Foresight is toying with the idea of having a sub-project (completely separate from Foresight Linux base) that it has tentatively called ‘boots, a Fedora remix‘ (a play on Dora in Fedora for those of you with kids).

What would happen is that mirrorball, a tool from rPath that ‘sucks in’ repositories, would pull in a Fedora repository into a separate Foresight repository.  From there, it is fully consumable by any product/project that is hosted on rBuilder Online from rPath.  Conary really is one of the most innovative package managers on the planet and I’ve mentioned it once or twice before (never got around to part II on one of those though).  The ability to fully suck in a RPM repository is already being done with CentOS and Scientific Linux on rBuilder Online…even Ubuntu is currently being done as well…so we have proof that it is totally possible.  Once imported, Conary takes over the management of said packages.

So what does this give Foresight?  A few things:

1. Testing of packages in 2 communities
2. Developer eyes/chatter in 2 communities
3. The ability of Foresight to cherry pick packages from a large base
4. Compare and contrast for packages from 2 different sources to track down bugs

So, as I said, I was wrong initially and I hope this clears up what Foresight plans to do.  A sub-project will be started that imports the Fedora repository changing them from (rpm to Conary) allowing Foresight to both test and cherry pick packages from a larger base hopefully freeing up a bit more time for Foresight architects.  Phew!  What a mouthful, run-on-sentence that was!

Why Conary?  How does this help Fedora?

I know some of you may be asking Why Conary?  What does it have over RPM that Foresight should suck in a repositoroy and change it to Conary packages?  The reason this is an absolute necessity is because the tools on which Foresight are built (rBuilder Online) works with Conary only…that means ISO generation and repository hosting are all mandated to be Conary based.

The other interesting part about this is that Conary blends version control with package management.  It deals with changesets as packages.  Imagine SVN…you have a local changeset that  you’re working on and the version inside the SVN repository differs from that.  You can then diff the state of your local copy to see how it differs from the remote copy.  This allows you to see the changes you’ve made and allows you to see what code may be broken.  Also, commits are numbered automagically so that you don’t have to worry about breaking things much because you can rollback to a previous known good state.

The same is true with Conary…you can rollback to previous known good states.  You can also diff each changeset locally with the remote repository.  Now imagine this with Fedora packages…if something is broken, chances are Foresight will find a fix for it much more quickly than someone in Fedora…a single command can diff the previously known good version with the broken version and find out the shortcoming.  Or perhaps a known good verion in Foresight that isn’t Fedora based might be used to diff the Fedora RPM version and find out the differences in them.  In all, it’s going to help developers track down problems faster.  This helps Fedora…they now have a small number of Foresight developers who will be working with hundreds of popular Fedora RPMs looking to see if they work or are broken.

Most of the benefit will be measurable in Foresight because they’ll be able to use just about any package Fedora creates…but the Foresight community is FULL of very capable developers…guys that really know what they’re doing.  If they can make this a collaborative effort Fedora will gain exceptionally smart developers as well…even if testing packages on a different platform, they’ll have eyeballs on these packages and if a fix is found or made for them they will definitely go upstream to Fedora.

Hopefully, this puts things right from my initial wrong.  I don’t claim to be an insider for Foresight…I just know a lot of the people involved and ask questions a lot….I also pay attention to the developer mailing list.  If you have any questions, please leave a comment and I’ll attempt to track down answers for them

Clarification on Foresight and Fedora originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on September 9, 2009.

I powered up the PCLinuxOS 2007 Final LiveCD and began the installation to disk. During the bootloader configuration I appended the following text to the end of my linux, failsafe, and framebuffer entry:

noacpi irqpoll pci=routeirq

From there, I saved, closed all programs and rebooted. Upon first boot I opened Synaptic and installed the PCLinuxOS .a64 Kernel which is optimized for 64 bit processors. I then opened up the PCLinuxOS Control Center yet again, went to the boot section and altered my grub bootloader again with the same information in the code above. I rebooted to make sure my changes worked.

When logging in this time, I opened Synaptic and installed the Nvidia 97xx drivers for my graphics card (Fata1ity 7600GT). After this installs you’re prompted to restart X and upon login…you should be presented with quite a stable and quick desktop.

Hopefully this works well for those of you out there that are using E521′s or E520′s as I believe they have the same mainboard (not sure though).

Dell E521 and PCLinuxOS 2007 Final originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on May 28, 2007.

