Fedora 10 Impressions

Posting has been light the previous few days because of… Thanksgiving? No! Well, at least not that much. Instead, a lot of my time has been devoted to explorations of Fedora 10, a new version of the Linux distribution I use at home and work, released earlier this week. Some random notes:

  • I opted for fresh installs on unused disk partitions. Although an "upgrade" path is available, the docs say "In general, fresh installations are recommended over upgrades." And for once, I decided to go that way.

  • That's fine, although my old Fedora 9 systems had accumulated months worth of tweaks, addons, and customizations. And also some forgotten now-worthless experimental cruft. So: distinguish the "good stuff" from the cruft, and carefully fold it back into the familiar-yet-new system. Maybe come up with better ways to do things, like integration of my mail program (Mutt) with LDAP and a local address book. This is an ongoing process. Fortunately, to the certain sort of geek I am, it's also fun.

  • Booting the installation DVD still did not recognize the USB keyboard on my work system, a Dell Dimension E510. I was presented with a nice, attractive menu from which I could select… nothing. Fortunately, it had the default behavior I wanted, after waiting for a minute.

    (There's apparently a workaround if you're fast enough with your fingers before the GUI menu appears. I didn't really need it.)

  • It finally did the right thing with my Dimension's display chipset (ATI Technologies Inc RV516). This has been a major toothache with previous versions of Fedora.

  • But post-install, the system locked up twice, necessitating a finger on the power button. Both times after I had left for the day. Grrr, major inconvenience.

    Possible source of the problem: I had deleted the installed GNOME screensaver, and installed the superior 'xscreensaver' and associated packages. My speculation is that there was some weird incompatibility with the X video driver and one or more of the packaged screensavers, which triggered the lockup. After (regretfully) removing xscreensaver, and reinstalling GNOME screensaver, the system has remained up. Albeit with a lame screensaver.

  • In contrast, my home system (an older Dell Dimension 4500) installed with only one hitch: installing from multiple CDs, the system demanded Disk 2 be inserted, but refused to eject Disk 1. Arrgh. After some fumbling, the only solution was to shut down, resulting in an unbootable system. Fortunately, starting the install up again worked fine.

Bottom line: I can't recommend Fedora to non-geeks, but I like it.


Last Modified 2024-01-23 2:06 PM EDT