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Try Ubuntu Hoary insteadTry Ubuntu Hoary insteadPosted Mar 15, 2005 20:16 UTC (Tue) by b7j0c (subscriber, #27559)Parent article: Announcing Fedora Core 4 test1
I made the switch, glad I did.
Ubuntu has a tightly integrated, "just works" distro that so far has worked flawlessly. Some points:
- only one CD to burn, and a promise that you will only ever walk through the installation process once. Fedora on the other hand is up to what, four or five CDs now? And they still recommend you upgrade via anaconda. So that means EVERYONE gets to burn or buy these disks. Now you can tell me how all disks aren't required, but there is no way to know what you need until you are in the anaconda upgrade.
- a faster package system. i am blown away at how much faster dpkg/deb is than rpm.
- cleaner set of repositories. With Fedora you are basically required to add 'dag' if you want any recent software. Ubuntu is set up correctly the first time.
- focus and vision. Ubuntu is not trying to be all things to all people. Maybe you do not like GNOME or apt/synaptic but at least they are simplifying things and focusing on making one correct environment, not a meta-environment that maybe works.
- based on debian. maybe not the latest and greatest, but i don't worry about breakage.
I think Ubuntu is going to change the distro landsscape, I hear nothing but positive comments from switchers.
(Log in to post comments)
Try Ubuntu Hoary instead Posted Mar 15, 2005 20:28 UTC (Tue) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] Two more arguments in favor of Debian based systems: synaptic and deborphan. There is nothing even remotely close to synaptic in Fedora. glint and gnorpm were obsoleted long ago, and system-config-packages is just inadequate for installing additional software and removing unneeded packages. synaptic from freshrpms.net doesn't work on x86_64.
Try Ubuntu Hoary instead Posted Mar 15, 2005 20:35 UTC (Tue) by sirtalon (guest, #28487) [Link] "Two more arguments in favor of Debian based systems: synaptic anddeborphan. There is nothing even remotely close to synaptic in Fedora." I use Synaptic in Fedora...
Try Ubuntu Hoary instead Posted Mar 15, 2005 21:17 UTC (Tue) by mali (guest, #4553) [Link] "There is nothing even remotely close to synaptic in Fedora."errrr... except maybe synaptic??? http://heidelberg.freshrpms.net/rpm.html?id=919
Try Ubuntu Hoary instead Posted Mar 15, 2005 21:25 UTC (Tue) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] Have you actually tried it on x86_64 with some i386 packages installed? Synaptic doesn't like when several packages with the same name are installed.
apt/synaptic and multi-arch Posted Mar 15, 2005 21:35 UTC (Tue) by djao (subscriber, #4263) [Link] Have you actually tried it on x86_64 with some i386 packages installed? Synaptic doesn't like when several packages with the same name are installed.What you say is true, but Debian/Ubuntu don't help either, since they don't support any sort of mixed-arch x86-64 and i386 environment at all.
apt/synaptic and multi-arch Posted Mar 15, 2005 21:38 UTC (Tue) by shahms (subscriber, #8877) [Link] And the horrible, horrible chroot kludge used by Debian/Ubuntu doesn't count. It's so fugly, I can't believe they went that route. Then again, I'll bet it was devised by the same person who developed the ridiculous network config file format.
I'm not sure if the fault ultimately lies in apt or dpkg, but Synaptic on Fedora doesn't support multilib because apt doesn't.
apt/synaptic and multi-arch Posted Mar 16, 2005 2:37 UTC (Wed) by Shewmaker (subscriber, #1126) [Link] There are aspects of the RedHat approach that are ugly.On Fedora Core 2 and RHEL4, there are i386 and x86_64 packages that claim to own the same binaries. As I understand it, rpm always overwrites the i386 binary with the x86_64 binary, but unfortunately this means that running "rpm -Va" on an "everything" install will show a large number of packages with md5sum differences. I understand that defining rpm's behavior the way they have made creating their multiarch distro require less effort, but I do think it is ugly and it reduces the usefulness of rpm's verification capability. It would help if it reported the arch of the package in addition to the package name, but it seems wrong for a correctly installed system to look broken when you run "rpm -Va". I also looked at a SuSE 9.2 system, and although not everything was installed, there were only a couple of multiarch packages that conflicted and those looked like unwanted mistakes in packaging and not a side affect of their methodology. Perhaps in addition to defining the behavior of conflicting multiarch rpms to overwrite i386 with x86_64, rpm could also remove the conflicting files from the i386 package's file ownership list. The other clean alternative I can think of would be to make certain all i386 packages on a multiarch distro have lib subpackages so there are no file conflicts. I imagine that was the work RedHat is trying to avoid. I kind of like the idea of having all 32-bit binaries in a separate filesystem hierarchy than the 64-bit binaries. Chroot may not be the ideal way to accomplish this, but perhaps environment modules would be.
