What are the best repos?

[flguy2]

I am using a FC4 image supplied by Amazon EC2. I seems to have really out of date repos. How do I get fresh ones? What are the best repos? I am all new to this and don't understand. For example, when I yum common programs like "mplayer" it starts getting 404 messages in the fedora-* repos. I instead freshrpms but I think I need more? Please tell me what repos are the best/freshest, and how I get them.

Thanks!

[daark.child]

Fedora is a fast moving distro so FC4 is no longer supported and there are no more updates for it so thats why you cannot access most yum mirrors for this release.

[devils casper]

I would suggest you to install Fedora 8 but you have to keep it updated all the time. If you want a RedHat based stable distro then go for CentOS.

[oz]

You should find much better hardware detection with Fedora 8 and more ease of use all the way around, so I agree with the others that you should upgrade right away.

[flguy2]

I want to use one of Amazon's public images, and for some reason they dont' offer a FC8. If it's possible to upgrade then I will try to make my own image based on FC8. I will also research CentOS, but at this point I have no idea what CentOS is or why it's better/different than Fedora or what. Still educating myself. A week ago all I ever used was Windows for the last 15 years. Thanks for the tips.

[oz]

While I did say "upgrade" above, I was really referring to a fresh install. You'll need the fresh install method of Fedora 8 because it's too big a leap to try to upgrade from FC4 to Fedora 8. You'll run into all kinds of issues if you try to merely upgrade.

CentOS is basically Red Hat but with all the logos and support options removed.

[flguy2]

I decided to go with the latest Ubuntu 7.10-GUTSY-BASE on EC2. I have not yet tried to install all the same encoding software yet, but at least the first step of getting a remote desktop session going between my XP desktop and my Ubuntu session worked! This base image does not have the LAMP stack preconfigured (which is why i was using the FC4 image) but hoping that will be easy to install with apt-get. I'll keep the post updated in case anyone is interested.

In the end, my goal is to configure a LAMP stack (actually, I'm going to substitute PHP with ColdFusion) with FFMPEG and Mplayer/Mencoder all configured properly, then create this as a public image for others to run off Amazon EC2.

[oz]

I decided to go with the latest Ubuntu 7.10-GUTSY-BASE on EC2. I have not yet tried to install all the same encoding software yet, but at least the first step of getting a remote desktop session going between my XP desktop and my Ubuntu session worked! This base image does not have the LAMP stack preconfigured (which is why i was using the FC4 image) but hoping that will be easy to install with apt-get. I'll keep the post updated in case anyone is interested.

In the end, my goal is to configure a LAMP stack (actually, I'm going to substitute PHP with ColdFusion) with FFMPEG and Mplayer/Mencoder all configured properly, then create this as a public image for others to run off Amazon EC2.

Great, it sounds like you are really getting into it!

I personally find that the Debian/Ubuntu apt-get package manager suits my tastes much better than the yum package manager that comes with Fedora. Of course, that's just my own preference. Lots of users love yum.

Anyway, have fun with it and post new threads should you have new questions.

[flguy2]

UPDATE: Got all the encoding software and EVERYTHING working on Ubuntu 7.10-GUTSY-BASE on EC2!! Not a single problem installing Apache, MySQL, Webmin, VNC desktop access, FFMPEG, Mplayer, Mencoder. Holy crap this was so much easier and enjoyable than using FC4. Apt-get kicks yum ass. I can't believe how much time I wasted yesteday before I switched to Ubuntu. NOW...I can finally get some sleep.