Michael Dolan Dot Com

Tuesday, October 31st, 2006

Fedora Core 6: Nice but there’s just something missing… nvidia

So I installed FC6 and have been using it for a couple days now. My quick summary includes:

1) Getting nvidia drivers running… what a mess. Don’t download from nvidia.com - get them through the livna repository (similar to Packman if you’re a Suse user).

2) Even when you figure out the nvidia trick, don’t expect AIGLX comes easily. I have been able to run AIGLX and XGL on my system under multiple distros but after 2 hrs of dedicated work, couldn’t get AIGLX on FC6. I looked at the popular sites describing how to (lunapark6 for instance) but no go.

3) Not a FC issue, but I’m so tired of not being able to use the nvidia drivers on a Xen kernel…. arrgghhh.

4) OpenOffice - not the Novell kind - when will these go upstream Sun?
5) The “development” options in the install… somehow fail to install kernel sources.

6) I LOVE the double helix graphic art.

7) Really like the LVM partioning maturity - very nice.

8) SELinux - who knew it could be mindlessly simple (ok, maybe not for grandma, but if you know what you’re doing, this is awesome)

9) Virtual Machine Manager - ok, this is really cool, but… lacks the ability to install a virtual image from CD/DVD - you can only do via kickstart or ftp/http???? Why?

10) System Monitor - love it.

11) Frysk fully enabled! Whooaa! Did you see that? I couldn’t believe it.

12) Disk Usage Analyzer - this came out of nowhere.. have never seen this before but it’s really useful. Makes du and df look dumb.

13) GDM is AWESOME - beats any other system’s login screen hands down. The graphics and layout are very polished - sorry Mark S….

14) Is it just me or does the RHEL based distro seem more “standardized” than the Suse stuff? No weird zdm stuff pushed in… I prefer standard.

15) In all my trials with AIGLX, I experienced the most robust xorg implementation and stability than I have ever witnessed.

16) Package Management: it’s much better in FC6. Much. It’s no Portage and it’s not apt-get, but it’s coming along. Even the yum implementation is better than previous experiences.

17) Don’t expect your broadcom wireless to work out of the box. It’s never worked for me out of the box and I’ve done ndiswrapper enough times to see the commands in my sleep.

18) Power management on my laptop WORKS - it’s never worked (not even in Windows). I don’t know what to say - I’m shocked.

Overall, I give FC6 at solid 7.9 out of 10. Once nvidia catches up to FC6 I could easily give this an 9.0.

SLED10 is probably still the best - and I never liked Suse - ever. I’m about to install Edgy so the game’s not over yet.

Oh, almost forgot to mention - FC6 has this “two tier” type menu for Grub. I was puzzled when I saw it for the first time. Not sure if it’s just a new grub or a new facelift for FC but it was cool.