• Compaq Armada E500 Laptop
• 700MHz Intel Pentium III
• 256MB PC133 SDRAM
• ATi Rage Mobility
• Intel Ethernet Pro 100
• Toshiba 10GB Hard Disk
• Netgear WG511 Wireless PCMCIA Card

Installation

I chose to use a network install via HTTP. This went quite smoothly, initially via a text interface for configuring the network and entering the address to install from, then a graphical interface for partitioning and package selection. Right from the start Fedora looks like a professional O/S, it’s not fluffy and cute, but it is very pleasant to look at. Partitioning was handled automatically by Disk Druid, no problems at this stage.

Fedora offers 4 options for package configuration; Personal Desktop, Server, Workstation and Custom. I chose a custom install as I wanted to install KDE 3.4 as well as the default GNOME desktop. I didn’t feel that package selection was a good as my usual distro (Mandriva). When selecting packages in Mandriva (or previously Mandrake) removing a package in one category meant the package would not be installed and that any other packages that were no longer needed would also not be installed. With Fedora it would appear that packages may appear under more than one category and therefore may be installed if you remove them from your selection in one category and not in another. This doesn’t bother me too much, but if you really wanted to make sure a package was not installed then you may find this frustrating.

All my hardware was detected fine bar two items. The first I’m not too worried about as only the latest version of Mandriva has allowed me to use it, and that’s the wireless network card. Mandriva offers the option to use NDISWrapper during the install, but more about that in another review The second item was the monitor, but this was resolved simply by choosing a generic monitor capable of 1024×768 (before doing this I could only select 800×600). Once again, this really didn’t bother me and I don’t believe it would have caused anyone adept enough to attempt an O/S installation any problems.

First Boot and Beyond

Fedora Core 4 has a very nice graphical boot display, it’s not a necessity but it’s certainly a nice touch. The GDM theme is very pleasant and professional looking. Logging in takes a while, but that would probably be improved by running it on something a bit quicker!

The GNOME desktop is pleasant, easy on the eye and uncluttered. I’m usually a KDE user but I like the idea of using two bars. The bottom bar shows open programs, a view desktop button and the Workspace Switcher. The top bar has the menus, shortcuts, clock, volume control and battery monitor. There’s also an Up2date button that monitors available updates. So far, there’s none available so it’s not a feature I’ve been able to test.

The menu structure is good, I like a menu that’s not cluttered and Fedora have managed to organise everything into only 6 headings. OpenOffice.org, Firefox and Evolution are all available as shortcuts on the top bar, I can’t imagine these aren’t the most commonly used applications for many people and they’re always removable if necessary. Also available on the top bar is a Desktop menu where you can change desktop settings, lock the screen or log out. I’m not sure if it’s a GNOME desktop thing or it’s something Fedora have added themselves, but there’s also a Places menu. This allows easy network browsing and access to your own files and mounted network shares.

The network is all set up and ready to go, I can get my email and surf the web without having to configure anything else (other than my account settings of course). I’ve heard plenty about Fedora’s lack of multi-media capabilities out-of-the-box, I don’t see it as a big problem as you only have to add them once. Flash and Java are easy enough to install for anyone familiar with Linux and certainly doesn’t take long; very few distros install these by default so I don’t see it as something to complain about. Not being able to play MP3s is a little unusual, but only required installing plugins for whichever application you prefer. Once this is done it’s on a par with other distributions.

Fedora happily mounted my USB flash drive and put a helpful icon on the desktop, this was done consistently and without user intervention. It also did this for CD’s so I was happy with the desktops’ behaviour as far as removable media goes.

All in all I’m very pleased with this latest incarnation of Fedora but I think what it really lacks is a Mandriva or SUSE style central configuration tool. I’m very fond of being able to control everything from one place rather than having to hunt through menus for various applications to configure different parts of the system.
Next Up: SUSE 10.0

Apostasy

Linux-Blog Editors Note: Fedora Core 5 is due out February 2006. We’ll have Apostasy take another look at things then and see if Fedora Core has improved any for him.

New Linux with an Old Laptop: Fedora Core 4 originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on October 24, 2005.

So…today I’ll be looking at Fedora Core 4. We’ll begin by assuming I’m a new user and new to Fedora in General.

The Quick Look

First things first. Fedora offers hands down the easiest install of any distro out there. Anaconda is like a betty crocker oven…even a kid could bake with it. For some people, this doesn’t cut it because they may or may not need to feel ‘old skewl’ or ‘l33t’ by keeping things text based or even similar to an Ubuntu/Debian installer feel. For new users though, the Fedora Anaconda install is stellar. Fedora really shines in this area.

