Fedoraargh 8.0

[ITWombat]

I had some time on my hands recently and thought why not install Fedora 8. It was on the DVD of a Linux magazine which means I wouldn't have to use up precious broadband quota on the download.

The install was easy enough. Apart from the partitioning scheme and selecting KDE as an additional desktop, I kept the defaults for other options.

First log on session was OK. There was a balloon tool tip thing on the menubar saying that there were 160 odd updates to download. OK, fair enough, better be safe than sorry.

Two hours later it was still downloading the updates. In that amount of time I could have installed and fully patched XP Pro or downloaded an ISO of another distro twice. The actual install of the updates was also quite tedious. It had been going about another half an hour before I accidently pulled out the plug ops:

Now am I being unreasonable to expect that a recently released distro should be fully updated within an hour of a hard disk install? My 2nd hand PC may be a few years old but I don't think a 2.8 Pentium 4 with half a gig of RAM is particularly underpowered.

Anyway, it seems that the power outage during the update borked a gnome-python dependancy and I can't seem to apply the other 35 updates even if I deselect the python files. Had it been another distro I would've probably just reinstalled the entire OS again but I am not going to wait that long for the updates.

As I luck would have it, I have found another cover-mount DVD with Ubuntu 7.10 on it. I think I'll try that instead.

I was hoping to use Fedora to find out if life with RPM was really that hellish or whether SELinux was really the Linux equivalent of UAC on Vista. Perhaps that will have to wait for another day.

[CyberNerd]

Now am I being unreasonable to expect that a recently released distro should be fully updated within an hour of a hard disk install

no. the last ubuntu install I had the machine installed, patched and on teh network within 20min.

[localzuk]

Regarding XP Pro, you are off the mark there - an average new install of XP Pro, which already has SP2 on it will take just over half an hour and then it usually takes about 3 hours to install all the remaining updates. Plus adding office, anti-virus, and the rest of the software for normal use will add another hour. So, even with all the updates, you are still taking less time.

Regarding RPM - I would take a DEB based system over an RPM based system any day. It just seems to work better overall and easier to recover from problems.

Also, think about what would happen if you accidentally pulled the plug during a windows update. If you did it when it was installing anything central then you would end up more than likely needing a reinstall. Whereas in fedora you can more than likely fix it with a bit of advice from the forums.

But anyway, I would go with Ubuntu over Fedora anyday.

[richard]

I have used both DEB and RPM based distro's over the years and have to say that I can find no real differences with them now. In the past RPM based distro's suffered from dependency hell but if if you use a distro like PCLinuxOS 2007, which is the one I currently use, then Synaptic takes care of those issues for you.

[webman]

Hmmm, I still find APT on PCLOS2007 a lot slower than Ubuntu/Debian on the same machine.

But yes, I would agree with localzuk in taking Ubuntu over Fedora any day.

[kestrel1]

Ubuntu fan here also.
Got it installed on my desktop & laptop. Wireless working a treat. Faster than XP in all respects. kubuntu, edubuntu & xubuntu also available. Give it a go.

[Ric_]

@ITWombat: Don't forget that there have been a number of revisions to OpenOffice recently too. Just think how long it would take Windows to update if it had to go off and download Office Pro from scratch

[ITWombat]

@CyberNerd
20 minutes? Partition cloning doesn't count. I'm talking about a full clean install and update. It took me over an hour to install and update Gutsy Gibbon.

@localzuk
3 hours is excesve for just XP Pro SP2 + 90 updates on a clean install. In fact even with Office 2003 it would still be half that on a good broadband link, especially if you apply Office SP3 from a local source. I don't deny it takes a long time to create a full production build of Windows (for locally hosted apps anyway). I was just expecting better perforamce from a major distro.

@Ric_
I understand where you're getting at but it is a poor excuse. Why must OOo require a complete reinstall just for an update. Modularity has been the norm for software for over two decades.

[CyberNerd]

@CyberNerd
20 minutes? Partition cloning doesn't count. I'm talking about a full clean install and update. It took me over an hour to install and update Gutsy Gibbon.

I did a full install and update on a dual 2.4Ghz Xeon 2GB with Gutsy server install. The server install is minimal, I guess this accounts for the time as ric pointed out it doesn't have to go and install/upgrade lots of large applications. If the dvd in its entirety was installed I can see this taking a while to update. apt-cache shows 30035 potential programs in my repos!, it could take a while to update all of these if I had installed them.

[localzuk]

@localzuk
3 hours is excesve for just XP Pro SP2 + 90 updates on a clean install. In fact even with Office 2003 it would still be half that on a good broadband link, especially if you apply Office SP3 from a local source. I don't deny it takes a long time to create a full production build of Windows (for locally hosted apps anyway). I was just expecting better perforamce from a major distro.

Nope, I am talking about doing this on a 2.4Ghz laptop with 512Mb memory. (As I did it 2 weeks ago to build a new image). I was actually being generous too - as I didn't include office service packs. And the net connection is a good one. 10Mb fibre link.

[StewartKnight]

I love Fedora! The way that compiz just works...even on a low spec machine.

[ITWombat]

I love Fedora! The way that compiz just works...even on a low spec machine.

OK but are the above update times normal or was I just unlucky/being-a-newb

[StewartKnight]

there do seem to be a lot of updates (you decide if thats good or bad!), but I've only had to do one reboot in 3 months

[ITWombat]

there do seem to be a lot of updates (you decide if thats good or bad!), but I've only had to do one reboot in 3 months

The local electricity board must love you

[StewartKnight]

you have no idea.... they have been demanding (I kid you not)........... £483 a month

not the school....

me.......... personally.............. at home...............