Catharsis - slowly my FC4 world crumbles around me

[Paul Howarth]

On Thu, 2005-07-21 at 10:50 +0900, Dave Gutteridge wrote:
> Someone else on this thread said that config-system-package shouldn't 
> work after the first install. And other people said it's just fine. In 
> any case, I'm not sure if we're talking about config-system-packages. 
> I'm talking about the Add/Remove Packages that is available in the 
> Desktop menu, and has a GUI. Surely *that* should work after the first 
> install. Otherwise why have a GUI for it?

The program is called "system-config-packages" and it gets run when you
select "Add/Remove Packages" from the menu. I believe it's *supposed* to
work as you say, but GUIs, like any other program, can be buggy. The FC3
version was definitely know to have issues resolving dependencies after
some updates had been installed, and it looks like the FC4 version may
also be affected, though clearly some people have been able to make it
work. In FC5 this program is being replaced by another one, based on
yum, called "pup".

> >How did you add ntfs support?
> >  
> >
> http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/rpm/fedora4.html
> Worked great when I first installed, and for the first few reboots. In 
> fact, it was the one RPM that went completely problem free and as the 
> installation instructions said it would.
> And then one day I notice the NTFS partition didn't mount, and no longer 
> auto-mounts at boot, despite me not having configured anything...

You probably booted an updated kernel. You'll need a new kernel module
to go with the new kernel.

> >On the other hand, a rational computer user would install FC3.  There
> >is less anguish.  You benefit from the suffering of other early
> >adopters.  And with the delayed release of FC5 there is the added
> >bonus of getting Fedora Core software support for a longer time span
> >than any of the releases to date.
> >
> This is the part that threw me. I don't get this system of numbering for 
> FC releases. People talk about this like it's normal or something, and 
> maybe it is and it's the way software companies like Adobe and MS that 
> are doing it wrong, but I would have thought that version 4 would 
> replace and be better than version 3, which would be better than version 
> 2...

It just means newer. For many people, me included, FC4 *is* better than
FC3. But I know that lots of people are having lots of problems with FC4
that they didn't have with FC3. MS have had issues like this too. Few
people would say that Windows ME was better than Windows 98SE.

> By "better" I just mean bugs and issues in the previous release are 
> fixed, and if there are new bugs, they are a part of new features. If 
> FC4 had the words "beta" or something to indicate that it was *less* 
> stable than FC3, I would have gone with FC3. How was I supposed to know 
> that FC4 was the least stable version? As I wrote this, I rechecked the 
> web site, and I didn't see anything that clearly states "this is less 
> stable than FC3". It seems to indicate that FC4 is a wonderful thing and 
> it's the one you want if you're making a fresh install of FC.

If I was doing a fresh install, I'd go for FC4 and would try to resolve
any issues I had with it, raising bug reports where necessary. This
keeps me up to date with the current technology, gives me the latest and
greatest versions of things like openoffice, and helps move the Fedora
Project forward by identifying issues and getting them resolved. But I'm
an enthusiast. If you're just using Linux to get your work done and are
having issues with FC4, then FC3 might be a better choice. But then so
might CentOS 4 (Red Hat Enterprise 4 clone), which will be supported far
longer than FC3.

Paul.
-- 
Paul Howarth <paul at city-fan.org>