After yesterday’s post on how I think Fedora is screwing up royally, I thought I’d follow that up with taking a look at the experiences of someone else.
Specifically I want to talk about a blog post by a developer on Flumotion and GStreamer, and a Fedora user. In other words: Someone who really knows what they are doing and how to fix problems.
He outlined his initial experiences with Fedora 11, and here is a few highlights that caught my eye.
“On my home machine, when I booted into F11, as usual my second monitor didn’t work (I have a Radeon GeCube Pro 2400). My own fault really – I should have tried to get a patch upstream into the default radeon driver the same way I sent a patch for the radeonhd driver that I still use. A rebuild later, I at least had the old radeonhd driver rebuilt to get my second screen working again.”
This is, in no way, acceptable. It is Two-Thousand-Freaking-Nine. If an OS has problems with using a second monitor without resorting to applying patches (which no normal user will do) then that OS is simply not ready for prime time.
“Upon logging in to the work desktop, I had no network. Completely puzzled as to why, until I figured out that I had to actually right-click on NetworkManager’s tray icon, choose to configure, and activate eth0 by default. After some browsing it seems that this was a deliberate choice to increase security.”
Yep. You read that right. Fedora Project decided to make using something like “a network” as hard as possible. Awesome.
“The first piece of functionality I checked was Evolution’s Google Calendar integration. It still seems a bit shaky, given that I had to restart Evolution a few times as it froze doing stuff with the net”
Wait. So the default email client freezes, and must be restarted, while doing stuff with… the internet? Seriously? Then why oh why is this build of Evolution included in the final release of Fedora 11? Why not use a previous build that, oh… I don’t know, does not freeze.
“At work, when I played a video using XVideo, my machine instantly froze. Seems to be a known bug.”
I wonder what would happen if Microsoft shipped a version of Windows where the entire machine locked up every time you try to play a video?
“I don’t know why it’s happening, but once in a while my screens blank. Even in the middle of doing stuff.”
Hey. Look at the bright side. At least, when your screen goes blank… you won’t be missing any of the videos that you can’t watch.
“PulseAudio integration in GDM seems a bit fragile. I have my pulseaudio configured to send audio to my media center pulseaudio server. Sometimes, after choosing a username in GDM, it doesn’t manage to play the audio sample related to that action, and then GDM is stuck there not showing me the password entry dialog. Pretty sure it’s due to blocking on pulseaudio, because when I kill it the password dialog appears. Pretty painful bug for new users though.”
Dear lord.
He concludes:
“All in all, not a bad first week experience, and seems like a solid release.”
Really? Really?
So. Let’s recap:
Multi-Monitor support is broken. You can’t play videos. Sound is almost completely broken and causes many other problems. Your screen randomly goes black. There is no network by default… and the email client crashes all the time.
How, in any reality, is this a solid release?
I’d go so far as to say that Fedora 11 is no where near being ready for release. Not only is it not ready for “normal users”… but it’s not even ready for power users. Hell, this thing is barely a “Pre-Alpha-Developer-Preview-For-A-Limited-Audience” calibre release.
Feel free to check out just a small sampling of the bugs. It is astounding.
I highly recommend the Fedora team focus on an “11.1″ update release that just focuses on bugs. And, just maybe, stop breaking things that already worked. Ya know. Just an idea.
June 24th, 2009 - 4:28 pm
You are clueless. How about you recognize that Gnote has advantages for some users?
June 24th, 2009 - 4:31 pm
You are instantly marked as clueless and linux enemy number one when you try to point all the bugs. Typical Linux zealots.
This is not only Fedoras problem, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE ane even Debian (althought less) have the same bugs.
How on earth is anybody able to use it?
June 24th, 2009 - 5:04 pm
Too bad that guy was having issues. I personally, had none of those problems at all as can be seen by the screen shot I posted the day after Fedora 11 came out.
http://www.twitpic.com/73ou9
Not sure why you choose to put down Fedora. It’s really too bad. You put down the Free Software Foundation for criticizing Kindle and say how it divides the community and yet you are doing the exact same thing in your criticism of Fedora.
Even worse is that most of the Mono claims you make are simply false. If you use the Live CD, maybe Tomboy is not included (I haven’t verified) but it is with the full install DVD. In fact, it is still the default note taking app if you use the DVD. If Fedora really was against Mono, why wouldn’t they also take it off of the DVD? Maybe they were trying to save space on the live CD. Maybe it is not a secret conspiracy against Mono like you seem to think. Talk about FUD man. Not only this but all the glory of Mono is available as a simple “sudo yum install tomboy” no matter how you install. I’ve read that it is going to be the same in Fedora 12. All this BS about Fedora ripping Mono out is just completely not true. So it would be nice if you got your facts straight before you start spreading all this garbage. That is what upsets the Fedora users. If you want to base your criticisms on reality then I’m eager to hear them.
I respect you a lot and I like the Linux Action Show a great deal. I seriously was shocked to hear you tear down Fedora. I just don’t get it. How many bug reports have you filed? Instead of complaining about bugs, why not help address them? That is how open source and community efforts work. In fact, go to FedoraForum.org and read the sticky post at the top. It pretty such says, “yeah, we got a lot of bugs, lets all pitch in and fix them”. So that is what the true Fedora users are doing, trying to make Fedora better, not sitting around pointing out the problems.
Have a nice day!
June 24th, 2009 - 5:46 pm
Hey B,
I know ppl read your blog but I wonder why they don’t post a comment.
I consider myself a Fedora-fanboy, but I too am not happy with Fedora 11. It’s been about a week or so and I still can’t get my nVidia drivers to work. When it tries to load my xserver, my monitor loses the signal and I have to reboot into level 3 mode and revert back to the original “nv” drivers. It has been a pain and I’ve experienced this since beta release.
As for NetworkManager, mine came up by default.
I think the most upsetting thing to me is their lack of communication about this buggy release. I scan their newsletters and there’s no mention of these common bugs their users are experiencing.
For functionality; I’m considering moving to Ubuntu until the next “solid” release from Fedora. One thing I can say, though, they are bleeding edge!
