Some subjective distros review in comparison to mint

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exploder
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Re: Some subjective distros review in comparison to mint

Post by exploder »

Fedora 9 is very interesting because they are introducing very similar features to Hardy. Fedora's Preview Release was delayed because they wanted more time to resolve bugs, this impressed me! Fedora, like Mint is committed to quality! I ran Fedora full time before coming to LinuxMint so I am no stranger to Yum or setting up multimedia myself. Our philosophies are very different but Fedora has some very innovative ideas.

Fedora 9 has a very professional look and feel to it. I don't know how to describe it very well but Fedora 9 looks like it belongs on corporate desktops. Fedora's new package management system while still a little buggy, looks good and shows real promise. The linva repo's are not available yet for Fedora 9 so I could not check out multimedia capabilities. I was able to listen to podcasts and play mp3's out of the box.

I am interested in how Fedora 9's final release compares to Hardy. Fedora has a very organized approach to development, like ours. I am waiting to see if they can get internal floppy drives to work in Fedora 9 and have looked at the bug report on it and got with the person that submitted the report. I realize that an internal floppy drive does not get much use these days but they are still sold and people still use them on occasion.

I noticed that the Fedora 9 Preview originally had some Network Manager errors sometimes at shut down and re-boot, not near as many as Hardy but still a problem. Fedora Developer's resolved the issue where Ubuntu has not. Fedora 9 does not currently have the ability to change GDM Themes. A new GDM was introduced with an option to help people with disabilities. Memory use in Fedora 9 was higher than in Hardy but I expected that because it is not a final release and has not been fine tuned yet.

Fedora 9 seems extremely secure! No sudo in Fedora and the Policy Kit seems more advanced than in Hardy. Fedora introduced the Policy Kit in Fedora 8 and has been working with it for awhile so I expected this. Pulse Audio was complete in Fedora, it comes stock with the volume control. This was not a surprise either because Fedora is the developer of this now.

Fedora's Live CD is quickly improving. Fedora 9 installed very fast compared to Hardy. Fedora did not automatically eject the CD when I rebooted but that was the only fault I found with the install. The speed of the install was very impressive! The system boot time was similar to Ubuntu. I did not time either system to compare but there was no real noticeable difference.

I enjoy seeing how different distributions deal with new technology and their ability to resolve bugs and advance Linux in general. Fedora has a completely different target audience in mind than us. Fedora is more focused on the corporate environment. I have respect for the Fedora Developer's for their choice in delaying their release to try and resolve more bugs, they set a good example. LinuxMint and PCLinux also demonstrate this same commitment to quality.

Sorry for writing a book here but this has been an interesting comparison for me.
exploder
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Re: Some subjective distros review in comparison to mint

Post by exploder »

Something else I should have mentioned is LinuxMint Daryna, with the new Mint tools Clem introduced, is still more advanced than any of the new releases I have tested. Everything works in Daryna! Higher version numbers do not necessarily mean better quality.
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Re: Some subjective distros review in comparison to mint

Post by belovedmonster »

I think Fedora in many respects are leading the way these days rather than Ubuntu. I just get a sense that they are a lot more professional and have talented people across the board (like the artwork isnt neglected like with Ubuntu for example), but at the same time Ubuntu's commitment to making Linux easy for people means Fedora isnt always as user friendly for noobs like me. :(
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Re: Some subjective distros review in comparison to mint

Post by MALsPa »

belovedmonster wrote:I think Fedora in many respects are leading the way these days rather than Ubuntu. I just get a sense that they are a lot more professional and have talented people across the board (like the artwork isnt neglected like with Ubuntu for example), but at the same time Ubuntu's commitment to making Linux easy for people means Fedora isnt always as user friendly for noobs like me. :(
Sounds interesting. I'm about to add Fedora 8 to my set-up and I'm sort of expecting a challenge. I stepped into Debian with Etch back in December and I figure Fedora can't be much more difficult than that (I thought Debian would be harder than it turned out). Just from looking at the Fedora sites and forums, things seem very professional like you say.
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Re: Some subjective distros review in comparison to mint

Post by exploder »

Be carefull, Fedora does not play well with other installed distributions.
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MALsPa
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Re: Some subjective distros review in comparison to mint

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exploder wrote:Be carefull, Fedora does not play well with other installed distributions.
Really? How so? Any info would be highly appreciated! Thanks for the warning. The only other .rpm distro I currently have installed is PCLOS 2007.
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Re: Some subjective distros review in comparison to mint

Post by exploder »

Fedora will mess up Grub. It is best to install Fedora first and then install other distributions and use Grub from them. I tested on a separate hard drive so I could avoid this.
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Re: Some subjective distros review in comparison to mint

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exploder wrote:Fedora will mess up Grub. It is best to install Fedora first and then install other distributions and use Grub from them. I tested on a separate hard drive so I could avoid this.
Can't you just install Fedora without installing its GRUB, or by installing its GRUB to Fedora's root partition? Does its installer not give you those options? Sorry to ask about these things here, I'll dig around about this at Fedora's sites if you don't feel like following up on this with me here. Thanks for the heads up!
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Re: Some subjective distros review in comparison to mint

Post by exploder »

The Fedora forum could give you a better answer to this than I could. I have always loaded Fedora on a separate hard drive. Have a look, I would bet this question has been asked a lot. Sorry I could not be of more help.
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MALsPa
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Re: Some subjective distros review in comparison to mint

Post by MALsPa »

Thanks, exploder, I went over there right away to post a question and check things out. I've got some good experience working out GRUB problems so I feel pretty confident, but that doesn't mean anything. Again, thanks for the warning!
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Re: Some subjective distros review in comparison to mint

Post by exploder »

Your welcome! I wish I could have been of more help. Let me know what you think of the Fedora 9 Preview, I would be interested in what your thoughts are.

Edit: I seen your post on the Fedora forum. I am glad you got a quick response and are good to go!
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Re: Some subjective distros review in comparison to mint

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I'm gonna stick with Fedora 8 for now. I got a couple of good, quick replies at the Fedora forums and it looks like things are good to go. They are saying that it's no problem to just install Fedora's GRUB to its own root partition and then edit the menu.lst that I'm currently using, which is what I was planning to do. Also, you might be interested in this reply from glennzo:

I think that the reason that someone said Fedora doesn't play nicely with other distros is because it doesn't seem to notice that there are other Linux distros installed when it installs its GRUB, and as such it doesn't add them to the boot menu. Other than that its fine with other distros. Once Fedora is installed you can add the other distros boot parameters to Fedora's GRUB and boot them all from there. Should be no problem. I do it all the time.
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MALsPa
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Re: Some subjective distros review in comparison to mint

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exploder wrote:Edit: I seen your post on the Fedora forum. I am glad you got a quick response and are good to go!
Oh, cool, you already saw it!
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Re: Some subjective distros review in comparison to mint

Post by MagnusB »

NiksaVel wrote:
MagnusB wrote:Ohh, you should try more or something, I'll check it out with my CD. However, if my memory serves me correctly, the DVD version is Powerpack = $$$. I reacted as well, my locales wasn't listed either, Norway, but I found them in a list below the main one...

yes, I know there's an expended list with the lower link, but it wasn't there either... :/ I read about this on the forums, and besides the small european countries like croatia or bosnia there was a guy complaining that india wasn't there either... so go figure :?
Yeah, I couldn't find it either, strange, especially since one of the Mandriva mantra's is to be available in any language...
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