F8 is an excellent release!

Timothy Murphy tim at birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
Fri Nov 23 14:40:11 UTC 2007


Mike C wrote:

> I have now installed F8 on six different machines and all are running very
> well indeed and are better by far than F7 was.

I don't want to sound mean, but in my view F8 was actually unnecessary,
since there were few if any system-wide changes introduced
which required more than yum updates.
I'm grateful to the Fedora developers for keeping at it,
but it seems to me that they have given themselves an unnecessary burden
by imposing a strict time limit for new distributions.

> 1) Wireless support is fantastic compared to F7 with the new in-kernel
> drivers for iwl3945 (and 4965), as well as the old ipw2200, and removing
> the need to compile and install proprietary drivers. Work is still being
> undertaken on ath5k and rt2x00 but the latter is now working well for me
> with a usb adapter that uses rt73usb.

I don't have any of these devices, but I would have thought
any advances were in the Linux kernel rather than the Fedora distribution?

> 2) Suspend seems to be much better than previously - I have one laptop
> that did not suspend and restart cleanly with F7, and it does with F8.
> 
> I am sure that others could name more parts of the system that work well,
> or have been greatly improved.

There is a slow but steady improvement through package updates.

Against that, I feel that there is a general increase in complexity,
and not enough thought given to simplifying and clarifying applications.
My particular bete noire is WiFi, where it is getting even more difficult
to work out exactly what is happening if there is a problem connecting.
I find it amazing that one is not told for example
that the encryption key is wrong, 
or that DHCP does not accept the connection,
or that there is no response from the access point.

> When I installed F8 I had an issue with the install hanging, but there is
> a known easy workaround.

I didn't have this problem,
but it is obvious that many others did.
What I find surprising is that I read the Anaconda list,
and I don't see any discussion there of this issue.
The list is full of ambitious plans of various kinds,
but I don't recall any reference there to what seems to me
a serious error in the basic functioning of Anaconda.

Incidentally, what is the "known easy workaround"?






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