[Nottingham] My fedora 9 experience (vent/rant included)

[Michael Simms]

I think I need to vent and see if I'm the only one who is currently
--->this close<--- to just dumping Linux altogether

Ive installed Fedora 9 over the last week on a number of machines and
already my stress level is going up and up through the roof.

So far, issues Ive found with fedora 9:

The DEFAULT setup denies all users a home directory if you login via ssh
becuase selinux says they arent allowed to go there. root is fine
though. HOW DID THEY NOT TEST THIS!!!

The DEFAULT setup prevents you using exim as an MTA. It refuses to read
the config file cos selinux says it isnt allowed to

Yum - when it updates, randomly overwrites your config files

Yum keeps on opening up services I have previously deleted and do not
want. I have now deleted the system to report my kernel details to some
random website I do not know and do not trust, FIVE TIMES and it keeps
coming back. This is borderline spyware. Hell it isnt borderline, it IS
spyware.

DHCPD - fedora 8 allowed dhcpd to listen only at eth0:0 now you can no
longer listen at aliases only things like eth0. Great now I have to
rearrange my network to have the device defaulting to the local
interface and have the external interface as an alias

The DEFAULT setup on laptops has broken touchpad drivers. It is a KNOWN
error and there is even a dialog box saying 'Add SHMConf on' to
xorg.conf. What the hell is this - how will a newbie even know where to
find that file. And Im not a newbie and I dont know where to put it -
why, cos there isnt even a mouse section in xorg.conf any more, its been
moved to some magic hidden new place.

Printing via samba just doesnt work. You can find printers, but you cant
print to them. No setup changes seem to affect this. Cause: Samba sucks.

STILL cifs is the default 'system to connect to windows shares' and does
NOT support resolving of windows machine names. You can ONLY mount them
by IP address and if you have DHCP, well, good luck in not having to
change your fstab every 5 minutes

Default httpd setup *wont read your certificates* - why? because selinux
tells it not to.

Default httpd has a nicely hidden away file that prevents all directory
listings. I can understand why they may do this but it is perfectly
possible to do it in a simple way, they did it in a way that took 20
minutes googling to find.

Even such a simple thing as ejecting a CD. Type eject. CD comes out, cd
goes back in. Reproducably stays out on the third request.

The standard /etc/rc.d/init.d/network configuration is now depricated in
favour of NetworkManager. NetworkManager doesnt start TILL YOU LOGIN VIA
X11. What use is this for a headless server. I remove the NetworkManager
from rc5.d and put the old network back in, and next reboot it deletes
it for me! (yes I know Im running a headless server at runlevel 5, but I
can get access to a KVMoIP connection so runlevel 5 makes sense). A such
my server 200 miles away is sitting there with no network connection.

Rebooting. The system - which was perfectly happy under fedora 8, now
hangs on reboot an average of 17 times before coming back up. It works
fine to do the same job via a setup CD but not from the disc. Thus it
cant be hardware.

INSTALLING - the system has a mix of SATA and PATA drives. The setup
system detects the PATA drives first, when you boot after install, the
SATA drives are first. Practical upshot? grub cant find your boot
partition! Only solution, unplug the PATA drives for install, plug them
back in and add them manually afterwards.

Since installing, yum updated and changed the soname of libcrypt. A fair
number of applications from the fedora yum repository are still needing
the old soname and will now no longer start up because 2 days later they
haven't released new packages to fix what they changed.

Starting up evolution for the first time on new fedora. It detects its
my first use of evolution, good good. Would you like to import settings
from an old version of evolution. Yes please. Browse window pops up. Ok
thats completely USELESS as default settings are in .evolution and the
browse window will not see, and you cannot type in, any dot filenames.
Its hiding hidden files. So you cannot import from the DEFAULT location
of old installs. I end up having to change the directory name on the
commandline.

This is my happy Fedora Linux experience over the last 4 days since I
got fedora 9 installed. Now tell me, if Im a Linux user since 0.99
kernel, Ive thrown in excess of 300,000 pounds into a company making
games for Linux - and its pissing ME off this much, HOW are we EVER
going to win over newbies and non-techies and what the hell chance do we
have of winning the race.

-- 
Michael Simms - CEO, Tux Games LTD
http://www.tuxgames.com