here is what Distrowatch.com has said about Fedora 7:
The last time I used Red Hat was version 5.2 back in 1999 when I was introduced to Linux by Andrew Tridgell (of Samba and rsync fame). At the time I found myself falling into ‘RPM hell’ where lack of dependency management drove the end user, me, insane. But today the clouds parted, the sun shone through my living room window and with the release of Fedora 7 I knew that now was the time to tempt fate once again. So let’s begin.
As we have come to expect from modern Linux distributions the initial boot loader was aesthetically pleasing and simply graphically cool. The installer quickly booted and prompted me to check the DVD for errors – a very handy tool to ensure that the image you downloaded and have now burned to disk did not become corrupt along the way. The installer is graphical, starting X and made use of a mouse to perform most tasks, all in a nice GTK+ environment. My AMD machine uses RAID 5 with LVM (Logical Volume Management) and I was pleasantly surprised to find that upon selecting ‘custom partitioning’ my RAID arrays and also my LVM configuration were both detected. Brilliant.
I hit the ‘Edit’ button after selecting my LVM volume group and created a new logical volume called ‘fedora’. Selecting this as my / partition I then proceeded to the next screen which was the boot loader. Unfortunately the boot loader configuration did not automatically detect my existing Linux installations (even though it had detected the LVM volumes containing them). I had to manually add them so that when GRUB was installed to the MBR (Master Boot Record) I could still boot to my other systems.
Selecting ‘Configure advanced boot loader options’ I was happy to see that the boot option ‘noapic’ that I added at boot time was automatically included for me. On my MacBook I was also pleased to see that by default Fedora was to install GRUB to the /boot partition (hd0,2) instead of the MBR (hd0) which was clever. The only file systems on offer were ext2 or ext3 which seemed a little strange, especially as the console showed support for ReiserFS, JFS and XFS. The rest of the install process was quite straightforward, configuring such things as my network settings, host name, time zone and clock as well as setting the root password.
I left the package selection set to ‘Office and Productivity’ which would install the GNOME 2.18.0 desktop environment. Certainly for KDE lovers out there this was the time to customise their selection and pick KDE over GNOME. Simply hit the ‘Customize now’ button and on the next screen deselect ‘GNOME’ and instead tick ‘KDE’. This was impressive as I was concerned that with Fedora being GNOME-based there would be no automatic package selection for KDE users, but the installer took care of everything with a single click! At this point it also allowed me to add some additional repositories for the package management system, however not knowing of any I left this for now. Right. So far the installer was proving very easy and I have to say that at this point I was very impressed by the stability and power of the installer. Leaving the system to install I went and made a cup of coffee.
After an install time of approximately 12.3578 minutes and 805 packages later the process was complete and I was ready to boot into my new system. The kernel started whirring away, detecting all of my hardware and preparing the system for initial boot. Wow… I had seen the graphical boot process of Fedora in the past, but this was really… what’s the right word? Classy. The system didn’t look super fancy using big bright colours and eye popping effects, just some handsome pastel-like artwork and an eye pleasing progress bar. You got me there, Fedora. Very, very nice.
Once the system completed loading I was presented with the configuration of the system. Agreeing with the license I continued onto the firewall configuration. It is great to see desktop machines (yes, even Linux ones) coming with a firewall by default. I left the firewall enabled which only allowed SSH access through and continued on. The next step was for the configuration of SELinux (Security Enhanced Linux). By default this was set to ‘Enforcing’ which I thought might give me some trouble down the track. Still, being the default option I left it set as it was and began to ponder the future hassles that would come my way when I tried to get random services and drivers working. The time was correct for my machine, but surprisingly NTP (Network Time Protocol) was disabled by default. Easily remedied.
I was then prompted to submit my ‘Hardware Profile’ to The Fedora Project which will give them information on what hardware is popular. By default this was set to ‘Do not send profile’ which in my mind is the right move. I chose to send my information anyway, it’s not like I’m using pirated software or have anything to hide 🙂 Next it was time to create a user, a very simple and straightforward process. I was pleased to see Fedora include various options for network login. Finally I confirmed that my sound card was working and then I was greeted with the Fedora GDM login screen.