Package selection during the install is all graphical, clear and concise. Adding visuals to any presentation or process will make it more efficient and easier to understand. After the install, you are greeted to a KDE or Gnome session depending on what you choose. I chose KDE since I’m more fond of it than Gnome.

During the experiment, Mrs.Devnet experienced problems with an extremely slow booting Fedora on our test computer. I chalk this up to it being a test release. There were no problems with it during this time. In fact, Fedora has increased its boot speed considerably with FC4. It’s one of the fastest booting distros I’ve dealt with. What makes it even better is that it is fully graphical. Though most people want a text boot, I like the fact that you’re given an option.

The Quick Look Continued…

So, let’s pretend I’m a new user and just finished installing Fedora Core 4. What’s the first thing I need to do? Browse the internet of course. So, opening up the web browser is the first thing I’ll do. Of course I’ll stop by Yet Another Linux Blog which is one of everyone’s first stops right? Perhaps I’d navigate over to hotmail and check the old email. After that’s through, maybe I’ll navigate over to amazon and check out a few books/CD’s. Wait a second. There’s something wrong on the web page. Something isn’t displaying right. It wants me to click here. Easy. Installation of flash is a snap. So Firefox and Macromedia save the day in this case. But there are other plugins that aren’t so easy to install.

Java Java Java. Why has Sun not learned? They try to show open source software just how open source they are and they can’t even get a Java installer right for Linux? I honestly think that all Linux devs should get together and re-evaluate using Sun Java plugins for web browsing at all. We need an alternative. Afterall, it’s a crock right now. By not having a precompiled Java install in your distribution, you are alienating practically any new user that isn’t tech savvy. No getting around it. This is why distros such as SimplyMEPIS and PCLinuxOS are popular…because they cater to the new user and the end user. Fedora Core 4 can tout license all they want in this case until they turn blue in the face…but the bottom line is that Java is difficult to install for a new user and 9 times out of 10 they’ll give up before they get it.

Perhaps Fedora might provide an installer for it…perhaps a nice script to create an rpm for it…something that can help. At least something better than the crap-tastic stuff that Sun provides on their website for Linux…with instructions valid for 4 releases ago. As stated previously, most users would bail…especially after seeing that screenshot above which shows that I have java installed (after following a how-to guide on how to do things and yet java still doesn’t work). I had to re-download and install from scratch and then track down why the symbolic link before I could get it to work. After a few hours of repeated headbutting of the wall, I finally got things working. How many new users are going to put that much work into their distro? That’s right…about NONE. Of course, it took me that long because its been forever since I compiled java myself having used precompiled distros for over a year.

[soapbox]Why do I tout the new user? Because the new user is the key for Linux. If Linux is to even begin to put a dent in the desktop market it needs to accomplish two things…first, to become a viable business alternative to M$ (which has begun) and secondly, to win over new users. By accomplishing the first, it will get support from businesses in the form of driver support and larger usage. By accomplishing the second, Linux can grow and become even more great than it already is. The new user is key.[/soapbox]

So, back to the assessment. Next, I decided to listen to some streaming music from a website. I listen to online radio stations because I feel that pop music should be popped into the toilet and flushed…no offense to those of you who like it. It’s just not for me. Online radio gives me a choice to listen to whatever I want. I’m sure there are others who share this idea and also listen to online radio stations. So, I decided to see what Fedora Core 4 could do for me.

Wouldn’t you know it…they lost me again. No streaming music…and what is worse, there is no information provided on how to resolve the problem. So finally after cycling through about 5 different music players and attempting to play music streams with each, I find that I need codecs…and then I’m back to square one as a new user. Being Linux savvy means I know right where to go for these codecs…but would a new user? Not a chance unless they had their hand held. So, yet again something that could be taken care of with more attention to detail (perhaps a quick script with disclaimer…Kanotix anyone?). And people actually recommend this distro for new users? Come on!

Ok…so perhaps I’m giving Fedora some extra criticism because of third party applications installed on it. But honestly, I thought most of these programs would work better on it like they do on other distros that I use. Will a new user be as understanding as I am? Most likely not. Hence, the reasons I pull no punches. I’m sure most die hard FC4 users think I’m nuts…but if you’re a new user or a recent convert with minimal experience, you’re probably silently cheering.

