Disappointing Fedora Experience

[joestrummer]

Hello All,

I'm new to Linux but have played around with Red Hat before. However, I've never made time to really sink my teeth into it. I'm amazed at the scope of what's available for Linux. I'm the IT Director for a non-profit and we can use inexpensive solutions! Lately, I've spent a couple days playing with Fedora and reading up on it. I plan to fine a role for Linux to play in my orgainization as DNS server, fax server, work station, etc...

With that said, I've had a real challenge with Fedora on my HP Laptop (Pavilion) including some troubling observations:

The UTC Clock is wrong - It's 10 PM and clock reports 3 AM when enabled. Time Zone is correct - turn it off - it displays correct time.

USB Mouse needs constant rebooting to work. When reverting back to PS/2 - another reboot is required (even Windows doesn't do this)

The most popular wireless NIC in the world (Linksys WPC11 v4) is not only not recognized but requires hours of Googling to find the proper install procedure. Many others report similar experience with this card and Fedora too. Not working yet...

Change your DNS settings - reboot or restart networking.... (Win 98??)

RHN Update (two and a half hours at 10KB/Sec on my Cable modem doing 400KB/sec) and contained frequent messages about packages appearing corrupted which in turn made the system unusable (digital sig??). Reinstall - run this again and it simply won't come up... No message - no update - nothing....

Reboot and all text is gone - reboot - text is back....

You get the picture. With that said, I LOVE tinkering with hardware and software and have over 8 years of supporting users and systems with various certs to my name. However, if this is what one can expect from Fedora, I'd recommend trying another distro or BUYING Windows. It's simply worth money to do the install once and forget about it and know it's going to work.

Anyone else had simliar experiences? Is Fedora Alpha Code? Can you recommend a distro that takes hours to configure as opposed to days??

I intentionally have not listed hardware as I'm not necessarily looking for specific support or guidance on the issues. Frankly, I've spent enough time on them anyway.

Great board - thanks for any feedback.


joestrummer




"The Ice Age is coming/The Sun zooming in/Meltdown expected/The wheat is growing thin."

[leonpmu]

I am an ex-redhat user, so bear with me.

Please don't take this the wrong way, but first of all, you need to understand the conceptof restarting a service, NOT the PC.

The UTC Clock is wrong - It's 10 PM and clock reports 3 AM when enabled. Time Zone is correct - turn it off - it displays correct time.

Chances are good that it is showing you a different time zone RH has the same problem, not sure what to do about that one...

USB Mouse needs constant rebooting to work. When reverting back to PS/2 - another reboot is required (even Windows doesn't do this)
Actually not, logout, restart X (ctrl+Alt+Backspace) and you can use it.

The most popular wireless NIC in the world (Linksys WPC11 v4) is not only not recognized but requires hours of Googling to find the proper install procedure. Many others report similar experience with this card and Fedora too. Not working yet...

That appears to be a Fedora thing, perhaps look at another distro, Mandrake perhaps??

Change your DNS settings - reboot or restart networking.... (Win 98??)
Use Linuxconf, it restarts the networking service automatically for you....

Reboot and all text is gone - reboot - text is back....
Huh???? That made no sense???

Anyone else had simliar experiences? Is Fedora Alpha Code? Can you recommend a distro that takes hours to configure as opposed to days??

I can highly recommend Mandrake 9.1, very UF and quite easy to conf.

Don't give up, I gave up on RH becasue I found that as a DT it wasn't up to scratch, as a server though......

Good luck Joe

[carbon-12]

OMG I hate Fedora. :mad:

1.) Slow boot-up(compared to other rpm based distros)

2.) RPM manager is really defective. It freezes after I install a couple of RPMS conseutivly.

3.) Very poor multimedia support

4.) Red Hat Update is ungodly slow( I was getting 4 kb/s on my cable)

For now, im back on SuSE 9.0. Much better :)

[nextbillgates]

The UTC Clock is wrong - It's 10 PM and clock reports 3 AM when enabled. Time Zone is correct - turn it off - it displays correct time.

Linux handles time two different ways: UTC time and local time. Windows always runs on local time, so if you're dual-booting, it may screw up your Linux time setting. Going into the Date/Time control panel and unchecking UTC should fix this.