June 24th, 2009 - 7:07 pm
Fedora 11 is obviously so bleeding edge it doesn’t even work, that can hardly be an endearing quality of this once superb, stable and quality distro.
Needless to say, like probably many other previous Fedora users I’m pleased to be currently using Ubuntu, not because it’s perfectly bug free itself, it’s not, but because it seems to have a fair amount of common sense in the included packages, so at least the basics work, or if they don’t, have easy workarounds that don’t befuddle the less experienced user.
It woes me that in a fight for the latest and greatest distro pissing contest, that ‘Basic Functionality’ is thrown to one side, this is totally unacceptable and only serves to harm the image of Linux as a whole, if it wasn’t a major leading distro this would be less of a problem somewhat, but if your trying to push out crap like this to the masses then don’t be surprised if the public don’t flush it back down the toilet…
June 24th, 2009 - 7:12 pm
Well, here’s my experience with Fedora 11:
1) Downloaded the live CD for KDE (32 bit).
Suspend to disk works fine too.
2) Inserted the CD into my toshiba laptop (intel graphics and wireless).
3) Booted into live environment with pretty boot up sequence.
4) Installed to the hard drive with no error and no issues.
5) Rebooted and created my initial user, etc.
6) Intel graphics are fine (3D accelarated out of the box) as well as wireless. Able to connect to encrypted wireless in about 20 seconds.
7) Sound works fine. Integrated web camera works.
Pretty much the same for my Dell Optiplex at work. I had to download the “kmod-nvidia-173xx” from RPMFusion as my Nvidia card is getting old. Hardly difficult. Network was fine out of the box, I didn’t have to manually enable it after the install.
My Nvidia card was not so easily handled by Ubuntu and the restricted driver application. An I had to sacrifice a chicken and say an incantation before Arch could do anything in X Windows.
I guess it’s the beauty of the internet, you can something to support your argument in almost all circumstances. Who’s right though?
June 24th, 2009 - 8:04 pm
Which Toshiba Laptop are you using?
TNX
June 24th, 2009 - 8:20 pm
I never used Fedora before, but in Ubuntu the worst breakage I had was from 8.04 to 8.10 where I had to uninstall the video card driver and reinstall the legacy driver.
Other problems were my own screw-ups.
June 24th, 2009 - 8:20 pm
I too had a similar experience to Tim Russell.
I’ve worked in the hardware design industry for over a decade. You can’t test a design by building a single instance of the design. You have 3 choices.
(A) You can build a bunch of instances and test them all and draw conclusions off of it statistically.
(B) You can simulate the design.
(C) You can roll the dice by testing one or a few instances.
What Bryan is doing here, is trying to call the entire design faulty with a single test, or a few tests.
Are there bugs/problems here? I’d bet money that they are. Are his problems real. Absolutely. But are they enough to call the entire design faulty? I don’t think so.
As far as who’s right? It doesn’t matter. Log the bugs in Fedora’s bug tracking site (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/index.cgi). If they’re already there, update the issue so that it’s accurate per Fedora 11. If you feel passionate enough to help out fixing the problem, then do that.
BTW, I appreciate Bryan & Chris’ energy and enthusiasm around making these Linux distros the best that they can be. I just listened to the latest version of LAS and it was, at times, hard to listen to, but I think Bryan and Chris’ hearts are in the right place when they both went off on Fedora.
June 24th, 2009 - 8:57 pm
@Sam M.
So, if that’s right what you’re saying, that means Linux itself is a very unstable platform for applications. It’s x86 hardware after all, not some esoteric stuff nobody ever heard about. The job of a distributor is to put software together, not to test it against several designs. That’s the job of the software developers.
If simply putting software together results in such differences between people using the same hardware platform, then you’ve got a very unreliable software environment.
June 24th, 2009 - 9:14 pm
@ Sparks40
It’s a Toshiba Satellite L305-S5907 (Model: TSLB8U-04X02F).
It came with 4GB of RAM, a dual core processor and a 320GB drive. It’s not the world’s best, but it was cheap. About the only thing I wish I’d thought about more was the default screen resolution (1280×800). It’s a little too low for the big shiny screen it came with.
June 24th, 2009 - 9:23 pm
Who needs enemies when… you know the rest.
Honestly: no existing OS of today is ready according to your method of journalism. Hence just pick randomly pick a distribution, from Windows to everything else; browse the Webb for reviews and forum comments; write a catchy rant. It’s that easy. The downside is that you achieve absolutely nothing, but it’s your freedom to choose how valuable your time is.
June 24th, 2009 - 9:38 pm
@Gee
I dunno. I think Sam M. is right. Besides all x86 hardware is NOT created equal.
For a long time, Apple controlled the hardware that their OS could be installed on. They didn’t have to test their software on every piece of hardware in the wild. This makes it MUCH easier to deliver a reliable system. Basically, they can run more tests on a smaller range of hardware. It increases the odds that things will go well for more users.
Same thing with all your gaming consoles. They don’t have to worry about 900 different graphic cards, how much RAM the system has, processing power, etc. They build for a single device with the same hardware specs. That’s why as a consumer you can just by a PS3 game without having to read the paragraph of system requirements that you’ll find on PC game.
I’m not sure there is a single application platform out there that is actually stable unless the hardware is also controlled (I love my Tivo and Nokia tablet for just that reason).
June 24th, 2009 - 9:59 pm
I’m running fedora 11 on 2 different systems with non of the problems listed. No distribution including fedora is perfect, but I have had fewer problems with new releases of fedora compared with other bleeding edge distributions
June 24th, 2009 - 10:05 pm
@Tim Russel
Yes you’re right, Apple and gaming console platforms don’t have to worry about so much different configurations. But neither do the software distributors. It’s mostly not in their hands to begin with. Their job is to built a system with software that is available to them. The ones responsible for software behaving the same on very different hardware configurations are mostly located at the driver and kernel level.
June 24th, 2009 - 10:07 pm
@Tim Russell
I’d say Android is a fair example, even when it’s ported to unsupported hardware it still works decent enough. Moblin V2 looks to be ‘broad’ enough also.
