Did I make a mistake in starting with Fedora Core 4?

[Jim Cornette]

Dave Gutteridge wrote:

> Terry, Tony, Mike,
>    Thank you for responding.
>    I was a little surprised when Mike said each release should be 
> considered independant of the others. I mean, if you say so, I believe 
> you, it's just that it seems so counter intuitive. If they are 
> different entities with more or less success on different hardware 
> configurations, shouldn't they be labelled something that seperates 
> them, not something that makes them a sequence? From looking at the 
> web site, it was easy to get the impression that FC4 follows FC3 and 
> is intended to replace it.

FC4 is a snapshot from the state Fedora was in before the previous 
release. The confusion is that there used to be a policy that releases 
followed a major change for versioning and a minor change number if 
releases were pretty much not effected by major library upgrades. This 
was moved away from in late RHL releases after the 7.x series. There was 
an 8.0 but RHL 9 had no .x revision.
Fedora Core 1 was what was intended to be RHL 10 (no minor numbers). 
Going back to the RHL 6.x and 7.x series they had 7.1, 7.2 and 7.3.

Fedora Core 1 = 2.4 kernel and pretty much like the RHL series.
Fedora Core 2 = move to 2.6 kernel and integrating changes.
Fedora Core 3 = Xorg-x11 and other switches in programs used.
Fedora Core 4 = release programs that are pretty much in sync with 
upstream packages.

This is not very accurate of all that has happened between all of the 
releases. It does show that FC1 through FC4 are progressive steps 
related mostly to time. FC4 has gcc4 as the compiler used for programs. 
It has the split of core and extras repositories for programs. It uses 
more dynamic vs. static methods to dea with devices. There are policy 
changes and package additions from release to release, but one release 
to another is compatible. You do miss out on newer packages and also 
miss out on some startup changes when choosing upgrade vs. new installs.

>
>    Unfortunately, I am not, as Tony asks, doing okay with FC4, which 
> is why I asked. I am having problems reading from my DVD/CD drives (an 
> issue I am pursuing in another thread). Not to mention not being about 
> to get my Wacom tablet to work. These experience, plus seeing other 
> people on this list raise concerns about the use of FC4 was what 
> motivated me to start this thread.

The other thread may spawm results to know how to get the programmers 
aware of this problem if it is reported with usable details through 
bugzilla.
I slip and use list discussions without subjects that relate to the 
problems encountered. sometimes the developers catch the unreported 
problem on unrelated threads, but can do little without a bug report.

>
>    I'm a little caught. It's just functional enough that I don't 
> really want to do any more reinstalls or switch to FC3. But it's also 
> giving me just enough trouble to make me have to keep going back to my 
> Windows partition to get certain tasks done. Anytime I want to copy 
> files from a DVD or CD-ROM, I have to go to Windows, copy it to that 
> drive, and then reboot into Linux and copy the data over from the NTFS 
> partition. That's obviously far from ideal.

This should not happen. I can see your point. I assumed that all DVDs or 
CDROMs should be readable on Linux as with windows. That is, if M$ did 
not come up with a filesystem for DVD/CDROMs that is off of the standard 
filesystems. By your report, Linux DVD controls are to blame. This might 
be remedied if it is a program deficiency.

>
>    It was largely for philosophical reasons that I moved away from 
> Windows, but I'm wondering if my jump was premature. Maybe it's true, 
> as I've often heard, that Linux (or at least Fedora) isn't quite 
> "ready for prime time".
>
I wouldn't expect a swarm of people going over to Linux just yet. People 
seems to be able to run Linux today without needing to have to do a lot 
of configuration to their systems. I pretty much let the installer get 
my system setup correctly and it does for the most part. Then there are 
factors that take a little more work than "it just works" when 
installed. I believe the aim is to make Linux just work on all hardware. 
This is tough to do whan the goal is held up by copyright laws and 
hardware vendors who do not want to release their code to get things 
working.
For windows, I am pretty much free from it myself. I do have a purpose 
for it from time to time. Mainly for loading music on a Windows only 
MP3player/jukebox.

Good luck if you decide to stick with Linux and the same if you feel 
switching back to nt5.1 (XP)

Jim

> Dave
>


-- 
Carson's Consolation:
	Nothing is ever a complete failure.
	It can always be used as a bad example.