[cumbria_lug] Fedora Core 1 - First Impressions...

[Michael Saunders]

On Sat, 8 Nov 2003, Schwuk wrote:

> The installer is strange - packages I de-selected (EMACS) have been
> installed anyway, and now can't be removed by the GUI...

Yep, it's been confirmed that there's a bug in redhat-config-packages
and hopefully an official errata update will be made available ASAP.  
Notably, RH have released some timely fixes for a couple of security
issues; let's hope this is a positive sign of things to come.

> I think it's time to try some of the non-mainstream distros for me
> though - lifes getting too easy... :) Slackware or Gentoo I think...

Slackware all the way! After so many years of fiddling with various
distros' idiosyncrasies I'm starting to feel at one with Volkerding's
design goals and implementation. It has the fewest hassles of all
modern distros I've tried, although naturally not ideal for newcomers.

The main issue is that first-timers don't differentiate between
kernel, library, desktop and distro problems in the same way that we
can. When a newcomer encounters a GNOME crash, X server glitch or
packaging error, he/she thinks "Linux has crashed" or "Linux is
buggy"; this is natural (if uninformed) behaviour.

So the quest for a solid, well-tested and approachable distro ain't
over. Hard-talking Red Hat CEO Matt J Szulik will be answering
Slashdot questions tomorrow, and hopefully mine will make it through:

http://interviews.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=85638&cid=7465156

Responses have thrown some light on projects already underway to
achieve this -- http://www.beau.org/~jmorris/linux/whitebox/ is the
most prominent. Still, the Star Trek styling isn't attractive...

Re-hashing components from the RHEL line isn't ideal, as it could
pinch a few potential sales, but it's the only option at present.  
Should this cause trouble, RH will probably release their sources as
vanilla tarballs, making it more difficult to reconstruct the
originals. Fair enough, really.

> Oh, and I've fallen out with Evolution as well - it refuses to send
> my mail consistantly, something that Mozilla Mail/Thunderbird
> manages to do fine...

Ugh, big bloated pointy-clicky mail apps. Evo's searching and sorting
is orders of magnitude slower than Pine and Mutt. Crivvens! :-)

Mike

-- 
Michael Saunders
www.aster.fsnet.co.uk