USB Mouse needs constant rebooting to work. When reverting back to PS/2 - another reboot is required (even Windows doesn't do this)

Never experienced this problem. With modern pre-built distros like Fedora, USB has always been plug and play. What exactly are you doing that requires Fedora to reboot?

The most popular wireless NIC in the world (Linksys WPC11 v4) is not only not recognized but requires hours of Googling to find the proper install procedure. Many others report similar experience with this card and Fedora too. Not working yet...

Again, I don't have much experience with this. A quick glance at Linux 802.11b support tells me that quite a few 802.11b cards use the same chipset, and will work with a generic kernel module. As for Linksys, I've never had any good experiences with them (support or otherwise), and I avoid them where I can.

Change your DNS settings - reboot or restart networking.... (Win 98??)

Changing DNS servers takes effect immediately. Changing your DNS name requires restarting the network service.

In Windows (all versions), changing your computer name always means a reboot.

RHN Update (two and a half hours at 10KB/Sec on my Cable modem doing 400KB/sec) and contained frequent messages about packages appearing corrupted which in turn made the system unusable (digital sig??). Reinstall - run this again and it simply won't come up... No message - no update - nothing....

I've had the sam problem. Fedora uses their own update servers, and they simply don't have enough bandwidth to handle the load placed on them.

You can solve this problem in one of two ways:

a) Pick a fast mirror that is closest to you. Here's (http://fedora.redhat.com/download/mirrors.html) a list of mirrors.

B)Install apt (get it here (http://ftp.freshrpms.net/pub/freshrpms/fedora/linux/1/apt/apt-0.5.15cnc3-0.1.fr.i386.rpm) and use that to update your system.

Hope you get Fedora working the way you want it.

1.) Slow boot-up(compared to other rpm based distros)

2.) RPM manager is really defective. It freezes after I install a couple of RPMS conseutivly.

3.) Very poor multimedia support

4.) Red Update is ungodly slow( I was getting 4 kb/s on my cable)

Fedora doesn't seem any faster or slower than Mandrake or Red Hat. And I'm not even sure why you consider Fedora's multimedia support lacking. The other things are address above.

[DaveT47]

I have SuSE 9.0 installed on a relatively recent laptop (Toshiba Satellite P25). It recognized my entire configuration inclusing my NIC, Wireless adapter, On-Board and PCMCIA modems, and the On-Board sound. I had numerous problems with RH in the past and switched to SuSE starting with 8.1. I've had very few problems since with 8.2 or 9.0. I recommend you try SuSE before abandoning Linux.

[carbon-12]

"Fedora doesn't seem any faster or slower than Mandrake or Red Hat. And I'm not even sure why you consider Fedora's multimedia support lacking. The other things are address above."

Compared to SuSE 9.0, fedora does feel very sluggish IMO.

I mentioned the multimedia support because MOST(all?) distros geared towards home users have some sort of multimedia capabilities. Heck theres not even MP3 support, the most used audio compression in the world! Yea I know, all you have to do is download 2 files and untar them into the xmms dir, but still.

[JohnT]

USB Mouse needs constant rebooting to work. When reverting back to PS/2 - another reboot is required (even Windows doesn't do this)

Just curious as it how many times a day you change out your mouse, from USB to PS2 and then back? I think I changed mine once, about two years ago, but can't be positive.
There is an addition to the kernel called hotplugging (http://linux-hotplug.sourceforge.net/) that has been availble for about 2+yrs now enabling you to plugin any USB device and use it immediately. The tools are there to use sometimes not so obvious. I think you miss the point of the Linux kernel as to the fact it is completely configurable for your particular situation rather than being limited by the generic win kernel.

[YeNotGuilty]

I'm running a pavilion laptop and the only problem I have with it is that the modem is a Conexant (winmodem)

other than that, most of it works fine

[EnigmaOne]

I have installed Fedora Core 1 on a number of machines and really haven't had a problem with any hardware, outside of the crystal audio that Dell seems to like to put on their motherboards.
::: shrug ::: I prefer the fully-supported Creative Labs line of sound cards anyways.

