Fedora 7 Review

After looking at Ubuntu 7.04 (Fiesty Fawn) and deciding to replace it with Fedora 7 as soon as it come out, I am happy to report that I've kept my word. Here are my first impressions.

The good:

• 1 CD sized download with all the good stuff.
• Same Gnome goodness I've come to expect from all distributions.
• RAID and LVM support in the installer.
• My "fake RAID" is detected by the installer!
• rpm.livna.org is ready with audio and video codecs
  

The not so good:

• Not sure I like the new desktop theme (Hot air balloons?)
• My PPPoE internet connection won't automatically start. (I'll have to find out why)

Verdict:
A couple of hiccups, but not a completely bad experience. The switch to a single repository, as far as users are concerned is seamless. The creation of a installable Live CD I'm sure was because of "market pressure", but this option is very welcome. I've researched a little bit about what needs to be done to make my own Live CD from the fedora repository and at the moment it seems like it will be a lot of fiddling with rpm and configuration files. Building a Live CD with my photo as a the Desktop banner for my mum is not a click and go process.

Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) Desktop edition

The first GNU/Linux distro I installed was Slackware of 3.5" floppy disks. I was awestruck by that first GNU/Linux expereience, especially when it told me that my old Pentium 60 Mhz had the "widely publicised" fdiv bug. I'm not really a fanboy type of guy and since then, I've chopped and changed distributions a little. I've used Redhat, Mandrake, SUSE, Knoppix, Fedora Core (3, 4, 5 ,6) Debian and even Gentoo. Debian and Gentoo honestly don't do anything for me as I've done those fiddly things a million times already. Just not interested in doing them again. I want something that just works. But my kind of "just work" is different to Ubunto's.

What is good about Ubuntu.

• I didn't spend hours downloading a DVD iso or 5 CD iso files
• I can play with it before installing it
• I can boot the install CD and use it as a rescue tool WHEN I screw things up
• I got used to sudo, and kind of like it now.
• It booted fast, and it's pretty.
  

What is bad.

• No LVM or RAID support in the installer
• Had to search for pppoeconf to get connected to the Internet
• Network configuration GUI has no pppoe support
  

Verdict:

My end goal has never been a Linux desktop at home. I want a cool high performance workstation that I develop on and surf the net . At times I felt like giving up on Ubuntu and just install FC6 because when I wanted to something a little uncommon, like software RAID or PPPoE internet connection, it wasn't simple or straightforward. While you can play with Ubuntu before installing, it's not knoppix.

Ubuntu seems to be for the "for dummies" crowd. For me, it doesn't cover enough of the functionality that I have come to expect from a good distro. Fedora 7 will have a similar installation model to Ubuntu, sudo is already available on Fedora Core and the livna rpm repository has non-free video/sound codecs that I could use if I wanted too. All the things I liked about Ubuntu will be in Fedora 7.

When Fedora 7 is released it is likely that Ubuntu will be wiped from my computer and the CD I burned will be thrown in the bin.

A desktop computer RAID

Haha, cheezy title.

Don't get it? My desktop computer did not get subpoenaed by the Record Industry Association of America. I am referring to redundant array of inexpensive drives (RAID). Traditionally used only on mission critical and high performance servers, RAIDs provide data protection through redundancy and higher performance through parallelism. But improved data security and higher performance are key sales points for desktop computers so now the technology is increasingly available on PC's. Dell has provided RAID options on some of their desktop PCs for close to 3 years now.

A modern desktop PC usually has RAID capabilities in its SATA chip set. When the computer boots, a BIOS tool is used to set up a RAID configuration. This is not a "real" hardware RAID but software RAID implemented in the BIOS, also known as a "fake RAID". Windows 2000/XP use BIOS routines to access data on the RAID until you install the "Application Acceleration" drivers provided by Intel or whoever the motherboard vendor is. It will then use those software routines to access the RAID devices.

Linux has had software RAIDs for a while but their software RAID system is incompatible with proprietary, BIOS based "fake RAIDs". While Linux "fake RAID" drivers exist and are improving with time, in my opinion, a Linux software RAID is a better choice if Linux is your primary OS. Linux software RAIDs are completely open, will work on any "normal" hard-drive, will co-exist with other operating systems. Tools for provisioning, backup and recovery are all in the Linux environment and they are all well tested. The only disadvantage is the incompatibility with "fake RAIDs". Hard drives cannot be "normal" and a member of a "fake RAID".

The Linux Software RAID Howto is a good resource to begin with if you want a deeper understanding of RAID on Linux.