a rock-solid system.
Meh. I use Gentoo on my workstation and have a custom rolled kernel. I've been running ext4 for a few months now and not a single problem.
yea gentoo is a great distro for learning about linux but i eventually switch to ubuntu because it took to much time and effort to get everything to "just work".
@jay jay
I don't think Gentoo is much better for learning linux that any other distro. LFS is what people should do if they want to learn the ins and outs of linux. Gentoo is great to create a streamlined system custom to it and its hardware. The performance you gain is probably minor, but I am sure there is something. We actually have a vendor that uses Gentoo for the servers attached to their high speed scanners.
I didn't mind spending some time with my system to get stuff working, it could be a pain in the ass sometimes, but overall it wasn't that bad. I think I stuck with Gentoo for so long since the portage system is outstanding, I feel it is better than apt-get. Once I got my laptop, I just got sick of trying to set it up. It was my laptop, I just wanted it to work, so I turned to Ubuntu. I also got sick of waiting for things with Gentoo, I didn't want to have to start installing something and then wait for it to compile just to run a needed app or test an app. The current state of Gentoo concerns me, there seems to be a lot of in-fighting among their developers and other political bullshit going on. This has seemed to result in some weird choices in packages getting removed and what not. I hope they can get past this and continue, I may look at Gentoo again, but currently I am testing Ubuntu on the new server I am building.
The compiling can be an issue on slower hardware. Fortunately the workstation is a dual quad-core Xeon system.
Yeah, another Gentoo + ext4 user here. Gentoo is great for 3 things in my opinion. 1. Portage, 2. Installing your environment exactly how you want. Want binary drivers and proprietary codecs? No problem! 3. Trying out cutting and bleeding edge software. Want that just released Sun Java JDK or to easily compile and run OpenJDK straight from tip? Gentoo's there for you. Sometimes it can be a huge pain, though, especially when you're willing to put in the time but just can't find any documentation online or knowledge in IRC. For having things Just! Work! Ubuntu does it better than no other.
So speaking of item #2 above, that's EXACTLY where Fedora wears major fail pants by the way. I don't want my distro telling me what software, codecs or drivers I'm *allowed* to use. If I want to use Mono, Fedora should support it. If I want to run proprietary NVidia drivers, Fedora shouldn't be getting in my way. If I'm a new user, I don't care about the philosophical arguments against patented codecs. Just play my MP3s damnit!
"Sure, it's still Linux: most folks who expect to just swap out their Windows environment wholesale are sure to be sorely disappointed..."
Ubuntu 9.04 + VirtualBox Win7. What else do you need?
I have to add : your win7 is gonna stop soon :)
win 7 and ubuntu 9.04 dual boot.
"Ubuntu 9.04 + VirtualBox Win7. What else do you need?"
How about a computer science degree...
Linux may have gotten more user-friendly on the desktop, but I frankly think the standard distros have gotten uglier over the years.
I started using it in '95 as my only desktop, but haven't regularly run a desktop Linux distro since around '05. Every time I install the latest Ubuntu or Fedora on a lark, I'm horrified at how ugly and unintuitive it is. They've tried to make it look and feel more and more like Windows over the years, to great detriment.
I'm sure if I took the time to customize my setup it'd get better, but I'd need a reason to use it over the Mac desktops I now have. And frankly, my free time is worth more than that to me.
I've got a double boot Ubuntu 9.04 on this pc right now, gnome running, I don't see any Windows ...
I have a dock, 3d effects all over the place, 4 desktops and I don't see what's ugly either.
And don't tell me it was hard to get, especially for someone who has been using linux for years !
I can understand a linux noob when he tells me he is lost, but I hardly can understand an old times linux user telling me it was better before ! !
In the past 5 years Desktop linux caught up on Mac OS X and Windows.
It just lacks more hardware manufacturer support as always.
I would highly recommend going with XFCE4 instead of KDE or Gnome when next you try running a recent distro. At least it still likens itself to being a minimalist interface; its fast and snappy and clean.
Linux Mint FTW
From the comments, it sounds like many people haven't used a Fedora system in years. One Fedora year is seven Windows years in terms of improvement. Also, Fedora has pretty hard statistics on usage - about 13M unique IPs access their update system regularly. Ubuntu has a lot of mind share, but I'm not sure they have the data to back up being the #1 position.
All these advancements in linux and I still cannot install a program by downloading and clicking on the install file (something that Windows was capable of for 15 years now). Fantastic. It's not that I have anything against Linux or the open source community. It's just that it will never become easy enough to use for the general public.
