What's wrong with RedHat?

Gomer_X · Post by **Gomer_X** » Fri Nov 04, 2005 9:44 am

Snarkout wrote:However, fedora really is a great distro for the most part, and you'll be able to do anything with it you can on any other. In fact, IME, some things about it are a lot nicer than their debian/ubuntu counterparts. My main complaint with it is that historically it has been terribly unstable for at least 3 months of it's 6 month life-cycle *every* release. I think the 6 month release cycle is going to prove to chase away more potential users than it attracts.

I've not found Fedora to be unstable. Certainly not for 3 months of a release cycle. Core 2 was a bit shaky, but any distro is going to have problems going from 2.4 to 2.6 kernels. Fedora was the first, it got all the flak.

Fortunately you don't have to upgrade if you don't want to. Fedora Core 3 is STILL more cutting edge than most distros, and is still getting updates on a regular basis.

I've run every test release of Fedora since Core 2, and even those are fuctional most of the time. Personally I'll wait a couple weeks after a new release to come out just to see what breaks, but even my server usually gets updated within a month of release.

Mortuis · Post by **Mortuis** » Fri Nov 04, 2005 11:15 am

I used SuSE for a few months last year and quickly fell into RPM hell. But I just as quickly discovered APT4RPM, which made such problems non-existant.

snarkout · Post by **snarkout** » Fri Nov 04, 2005 1:46 pm

Well, I can only speak to fc2 and fc4 -- fc2 was such a mess that I declined to upgrade to fc3 for several months. Fc4 was certainly just as bad. I like fc3 a lot, but at this point, getting it to a state I can use it is a major undertaking. At least 5 hours worth of updates/updating, and the install itself isn't exactly speedy. FWIW, I only got rid of my last fc3 install because atrpms completely fUx0r3d my box by installing a number of other yum repos, an ***enabling*** them. Thinking this was a fluke since I've seen *no* other mention of this on the net, I reinstalled the entire OS and enabled repos one by one -- same deal once I got to atrpms. I'm not a big fan of atrpms anymore. However, I *do* think that kde-for-redhat is the best implementation of KDE I've ever used.

Gomer_X · Post by **Gomer_X** » Fri Nov 04, 2005 2:22 pm

Snarkout wrote:Well, I can only speak to fc2 and fc4 -- fc2 was such a mess that I declined to upgrade to fc3 for several months. Fc4 was certainly just as bad. I like fc3 a lot, but at this point, getting it to a state I can use it is a major undertaking. At least 5 hours worth of updates/updating, and the install itself isn't exactly speedy. FWIW, I only got rid of my last fc3 install because atrpms completely fUx0r3d my box by installing a number of other yum repos, an ***enabling*** them.

Yes, it's pretty well known that mixing repositories will break your system, unless you're using a tool like SMART. If you listen to TLLTS and read the forums you'll know that this is a problem that Debian and Ubuntu (and Kanotix and ... ) suffer from also.

That's why I use nothing but Fedora repos and Livna. Livna works really hard to stay compatible with Fedora, and Fedora Extras is getting to be a really good project.

As far as install speeds go, I installed my wife's system with FC4 by NFS mounting the CD images from my main machine and doing it over the network. Took about 10 minutes.

The amount of time it takes for updates depends on your network connection, of course. The fact that they updated the entire OpenOffice suite right after FC4 came out didn't help.

snarkout · Post by **snarkout** » Fri Nov 04, 2005 2:55 pm

Well, I'm on a 23 channel t1 (1 voice channel) at home - not screaming, but I'm going to assume that I get the stuff as fast as redhat is pushing it to me. As far as repos go, yeah, livna is great, but I needed/wanted more packages than they offered. My experience with the rpmforge repos was great, and I never had a problem with any of the repos in that group. The problem was that atrpms added several java and gnome repos, on its own, w/o asking, and they were broken. Saying my problem was related to mixing repos is not entirely accurate. Backports and extras weren't official repos (extras still isn't), but the packages in them tend to at least work, and neitehr of them have ever poured raw sewage into my system w/o being asked. However, i do take your point that redhat/fedora had nothing to do with that experience. I never blamed them.

Post by **dann** » Sat Nov 05, 2005 8:55 pm

What's wrong with RedHat? Faber runs it. 'Nuff Said.

snarkout · Post by **snarkout** » Sun Nov 06, 2005 1:59 am

This faber?
http://linuxgazette.net/authors/fedor.html

Post by **dann** » Sun Nov 06, 2005 9:52 am

Yeah, that Faber.

Actually, he's a really good guy; we're lucky to have him as part of our LUG. Just throwing some hassels.

Gomer_X · Post by **Gomer_X** » Mon Nov 07, 2005 10:33 am

Snarkout wrote:Backports and extras weren't official repos (extras still isn't), but the packages in them tend to at least work, and neitehr of them have ever poured raw sewage into my system w/o being asked. However, i do take your point that redhat/fedora had nothing to do with that experience. I never blamed them.

I'm not sure what you mean by "backports," but Fedora Extras is indeed official. It has been enabled by default since FC4 came out. I'f you're using yum, you're using Extras. I can't say about up2date because I don't use it.

You may be talking about a time before Extras was "officially" official, though.

snarkout · Post by **snarkout** » Mon Nov 07, 2005 1:17 pm

Backports is an ubuntu repository.

Gomer_X · Post by **Gomer_X** » Tue Nov 08, 2005 12:25 pm

Snarkout wrote:Backports is an ubuntu repository.

That might explain why it breaks your Fedora.

thelinuxlink.net

What's wrong with RedHat?

APT4RMP