Apples & Oranges obviously, but I don’t think it’s some mythical Holy Grail that is unobtainable.
June 24th, 2009 - 10:09 pm
I honestly cannot understand all of these calls for Bryan to “submit bug reports.” Do you people expect the folks at Cnet to submit bug reports when they review software? No, you don’t. Do you expect the tech reporters and reviewers at any major newspaper to submit bug reports when they review software. Absolutely not.
Why this double standard? Why are you trying to act like reviewing FLOSS plays by some different kind of rules or some different standard? Reviewing software is reviewing software, whether it’s FLOSS or closed source. It is the job of the listeners to fix the problems, not the reviewers. If there are devs listening to or reading these reviews and discussions, then it falls on their shoulders to fix the problems.
Tech journalists and software reviewers should never be under any kind of pressure to submit bug reports or participate in the communities surrounding the products they review. They review them from a CONSUMER’S STANDPOINT. Consumers don’t participate. They don’t submit bug reports. Consumers don’t code, don’t patch, don’t fix their own software.
If you are a reader of these reviews and you are a developer or contributor to that product and you say “well, you should just submit a bug report,” then that falls to you. You. Not the one doing the review. This double standard that you people keep pushing is abominable.
June 24th, 2009 - 10:14 pm
Well, I could only say – you’re right. Fedora 11 *it has* tons of bugs. Similarly as the others, when the they releasing an new release. No exception. But think through again.
1. Most of the coders (bugzappers), packagers from the community are working in their free time with enthusiasm. Without payment. Think again that who’s work you’re tearing down now… Anyhow, I hate any form of bashing. Now in 2009, earlier and later on also.
2. Lot of new features, rebuilds what is tested out by the masses – our fedora community – it will be later used up by other distros, other users, coders. You know, that’s GNU, GPL and freedom what gives us better feel. But for to get something new, you must destroy the old one. Without rebuilding, and testing out – no evolving. So it’s a need, not just an saying.
3. If something not working, don’t cry. Just try in first make questions. And come up to the #fedora support channel (where me, and the others guys are trying to help anyone), or look after on bugzilla – it’s reported or not. Ask for a possible replacement, if there is any. If your problem not resolvable in your opnion – switch back to earlier version, or wait out the repair arrives. And fill bugreports until you waiting, or help us to hunt down them. If you want to use Fedora… if not, read 4th, or pay for another OS.
4. If Fedora doesn’t fills your needs, there are huge amount what maybe not lives on edge – prefers most stability, and you could use it without “so huge” problems.
Choose another one, and stop writing yawning like a baby. This will not help anyone. You don’t prefer, okay. But finish here.
5. You know, I like to try out, run new, and awesome things. To see a bit of linux future. Fedora Linux future.
Cheers,
an community member.
June 24th, 2009 - 10:39 pm
Oh, this is just sad. You decided to follow up on yesterday’s post, not by acknowledging any of the useful comments explaining things you had exaggerated or misunderstood, not by acknowledging any of those points, but by picking a single random blog post, extrapolating the problems that guy reported with certain *specific* configurations to assume that they affect *all* configurations, and hence declaring that Fedora sucks – and hence achieving…what?
Why?
Long responses to various people follow…
multiple monitor support is not ‘broken’. You say this as if it’s a digital thing – multiple monitor support works or it doesn’t. Er, that’s just laughably wrong.
There’s, what, a couple of dozen X device drivers active right now? Say seven or eight that are really used in anger by any significant number of people. All of those have some kind of multiple monitor support. For each of those drivers, there’s a huge variety of different hardware devices they support, each of which may have quirks with multiple monitor support. There may even be different implementations of each of those _devices_, with different video BIOSes, introducing more quirks. Then there’s different multiple display configurations – it’s perfectly possible for the DVI outputs to work but the VGA ones not, or some such. Literally millions of possible combinations. And you take a _single_ failure result and extrapolate it to “multiple monitor support doesn’t work”? That’s just…silly. I’m sure I could find you plenty of instances where any distribution or OS fails at multiple monitor support. Do they all suck? Do we write blog posts excoriating all of them? Is no one allowed to release an operating system until every one of the seven trillion possible theoretical multiple monitor scenarios is guaranteed to work?
If you install Fedora and don’t configure a network connection, it doesn’t automatically bring one up, yes. I’m not sure why you consider that so crazy. There’s legitimate arguments on either side, and situations where either possible default makes sense. (You probably don’t want any old network connection that might happen to be plugged into your zillion dollar, mission critical server to be automatically detected, configured and used without any user input…) There’s an open bug and this will likely be addressed in F12 by introducing a more explicit choice into the installation routine somehow. But it hardly requires such drama.
On the Evolution case – it does not, as you imply, hang when doing any ‘stuff on the internet’. It clearly hangs on a specific operation, synchronizing with Google Calendar (a service which, BTW, seems to change API every weekend, just to keep everyone on their toes). You suggest shipping a previous release which ‘worked’ – but you don’t seem to say that you’ve actually tested, confirmed this issue, and confirmed that it didn’t happen in a previous release. Or link to a bug report documenting this situation. Or anything at all that would actually be useful, really.
On the video freeze, once more you take an issue which is clearly related to a specific hardware configuration, and argue as if it affected all systems. Would you honestly be surprised if someone told you there were a system on which Windows froze when you tried to play video? Just one system, out there, somewhere? The bug report also shows that there’s a fairly simple workaround, but you mysteriously leave that information out of your post too.
You suggest the PA issue is hideous, but…er…he has his PA server set up to forward audio over the network to another PA server. That’s hardly a common setup (though it is a neat PA feature). I haven’t seen anyone else report this bug, which strongly suggests it’s specific to this configuration of PA, which is not something most people would run into.
You suggest in your conclusion that “sound is almost completely broken” (er, a single bug in an exotic PA configuration equals “sound is almost completely broken”? Really?
You also suggest the email client crashes all the time (it doesn’t. I know this. I have it running 24×7), presumably on the basis of that specific bug in a specific configuration.
You also say “your screen randomly goes black” – I addressed that in the comments on the previous post. That does not affect all users, or even anything close to a majority of them.
