Working X86_64, Fedora 11 Beta

[Robert L Cochran]

After some initial hiccups with bug 493575 (the anaconda off-by-1 swap 
error) and a helpful suggestion from Andreas, I was able to get Fedora 
11 installed and updated. It is working very well for me, on a Dell 
Latitude E6400 laptop. So far there are two small nitpicks. I'm one of 
those people who likes to encrypt an entire hard drive and use a 
passphrase to decrypt it. That keeps private things private, hmmm? I 
like to see my boot messages scroll by too, at boot time. They appear to 
stop with the discovery of a particular USB device but before the 
"password" prompt appears. To get the actual "password:" prompt to 
decrypt the filesystem, I have to press the <enter> key. It might be 
associated with connecting a USB keyboard and/or mouse. This issue 
surfaces in Fedora 10 every now and then, perhaps depending on which 
docking station port I plug the keyboard and mouse into. I will file a 
bug over the weekend for this.

The second nitpick, perhaps a bit larger than small, is Xorg seems 
unable to automatically detect that my Dell 2407WHC monitor is plugged 
in to the docking station and to use a 1920 X 1200 resolution for that 
monitor. I've researched on this list and read other posts discussing 
this same issue. I will have to figure out just how to code an xorg.conf 
file that works for me. I would really like Xorg to automagically get 
the resolution correct regardless of the physical monitor 
characteristics, because I want to plug my laptop into a variety of 
different widescreen monitors, wherever I go, including hotel room TVs 
that happen to have a VGA port. If I travel on business I want to have 
devices just work, as opposed to spending time locating and then adding 
in compatibility code for a particular device.

The good things are tremendous, though. Boot times are much faster 
versus previous Fedora versions. Shutdowns are faster too. My wired and 
wireless networking just works, although I still have to test Bluetooth. 
I love the filesystem encryption. If someone snitches my laptop, at 
least it is just a money loss. My data should be unusable to the thief, 
and that is a relief. The Fedora 11 Installation Guide is a tremendous 
help to people looking for comprehensive installation advice for every 
possible scenario. And I think Robert Day is trying to do further 
documentation of Virtualization features. This is all fantastic work.

Bob

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