What’s next? Well, we’ve surfed the internet. We’ve checked the webmail. We could use Kmail or Evolution or Thunderbird to get mail but I’m not overly concerned with these applications as they are all pretty good and not really needing a testing. Nay, we’ll do what just about every other user might decide to do. Plug in a thumb drive with some mp3′s to play. In this case, I’m using my Cruzer Micro 512MB Thumbdrive…you might have some sort of mp3 player. Since these devices are relatively similar, this should give good indication on how FC4 handles pluggin devices. Not bad! It detected my Cruzer Micro straight away and placed a desktop shortcut! Let’s see if this is a fluke or if Fedora Can actually detect this thumbdrive each time…and Fedora scores in this area. The only problem is that it creates an icon for each time you plugin the device but this is just a small nucense. In no time, I’m browsing files and looking for a tune to play. Very nice indeed. This is one of the first distros that actually detects and installs my thumbdrive.

What happened next is something that happened during our previous look as well. Fedora Core does not come with mp3 support. As stated in our previous review, this is always chalked up to license. This is a major kink in Linux being able to appeal to new users. In this case, Fedora, as expected, takes a nose dive. Many users have run across this mp3 issue and Red Hat/Fedora pulls up the patent issue. To me, this is a huge cop out. How so many other distros can have mp3 support out of the box is a mystery. Many of you are probably thinking, “well, Fedora and Red Hat are larger targets because they’re a bigger business.” Agreed. Perhaps they should approach RCA who holds the patent and find out what they can do to reach an agreement? Perhaps they should include an mp3-to-ogg vorbis converter with a nice little how-to included with a link to it on the desktop? There are many avenues that they could take…but instead, they’ve left it well enough alone through 4 releases. It is my personal opinion that this area is also holding Linux back as well. Linux cannot appeal to the masses if it can’t play DVD’s and mp3′s.

Of Lacking and Improvements

So we found quite a few areas where new users would trip up and most likely give up on right away. Being that Mrs.Devnet, a new Linux user, took a look at Fedora Core 4 Test 1 a while back…I decided to take a look back to see what her major gripe about Fedora Core 4 was. She stated that overall it was a lack of knowing what to do with Fedora. There were minimal programs installed on her Gnome desktop and she didn’t know how to download the ones she wanted nor had any means to find the program she might. There was no documentation readily available on how to get to the things she needed.

In cases like this, distros such as Xandros with Xandros Network and Linspire with CNR might be a better alternative for new users since they offer graphical explanations of what each program is. But the silly thing about all this is that they charge for this software. What I’m amazed at is that someone hasn’t done this for Red Hat or Debian already and made a distro have something like CNR and Xandros Network only an open source derrivative where one isn’t charged for freely downloadable software. Fedora strikes me as the prime candidate to come up with something like this to revolutionize the desktop. They’ve got excellent support via Red Hat and fantastic community members. They’ve als go tons of documentation if you know where to look. This is one area I think ALL distros can improve in…

I thought about the lack of direction Mrs.Devnet had right away out of the box on this distro. One way to improve this would be to place a document on FC4′s desktop that points users in the right direction for getting started. Perhaps another improvment might be to include a link on the desktop to a tutorial for getting started. If it were my Linux distro…I’d include a link to a Wink Flash tutorial geared toward new users. This would physically show new users how to get started using their brand new Linux desktop. Visually seeing a desktop in action would benefit a new user greatly.

Conclusion

It’s obvious from my quick look above that I’m quite unimpressed with Fedora…mainly because of its inability to provide easy solutions to java and mp3 issues. There are ways to circumvent patent infringement with disclaimers or with third party scripts. Hopefully, Fedora will cater to the user instead of requiring them to become well versed in compiling code within the first 10 minutes of using…because I know the average user isn’t going to want to drop to CLI anytime.

I’m very happy that Fedora Core 4 offers a great distro for those of us that have some Linux knowledge and that boot speeds are quite impressive. However, for new users, I will continue to recommend against it. Overall, after getting a fully configured FC4 box…I was riding high on the hog. I’ve had it on my test computer now for about 2 weeks and it has been stable and fast. Hopefully, some of the recommendations for this great distro won’t fall on deaf ears. That way, new users can enjoy what I’m enjoying right now with minimal effort. That’s the key…simplifying our lives with computers and Linux…not complicating them. Thanks for reading!

Experiment Revisited: Fedora Core 4 originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on July 23, 2005.

Here’s the list of distros I’ll be posting w/ screens on:

1. Mandrake 10.1
2. Libranet 2.8.1
3. PCLinuxOS Preview 7
4. SimplyMEPIS 2004.04
5. Fedora Core 3

Some of you might be wondering why I don’t have ‘X’ distro listed in there. The reason is that I’m looking for the following criteria: 1. Full version is free 2. Noted by the Linux as very new user friendly 3. the distro’s not Ubuntu (REVISED: Ubuntu is now in the mix due to reader response).