At this point I must congratulate Fedora on an excellent install process. The installer is very clean, clear and easy to follow yet can be very powerful for advanced users. I very much like the post install configuration implementation as this makes the distribution of a single image much easier to manage, but also makes the install process less complicated and drawn out. Well done.
Now it was time to check out what Fedora had to offer and how it would stack up to everyday usage. Fedora correctly detected my screen resolution at 1280×1024 and configured X to use the ‘nv’ driver. The default Fedora desktop was very clean. The quality of artwork remained consistent within GNOME, sporting the same hot-air balloon artwork seen previously. Browsing around the GNOME system one does get the feeling that Fedora might be stuck in the early 90’s. The artwork is clean, there’s no doubt about that, but the colour scheme seems a little dated. Nautilus is also configured to open a new window every time you browse to a folder instead of using the built-in browser functionality and did somewhat remind me of Windows 95. Still, there was plenty to be happy about.
Being a DVD installation I expected the default install to have all the applications I would need out of the box and I was not disappointed. The default user environment was configured with various folders to store one’s photos, music, pictures and downloads and there were programs to fulfil each of these tasks. Firefox was the web browser of choice which opened up to a Fedora welcome page, while Evolution played the role of email client, calendar and everything else related. There was also a ripper to convert your CD collection to flac, ogg or wav along with media players to play them. Included by default was a BitTorrent client, no doubt to encourage users to seed the ISO image they just installed from.
I was very pleased to see that the applications in the menu had helpful names for the most part. For example, Xsane was called ‘Scanner tool’ and File Roller named ‘Archive Manager’. This extended somewhat to the package management system where I was able to search for ‘mobile phone’ and it came back with a variety of packages to choose from. Great for users who are new to Linux and aren’t sure which programs do what. Actually, I found an application in the menu called ‘Internet Messenger’ and not knowing what it was, I opened it. To my surprise it was Pidgin (formerly Gaim)! This was my first time to actually use Pidgin, so I can see the value in using such a naming convention.
Within the package manager were three views; ‘Browse’, ‘Search’ and ‘List’. The ‘Browse’ window was quite easy to navigate. Packages were firstly broken down into sections such as ‘Applications’ and ‘Servers’, and then further into groups. The selection of one of these groups, such as ‘Editors’ and ‘Printing Support’, revealed the individual packages associated with them. From here I was able to select the packages I wanted like ‘poedit’ and ‘bluez-utils-cups’ simply by ticking the empty box and hitting ‘Close’. Back at the main screen the ‘Apply’ button proceeded to resolve dependencies and then downloaded all required packages from the Internet and installed them. Done. If you can’t quite find what you’re after, the ability to search should help you out and if that still doesn’t help you can get a list of all packages, both currently installed and those that are available.
Unfortunately for most, playing encrypted DVDs, using Java, watching your favourite wmv video clips, listening to your mp3 collection and getting some 3D action on NVIDIA cards are all still an issue with Fedora 7. Out of the box Fedora played my flac and ogg files but none of the other test formats that I threw at it, which included: mp3, asf, mov, wmv, divx, xvid and swf. I also couldn’t see an easy way to configure my system to use the NVIDIA driver. While generally this situation is improving, the problem is that users who are new to Linux won’t be able to use their shiny Linux system as they might expect and will have to get into some (potentially off-putting) command line dirty work. After some Googleing around (if that’s even a word) I found the Livna Repository which has support for Fedora 7 (another popular repository is FreshRPMs). Adding this was reasonably trivial, I first configured sudo and then installed the livna RPM from the command line like so:
sudo rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/fedora/7/i386/livna-release-7-2.noarch.rpm
This automatically added the livna repository to my system and when I then searched for things like ‘nvidia’ lots of results appeared. To get support for the above files working on my system, I ran:
sudo yum install libdvdnav libdvdplay libdvdcss gstreamer-ffmpeg gstreamer-plugins-* xine-lib-extras-nonfree
Unfortunately, when I tried totem-xine and totem-mozilla they both failed to install complaining about GConf conflicts (a problem with adding non-official repositories, I guess). Although I had libdvdcss installed Totem wouldn’t play DVDs, which I assume was due to a dependency that has been stripped of this capability. Nevertheless I simply proceeded to install mplayer-gui which worked just fine.
