asdfasdf wrote:I have been primarily a Fedora user over the years. Yet I am down to just my last Fedora 17 desktop (and it's using KDE, not that disgusting Gnome 3 tripe), *every other desktop I use* having gone to Linux Mint 13 or LMDE.
I was sick and tired of the alpha-minus-minus software that the Fedora project team was allowing a particular developer to keep throwing into the distribution. That software should have much more widely tested rather than being allowed right into the mainline of the distribution without adequate testing. I don't mind "release early and release often", but such releases should not be straight into the mainline of the distribution. The ideas behind systemd and PulseAudio aren't bad; indeed, some of the technical decisions are quite clever. But the venue for testing such new work should be in a q.a. environment, and not by the general user community.
The Fedora engineers also push out a *lot* of kernels, too, and surprisingly frequent updates to libc. This means (1) dkms gets lots of exercise if you use VirtualBox; (2) existing Firefox processes usually become quite squirrelly after a libc update; and (3) if you only reboot your desktop infrequently, you will want to change the default 3 kernels retained by yum to (at least) 5 --- also, your boot partition on a Fedora installation should be at least 2 gigabytes, and definitely not the much smaller default value.
I can be wrong but your words sound like if you don't understand what is fedora. Fedora is not really for the same target than Ubuntu/Mint, to quote just these two.
Yes, it is what you said. But Fedora is one of the most innovative distributions available today, and also, as such, obviously there are sometimes issues. You must know that and be ready before installing it.
DistroWatch has a not bad description of Fedora:
In 2003, just after the release of Red Hat Linux 9, the company introduced some radical changes to its product line-up. It retained the Red Hat trademark for its commercial products, notably Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and introduced Fedora Core (later renamed to Fedora), a Red Hat-sponsored, but community-oriented distribution designed for the "Linux hobbyist". After the initial criticism of the changes, the Linux community accepted the "new" distribution as a logical continuation of Red Hat Linux. A few quality releases was all it took for Fedora to regain its former status as one of the best-loved operating systems on the market. At the same time, Red Hat quickly became the biggest and most profitable Linux company in the world, with an innovative product line-up, excellent customer support, and other popular initiatives, such as its Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) certification programme.
Although Fedora's direction is still largely controlled by Red Hat, Inc. and the product is sometimes seen -- rightly or wrongly -- as a test bed for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, there is no denying that Fedora is one of the most innovative distributions available today. Its contributions to the Linux kernel, glibc and GCC are well-known and its more recent integration of SELinux functionality, virtualisation technologies, Systemd service manager, cutting-edge journaled file systems, and other enterprise-level features are much appreciated among the company's customers. On a negative side, Fedora still lacks a clear desktop-oriented strategy that would make the product easier to use for those beyond the "Linux hobbyist" target.
Pros: Highly innovative; outstanding security features; large number of supported packages; strict adherence to the free software philosophy; availability of live CDs featuring many popular desktop environments
Cons: Fedora's priorities tend to lean towards enterprise features, rather than desktop usability; some bleeding edge features, such as early switch to KDE 4 and GNOME 3, occasionally alienate some desktop users
It is probably not a distro for the "general public", it is not ready made, turn-key etc as can be Mint for instance. And, as said well DistroWatch, it targets developers, professional or "Linux hobbyist" and people with some knowledge. It is NOT a "general public" distro and has not the same orientation than Mint at all. It's not by chance it is the Distro used by Linus...
EDIT: About "a *lot* of kernels", maybe yes there are kernel updates, more than in some distros and more than in Mint. But I have had no real problem for now with the kernels and just keep the new kernel and the previous, i.e. the one you used before the kernel update and which works, is necessary and useful. No other kernel is necessary. You have just to use the command, as root:
package-cleanup --oldkernels to make this quite simply and easily.
And no, you have no need for a /boot partition "at least 2 gigabytes, and definitely not the much smaller default value". For instance, my /boot partition is 320Mb and with two kernels installed, as I said, 68,56 MB are used. So, it has 251,44 Mb unused space. And with this I have no problem with PreUpgrade neither with other thing!
asdfasdf wrote:Then, of course, since Fedora 15, the fonts have become incredibly spindly and downright ugly on most display devices (though they usually look okay on netbooks and smaller devices.) I have wasted a lot of time trying to tweak these into something that looks even half as nice as a normal Linux Mint installation; infinality mostly works, but it is very intrusive and touches far too many packages for my comfort.
Well, I never had some problem with fonts in Fedora. I always use the DejaVu font family in every distro. And you can improve them with the freetype-freeworld package if you want: "I think freetype-freeworld is technically closer to what Ubuntu/Mint uses", from your link, KBD47.
asdfasdf wrote:I also saw some discussion about preupgrade in this thread. While preupgrade usually works well enough, it doesn't always and when it doesn't, it usually leaves the machine in a pretty ugly state. Also, important to note is that while a normal full Fedora installation does support software raid with mdadm, preupgrade does not. If you do set up software raid during a normal installation, you will have to go through full installation each and every time you upgrade (i.e., no preupgrade for you), and sometimes this type of installation over existing software RAID is a very poorly tested area.
Yes, you can't use PreUpgrade if your /boot partition is on RAID. It's the only limitation. BTW, this is the first thing which is said in the
PreUpgrade guide page:
Prerequisites
Your system cannot be upgraded with preupgrade if any of the following apply:
1. If your /boot partition is on RAID. See
bug 500004.
And as I said, PreUgrade worked always well for me on my desktop version after version. Some time ago now I have not made a reinstall of Fedora on this box but just used PreUpgrade without problem, 14 to 15 to 16 to 17... Oh also I don't use RAID and/or LVM.
But as I said, it's just my experience and even if it is excellent for me on this box for now, there are also surely people who have had problems with it... Nothing is perfect and nothing is mandatory the same for everybody and/or every box.
K.I.S.S. ===> "Keep It Simple, Stupid"
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." (Leonardo da Vinci)
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." (Albert Einstein)