Linux for dummies - where to start

[Phil_MI]

CAcreeks wrote:

I was pleasantly surprised tonight when I wanted to print from my (used hardware but new Linux OS) Dell laptop.

Just clicked Control Center > Printing > Add > Network Printer. It found our Canon MG6200 on the wireless network, downloaded the driver, and I printed a PDF file.

Linux is unbelievably mature compared to how it was about five years ago.

My H-P printers and scanners have always worked with Fedora for several years. I have a H-P All-in-One C8180 that I connect to wirelessly without issue. The older H-P flatbed scanner that was used with a Windows 98 SE here and was not supported in XP or Vista has never had a problem with Fedora and never had to endlessly search the web to try and get it to work with Windows or "Would you like to have Windows go online and look for drivers" No thank you Windows I'd rather do it myself!




phil

 

[CAcreeks]

Phil_MI wrote:

My H-P printers and scanners have always worked with Fedora for several years. I have a H-P All-in-One C8180 that I connect to wirelessly without issue.

Good to know H-P printers are well supported by Linux.

Four years ago I could not print a PDF from Ubuntu 8.04, because Evince(?) was unable to translate PDF into H-P speak (whatever).

I never had to endlessly search the web to try and get it to work with Windows or "Would you like to have Windows go online and look for drivers" No thank you Windows I'd rather do it myself!

Did that ever work in the history of Windows, searching for a driver? Never worked for me. Thank heavens for Google. Often a new driver from the hardware vendor was a solution to both Windows crashes and ill-functioning devices.

 

[Jim Cockfield]

Phil_MI wrote:

My H-P printers and scanners have always worked with Fedora for several years. I have a H-P All-in-One C8180 that I connect to wirelessly without issue. The older H-P flatbed scanner that was used with a Windows 98 SE here and was not supported in XP or Vista has never had a problem with Fedora and never had to endlessly search the web to try and get it to work with Windows or "Would you like to have Windows go online and look for drivers" No thank you Windows I'd rather do it myself!

The problem with Fedora is that their production (a.k.a., stable) releases tend to be alpha/beta quality compared to other mainstream distros.

IOW, Fedora is probably the very last distro I'd suggest a Linux Newbie try to install and use.

Their new releases are just too buggy, since they tend to be very "bleeding edge".

Fedora is best looked at as a "Test Bed" for Redhat, letting the community debug new features before eventually integrating the ones that work into a production RedHat release.

For example, the new installer in Fedora 18 is a real mess, as I've noticed in several reviews of it. Here's one that's fairly "nice" about the obvious problems with it:

https://hedayatvk.wordpress.com/2013/01/16/my-fedora-18-review-part-1/


Here's another (not so nice about the obvious problems with it):

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/fedora-18-kde.html

IMO, at best, it's Alpha quality software.

Sure, the anaconda installer was getting to be a bit "dated" compared to more modern installers in other distros. But, the Fedora developers should have waited until they had a better installer ready before replacing it with an installer that would be best described as "experimental" (not something you'd expect to find in a production/stable release).


I've seen the same type of thing when installing older Fedora releases, with far too many problems compared to production releases from other distros. IOW, you can't expect a Linux "newbie" to cope with those types of issues.

The only way I recommend Fedora to a Linux "newbie" is via some of the respins. That way, they include all of the bug fixes since the product was first launched, making it easier for new users of Linux. For example, I've been impressed with what Chris (the primary developer of Kororaa) has accomplished with past Fedora releases.

He should have a new Kororaa beta based on Fedora 18 available soon:

https://kororaa.org/2013/01/korora-18-on-the-way/


Fedora is a great distro since you get access to the latest technology and software. If you want access to the latest software, Fedora is the way to go.


But, it's really not ready for "prime time" for a Linux newbie, as the Fedora production releases tend to be at the Alpha/Beta quality level compared to other mainstream distros.

So, I would not recommend that any newcomer to Linux try to use it. They're better off waiting until the bugs are worked out first, sticking with one of the "respins" that make it easier to install and use.

 

[CAcreeks]

Jim Cockfield wrote:

The problem with Fedora is that their production (a.k.a., stable) releases tend to be alpha/beta quality compared to other mainstream distros... Fedora is probably the very last distro I'd suggest a Linux Newbie try to install and use.