That's existed for some time... One for is DEB files.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deb_(file_format)
Just double click them and an installer pops up. Just because developers don't use it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
The biggest thing holding back Linux is package management. There is no one unified type of package that you can easily download and install on any Linux distro. You have RPM files in Red Hat based distros such as Fedora and Mandrive, .deb files on Debian based distros, .pkg, plus the different managers like yum and apt.
Mac OS X has, in my mind, the best way of installing apps by far. You download the compressed disk image, which expands containing a .app file (in reality just a directory/folder containing all the app's needed file). Drag the .app to the Applications directory (or not, you can put it anywhere you please) and you are done. To uninstall, just drag the .app to the trash and empty.
I don't see why Linux couldn't adopt the OS X method as standard.
@ Nathan
Your comment makes me believe that you have not used a linux distro since 2000 (or earlier). Most (I cannot say all because I do not know for sure) Linux distros have an "add/remove" manager along with a package manager. In Ubuntu, the programs are listed by category with a description. Instead of searching through the internet for a program, you just go into one of these programs and find the program you want in seconds.
This system is so much better than Windows and Mac
I usually stay out of these silly meeting of the minds, most of which have no clue what they are talking about, but you my friend, have been crowned King of the Village Idiots! Pretty much every linux distro in existance, at this point, has a installation system light years ahead of everything else. OSX is great, drag and drop, but does a shitty job cleaning up after itself. You need addon utulities just to clean up after uninstalling an application. Windows...lets not even go there. You CAN download a file and click to install in many different ways, OpenSUSE 1Click is a great way for largest packages sets, like click here to install KDE, but that's all legacy. Why on earth would you want to download and click a file with there are apps specifically designed for retrieving and autoinstalling apps for you. Tell your mother to open the Add/Remove Programs and find Banshee then click GO...makes more sense to me.
Besides that, please show me another OS that can fetch an excess of 20,000 applications on demand to turn a desktop into a webserver, into a sql server, into a media server, (you get the picture)
And for people complaing of no Windows Way of installing windows applications, check out Codeweavers Crossover Office. It's been around for ages, and does just that.
Yep.. because clicking on some random file of the net is soooo much better than using a vetted inspected file from a secure trusted repository..
And going to a web site, finding the link to the download, making a note of the serial number, downloading the app, and finally installing the app is so much easier than selecting it from a list and letting it do it's own thing.
Be honest. Windows installation is easy. Easy to do, easy to bugger up, easy to get infected with. And with the hoards of auto clickers, installing on Windows is so easy that you can do it without realising.
The ext4 data loss issues were fixed in the 2.6.30 kernel and have been backported to the 2.6.29 kernel that Fedora uses. Ubuntu shipped with 2.6.28 and doesn't have those fixes. They were more down to design decisions rather than being actual bugs - in the end the version of reality where we accept people's software isn't perfect won and the kernel now looks after your code anyway.
(The long story is that the "right" thing for applications to do with ext4 was about the worst possible thing you could do with ext3. If you write a file and then move it on top of another one, there's no strict guarantee that the writing will occur before the moving occurs. If your system lost power or crashed during that time you'd lose both the old and the new copies of the file. The ext4 developers suggested that you should forcibly synchronise data to disk before performing the move to prevent that from occuring. Unfortunately, that forcible synchronisation would cause ext3 to write out *all* pending data, not just the data related to that file - this could cause the system to stall for an extended period of time. Applications could chose to either work well with ext3 or ext4, but not both - they both provide the same filesystem magic number, so there's no way for an application to tell which of them it's writing to. In the end sanity won and now ext4 will ensure that the data hits disk before performing the move. As a result, you're now basically guaranteed to get either the new version or the old version - it's not possible for you to lose both copies unless the application is doing something very stupid)
"Fedora doesn't have all the desktop refinements of Ubuntu, or the wild popularity, but it does act as the underpinnings of Intel's Moblin, and the Sugar OS, and doesn't shy away from the future."
That's interesting because they all look the same to me on Gnome.
Guess its getting down to a matter of choice and usage. Fedora does have the desktop refinements (IMO) that Ubuntu has. I work with both distros -- when it gets into light duty stuff such as email, browsing the web, blogging, etc -- I use Ubuntu. When it gets into heavy duty stuff such as programming, photo manipulation, testing, etc -- I use Fedora. To me, each has its own refinements that meet my needs in the specific ways I am using the distros.
