Fedora - A Step Forward or Backward?

[Rick Bilonick]

I was able to get my hands on an old Compaq Deskpro (166mhz Pentium, 
1.6gm hard drive, 64mb of memory with cdrom). So I installed RH 9 on it. 
Installed easily with no problems. It recognized the video display 
adapter (Cirrus CL-GD5445) and I was able to set the monitor to the 
Compaq P75. It's also nice in RH 9 that you can configure this 
(redhat-config-x86free?).

I downloaded and burned Fedora Core 1. The install went smoothly and 
looks pretty much like RH 9 with a few exceptions (doesn't seem to show 
as much detail when installing the packages, not as much time info if 
memory serves). Fedora didn't configure the video adapter correctly - I 
had to correct the driver - it chose a similar driver  - and insisted on 
only doing 800 x 600 (instead of the 1024 x 768 that RH 9 made 
available). The redhat-config-x86free (?) would NOT let me configure the 
driver reliably. It did once, but since then clicking on configure for 
the adapter does nothing (I can still configure the monitor). I've 
resorted to manually adjusting the XF86Config file - I've finally 
achieved 1024 x 768 but I'm not sure now what I've done (I tried so may 
things without success). I've noticed that there is a Screen Resolution 
applet under Preferences. It insisted on 800 x 600 no matter that the 
video adapter was set at 1024 x 768 (it only gave me two choices: 800 x 
600 and 640 x 480. Thinking back, I think the problem may have been 
connected to specifying too many colors (millions) and when I set this 
lower I was able to get 1024 x 768 again.

Also, when I logout, an applet crashes (mixer_applet2, seg fault).

Isn't Fedora an upgrade from RH 9? I was surprised at the problems in 
setting and modifying Xwindows and the config program not working 
reliably. (After working once to configure the video adapter, it refuses 
to allow any changes). When it did allow configuration, there was no 
ability to do a probe.

On the plus side, at least Fedora works on such old equipment and it's 
not too slow to be useful. In most respects it looks and runs just like 
RH 9.

Rick B.