And despite my careful explanation of why just referring to a Common Bugs page as proof that a distribution is buggy is a bad idea, you go ahead and do it again. Sheesh.
I had a good time when I met you at LFNW, your talk was interesting (because it identified important issues without being overly negative, and proposed concrete solutions, even if they may not turn out to be the most practical), and we had a good discussion at lunch, but I really think this pair of tirades is a bit of a sad effort. They’re riddled with inaccuracies, show a clear lack of any effort to do any particular real research, and – most importantly – are entirely unproductive. These whole huge two posts achieve precisely nothing in moving forward the state of F/OSS software development.
@4: er, lack of communication? You mean apart from the carefully written, pretty comprehensive, and actively updated Common Bugs page to which Bryan is so fond of referring? http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F11_bugs
@5: Fedora has precisely no interest in ‘distribution pissing matches’. Why would we? What would be the point? Fedora cares about driving open source development. That’s what we’re doing.
@17: the open source world really doesn’t work like a traditional consumer / supplier relationship. It just doesn’t _work_ unless people share: code, ideas, and information. If everyone used each other’s code but never sent in any patches, what would ‘open source’ mean? It’s just the same with reporting your experience. Saying ‘this thing sucks’ just isn’t helping anyone. Saying ‘this thing’s broken, here’s some really specific information as to why, and here’s my email address if you need to ask me any more questions’ does. This is why the best thing to do is to report your experience to a bug tracker, not to write about it in uselessly non-specific ways in a blog post. But then, Bryan isn’t writing about his own experience – he’s just using bits of someone else’s.
June 24th, 2009 - 11:54 pm
@Gee
Well, when you put it that way
I see your point.
@Woodz-HN
I still haven’t seen either of those yet (Moblin or Android). My wife says I have too many “toys” already. Maybe I could play with android though.
June 25th, 2009 - 12:18 am
Bryan,
I have to give you credit and kudos for posting all the replies. I wasn’t sure you would approve my post. I know you are a stand up guy and I hope you don’t take my criticism personally. I’ve gained A LOT from your podcasts. The in depth look at different Linux development environments, for example, was awesome. I actually feel I have a lot in common with you. Usually I’m like, man that Bryan really knows his stuff and holy crap, I didn’t even realize that, thanks Bryan! Also the combo of you and Chris is hard to beat. So I don’t know, part of my motivation is that I know you are a reasonable person and I wanted to make sure that you are aware of, what I feel to be, the true reasoning behind Fedora’s change with regard to Tomboy.
Best Regards,
Rick
P.S. If I were to rewrite my post I wouldn’t have said “spreading all this garbage” but rather “conveying these inaccuracies” or something like that. Sorry man, I was a little emotional.
June 25th, 2009 - 12:33 am
I think you are missing the point. Fedora is not supposed to be stable. There is a reason why there isn’t a server version. Everything is as new as possible. You can’t expect a distro with all new software to not have many bugs. If you want stability, go with Slackware, Debian, or CentOS. Fedora ships with beta software (Firefox for example). There is no way it won’t crash eventually (although the KDE version is quite stable).
June 25th, 2009 - 6:31 am
It is really refreshing to see people being brutally honest about the latest versions of their favourite linux distro. I wish there’d been more honest reviews about Ubunty Jaunty which came with its fair share of issues too.
As for the linux zealots who just can’t stand people who know less or say something negative about a distro…get a life and just accept that somethings are still not up to speed in linux!
June 25th, 2009 - 6:43 am
I’m running F11, stably 24×7 on three x86_64 (Intel and AMD) machines, two x86 machines and two PPC machines with a mix of Intel, Nvidia and ATI video.
There were a small number of issues at general release, all easily worked around. Some have already been corrected in maintenance. There were certainly no show-stoppers.
I complain about bugs as much as the next person, but I generally try to be productive and report them, both to Fedora and upstream. It actually seems to get the bugs resolved (strange, I know).
I don’t know why so much vitriol is being directed at Fedora.
June 25th, 2009 - 6:54 am
[...] Continued here: Lunduke.com » Fedora 11: Not even remotely ready for usage. [...]
June 25th, 2009 - 7:20 am
not again… this guy should get a job @ m$
June 25th, 2009 - 7:54 am
Blog about windows please.
June 25th, 2009 - 9:04 am
I have f11 with a nvidia card and 2 monitors (GeForce 6200 TurboCache(TM)] and it got detected fine by the installer. I could use my 2 monitors without any kind of hassle with the nouveau driver. With the display application (system -> preferences -> display) I could set everything as I wanted (extended desktop) and the maximum resolution of both the card and the monitors. No sweat.
Having said that, I have installed the nvidia driver from rpmfusion because it is simple much more responsive at this point in time. This is my work-workstation and I need to shadow users with the citrix reciever. With the nouveau driver it felt sluggish, with the nvdia driver it works perfectly. I am sure this will improve in next releases and am not bothered by it.
So your rant about dual-head settings is just incorrect.
I have tested the display application with a laptop and a beamer (intel card, I do not exactly know at this point what for model, but it doesn’t matter): it just worked.
I wanted to thank the fedora crew for giving away a software distribution that *just works*.
June 25th, 2009 - 9:30 am
“Specifically I want to talk about a blog post by a developer on Flumotion and GStreamer, and a Fedora user. In other words: Someone who really knows what they are doing and how to fix problems.”
thomasvs a guy who knows what he is doing? I wouldn’t say so… he has been know to criticize git without even reading the man pages.
Also, upgrading Fedora is not something recommended, if you do it, you are on your own; if you get breakage, you are expected to fix it yourself.
The recommended way to install Fedora 11 is from a CD… that’s what I did, and I haven’t had any problems.
June 25th, 2009 - 11:54 am
A very disappointing write up. You used some data to come up with some very bad conclusions. Having not read anything on your site before it makes me reluctant to bother again
June 25th, 2009 - 1:28 pm
If something is not working in Linux (taken from the comments here):
- it’s all your fault
- try to google it
- how can you criticize – it’s for free, you can’t criticize it
- fill bug report
- it is meant to be not stable
- it’s not our fault
- you are not entitled to reviev it because you are just a user
- you can’t compare it to other systems (because it’s free)
- don’t use it
- we don’t care
- it will be fixed in next release (when we break other things)
- you don’t need that
- it works for me!
