Why in the world should I use Fedora?


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Thread: Why in the world should I use Fedora?

  1. #1
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    Question Why in the world should I use Fedora?

    This post is somewhat related to another question of mine (see http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?t=148811).

    As I ventured off on my attempt to install Linux, a friend of mine recommended that I go with Fedora. He recommended it because it was free, had descended from redhat (and who hasn't heard of redhat?), was easy to install, and was one of the most popular, thus having a wide base of support available. Having done a bit more research and looking through sites like this one and distrowatch.com, I'm wondering if that was really sound advice.

    It seems that distros like Ubuntu, Mandriva, and openSUSE are a lot more popular. They also seem to have the best reviews regarding ease-of-installation. I don't know how accurate something like this would be, but I used the Linux Distro Chooser at www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/ and Fedora came out 7th in a list of 8. (Madriva, Freespire, and Ubuntu were the top three.)

    Are there any pros to using the Fedora distro? Or should I abandon it and install a more newbie-friendly distro like Ubuntu, Mandriva, or SUSE instead?

    And I hope I'm not opening a can of worms here, but... as a newbie, am I really going to notice a difference between the type of package manager a distro uses? There seems to be quite a lot of discussion on pros/cons of the major package management systems.

    Thanks for your help.

    Regards,

    Ryan

  2. #2
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    The initial install is going to be a hump no matter what you decide.
    Fedora and Mandriva are rpm-based distros so if you get in there and want to add all kinds of software you'll end up kicking youself pretty soon. (There are some people that say RPM Hell doesn't exist if you RTFM, but I never bothered to Read Their Fine Manual).
    Anyway, I'll let 50 other people chime in now, and then next week I'll probably merge this thread with the Main W1cH D15TR0 Thread....
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  3. #3
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    Lissen to da moderator man - he tell it rightly. When I changed from Red Hat to Debian years ago, I couldn't believe the difference in the package management between the two. Many times with RPM I would spend hours or days trying to complete an install and still probably failed half the time. With Debian and apt-get, the installs are easier than clicking on a Windows setup icon. Of course, I knew a whole lot less about Linux back then than now, and frankly, hacking through an RPM install taught me a ton of stuff that I wouldn't have learned on Debian (or Knoppix, Gentoo, Ubuntu, etc).

    When I get a newbie who expresses an interest in Linux, I always steer them to either Knoppix or Ubuntu and one of the main reasons is so that a session of RPM hell doesn't drive them back to that other OS that specializes in BSODs.

    There is nothing whatsoever wrong with Fedora, but be advised of the not exactly user friendly package manager - at least for beginners.

    My favorite hangup used to be...
    "That RPM package cannot be installed because it is already installed." Then...
    "That RPM package cannot be removed because it is not installed" (???)

    Konan

  4. #4
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    Thumbs down SUSE>Fedora

    Okay, here I go into my SUSE sales pitch one more time.

    Opensuse has all the advantages of Fedora, and is structurally similar but my experience and all the buzz that I've heard suggests that it tends to vary a lot more in stability between releases (although, to be fair, SUSE had some unfortunate problems with 10.1 release last year.) Red Hat uses Fedora to test new software, where I get the impression that Novell develops openSUSE in earnest, no doubt to help popularize their enterprise products.

    Also, SUSE has YAST, which does a great job of integrating just about all the administrative functions into one interface, roughly equivalent to Windows' Control Panel, only a lot more comprehensive.

    Finally, SUSE has the advantage of having been around longer than just about any other "popular" distro . I put the word "popular" in quotes, because here it doesn't mean "used by more people", it means "geared toward the masses". This means that SUSE has a kind of maturity that's expressed in the details. Just an example, the zsh shell is preconfigured to run easily in SUSE without a lot of fixing. Another example is that when I run KDE from SUSE, I can easily set keyboard shortcuts for gnome-based applications, not just kde-based applications. These are details that I happen to care about, and you may not, but I find these little advantages popping up in SUSE again and again, and I don't think it's coincidence. I think it's the result of a longer history of development and evolution than Fedora or Ubuntu have enjoyed in their present form. Or maybe that's not why, but whatever the reason, the details are there.