Try Ubuntu Hoary instead Posted Mar 15, 2005 23:55 UTC (Tue) by TwoTimeGrime (guest, #11688) [Link] That sounds like a problem with synaptic not the distro.
Try Ubuntu Hoary instead Posted Mar 17, 2005 15:55 UTC (Thu) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] Right, but it's not like Red Hat could not do anything about it. After all, Synaptic is an open source project, and Red Hat could have added multiarch support to it (possibly making a fork).
Try Ubuntu Hoary instead Posted Mar 16, 2005 15:39 UTC (Wed) by mali (guest, #4553) [Link] "There is nothing even remotely close to synaptic in Fedora."... "Have you actually tried it on x86_64 with some i386 packages installed? Synaptic doesn't like when several packages with the same name are installed." how can I try something which supposedly doesn't exist?! I'm dazed & confused, your statements don't make any sense... Segmentation fault (brain dumped)
Try Ubuntu Hoary instead Posted Mar 15, 2005 20:54 UTC (Tue) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] Um, you only need the first Fedora CD to install a base system too. Once it's installed you can then use yum/apt/wget/whatever to install anything else that was on the other CDs.
You also contradicted yourself -- if Fedora needs the 'dag' repository to get "any recent software", and this is a problem, then how is Ubuntu's "maybe not the latest and greatest" not the same problem? (And funny, last time I checked people were still bitching about how Fedora tended to be pushing the bleeding edge with its bundled software.)
As you said, Ubuntu is not trying to be all things to all people. Perhaps those who prefer Fedora have their reasons, mmm?
Try Ubuntu Hoary instead Posted Mar 15, 2005 21:27 UTC (Tue) by b7j0c (subscriber, #27559) [Link] >> Um, you only need the first Fedora CD to install a base system too.
but this is not widely known and in fact i would say your comment simply adds to the confusion - why are there multiple distro CDs if only one is needed? and no, the fact that only one is needed is not widely advertised by the documentation.
>> You also contradicted yourself -- if Fedora needs the 'dag' repository to get "any recent software", and this is a problem, then how is Ubuntu's "maybe not the latest and greatest" not the same problem?
??? ubuntu provides one set of repositories that do not conflict with each other. there is stuff in dag which is in other repos. everyone uses dag but it is not an officially sanctioned distro repository. i don't see how my comment creates any contradiction.
now to their credit the fedora people are claiming to expedite the process of getting things in extras, but this is not scheduled to be "ready for prime time" until FC5 (their statement, not mine), and FC4 is not even out.
if they had not ignored fodora for so long, these would be non-issues. now they have serious competition from community distros.
Try Ubuntu Hoary instead Posted Mar 15, 2005 21:45 UTC (Tue) by shahms (subscriber, #8877) [Link] You did contradict yourself with those two points, btw. Either you can get the 'latest and greatest' or you can't.
"not until FC5" is completely untrue. The anaconda installer won't support additional repositories until FC5, but FC4 will be shipping with at least Extras configured and ready to go by default. In addition, the pace with which new packages are being added to Extras is astounding, especially considering how recently the infrastructure was finalized.
That Red Hat "ignored fodora [sic]" is also untrue. They never ignored it, they just did a lot of things in the background until the infrastructure was in place. I'm not going to defend the early atmosphere, but Fedora was definitely not "ignored".
Competition is good. Fedora *is* a community distro in almost exactly the same sense as Ubuntu. If you're going to compare the distros, please, please get your facts in order and refain from
Try Ubuntu Hoary instead Posted Mar 16, 2005 2:55 UTC (Wed) by b7j0c (subscriber, #27559) [Link] >> That Red Hat "ignored fodora [sic]" is also untrue.
http://news.com.com/Red+Hat+Fedora+will+engage+customers/...
"One of the mistakes we made when we launched this Enterprise Linux product was we focused so exclusively on this enterprise market that we left this (early-adopter customer) square uncovered," Tiemann said. "It insulted some of our best supporters. But worse, we lost our opportunity to do customer-driven innovation."
i'm going to go with tiemann on this one.
Try Ubuntu Hoary instead Posted Mar 15, 2005 22:41 UTC (Tue) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] >> why are there multiple distro CDs if only one is needed?
For the same reason you can download a six CD set of Debian as opposed to a 100 meg minicd installer image -- So people with slow, metered, or non-existant internet connections can still do more than base installs.
No thanks Posted Mar 15, 2005 21:12 UTC (Tue) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] You don't need to buy or burn these Fedora images, you can use them directly (if it's a fresh install you need to burn the first image, or use a floppy in order to boot Linux). Both Red Hat and Fedora will install or upgrade from NFS, HTTP or FTP images, local hard disk images, local RPMs, etc. using the ordinary graphical installer.
It's hard to imagine how "switch distros and re-install everything" could possibly beat the clean upgrade paths for 10 years or so of Red Hat and Fedora... I guess if you screw up your system every few months you get to try all these distros out, but I've never had that problem.
No thanks Posted Mar 15, 2005 23:45 UTC (Tue) by NightMonkey (subscriber, #23051) [Link] To my memory, with the pre-Fedora Red Hat, upgrading was great if you didn't do anything outside what RedHat thought the "average user" would do. But, more often than not, you'd get a broken mess when "upgrading". I found that re-install was the better option for production systems.
No thanks Posted Mar 16, 2005 2:23 UTC (Wed) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link] I upgraded several Red Hat machines (particularly our servers) over the years without too much trouble. Most problems were due to partitions that were too small for the new packages, or messed up packages (stuff installed over packages from sources, things moved to strange places, ...)
No thanks Posted Mar 16, 2005 4:15 UTC (Wed) by loening (guest, #174) [Link] I've got a box that's gone Redhat 8 -> Fedora Core 2 -> Fedora Core 3 that I haven't physically seen since it was running Redhat 8. I don't recall ever having to fix anything because of the upgrade process. And it runs a web server and samba, so it's more than just a token box. Upgrading with yum definitely does the job.
Try Ubuntu Hoary instead, no thank you Posted Mar 15, 2005 21:21 UTC (Tue) by euler2323 (guest, #28489) [Link] The installer in Ubuntu doesn't "just work". I tossed the cd after having it fail constently at the same point. I didn't care if it was a fixable situation or not, if it couldn't install on my pc as it was then I wasn't gonna give it a chance. I installed FC3 after w/o any issues and have been pleased with it.
Ubuntu is the only distro that I've tried personally in the last 8 years that has not worked rock solid.
Try Ubuntu Hoary instead, no thank you Posted Mar 15, 2005 21:29 UTC (Tue) by b7j0c (subscriber, #27559) [Link] >> I tossed the cd after having it fail constently at the same point.
which was?
Try Ubuntu Hoary instead, no thank you Posted Mar 15, 2005 21:40 UTC (Tue) by euler2323 (guest, #28489) [Link] You're not understanding what I said. The fact that it failed like that, was the reason the disk got tossed. When I have a couple dozen distros to choose from, why waste my time when the installer sucks?
I tried Ubuntu from many positive comments I read about it. But, I happened to not like it.
Also, you play up the fact that its based on Debian, why not just use Debian then? At least then I'd know that the distro has a future.
Try Ubuntu Hoary instead, no thank you Posted Mar 15, 2005 23:59 UTC (Tue) by TwoTimeGrime (guest, #11688) [Link] > You're not understanding what I said.
And you're not understanding what he asked. Could you share with us where it failed? Was it probing a sound card? Would it not recognize your hard drive? We're just curious. I've never used Ubuntu or Fedora but I'd like to get some feedback from other users, even if they are about problems, before I investigate further with a distro.
Try Ubuntu Hoary instead, no thank you Posted Mar 16, 2005 16:14 UTC (Wed) by euler2323 (guest, #28489) [Link] What I said was, I didn't give a f__k what it was doing. It didn't event try to find out. I tossed the cd and installed FC3. How many times did I say that?
Try Ubuntu Hoary instead, no thank you Posted Mar 16, 2005 19:40 UTC (Wed) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link] Which is not useful to anybody else. If a problem is going to get fixed,knowing where the problem occurs is essential.