Ridiculous.
June 25th, 2009 - 1:34 pm
@fedoradave
Show me where I can find that sentence on fedoras website. Where are the big red letters saying it’s constantly in beta and you should not use it in production environments. Where is the information about dozens of bugs?
“Fedora is not supposed to be stable.”
Ridiculous.
June 25th, 2009 - 1:36 pm
I have only a couple irritations with F11 so far but they are like mosquito bites, not shark bites.
I had to edit my DNS servers because it wasn’t picking them up from my AT&T Motorola DSL Router. No big deal. It also didn’t automatically triple boot with Ubuntu and Windows. It picked up windows but not Ubuntu but all I had to do was edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst and that’s all.
My wireless card in my Inspiron 1720 doesn’t work out of the box but I don’t blame Red Hat/Fedora for that in the least since I consider it the manufacturer’s job to provide open device drivers.
So far, so good. I know for some GNU/Linux newcomers the networking issue may be a big problem but I’d like to see them get Windows to work with all their hardware with a fresh, shelf-bought Windows distro without any driver disks or downloads.
June 25th, 2009 - 2:40 pm
#4 – if you use the nVidia binary drivers you must disable nuveau drivers
Personally I have installed Fedora 11 on an ageing desktop with no issues whatsoever, and on an Acer Aspire One netbook as well. No problems.
June 25th, 2009 - 2:43 pm
somebody: there’s nothing wrong with pointing out when something’s broken (although doing it in very vague terms on your blog isn’t the best way to help yourself). What’s wrong is leaping the gigantic gap from premise “something is broken somewhere” to conclusion “entire product is ‘not even remotely ready for usage’”.
June 25th, 2009 - 3:09 pm
Our company is using Fedora 11 as a development environment at the moment (we have used Fedora from FC4). We have tried couple of different distros like Debian (Lenny) and Ubuntu (Jaunty), but Fedora has the best tools for a development work. Debian and Ubuntu were ok, but for example gcc, glibc and systemtap versions that Ubuntu provides are too old and buggy -> makes Ubuntu unusable for us. Fedora provides excellent tools “out of the box” so it was a easy choice.
Linux users are lucky to have plenty of alternatives where to choose from.
June 25th, 2009 - 4:31 pm
@fedoradave,
Actually I think you missed the point. The point is Fedora has had some real issues. It didnt last 10 minutes on my box. No working wpa2. Even though dual booting sidux it works flawlessly…. Oh and by the way sidux is bleeding edge too, but surprisingly those guys know a thing or two about stability.
June 25th, 2009 - 4:52 pm
@houms
Sidux gives me a black screen on startup and my Belkin Bluetooth dongle doesn’t work, but I’m sure their X.Org and kernel developers are working hard to get these bugs fixed.
June 25th, 2009 - 5:23 pm
@somebody
Brilliant summary
June 25th, 2009 - 5:30 pm
LunDuke you are obviously seeing the wrath of the Linux fanbois as they re-group and mobilize in order to defend the mother ship. I had similar experiences with Fedora 11 although not as bad as you are having. I would suggest trying PCLINUXOS or LinuxMint instead. Fedora is a testing ground and as such it tends to be more troublesome than some of the other Linux variants.
Whatever you do don’t even think about the latest Ubuntu because that one is riddled with bugs as well. Many people are experiencing lock ups and freezes with Ubuntu 9.04.
Good luck and don’t let the zealots discourage you from posting your experiences, both good and bad.
June 25th, 2009 - 5:33 pm
@Justin
No offense, but do you guys actually get any work done while checking out every distro available? I’m a software developer, too, and I barely got the time to install new AddIns for my internet browser while I’m at work. The system on my workstation got installed 2 years ago and it never was necessary to install another one because of lacking functionality.
June 25th, 2009 - 6:21 pm
I wonder what would happen if Microsoft shipped a version of Windows where the entire machine locked up every time you try to play a video?
XP SP2 had a similar bug on my machine. Whenever I right-clicked on the desktop it would instantly crash completely. Turned out it was trying to check if the file you were clicking was a video and if so, render a preview. On my machine this would happen regardless of whether or not I was even clicking on a file, let alone a video.
What happened? I rebooted back into Linux, copied a few files over from the XP partition and reformatted it. The day SP2 was released was the day I switched to Linux completely.
ABCC
June 25th, 2009 - 7:44 pm
@somebody
FedoraDave is right. Just look at FedoraForum.org, it is the sticky post at the top. And actually Fedora 11 is production ready. Most of the stuff people are complaining about is related to the desktop. Do you need a bug free desktop for your mail server / web server, etc? No, you will probably be running at run level three. Even with the desktop, I’ve had no problems at all on a couple of different machines (even running multiple videos simultaneously with YouTube – see screen shot in comment #3). And anyway, most people who know anything about Fedora know that if you want to run a stable production system, your are probably going to choose Red Hat Enterprise Linux or CentOS. Fedora is basically the testing ground for future versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I have a RHEL4 box at work that has been up for 1067 days. Guess what RHEL4 was based on? Fedora Core 3. RHEL5? Feodra Core 6. Finally, show me in the comments where people say it is your fault? You apparently made up some of your bullet point items. The only thing ridiculous is your post in my opinion.
June 25th, 2009 - 8:10 pm
@ Squimmy
“LunDuke you are obviously seeing the wrath of the Linux fanbois as they re-group and mobilize in order to defend the mother ship.”
There’s nothing to defend since it’s nothing but a tool. I see few emotional posts here. Do die hard Linux users admit that Linux has some cons? Yes, the do. Difference though is that we expect constructive criticism, something that leads somewhere. At a forum I appreciate a lot there’s a section labelled “Topics Going Nowhere”, and in my opinion these later articles by Lunduke wouldn’t fit in anywhere but under such a section.
