Fedora Core 5 Issues

[Timothy Murphy]

Les Mikesell wrote:

>> I've actually been reading the list since it started.
>> I've often seen this mantra that Fedora is "bleeding edge"
>> and not to be trusted.
>> But that is not my experience.
> 
> How many hardware platforms are you using?

5 or 6 - Asus P2B-LS (Scsi only), Athlon-64, Sempron,
ThinkPad (T20 and T23), and Sony Picturebook (C1-VFK).

> Did you use firewire drives with FC4? 

No

> There was about a 6 month 
> period when they weren't recognized as drives.  People also
> have lots of trouble with SATA with about every new kernel.
> I have an IBM x86 225 eserver that I'd consider fairly mainstream
> with the MPT scsi controller running FC5 and it hasn't booted
> with anything newer than kernel-2.6.16-1.2133_FC5smp and that
> was several updates back.  The current 2.6.17-1.2157_FC5 does see
> the the SCSI drives but hangs when initializing the broadcomm gigabit
> NIC. Fortunately it keeps the running kernel, so the intermediate
> ones have been deleted instead of the last working one, but if it
> had been updated and rebooted in a remote site where no one could
> power cycle after a hang and select the alternate kernel in grub
> it would be dead now.

These all seem to be kernel problems.
As I mentioned, I prefer to compile my kernels,
partly because I like to keep distribution and kernel separate.

>> I usually compile the kernel for various reasons.
>> (I don't think any of the supplied FC kernels have worked
>> with my USB WiFi device.)
>> So this again is independent of distribution.
>> 
>> That just leaves non-X applications,
>> and my impression is that the Fedora RPMs
>> are nearly always well-tested and reliable.
> 
> Just not on a lot of hardware....  I have another box with an
> older adaptec SCSI controller and a really old DEC chip netgear
> NIC that never has problems.

Which distribution do you consider tests on more hardware? 

-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland