Why I quit Fedora 7

Karl Larsen k5di at zianet.com
Sat Jun 9 16:49:13 UTC 2007


Todd Zullinger wrote:
> 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? 
    Yes it did and I had real problems setting up my printer which is a 
China made Brother HL-1440 laser printer. I put the stuff in the first 
page and it chewed for a minute on that and then put the old list of 
printers from FC4 or so up and I selected my printer from that.

    I tried to print a simple ascii file I made with the Joe editor. In 
a terminal I typed lpr filename and it came back with an error. I had 
not selected a DEFAULT printer, even though it's the only darn printer 
listed. I found the place you select a default printer after a while and 
then it printed the file. The printing was all screwed up! It prints 
part of the first line and all the second and part of the third line. 
Not good.

    On Fedora Core 4 the printer has been working just fine for 2 years.


>  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? :).
>   
    I am sorry that Tim Waugh's changes to printing do not work well and 
do not get the proper file to handle this printer. I suggest we go back 
to the old way. It was no problem at all.

>   
>> 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.
>
>   
    I didn't see this in any writing. I didn't think you could yum 
thunderbird but it seems this is the only way it will work.
>> 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.
>   
    No I'm using the Firefox that came in the Fedora 7 package. And it 
is very slow to come up. It seems to work ok but I had trouble getting 
Google to come up on the F7 system. Got it up after a few minutes.

>   
>> 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.).
>
>   
    I use Text Editor and OpenOffice and Joe.
>> 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.
>   
    I have applied quite a few updates over the past few days. And still 
I'm having problems you do not. Not sure why. But for me the basic 
things just do not work.

Karl


>   
>> 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/
>
>   




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