Fedora stability

[Krikket]

On Wed, 31 Dec 2003, Leonard den Ottolander wrote:

>  I know I am wandering off topic here, but I am interested in founded
> opinions on the subject, ie founded criticism on SUSE. Fact of the matter
> is I am currently running a server in Germany that came preinstalled with
> SUSE 9.0, and must say it is quite managable. Problems updating the box? No
> way. Yast manages that quite well, and you can always go back to plain old
> ftp and rpm.

Yes, YaST does it's job quite well, which is to install a package made for
SuSE.  It's *compiling* a package that gives you a world of heart-ache as
far as I can tell.  (I've heard rumors of people doing it, but that's not
the same as being able to do it myself, or knowing someone firsthand who's
been able to do it.  Example:  I never was able to get LogJam (a Live
Journal client) to run on SuSE.  Even when I downloaded and let YaST
install a SuSE rpm.  After a month of trying, I gave up.  Similar results
with other packages that aren't part of the distro by default.  (But some
worked without a hitch -- Xine (not the basterdized copy they give you)
and K3b come to mind.  But I was woking with SuSE rpms in both cases.)

>  I am not that fond of integrated configuration tools because they tend to
> have a mind of their own (linuxconf being a prime example of this), so I
> don't use yast for configuration tasks, but neither do I use the integrated
> configuration tools that Red Hat and Fedora are currently developing (apart
> from ntsysv and kudzu that is).

If you never use the integrated config tools, then it may very well work,
because the system won't try to be smarter than you...

>  It's just that for years I've been working with Red Hat, so I am used to
> that, which makes managing it easy. But all in all I don't believe there is
> that much difference between the distro's if you know your way around
> (them).

There is some truth in that statement.

> > Don't switch to SuSE.  Trust me on this one.  Baaad juju.
>
>  What does that mean, bad juju? Why is SUSE bad juju?

Err, it's slang for "lots of problems".  Similar to "bad mojo".  Most of
the problems I had were due to things not compiling on the desktop I had.
A friend is having similar nightmares on a server he's running, because
SuSE keeps trying to be smarter than him and rewriting his stuff without
so much as a "by your leave".  There's more in his case, but I don't know
the details.

> > If you needs are met 100% by what's available on the distro CDs, then SuSE
> > could work for you.  But adding anything else?  Damn near impossible. There
> > are some things I *couldn't* get installed under SuSE, that were a breeze
> > with Fedora.  I'm not the only one wih those problems either.
>
>  Could you give us some examples of specific things that you were not able
> to install?

LogJam is the first thing that coms to mind.  And *anything* that I tried
to compile from source.  I don't recall the exact packages offhand,
because with extra searching, I was usually able to find a RPM of it
somewhere, so it eventually stopped being a problem in my mind.

> > On the positive side, there are more GUI controls for things.  So if
> > that's what you're looking for, then maybe it's for you.
>
>  Another aspect is that SUSE is more devoted to KDE than Red Hat, which is
> the desktop manager that I prefer to use. Why for example can't I shut down
> my desktop machine from the KDE menu directly (at least not when I also
> have Gnome installed)?

I agree.  I prefer the KDE desktop.  I'm using Gnome right now mainly
because of the ease for mounting/unmounting disks by right-clicking on the
background.  If you have any suggestions for doing this on KDE, I'm
listening!  (Or just do auto-mounting...)

> > Also you can *forget* right now about editing files by hand and expecting
> > them to stay that way, and work correctly.  The SuSE likes to rewrite stuff
> > on you without warning.
>
>  Didn't happen to me yet, but I'll heed your warning. But then I don't use
> yast for anything but online updates and installation of packages.

*Nod*  The one example that comes to my mind was having my hosts file
re-written...

> > In short, the problems I had with SuSE 9.0 were great enough that I
> > abandoned it, even though I paid the $80 for the Professional version.
>
>  Once again, what specifically were these problems? I don't have a lot of
> experience with SUSE, so maybe I just didn't bump into them yet.

And it's possible that some of the things I wanted to do are just
*different* from what you wanted.  For example, for no apparent reason, I
wasn't able to get a phonetic cyrillic keyboard running without having it
as my *default* keyboard, and thn switching over to a US keyboard whenever
I logged in.

(This is one of the reasons I decided to switch to Fedora.  I *know*
there's RH/Fedora documentation available for this sort of feature with
the Fedora distro.  I was't able to find any that would work with the SuSE
distro.  I couldn't even set the consolefont...  Never did figure that one
out, even when I took it to the suse-linux-e list.)

It's also worth pointing out that because I've had a rather nasty
experience with it (along with the two others that I know firsthand who've
tired SuSE) doesn't mean that you will have a problem.  There are some
things that the SuSE distro is great for...

(You don't have to worry about installing any of the plugs-ins in Mozilla.
It's all done for you...)

The way I look at it is that Fedora is great for the people who want to
tweak it in slighly unusual ways, or have a little more experience.  SuSE
is good for the beginner who doesn't have anything unusual in their
configuration.

Krikket