As a past user of Ubuntu, I can tell you that it doesn’t hold a candle overall to any of the distros I’ll be investigating and will therefore NOT be included into this group. If you need Ubuntu snapshots and reviews…go google it and you’ll come up with at least 500 misguided ones. I suppose if there is any feedback about Ubuntu here I can probably give my two cents on it.

As I posted earlier, I recently installed Mandrake Linux 10.1. I was quite impressed with the default install and how it appeared. Now that I’ve had about a week to analyze it I can share some observations.

First and foremost, this OS is eyecandy. Everything looks and feels organized and soft. There aren’t any hard, right angled fonts, icons, or windows. You look at the desktop and get a sense of completeness. Â I can’t explain it any more than that. For appearance, Mandrake is hands down the most eye pleasing free distro available.

The second most noticeable thing is the organization of the menus. Everything has its place and there isn’t a ton of confusing menus to mess things up. For instance, with most KDE default installs on distros that don’t preconfigure them for you (i.e., slackware) you find ALL of the KDE menus intact. This means that when you go to the more applications link in the K-Menu, you find EVERY SINGLE APPLICATION INSTALLED. This makes the menu branch out and get quite confusing and frustrating. If one knows how to tweak this, it isn’t a problem. But for those that are just starting out in Linux, it’s very confusing.

I like the fact that it is very easy to configure the various aspects of your desktop and the settings. They have the menu organization down to a tee. I really think this is the way a Linux distribution should be after it is installed. It is simply KDE done right. You’d think with all of this going for it, Mandrake would rate high on my list…but remember, I’m thinking more along the lines of this distro being ready set go right out of the box. So it fell short on a few points.

The first place it falls short is package management. I realize that Mandrake is trying very hard to have a ‘package warehouse’ like that of Linspire and Xandros…but it falls very short. I tried to upgrade for any security holes numerous times without any success. Also, requiring the user to ‘register’ in order to receive said updates put me off somewhat. If I’m just installing an operating system…I want to accomplish my goals ASAP without adding my email address anywhere in order to accomplish them. So, I was a bit annoyed by this little detail. Perhaps they should make it so it asks on the 2nd update try.

The second place Mandrake falls short is configurability. I know many of you are going to hop all over me for saying this touting “It’s totally up to the individual to configure it” and you’re right…it is up to the individual. But what new user is going to know how to do this out of the box? If I were a new user, I’d be going to the Mandrake Control center for everything I needed…kinda like the Control Panel in WinDozeXP and I wouldn’t want to snoop around to find anything else. I know that this could be a ‘KDE’ or ‘Gnome’ thing depending on the OS…but you’d think that a distro that has developed as many custom menus and such for Linux would go the extra step and take ‘Y’ out of the equation…i.e. making it just one step easier to configure the look, feel, and styles of the desktop.

The last place Mandrake fell short for me was sound. I had no sound at the first boot. No probs I thought….I ran ‘alsaconf’ and pumped up the sound volume making sure it wasn’t muted. I tried the sound again with no go. So…no matter what I did, I couldn’t get the sound going without having to jump farther into the command line that I should have to with a distro such as this. Eventually I did get the sound going. It seems Mandrake detected my onboard sound as active even though it was deactivated in BIOS. Odd, because it is the only distro that has done so. However, I couldn’t ignore the fact that sound wasn’t good to go after a few intervening actions on my part.

Overall, I’d give Mandrake a thumbs up though. This is a pretty solid distro. I can’t wait to see how it fares with my wife. She is really good about checking into what programs can and can’t do and will really put these distros to the ‘new user’ test. As promised, I’ll cycle through each distro myself during the next couple of weeks and post my thoughts on it. Then at the end of this period, I’ll install one of the five listed at the beginning of this post and I’ll have a true new user come and check out each. I think sticking with a distro a week for her to test will be a good idea. That should give her enough time to truly ‘feel’ what it is like and decide for herself if it will get her stamp of approval. I consider this type of test MUCH more unbiased than one you’d read on some large new site…mainly because new users don’t do the reviews…and I’m sure you’d agree that having someone new to Linux take a look at a distro would provide some really interesting feedback.

Thanks for reading and stick with us…it looks to be very interesting.

PS: On the horizon…I’m uninstalling Mandrake 10.1 right now to look at SimplyMEPIS 2004.04. I should have initial reports back sometime in the next few days.

The Point is Click Linux; a managed theme… originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on December 10, 2004.