While I was working, the screen froze up and I noticed the hard drive thrashing away. After powering the PC down, I noticed it could not find a a working Linux image to boot off of. I had trouble restoring Ubuntu Linux 9.04 so I loaded a copy of Fedora which is the open source version of Red Hat Linux.
After working with Fedora 11, code named Leonidas, I started to notice some idiosyncrasies. First there was no third party driver for my Nvidia PCI video card. The Ubuntu driver didn't work perfectly because I had to reset the video resolution to 1600 x 1200 dpi every time I rebooted. In the case of Fedora, there was no third party driver at all. I even looked for one on the Nvidea Linux page but there was only a .bin driver that Fedora couldn't use. So I was stuck in 1024 x 786 dpi resolution.
I also noticed that Fedora had a CD-burner but it was buried in Places | Computer rather than as an Accessory. The Take Screenshot (print screen utility) was crippled in Fedora. I could grab the entire desktop or current screen in the foreground, but I could not grab a selected area by framing it. When you publish a blog, this is an essential function because tables and graphics can be easily copied. That was a real bummer.
When I tired to download a third party application from the command line using the Terminal function, the command would not run because it did not consider my user name to be an administrator. I ran into this problem months ago and there is a work around, but you have to edit a file and change permissions to fix it. This was bummer number 2.
I also post my best articles in a couple of Usenet conferences. Again , when I tired to use Yum Package Manager to download the Pan newsreader, the application was not available. I searched on the web for Pan but there was no download in the .RPM format that Fedora uses. This was bummer number three. I was never able to get any news reader to work on Fedora although I found some alternative newsreader aps. None showed up in the Fedora menus, however.
Having some background in network security, I tried to download the CLAMAV antivirus/malware utility and its front end, CLAMTK. I was able to download both, but I could never upgrade the CLAMAV antivirus signature, even after a reboot. This was bummer number 4.
However, the Fedora firewall front end for IPTables was a nice surprise because Ubuntu dos not come with a a firewall front end. I have to download GUFW using the Synaptic Package Manager for the AV front end in Ubuntu. So chalk up one kudo for Fedora.
I also ran into problem playing You Tube videos with Fedora. A Totem movie player plug in was missing that could not be downloaded. In Ubuntu, you are prompted to download Flash to see the You Tube videos. I embed videos in my blog and the Flash download worked fine for viewing videos. Printing was also problematic with Red Hat. It was missing Canon PIXMA drivers that Ubuntu provides that was bummer number 5. I also notice that themes, backgrounds (wallpaper) and OpenGL screensavers were missing in Fedora. I was able to download OpenGL screensavers using YUM. I would venture to say that Red Hat probably dumbs down Fedora because it is the free version of it it commercial product, Red Hat Linux. I have used Red Hat in the past and it is more robust. It also comes with technical support for one year when you purchase it.
After continuing to play with Fedora for a couple of days, I backed up my data and reinstalled Ubuntu. Clearly Ubuntu has an edge over Fedora. Ubuntu supports third party video drivers, the screenshot utility is not crippled, The administrator account works when you login for the first time, the package manger provides an excellent newsreader that can be downloaded, the antiivirus utility didn't not work in Fedora and I could not view Flash online videos. The Canon Pixma printers are very popular because of the print quality and the low cost of ink jet cartridges. The missing print drivers were really irritating.
It is possible that over time I could have fixed many of the problems with Fedora. But why waste the time since Ubuntu had all of these problems resolved.
If you are going to try Linux, Rightardia recommends Ubuntu. You will get up to speed faster with Ubuntu.
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6 comments:
Fedora does indeed have pan available. You can use the PackageKit installer to install it, or do 'yum install pan'. There are third-party repos such as rpmfusion that carry the nvidia drivers, and installation is point-and-click simple. Finally, there's even a flash page on the Fedora wiki that tells you how to make flash work perfectly. (Google "Fedora Flash" -- pretty easy!) :-)
You apparently did not read enough to know that Fedora is FOSS, which means you'd have to enable RPMFusion to gain the 3rd. party drivers for audio and video. That totem plugin and Pan is available; I'm looking at it. And in Fedora, as in most distros, you'd use a root password (su or su-) to handle installing packages. It's considered more secure than having an open sudo. Remember that linux is all about security. Of course, if you prefer, it's VERY easy to set up sudo on Fedora as it is on any other linux distro. Keep in mind that under the hood, they're all linux.
As to ClamAV, yes, it will update just fine, if you read enough to know to add 'freshclam'. That's what 'man' pages are for, my friend.
Fedora's a US distro and Ubuntu's a S. African distro. Different laws apply. Remember reading that disclaimer on not using copyrighted codecs if you're in the US?
There's tons of info available if you take the time to look and read, rather than jump in without research.
I hope that anyone reading your blog will realize that millions of people have success where you've fallen short.
Nice post. You are totally right. Ubuntu is way easier than Fedora (although they can be equally buggy. Debian beats them hands down in the stability department.)
I plan to write another article based on the comments I've been getting on Fedora. Appreciate all of the comments, pro or con. I am a big Linux fan.
One additional comment: next time you install it, use AutoTen: http://www.dnmouse.org/autoten.html to add many of the things you've been confused about.
Tom's right about Debian and stability. The packages are older, but rock-solid. Fedora's a testing distro and cutting-edge breakage must be expected.
I resorted to Fedora 11 KDE because Kubuntu had so many problems. But Fedora 11 has the screen resolution problem, it can find automatically fix the resolution to 1280x1024. I have to do it everytime manually using "display". Then finally yum was totally screwed that I could not fix it in anyway. I tried the help from the fedora forums but everything failed.
Even a humble distro like PARDUS can do things right than mighty Leonidas of Fedora. I had only bad experiences with Fedora all the time. Now I think I will be back to buggy Kubuntu because atleast Kubuntu has fixes that work. Fedora is broken beyond fixing.
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