Try Ubuntu Hoary instead, no thank you Posted Mar 16, 2005 2:15 UTC (Wed) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link]
On my notebook (Toshiba Satellite, recent model) the Gnome 2.10 live CD
(Ubuntu based) hangs when recognizing IDE (lspci(8) tells me:
On another machine it boots fine, but boy takes it a looong time to do so... not too lively in my book.
Try Ubuntu Hoary instead Posted Mar 15, 2005 21:35 UTC (Tue) by shahms (subscriber, #8877) [Link] Try just burning the 'boost.iso' image for Fedora. Whamo! Network install. Oooh. And it works better than the Hoary netboot install. As in, unlike the latest beta, it actually works.
*And*, while "live updates" are not recommended, they do work. Of course, because it isn't supported you have to do some pieces manually (like fetching the newest fedora-release package), but it is doable.
Bah! Never add 'dag'. There are so many other viable repositories for Fedora that don't replace core packages that dag should be a last resort.
Extras, Freshrpms and Livna are mostly all you need. Admittedly, none of these are set up out of the box on FC3 (but Extras should be for FC4). Additionally, of the major distros, Fedora packages are usually the most up-to-date. Unless you bring in Debian 'unstable'. But then you have to include 'rawhide' and Fedora wins again. Yes, Hoary has (will have) GNOME 2.10, but so will FC4 ;-P
(And your 3rd and final points are directly contradictory, btw)
I'm not trying to bash Ubuntu here as I'm sure I would love it if I could get the freakin' installer to work, but many of your points are just not valid.
Try Ubuntu Hoary instead Posted Mar 16, 2005 3:02 UTC (Wed) by b7j0c (subscriber, #27559) [Link] >> Extras, Freshrpms and Livna are mostly all you need.
my understanding was that the entire livna repo was marked as broken.
looking at the number of packages installed, dag is by far the most complete third party repo. although i am not a fedora user anymore, when i was, dag was the only third-party repo i used (freshrpms is installed by default).
Try Ubuntu Hoary instead Posted Mar 16, 2005 22:57 UTC (Wed) by shahms (subscriber, #8877) [Link] Then your understanding is wrong. Freshrpms is not installed by default, unless you're referring to the sources.list file shipped by Dag, I wouldn't know. If dag was the only third-party repo you used, I'm not surprised you had so many problems with Fedora. Dag does a good job packaging things, but he's also a little . . . overzealous, and that inevitably leads to breakage.
Try Ubuntu Hoary instead Posted Mar 15, 2005 23:00 UTC (Tue) by clump (subscriber, #27801) [Link] I think a little competition is good among distros but I also think rooting for another distro in an announcement article is a little... well, impolite. I wish both Fedora and Ubuntu the best of luck.
Try Ubuntu Hoary instead Posted Mar 16, 2005 2:25 UTC (Wed) by peace (guest, #10016) [Link] Ok, when we conversed last time I had the sneaky suspicion that you would pop up again. You were recently berating Fedora in another thread and claiming that you were moving to Gentoo:
http://lwn.net/Articles/125378/
You are still spreading the falsity that Fedora requires multiple CD's to install even though I went to great lengths in my last series of posts with you to point out that it only requires CD 1. So there is at least one way you could find out without having to run anaconda, namely, pay attention.
It's very disapointing to see this nagativity. Now, instead of a lively discusion concerning, say, FC4 test1 we have a lot of rambling offtopic this vs. that distro posts. Please understand that if Gentoo or Ubuntu work for you than that is a good thing. You are doing nothing productive with your actions here though. I use all three distributions at home and work and like them all. I am particularly pleased with Fedora however and I have definatly not been a Red Hat fan.
I don't get the sense you are deliberately trolling but you are severaly lacking in some understanding regarding the FL/OSS community.
Kind Regards
Try Ubuntu Hoary instead Posted Mar 16, 2005 3:10 UTC (Wed) by b7j0c (subscriber, #27559) [Link] >> Ok, when we conversed last time I had the sneaky suspicion that you would pop up again.
one of the privileges of being a subscriber, i get to "pop up" from time to time.
>> Now, instead of a lively discusion concerning, say, FC4 test1 we have a lot of rambling offtopic this vs. that distro posts.
no one made you reply, either time.
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