    Okay, but SUSE uses RPM. I don't know about the alleged problems with RPM that have been mentioned. In order to run SUSE succesfully, you need to add the necessary online repositories for YAST, and then you can install nearly everything you need just by using the YAST "package management" interface. You can even add online "Installation source" repositories to yast which will allow you to install more software from the SUSE packages without needing the disks. Once you know how to do that, there aren't a lot of problems with dependencies or anything else. The YAST package management interface takes care of everything. You search for what you need, yast tells you what's available, you pick what you want to install, and YAST installs the package you request, along with the dependencies in nearly every case.

    With SUSE and yast, I have never had any of the paradoxical error messages that Konan mentions, but if I did, YAST would give me options for overriding those problems.

    Of course, I don't expect you to understand anything about what I'm talking about, but I'm glad to help you with anything more you want to know.

    Another good option is Ubuntu, which has the advatage of great community support and the easiest conceivable installation. I have problems with Ubuntu. For example, getting accelerated support for my video card (necessary for 3d graphics for gaming) is a hassle in Ubuntu. but for a newbie installing his or her first Linux system, Ubuntu may be a great choice. By comparison, SUSE needs a little setting up to get running flawlessly, but then it really does run damn close to running flawlessly. (I've written about setting SUSE up elsewhere in here, and I'd be glad to tell you all about that.)

    Before I ever ran SUSE, I ran Debian Sarge. It was easy to install over the internet with the newly invented debian-installer disk, and once I had it installed, the apt repositories were set up that enabled me to install any one of fifteen thousand software packages with a simple command. I couldn't do everything with it, but I could do enough that I was given the opportunity to fall in love with Linux. Today, Ubuntu offers those same advantages to the new Linux user, plus maybe a few more.

    I mentioned SUSE first because it's my favorite, and because it has the most in common (and therefore offers the clearest comparison with) Fedora.
    Last edited by blackbelt_jones; 03-26-2007 at 04:56 PM.

  5. #5
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    I don't think the rpm issues really exist anymore. Of course there is no way of convincing anyone of that who has gone through it and changed over to a non-rpm distro. But anyway, for a first timer I would recommend Ubuntu or maybe PCLinux. Fedora is good but could be a little too rough on the edges for a first timer. I hope you are prepared to hear numerous answers in this thread though.
    Check out the Unix/Linux Administration Program at Seneca College.
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  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by Calipso
    I hope you are prepared to hear numerous answers in this thread though.
    Calipso is right. Anybody who comes here and innocently asks for distro suggestions is in for an earful, and people will probably be weighing in with their opinions long after you've made your choice, and ceased to care.
    Last edited by blackbelt_jones; 03-26-2007 at 04:50 PM.

  7. #7
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    If ur experienced enuf.. dont like a distro, dont use it.. newbies just have to get past the initial hurdles and they mostly settle on 1 distro they felt most comfortable with in the end...

    For me i had tried mandrake, redhat, fedora, debian, knoppix, usw usw.. cant rmb them all... b4 i finally settled on gentoo few years back. blackbelt seems to like SuSE lots but in the past it was a pain to download it so i nv tried it and i dont have any spare boxes to try now..

    switching from windows is like trying to kick an addiction, get over the initial withdrawal symptons and ure gonna feel great

    BTW.. i hate rpms.. retarded package management...
    Registered Linux User #388117

  8. #8
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    "Why in the world should I use Fedora?" Well in the wonderful world of Linux you may find your distro is fedora core. However Linux is not a one size fits all operating system and thats the beauty of it. You can try several distros before you find your perfect match. I would suggest you download several distros give each one a fair tryout and see what fits your taste and style. You have a lot of choices starting with Ark going all the to Zen and if you like lean and fast you have Puppy Linux install on a thumb drive and take it with you (yes puppy is paper trained). Have some fun with Linux drive it around and see what you like. If you decide to go with a rpm based system and you want to install new software search until you find and rpm built for your distro of choice and rpm hell should not be a problem.