With that said, I had the same problem with using up2date, but you have to realize that RedHat has seriously scaled-back their server resources allocated to feeding updates to the Fedora up2date clients. Personally, I'm amazed that they bothered to support up2date at all for Fedora; which makes them (RH) champs in my book.
Best way to go about it is to run up2date, downloading all the updates, until it bails out on a corrupted file.
Answer "no" to the question of continuing.
Restart up2date and select all packages again.
Packages you've already downloaded will be skipped, and you'll start actually downloading at the corrupted file--continuing on from there.
When you finally finish downloading--and believe me, the first batch of updates is the worst--things will move along normally with package installation and wrap-up.
The next time around, you'll be downloading far less than the 100MB+ files that come down on that first run, and you should have far fewer problems--especially if you run up2date once a week or more often.
EXPECT problems like corrupted files though, because the up2date servers are getting hammered, and there are far fewer of them for the Fedora project.

Your time zone may be correct but, from what you describe, I'd bet that your system clock isn't actually set to UTC (GMT).

The USB mouse needs constant rebooting???
How old is this laptop, and have you updated the BIOS?
On certain laptops the USB implementation is flakey--and that's being polite. If you have a PS/2 port for a pointing device, use it.
I use both USB and PS/2 on my desktop unit (simultaneously), but I don't plug and unplug them...there's no need to do things like that.

The WPC11V4 Wireless NIC has issues....might be popular, but it isn't with me.
It hates both win98 and Linux...as well as certain models/revisions of Linksys Wireless Routers and WAPs. What the heck...I don't even like wireless anyway....give me a roll of Cat5e instead.

Change your DNS settings? (Set 'em once and forget 'em.) Restart the networking service--it ain't win98.

Reboot and all text is gone - reboot - text is back???
That makes absolutely no sense, unless it's a problem initializing your laptop's LCD, and that's really bound-up in the hardware interactions.
Also....you reboot too much. RESTART SERVICES.

FC1, RH9, RH8, and RH7.3 can tolerate a wide range of hardware, even though laptops are typically the most finicky, poorly-documented conglomerations on the retail market. From what I read, HPs are probably the worst kind of pig to attempt such an installation with.
Don't get me wrong, I love their optical drives and printers--they're absolutely awesome! I just don't think their laptops have emerged much beyond status-symbol-toy significance.
Next time try a Toshiba Satellite Laptop (A10 or A15 is a good one).

I can install any of the above (FC1, RH9, RH8, and RH7.3...only because those are the ones I've tried this with so far) to a Celeron eMachine, a P2 Dell, or even a Gateway Notebook, with an Intel or SiS chipset and some seriously weird integrated hardware; then move that same hard drive over to an Athlon, VIA chipset machine, with first-rate audio, video and multiple networking expansion cards with hardly a stumble--even if the original install wasn't shutdown cleanly.
I know. I've done it no less than 30 or 40 times by now.
Auto-fsck and Kudzu are your boot-time buddies, and the module support is solidly there for them to work with.

I don't think that qualifies as Alpha Release performance.

As to configuration time for Fedora Core 1?
Including virgin CD install, up2date and some fiddling with getting rid of the Bluecurve abomination, 4 or 5 hours, tops.

...I'd recommend trying another distro or BUYING Windows. It's simply worth money to do the install once and forget about it and know it's going to work....
In that case, you wouldn't recommend windoze to anyone now, would you? ;)

You may have certs--and they aren't worth much, BTW--great.
I have an MCSE myself, and I don't expect THAT to be more than a foot in the door to move customers AWAY from microsoft. (Franlky, that's the only reason I bothered with the cert.)
You have windows-like expectations of Fedora, which is a bit unrealistic, and leads me to believe that you didn't really read everything before you downloaded the ISOs. Those same expectations are probably causing you most of your problems too.
You might want to go ahead and try other distros, starting with Lindows; only because I think it'll meet your expectations better. Move up from there, trying other distros as you learn.

I intentionally have not listed hardware as I'm not necessarily looking for specific support or guidance on the issues.
So that makes this what....
Venting out of frustration?
Flamebait?

I think your perspective will change a bit, with some more Linux experience. Stick with it.

[nextbillgates]

Originally posted by carbon-12
Compared to SuSE 9.0, fedora does feel very sluggish IMO.

I mentioned the multimedia support because MOST(all?) distros geared towards home users have some sort of multimedia capabilities. Heck theres not even MP3 support, the most used audio compression in the world! Yea I know, all you have to do is download 2 files and untar them into the xmms dir, but still.