I have appreciated some of Lunduke’s earlier articles, at least to some extent, but somewhere down the road the possible cause became obscure and even counter-productive. Sure it’s popular to “scream” load on the Webb, but over 90 % is also quite useless information. Nevertheless I give him the benefit of doubt and will check out his future articles.
June 25th, 2009 - 8:13 pm
squimmy: read the post carefully. Bryan isn’t posting his own experiences. he’s recycling someone else’s, with his own conclusion attached.
June 25th, 2009 - 10:40 pm
You were better off giving Fedora a helping hand and not
wasting other peoples time.
June 25th, 2009 - 11:52 pm
I’m with Bryan, F11 failed for me and out of a dozen distros I chat about…F11 is NEVER mentioned…
just my .0002 cents
June 26th, 2009 - 12:22 am
Just stick with Ubuntu. Please.
The only thing that’s not ready for Fedora 11 is you.
I really liked your “Linux Sucks” video, made some obvious and valid points, among contradictory ones, but these new articles are a joke.
These articles really don’t bother me too much, except for the fact that you only get attention from these childish “SUCKS” opinions.
June 26th, 2009 - 5:04 am
Personally, I did an upgrade from F10 to F11 without any problems. I installed to my HP laptop without any issues. Software is complex and there are always bugs, regardless of the operating system or platform – be it IBM Mainframes, Cisco routers, Windows Servers, Sun Workstations or Mac. When I encounter an issue with Fedora, I open a bug report, or find the existing issue and report on my situation. This allows users to search and resolve issues in a centralized location and also assists the developers to fix an issue. You can’t fix what you aren’t aware.
Oh, and BTW… Fedora isn’t “bleeding edge”. It’s “leading edge” – a showcase for new technologies which will be folded into RHEL and other Linux distros. We do have a repository for “bleeding edge” – it’s called Rawhide.
So, if you’re so inclined please take a look at bugzilla.redhat.com – more than likely your issues have already been reported and are being worked – either in the Fedora community or upstream in another project. If not, please take a moment and enter a bug report.
There isn’t a fee charged to use Fedora, it is a community driven effort. I work to try to make the distribution better – I figure that is the least I can do and is my payment for using the distribution. I don’t think sitting on the sidelines bitching is particularly constructive.
June 26th, 2009 - 9:57 am
REDHAT/FEDORA ARE SPOOK PROJECTS
Sorry to inform you clueless idiots, but Redhat is a spook project run by the NSA. Just like Tor was created by the NSA, so was Redhat and SELinux.
Redhat is actually broken by design by the NSA. Think about it. These goons run and infiltrate companies and have been since the 1950s.
Furthermore, if the NSA hadn’t infiltrated Redhat years ago, do you not think Microsoft would have? Microsoft has a $50 billion checking account (billion not million).
Fact is, Linux has become a garbage/junk OS used/programmed by idiots with no formal education. It may be free software, but it’s really bad/stupid software.
June 26th, 2009 - 6:26 pm
Hi,
I must say that the blog poster IS right. He could have been a little more friendly but in the end he is right. Roughly all comments on this post blame h for that but why? Fedora just IS becomming more horrible to use with every distribution they release which is a FACT!! I used to be a fedorq fan-boy but that changed roughly sjnce fedora 8.
Some things you all must know when picking a distribution for the desktop.
Fedora = bleeding edge and could include unstable software. Experience tells me that fedora always includes unstable software in a distribution.
Ubuntu = stable but so called “edge” software. They sometimes include unstable or beta software but only with good reasons and usually tested a lot.
Now fedora USED to be a desktop os but lately (again since fedora
the desktop has become more unstable with every release. I personally see fedora as NOT USABLE for the desktop the way it currently stands. As a server it might be nice but with fedoras latest batch (since fedora 8 right till fedora 11) screwups it’s all just beta thus not usable till they fix it. Or thats the case for the desktop version .
What would be cool and needed is someone or some group to stand up, fork (NOT SPIN) fedora and fix what fedora refuses or can’t do. I say this because i like rpm and i used to like fedora… And why RPM? To me it seems easier to use, make rpm’s for, then to make deb packages or even ebuilds.
This is just my opinion
June 26th, 2009 - 8:46 pm
What about the theory that the odd numbered releases are problematic? My limited experience (F9 and F10 on a Thinkpad R50e) leads me to believe there may be something to it. I never did get Japanese language support working on F9.
The only problem I’ve had since I installed F10 was a bad hard drive. The Thinkpad has vanilla Intel graphics and wireless and I never needed to plug it in to the ethernet at all.
I’ll wait for F12 – what I have now works and does everything I want it to.
June 26th, 2009 - 11:10 pm
Fedora11 was delayed two weeks, and it should have been delayed two months. In the two months, to concentrate on getting video working properly (I have lost ability to use hd3450 ATI graphics, or compiz features).
I never have been able to get graphics to work with my webcam that continues to be sold, and has about 300,000+ devices out in the pc world.
I think the biggest problem is trying to meet a deadline that is too restrictive. It is like this
With N modules, two way interactions are for N * N or N-squared tests.
With N+M modules, it is N*N + ( 2*N*M * M*M )
Those extra 2*N*M + M*M tests also take time.
Worse if there was a three way interaction.
Leslie
June 26th, 2009 - 11:16 pm
Further to my previous email, I think that the update cycle should be stretched from 6mo targets to 8 months. Fedora (Red Hat) should decide if they are anything but a server linux.
Graphics, Sound and better grub / annaconda software should not be overlooked. Take the time to fully test it to get it right.
June 27th, 2009 - 3:31 am
Just thought I would post some tweets about Fedora 11 that crossed the Twitterverse within the last 24 hours of posting this comment.
dave_enz: completed fresh install of #fedora 11 – gr8 distro, getting nicer all the time
loaizatavo: Mi nuevo Fedora 11 esta excelente…. mucho mejor que ubuntu…!