    ed

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by WhiteKnight
    blackbelt seems to like SuSE lots but in the past it was a pain to download it so i nv tried it and i dont have any spare boxes to try now..
    By the way, these days you probably don't need to download more than the first three discs to install SUSE, at least if you have a broadband connection. I install the standard KDE configuration (minus amarok and xine, so I can install the full-service versions later) and then open YAST, click on "installation sources", and add the "packman and "guru" repositories from this page, and then the installation sources from the suse mirrors at this page, , and from that point on, I can install whatever I need, the CDs (or the DVDs) are superfluous. I can download and install just about everything I need, dependancies included, by searching for it in YAST under "software management".

    I respect the fact that everyone's different, and your mileage may vary, but nothing has come close to SUSE for giving me trouble-free results and full service. A few years ago, I used to reccomend Debian Sarge as a newbie distro because it was easy to set up, and it gave me good service, but some of the finer points-- the mplayer plugin for mozilla, installing my nvidia driver-- were elusive. For the same reasons, I might reccomend Ubuntu to a newbie today. For me, Ubuntu is easy to set up, but not nearly as easy to live with as SUSE... but you have to know how to set SUSE up.

    I'll talk about that some other time, in some other post, but if anybody wants help in the meantime they can send me a private message.
    Last edited by blackbelt_jones; 04-02-2007 at 03:07 PM.

  10. #10
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    i use fedora on my desktop. i started out with redhat 7, back in dependency hell days. i remember spending an entire saturday trying to install something or another. i tried to install whatever it was, and i was missing a dependency. so i tried installing the dependency, and then i was missing another one for that. i ended up going down about 10 levels of dependencies before i finally got something that would install, and then built the rest based on that. the next weekend i took off redhat and went thru suse, mandrake, debian, until i found slackware, and i stayed with that until fc5. i love slackware and have it on my server, but after using yum in fedora core im not sure i can give it up that easily. using fedora as my full time desktop o/s, theres been one time that i havent been able to install something thru yum (that was available from yum, anyways), and that was partially my fault. ive heard some good things about swaret or the yum equivalent in slackware tho, and im tempted to try it out.

    so anyways, i wouldnt worry too much about dependency hell anymore. if you wanna try fedora core, give it a try. id probably go thru a few distros until you find one that fits you.

  11. #11
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    Actually, you shouldn't.

    You better should try FreeBSD

  12. #12
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    Why Fedora??

    I am not going to tell you why you should use Fedora or any Distro for that matter, what I would say is, try one that comes with a LIVE CD/DVD version before installing anything, this way, you will know right off the boot, what problems you are going to run into with hardware and drivers ( if any at all ) before trying to install it.

    there are many LIVE CD/DVD version out there, any of them should do just fine, although I am sure people will say one is better than the next, but really doesn't matter.

    Good luck with whatever you do go with, and remember, this is a great place to get help if you need it, just search for your answer before asking the question :-)


    BaVinic
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    Shut the Gates, and Close the Windows
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  13. #13
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    Thanks for all the help and advice. I decided to go with Ubuntu for now. I'm keeping copies of my Fedora and openSUSE DVDs handy, though, in case I should decide otherwise. Ubuntu installed just fine for me, but now I'm just struggling with dual-boot problems. The wife and I, although giddy at the thought of ridding our last remaining PC of Windows (we already have two Macs), still depend on Windows for one thing -- Quicken! Damn it, Intuit! As soon as I get the basics out of the way, I'll explore one of the open source Quicken alternatives. Until then.... Thanks for everyone's help thus far. I'm learning a lot just by hanging out and reading others' posts.

    Regards,

    Ryan

  14. #14
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    gnucash and kmymoney (heavy KDE dependencies) are a couple of good quicken alternatives...
    Need help in realtime? Visit us at #linuxnewbie on irc.libera.chat

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  15. #15
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    have a look at this pagehttp://www.omninerd.com/2007/03/26/articles/74

    seems Fedora does well in tests using nmap and nessus security scanners.
    Linux user #367409

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