Fedora (as well as Red Hat 8+) is up front about their lack of MP3 support, and there's plenty of information about it on Google, and about a billion threads about it here. As for speed, optimizing Fedora is just like optimizing for any other distro: shut off uneeded services, make sure you've got the correct drivers for the hardware, create your own customized, optimized kernel, etc. Sure, it's no Gentoo, but that doesn't mean Fedora can't perform.

It looks to me like you had your mind made up on Fedora before you ever installed it.

[carbon-12]

"Fedora (as well as Red Hat 8+) is up front about their lack of MP3 support, and there's plenty of information about it on Google, and about a billion threads about it here."

Like I said, the process of enabling Mp3 support is pretty simple, I was just commenting on the fact that it wasent included by default.


"As for speed, optimizing Fedora is just like optimizing for any other distro: shut off uneeded services, make sure you've got the correct drivers for the hardware, create your own customized, optimized kernel, etc. Sure, it's no Gentoo, but that doesn't mean Fedora can't perform."

But I was comparing an default SUSE install to a default Fedora install.


"It looks to me like you had your mind made up on Fedora before you ever installed it."

Er...I used Fedora as my main OS for a good 2months. I only recently made the switch to SUSE 9.0. But if you like RH/Fedora so much, I wont hold that against you.

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

Quick question:

What were you using to edit your DNS settings? I've always edited /etc/resolv.conf directly, and I've never had a problem. I didn't even need to reboot or restart a single service!

[Goran[Croatia]]

Can you recommend a distro that takes hours to configure as opposed to days??
Mandrake 9.2? I use it! Works nicely. Fast bootup and 30 minutes to install!

[JohnT]

Can you recommend a distro that takes hours to configure as opposed to days??

Yea...every one of them except Gentoo and LSF and a couple of others out of the several hundred..

[joestrummer]

Guys,

Thanks so much for the insightful replies. THIS is one of the things I like about the Linux community - you'd simply not find this among Windows users too often.

To clarify, I'm not expecting any distro to work "out of the box". Hell, I LIKE figuring this stuff out - it's extremely satisfying to make it your own as MDWatts says. And, the fact that I can save my org some money is simply great. I had Red Hat 7.3 working great a couple years ago!

However, I work 10-12 hours a day in a health care environment - have a child and am working on other professional certifcations to boot. While I can make an hour or two a night to devote to googling, reading man pages, docs, etc... it's simply got to work reasonably well after that type of investment of time. Crashes and silly things like the clock being off or Auto update corrupting the Kernel will relegate Linux to "enthusiast" status forever. While I have time for a hobby, I don't have time for a life's work.

I am dual booting this with XP so perhaps that explains the UTC problem. But that was simply the last straw last night. If I sounded frustrated, I was.

I'm leaning towards downloading SuSe as I heard the most positive things about it. Again, I know that it too will need configuring and I look forward to figuring it out.

Thanks for the tips - I'm going to try them now!

JoeStrummer



"The Ice Age is coming/The Sun zooming in/Meltdown expected/The wheat is growing thin."

[JohnT]

Try Mepis Linux instead.......your only headed for more frustration...most distros need more than an hour or two to configure properly. Better stay away from a new Win install too, they can run into hours before properly configured.

[bandwidth_pig]

Originally posted by Goran[Croatia]
Mandrake 9.2? I use it! Works nicely. Fast bootup and 30 minutes to install!

Hmm. Last time I toyed with Drake it was 30 minutes to boot up and fast install. :D

[JohnT]

Originally posted by Goran[Croatia]
Mandrake 9.2? I use it! Works nicely. Fast bootup and 30 minutes to install!

That gives you time to get to "justlinux.com" in just under an hour for all the install problems you'll be having having.:D

[hard candy]

That gives you time to get to "justlinux.com" in just under an hour for all the install problems you'll be having having.
Slackware is only a 30 minute install- and a lifetime hobby to configure!
Mepis is a 30 minute install-and a lifetime of looking for something else to do with all that spare time (maybe install Slackware?)!
Fedora is a 30 minute install and a lifetime of posting to JustLinux to find out what is wrong!
Gentoo is a lifetime to install and 30 minutes to run "emerge -u world"!
Windows XP is a 30 minute install and a lifetime of paying for upgrades !
:D

[JohnT]

he,he .....I didn't mean for you to spil the beans on everything... hard candy:D :D