(translation: my new Fedora 11 is excellent. Much better than Ubuntu)
dpatterson: @kschulte The OS that was on it (Xandros) was very unstable and buggy, so I installed Fedora 11 on it. Now it is Amazing!
katzj: Reinstalled my @linode with Fedora 11. Their pv-grub setup is kind of horky, but otherwise straight-forward to do netinstall of pvguest
jkrupka: Happily running on Fedora 11 after installation last night. Did some tweaking today, so far so good other than the exchange mapi connector..
linuxkido: Enabling Compiz Fusion On A Fedora 11 GNOME Desktop http://bit.ly/oJSa5 (expand) #linux #fedora
steveHNH: Installing Fedora 11 on my pc. Can’t get the Live CD to work, but the DVD seems to be going just fine
meltingrobot: finally updated to Fedora 11 on my work desktop.
echelon4: Review part 2: http://echelon4.net/index.php?id=185 Enjoy this last part of the Fedora 11 linux distro review!
The one above deserves a quote from his review. The conclusion reads -
“Fedora 11 is great. It is easy to use, innovates all the time, and it runs flawlessly. It is easy to install and to set up, the live spins can also be a nice addition to anyone who wants to try it out without touching their hard drive. They are really working hard to attract more regular users, not just the geeks and the computer techs. I would recommend it to people who wants to start using linux as their main OS, as long as they have a little help getting started. I don’t want to compare it to other main stream linux distros, but Fedora 11 is clearly one step ahead.”
mattvogt: just downloaded and am installing OSC NG Inventory Manager on Fedora 11.
lmpeiris: @isudana I was saying that for months! I really need fedora 11, or i’ll remove linux!
kombitz: VLC Player No Sound on Fedora 11 under VirtualBox – http://bit.ly/2b0vJ
(I’m posting the good with the bad. His link gives tips for getting the sound to work in VLC)
manatsawin: OMG! Fedora 11 service starting is very very fast even on LiveCD!
MethodDan: Sat on the floor at #LinuxTag configuring my new Fedora 11 system with the conference wifi. I’m hardcore… I like to imagine
iarlyy: wireless broadcom driver for fedora 11 http://www.dnmouse.org/broadcom.html #fedora #linux
Hmm, look pretty positive to me.
BTW, I’m posting this from my own Fedora 11 install. Its been purring like a kitty for about a week now. Cheers.
June 27th, 2009 - 5:55 am
@Leslie Satenstein:
>In the two months, to concentrate on getting video working properly (I
>have lost ability to use hd3450 ATI graphics, or compiz features).
http://www.mail-archive.com/fedora-list@redhat.com/msg44674.html
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ForbiddenItems
>I never have been able to get graphics to work with my webcam that
>continues to be sold, and has about 300,000+ devices out in the pc
>world.
Which webcam is it?
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/BetterWebcamSupportF12
June 27th, 2009 - 6:06 am
@Leslie Satenstein:
http://www.mail-archive.com/fedora-list@redhat.com/msg44691.html
June 28th, 2009 - 9:10 pm
This post is 100% right. Fedora has not been usable for the last several releases. The sad part is that the list of bugs really IS shameful. Basic functionally broken, as it always is with Fedora these days. How they get a pass for releasing something of this quality is beyond me.
Sadly, it’s nothing new… I was soured on fedora a couple releases back when they shipped that disaster KDE 4.0(even though KDE said it was not ready). And now the final straw is this moronic mono business.
Desktop linux keeps getting weirder and weirder…
I’m not even going to bother even trying Fedora any more untill:
1) They ditch this stupid “bleeding edge” policy. If you want to included bleeding edge alpha quality software, have a testing branch like debian does.
2) Grow the F up and quit letting the Orwellian “freedom” zealots dictate what software should be included.
June 30th, 2009 - 12:10 am
leslie: “Graphics, Sound and better grub / annaconda software should not be overlooked.”
They aren’t. That’s why Red Hat pays the main developers of radeon and nouveau (and major contributors to intel), the main developer of PulseAudio, and one of the main ALSA developers. And all the Anaconda developers.
June 30th, 2009 - 12:13 am
eggbert: well, you’re clearly making the right decision for your desires – you want a distro which packages old, non-free software. It would clearly be wrong for you to use Fedora. I don’t know, though, why you seem to think this is in some way a problem for Fedora. Fedora’s not trying to meet your desires. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad product. It’s just not the product you’re looking for.
If I want to cut my hair I’ll buy a pair of scissors not a ride-on lawnmowers, but I won’t lay into ride-on lawnmower manufacturers because their products don’t cut hair very well…
June 30th, 2009 - 12:18 pm
I disagree with alot of your posts; I personally suffer from the “gnome-power-manager 2.26″ issues. However, I’m very glad fedora chooses to ship this anyway. This way, I can spend…oh, I don’t know, 30 seconds sending in my xorg log with hardware specs, and hopefully help fix it.
If every distro, such as ubuntu, decides to simply skip gnome-power-manager 2.26 (and ship their latest gnome 2.26 with g-p-m 2.24.x), how are these issues expected to resolve? I guess it also gives the trolls something to complain about, though. I’ll keep trying to figure out where gnome-power-manager is broken on my setup, though, so hopefully your next ubuntu release will work without you having to contribute anything.
June 30th, 2009 - 10:40 pm
Really, comments like a lot of the ones on this post, and a lot of forums tell the simple truth that the Linux community really is an elitistic bunch. A lot of people talk and talk and talk about how friendly Linux people is.. Well, that’s only true if you agree with them.
Let’s not be fanboys people. And c’mon Fedora-people, if you really think mr Lunduke is such a moron, then don’t fucking comment on his post. I used to be a happy Fedora user, and I still think there’s a lot of cool things coming out of Fedora, but as a distro I wouldn’t use it today. That’s my 5 cents.
July 2nd, 2009 - 7:57 am
“Let’s not be fanboys people. And c’mon Fedora-people, if you really think mr Lunduke is such a moron, then don’t fucking comment on his post.”
Er, how does that make sense? If someone says something stupid, don’t point out that it’s stupid for the benefit of others who may be reading, but just ignore it?