As for the Windows environment sorely disappointed thing -- I don't know where that came from. I work with both environments (Linux and Windows) on a daily basis -- and -- I found that that there is no "sore disappointment" for me in terms of Linux. It's more like this -- there are a few things that Linux can do that Windows cannot. Conversely, there are a few things that Windows can do that Linux cannot. When I've encountered these issues in Linux, they are minuscule and they are not the show stoppers that would make me sorely disappointed.
I don't care about the OS but +1000 for Django Reinhardt!
I've been "switched" to Linux (Mandriva 2009.1) for about 6 months now, and I'm REALLY trying to like it. The Computer guy in my does, but the practical guy in me is still not convinced. My wife certainly is not.
Until "Linux" can sort out all the hardware issues (read: incompatibilities), then it'll never be ready. I know the arguments, so spare me - "it's the hardware makers to blame". As true as that may be, it's all BS from an end-user point of view...
Until I can plug in my minidv video camera and have the system actually detect that something's in the firewire port and THEN save my film, edit it, and produce a DVD copy of something easily and without jumping through hoops, it's not ready.
Until I can use my Logitech webcam with skype, or any other video calling program because the system doesn't "see it", it's not ready.
Until I can start a second X session in KDE (equivalent to Windows "switch user") without the system feeling like it's 10 years old, then it's not ready.
Until sounds stop getting cut off, or stop working unexepctedly, it's not ready.
Until people tell me to stop using ATI cards, it's not ready.
I can go on....
Linux used to be the champion of older hardware, but that's not the case at all any more. Not for "today's" Linux. Not for the X-windows, KDE/Gnome world. If your hardware is more than 2-3 years old, you'll probably have some or all of the problems above.
In the meantime, I'll keep plugging away until I get too fed up with it all. (I've tried K/Ubuntu, and Fedora, all have similar issues. I like things about Mandriva better than the others which is why I chose that distro). Maybe I'll have another look at Fedora (much to the chagrin of my wife).
I always wonder what the mean when they say 20 second boot time. It's all dependent on the computer. My old Tecra laptop will boot a lot slower than some newer piece of hardware.
BTW.. I run Mandriva 2009.1 on it. Supports all of it's hardware and laptop suspend features out of the box. The only problem is the onboard S3 video on the Tecra is too slow for the high resolution 1440x1050 screen.
Use FC9 daily. Never moved to FC10 cause of instability reports from a friend.
So, the obvious questions. You install FC11 on a laptop. Its got either an ATI or an NVIDIA GPU. Do you have to immediately download and install a binary driver to get the full resolution of your screen? Do you almost immediately end up manually editing the config files to get either the GPU or the mouse buttons to work? Is the power management finally worked out so the battery life is anything comparable to what it would be in Windows? Do you still have to reinstall a lot of your applications (VMWare say) each time the kernel gets updated? Does the sound work in more than one application at a time or must you still launch the one you want to have the sound first? Have they solved the problems with the network manager and wireless?
"You install FC11 on a laptop. Its got either an ATI or an NVIDIA GPU. Do you have to immediately download and install a binary driver to get the full resolution of your screen?"
No.
"Do you almost immediately end up manually editing the config files to get either the GPU or the mouse buttons to work?"
No.
"Is the power management finally worked out so the battery life is anything comparable to what it would be in Windows?"
Depends on your hardware. Probably similar, in a few cases better, in more cases slightly worse.
"Do you still have to reinstall a lot of your applications (VMWare say) each time the kernel gets updated?"
A lot? No. VMware? Yes. Blame VMware for shipping kernel modules that can't be upstreamed. There's nothing Fedora can do about this.
"Does the sound work in more than one application at a time"
Yes.
"Have they solved the problems with the network manager and wireless?"
What problems exactly?
Awesome, I believe this is the distro made famous by former 'N Sync heart throb, Justin Timberlake - whom I coincidentally saw at a Nando's chicken joint a few months ago. He was having a burger of some description, as was I. Unfortunately I was not able to get him to sign my Fedora LiveCD
You know, I was just thinking "I'd love to use Linux, but the ext3 just isn't good enough so I'll have to stay with Windows 95." Well, I guess this fixes that issue!
Seriously... I just want Linux to stop feeling like the kernel needs to be bleeding edge. It's the apps that matter, not the kernel these days. And every time they muck up the kernel I get to reinstall tons of apps. Stop doing that so often!