As for the NVIDIA driver and my system, it was a simple case of installing ‘kmod-nvidia’ which downloaded all the required packages, installed the kernel module, GLX package and configured my system to use the NVIDIA driver. All I had to do was log out and back in again and 3D was working. Very simple, once you know what to install! Upon reboot, however, I was not able to use NVIDIA as the system could not access (among other things) the /dev/nvidiactl device. This was where SELinux came into play. Simply turning it off and re-installing the driver solved the problem, though I’m sure there is a proper way around this issue. Other than this I did not have any SELinux problems (that I noticed) which was good, although SELinux still seems a little complicated for the average user. It’s nice that it just seemed to work most of the time, but when something doesn’t work the easiest step is to just turn it off.
CPU speed stepping was enabled out of the box, which was a great thing for my MacBook. Unfortunately suspend to RAM didn’t work at all; well actually suspend worked very well but resume didn’t 😉 I also enabled ‘suspend’ in the KDE power management options but it spat up an error saying it ‘could not start pidof’. While suspend did not perform as I was hoping it would, hibernate was successful. The touch pad on my MacBook didn’t work as expected under Fedora either, but the quick addition of a USB mouse gave me the ability to right click and scroll. An addition to the next Fedora that would make everyone’s life that little bit happier would be the auto-configuration of multimedia keyboards. The extra buttons on my ever faithful Logitech keyboard were all dead and on my MacBook I couldn’t adjust brightness, control the volume or eject a CD through the function buttons.
Overall, KDE just didn’t seem quite as refined as the GNOME desktop. The default KDE profile not only installed QT applications for most tasks, but also the GTK+ equivalents from GNOME. This seemed a little strange because if someone was after a KDE / Qt desktop they wouldn’t need the GTK+ applications as well. I also noticed that the desktop-effects application for configuring Compiz was not installed with KDE, yet turning it on was trivial under GNOME. Simply opening the ‘Desktop Effects’ application and clicking the ‘enable’ button resulted in instantaneous Compiz goodness. All of the effects, wobbly windows, spinning cube, the switcher and scale were very smooth. Once I had the NVIDIA driver installed on my desktop it also worked perfectly out of the box, I didn’t even have to touch xorg.conf! It’s great to see effects like this included by default in many new distributions. Speaking of X.Org, one feature I really liked was the way the system prompted to re-configure X if it failed to start. This means end users less knowledgeable about the mysterious ways of X won’t be left stranded should things go awry. Excellent stuff.
While Fedora doesn’t seem to have made great advances in the ease of configuring those finer things in life (like non-GPL drivers and non-free codecs), it’s not overly complicated if you’re willing to get your hands a little dirty. Once you start needing to customise the machine outside of standard Fedora boundaries though, things can become a little less reliable. Nevertheless, I did rather enjoy my Fedora experience, with the stand out impression being that it felt solid right down to the core (excuse the pun). From the initial boot of the installer the system exuded a sense of stability which filled me with confidence the more I used it. The installer is probably the best I have ever used and is very powerful while remaining simple to use. Top marks for that. Overall, the default GNOME install of Fedora is very good and (non-free software idiosyncrasies aside) as a Linux distribution in itself I thought it was excellent. If what you are after is a reliable, stable, easy-to-use yet powerful Linux distribution out of the box, then Fedora fits the bill nicely. Just be prepared to struggle a little if you need those *cough cough* non-free bits.
8 out of 10 ‘Smarties’.
About the author: Chris Smart is the founder of Kororaa, a Gentoo-based Linux distribution, and the maintainer of Make The Move, a Linux advocacy web site. He lives in Canberra, Australia.
Thats all for today. Have a good day
