What's so great about Fedora Core 4?

[oosterhouse]

I'm thinking of switching from PCLinuxOS to Fedora Core 4, just I don't know what's so good about it. I will look around more about it, but for now...what is so great about Fedora???

[Roxoff]

What's great for me is that it's a straight upgrade from Redhat 5, 6.1, 7.1, 7.2, 8, 9 and FC 1, 2 and 3. (Having said that, I'm planning a re-work of my server using CentOS 4, some bigger hard disks, and a much much faster processor or two).

It does everything I want, the config tools are nice, it doesn't use YAST (which caused me untold headaches when we tried to use SuSE a few years ago), and the update system works perfectly.

I suppose the thing I like about it is that it's right for me. Try it out, maybe try out some of the other big distros too, and see which one is right for you.

[gtmtnbiker98]

I would definitely try CentOS - it is an exact clone of RHEL 4 without the trademarks, of course. However, SuSE is another great distro if you ask me. I have yet to experience any problems with YaST and we employ SuSE in a production environment, running all of our Web facing servers with it.

[Roxoff]

I would definitely try CentOS - it is an exact clone of RHEL 4 without the trademarks, of course. However, SuSE is another great distro if you ask me. I have yet to experience any problems with YaST and we employ SuSE in a production environment, running all of our Web facing servers with it.

YaST used to (and maybe still does) read and write settings through an intermediate file - so if ever I changed anything in it's normal config file, it would get overwritten by bloody yast and it's clever-dick approach. I'd left windows behind because I didn't want system complexities hidden from me... I prefer to get down and dirty with the config files; at least Fedora's setup tools read and write directly to the config files, so any changes I make to /etc are directly reflected in the config of whatever I'm adjusting.

[GNOME_n00b]

However, SuSE is another great distro if you ask me. I have yet to experience any problems with YaST and we employ SuSE in a production environment, running all of our Web facing servers with it.

suse is great, but it is just sooooo slow to boot up. yast is great, but very slow.

I'm thinking of switching from PCLinuxOS to Fedora Core 4, just I don't know what's so good about it. I will look around more about it, but for now...what is so great about Fedora???

its not that great. like any distro, it has its strong and weak points. the admin tools are non-existant. the default bluecurve icons give it a pleasing appearence IMO. java is well catered for. it seems reasonable stable given that fedora is meant to be cutting edge. security is good in the form of SElinus if your linux box is connected to the internet.

[twoHats]

Well - I would say that FC4 is the IBM of Linux distros. ie it is stable, it works well, and it is pretty boring. I have it on a partition, but almost never boot it. If you want to see whats what - go to one of the cheap Linux sites (i can recommend budgetlinuxcds.com - not affiliated!) and buy a bunch of distros and try them on your hw. Then you can see *exactly* what they do and don't do. A lot of distros have live versions these days.

Have fun

[techieMoe]

its not that great. like any distro, it has its strong and weak points. the admin tools are non-existant. the default bluecurve icons give it a pleasing appearence IMO. java is well catered for. it seems reasonable stable given that fedora is meant to be cutting edge. security is good in the form of SElinus if your linux box is connected to the internet.

I'm going to have to disagree with the java and stability comments here. As a Java professional, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that Java support in Fedora Core (as of Core 4 anyway) is terrible. They do include GCJ, but not the official Java Runtime Environment or SDK, which precludes the use of some parts of Java (namely Swing), as well as making the "Native Eclipse" IDE they include absolutely useless IMO.

Fedora isn't meant to be stable, and for me it isn't. The programs the maintainers throw in are the latest and greatest, but they're often too new to be completely tested. The Native Eclipse application is a good example. It came with no ability to compile any programs and parts of the menus were simply broken.

Redhat Enterprise Linux distros are meant to be stable, and are in my experience. One example is CentOS. But these are just my observations. Your mileage may vary.

[GNOME_n00b]

As a Java professional, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that Java support in Fedora Core (as of Core 4 anyway) is terrible.

not from my point of view its not. perhaps i should have included the small print - "my linux box does not have an internet connection". if you compare the different distros with the amount of java stuff (including gtk-gnome etc) thats included on the dvd/cd, it is one of the most, if not, thee most, best supported
although fedora/redhat seem to be enforcing the gcj java, there is an option to choose whether you want sun's or gcj. unfortunately, due to dependencies, i can't see a way of uninstalling the gcj and leaving the gnome/gtk bindings.

The Native Eclipse application is a good example. It came with no ability to compile any programs and parts of the menus were simply broken.

when i had fedora installed, it wouldn't load at all without crashing each time.

i still think that it seeems to be quite stable given its cutting edge nature.

[Cabhan]

I can't speak about Java, but I can speak about stability: I had a ton of graphical lockups sometime back when I tried out FC.

I would describe FC as looking nice, but lacking in some true Linux features. I found it difficult to do much system administration, and updating software was nigh impossible.

Maybe they've improved on some of these things, but I'd recommend SuSE over FC any day.

[GNOME_n00b]

and updating software was nigh impossible.

thats another aspect i forgot to mention about. a decent distro needs a decent package installer gui. the supplied system-config-installer(or whatever its called) was terrible beyond belief. it catered for no other group other than a half-senile total linux newbie. i had to install smart package manager seperately.