Why I quit Fedora 7

Todd Zullinger tmz at pobox.com
Sat Jun 9 15:51:14 UTC 2007


Karl Larsen wrote:
> I never got just the basic things working.
> 
> 1. Printing:
> 
>    Fedora Core 4: use Desktop-System Settings-Printer
>    Fedora 7: I could not find anyway to set up the printer.

Did the System->Administration->Printing menu not start the print
configuration tool for you?  Tim Waugh put a lot of effort into
improving printing support and setup.  I've not tested it, as I print
things maybe once per Fedora released (paper?  what's that? :).

> 2. Email:
> 
>    Fedora Core 4: Thunerbird loaded easy from their web page
>    Fedora 7: Found a library file was missing. Yum that and it ran.
>    But I was unable to bring my old setup to Fedora 7 like I did to
>    other Linux versions. With the old data files thunderbird will
>    not run at all. Fedora Core 1 through 4 it worked fine.

Thunderbird 2.0.0.0 is included with F7.  There's not really a need
to install it from the mozilla web site.  If you do want to install
from there, then yeah, you need to take care of installing the much
older libraries that they build their installers with.

> 
> 3. Web access:
> 
>    Fedora Core 4: Firefox latest version works but has minor bugs.
>    Fedora 7: Firefox is VERY slow to come up and it is quite odd.

I'm not sure what you mean about it being quite odd.  As far as speed,
I've not noticed any problems here.  If anything, Firefox seems
faster compared to FC6.  Of course, I'm using the Fedora packages of
Firefox, not the builds from mozilla.org.  The same caveats apply here
as with Thunderbird if you're using the mozilla.org builds.

> 4. Writing:
> 
>    Fedora Core 4: Easy to get an editor and write
>    Fedora 7: SAB.

Eh?  What sort of editor are you looking for?  Simple text editing is
available with Applications->Accessories->Text Editor.  Or you could
use OpenOffice for more structured documents.  (Or you could just use
vim, emacs, nano, etc.).

> Reading this list I have learned the kernel shipped with Fedora 7 is
> corrupt. That explains some of the odd effects that I see.

Corrupt is not the right word.  There are certainly bugs in the
kernel (there always are).  The shipped kernel was updated to the
latest stable release from kernel.org just before the release and that
proved to have a few more bugs than the Fedora kernel folks would have
liked.  But it'll get fixed up fairly soon I'm sure.  I've yet to run
into any of the bugs myself, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that.

> It appears that just like the DOS packages of long ago you NEVER
> want a simple number. DOS 4.0 was buggy and bad. DOS 4.1 was a
> keeper. I'm going to wait for Fedora 7.1 to arrive.

There won't be a 7.1 release though.  There will be updates to 7 for
the next ~13 months though.  Perhaps wait a month and then reinstall
F7 and apply those updates.

> And I volunteer to write some part of the documentation, provided I
> can make that part work :-)

Cool.  I'm sure the docs team could use the help.  Maybe lurk a bit on
their list?

    http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-docs-list
    http://docs.fedoraproject.org/

-- 
Todd        OpenPGP -> KeyID: 0xBEAF0CE3 | URL: www.pobox.com/~tmz/pgp
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom.
    -- Justice William O. Douglas

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