(I could easily draw a comparison at this point that would cause someone to invoke Godwin’s Law, but I won’t…)
That’s actually true to a certain extent – if it’s just some idiot in a random forum somewhere I probably would just ignore it – but if the post in question has some prominence, that doesn’t make any sense at all. If someone wrote in a national newspaper that you like to fondle macaques while wearing a girdle, you’d probably want to point out that this was not in fact true. Bryan has a substantial audience of his own, and these two posts were widely linked to from general-interest news sites; consequently there are many people reading them, most likely. Not attempting to correct some of his inaccuracies and tone down his bombast in this case doesn’t seem like the best policy at all.
July 12th, 2009 - 12:27 am
There are a lot of people who are programming for linux that should not be, especially at Ubuntu. Have you seen all the latest security issues? Redhat BF (before Fedora) was a solid piece of work, once the community got a hold of it, it as well as most (but not all) of the community distros went downhill. I will say that I installed f11 via the net on a PII and it seemed to run flawlessly.
I could care less about the gnote/tomboy controversy. I use zim when not using vim and it puts both tomboy and gnote to shame. If you have ever looked at a tomboy datafile you can see how much space it wastes via xml unneeded code. Give me a text file any day over xml.
July 18th, 2009 - 12:38 pm
I’ve been using fedora since its inception, jumping one or two releases. 11 is simply not ready for prime time.
Firefox 3.5 will crash frequently with flash contents unless you remove most of its lib*.so. Once they are removed, firefox will longer crash. But now, while playing flash video, the sound will suddenly stop (almost like a broken record stuttering over the same note). I do not know if it is pulseaudio related or flash (new glibc)?
But I never have any problems with firefox & flash in Fedora 10. Given most users uses their computers to browse the flash-driven websites 90% of the time, this problem should never have left the beta release. Totally unacceptable.
Back to 10.
July 20th, 2009 - 7:20 am
Dont even bother replying to this troll. Fueling more incorrect behavior from others. Just ignore it for some time, if he is seriouse he will do something proper, but this is just trolling.
BTW: Fedora is Bleeding Edge, this means there is gonna be problems with upstream packages, like X server, which created at least the first problem u mentioned.
July 20th, 2009 - 9:16 pm
I stumbled across this post today, thank you! It gave me a hearty chuckle. I came across it because my Fedora11 update today broke Compiz and I was looking to see if anyone else had this issue. Frankly I agree with every point you make. Linux is FAR from a “Ready for Primetime” OS. I’m sorry linux zealots, but its true.. Every time I install linux on any machine I install it on, I have to spend HOURS getting it working. Then at some point, a simple update breaks stuff to the point of needing to spend mass amounts of time to fix it. Neither Apple or MS have these kinds of issues. My point in bringing that up isn’t to bash linux or promote MS or Apple, I dislike both. I just want to see Linux be the OS that everyone expects it to be! I find that developers make seemingly random choices “willy nilly” causing major headaches in the name of “security” or “thats what the users want” when in actuality its not much more secure and the “users” are the developer’s buddies.. Thinks like network need to be on by default.. The X server needs the ctrl-alt-bksp to reset it.. Turning that off and then defending yourself to the point of idiocy is ludicrous. (see the newsgroups on this one, its comical)
Linux has a LONG way to go before it can compete with the majors, unfortunately they are improving at great speed. In this case the Bazaar isn’t really helping…
(just my .02.. and I’m a unix sysadmin, since 1991)
August 28th, 2009 - 6:51 pm
Really? Not ready for prime time? I didn’t realize that desktop readiness was one of Fedora’s goals. I thought all this time that it was a test bed for RHEL.
September 6th, 2009 - 1:31 am
I agree. I love linux, but fedora 11 is a nightmare running a monolithic kernel. Every system I install it on has some issue or another with it. GNOME won’t start on my main desktop, my vaio will not boot, period, where fedora 10 would run fine, and my acer aspire one 8.9 inch screened netbook hangs every so often for no apparent reason. Things like this are what I call a “disgrace to linux”. I hope 12 gets better, but the alpha hung when I started system monitor to see what kernel it was running. Not in my seven years of penguining have I seen such an abomination with an RPM packaging system. I have reverted all my systems but my netbook, which I cannot revert due to large amounts of data and a well sealed case, to fedora 10. Fedora 9 was my favorite release. Maybe I should dig out my fedora 9 CD.
September 7th, 2009 - 4:08 am
After updates to fedora 11, my pc crash. sometimes the video graphic shut off, and my monitor goes dark. the only way to get around that is reboot the pc.
finally, i went back fedora 10..and it seem a little stable than 11… the cool boot is slow to pass before get in window.
September 30th, 2009 - 1:13 pm
Fedora is a Linux testbed platform, absolute bleeding edge. I run with fedora-testing enabled as a repo, too. Beyond absolute bleeding edge. Yes, there are few bugs. You file bug reports. Most things are resolvable for Linux veterans. That’s the idea: it’s a platform for those that can resolve problems and submit bug reports. Think of it as the proof-of-concept distribution for things that will eventually make their way, after debugging, into the stable Linux distributions: Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Debian.
New users wanting a recent-as-possible-without-instability platform should probably look to Ubuntu, or to a one-step-old Fedora distribution (i.e. Fedora 10) with all updates applied.
Certainly I’ve never had any expectation that a brand new release of Fedora will present an easy install or a bug-free environment. All in all I’ve been very pleasantly surprised over the years, given the level of radical newness that’s often involved.
My biggest complaint is the degree to which the under-the-hood “Unixness” is gradually disappearing from Linux, with Fedora at the forefront of this change, but in return Linux gets to evolve toward a more and more “user friendly” desktop experience…but Fedora certainly isn’t the place for regular users to experience this.
If you’re not ready for debugging, use Ubuntu, RHEL, or Debian.
May 8th, 2010 - 4:11 pm
After 15 years of using Linux on a regular basis and a decade of using FreeBSD at work, I must say Fedora 11 as a whole is the biggest piece of garbage I’ve ever used. It constantly froze until I replaced the open SORES wireless card driver with ndiswrapper. BTW, I have graphical glitches on screen as I type this. After applying updates, “enable desktop effects” no longer works. The open SORES radeon driver is trash and ATI/AMD no longer supports my card. :.(