Moreover Fedora is RPM based. I prefer the Debian packaging mechanism, and wish all Linux distros would switch to it.


Maybe RPM has advantages, but I don't know what they are.

 

[Don_Campbell]

CAcreeks wrote:

Jim Cockfield wrote:

The problem with Fedora is that their production (a.k.a., stable) releases tend to be alpha/beta quality compared to other mainstream distros...

I think that overstates it by a long way. Unlike Ubuntu and therefore its derivatives, Fedora has a lot of professionals employed by Red Hat doing development of various technologies. Some of that stuff gets into Fedora as "previews" that you use knowing that it is sort of an advanced beta. The rest is pretty much cutting edge but definitely not beta. It's a distro that will have about as up to date "fresh off the press" software as you're likely to find in a mainstream distro.

Fedora is probably the very last distro I'd suggest a Linux Newbie try to install and use.

In spite of my statement above, I agree with this. The reason isn't about blood on the floor. Instead, the reason newbies should probably go for Mint, Mepis or some other highly regarded newbie-tame distro is that for Red Hat philosophical reasons Fedora is fussy about proprietary software. They won't distribute it. That means proprietary drivers and things like codecs for proprietary multimedia formats and so on. Those are trivially easy to install after a fresh install of Fedora and there are several sites with quick and easy to do that. It takes me about 6-8 minutes to get all of that stuff installed when I have a fresh install of Fedora. With a Fedora upgrade, the repositories are already set up for that "extra" stuff and so they get upgraded with everything Fedora, all at the same time.

Moreover Fedora is RPM based. I prefer the Debian packaging mechanism, and wish all Linux distros would switch to it.

Maybe RPM has advantages, but I don't know what they are.

I've never used deb/apt but rpm/yum is a perfectly acceptable way to get software. Yum does the resolution and fetching of dependencies as I think apt does for Debian derived distros. Essentially, yum is to rpm as apt is to deb. I'm willing to be corrected if that oversimplifies it. I know that many folks prefer apt. I've not heard that explained in a way that seemed deeper than they were already comfortable with apt.

 

[Jim Cockfield]

Don_Campbell wrote:

CAcreeks wrote:

Jim Cockfield wrote:

The problem with Fedora is that their production (a.k.a., stable) releases tend to be alpha/beta quality compared to other mainstream distros...

I think that overstates it by a long way. Unlike Ubuntu and therefore its derivatives, Fedora has a lot of professionals employed by Red Hat doing development of various technologies. Some of that stuff gets into Fedora as "previews" that you use knowing that it is sort of an advanced beta. The rest is pretty much cutting edge but definitely not beta. It's a distro that will have about as up to date "fresh off the press" software as you're likely to find in a mainstream distro.

Yep. I pointed that out in my previous post. If you want the latest software, Fedora is the way to go.

I also pointed out that Fedora is more of a "test bed" for Red Hat (as anyone that's been around Linux for long realizes). Because the software is "bleeding edge", some of it is just not ready for "prime time"

In any event, the new installer the developers went with for Fedora 18 is a great example of software that's just not ready. Frankly, I'm shocked that they went with software that bad for a production release.

As at least one of the reviewers that have looked at it have commented, it's "dangerous", since the icons don't give you any information above the drive manufacturer's IDs for the drives, and they're displayed in reverse order (with an icon for sdb shown to the left of the icon for sda).

Of course, lack of time zone selection is another (although less serious) problem with the new installer that more than one reviewer has commented [negatively] about.


IMO, the new installer is alpha quality at best, and I just don't understand why they'd use it versus the more proven anaconda installer, unless they decided to "put it out there" for more feedback from the community so they could refine it for Red Hat, even though it's obviously not anywhere near ready for prime time in a production Fedora release at this point.

I've seen that kind of cr** with previous Fedora releases. So, that some of the developers get a salary from Red Hat is not always a good thing from my perspective, as they're probably more likely to include software in Fedora that isn't ready for
"prime time" usage to get more feedback from Fedora users to improve it for future Red Hat projects.

I almost installed Fedora 18 yesterday. But, after a quick look at it in a VM, I decided to wait until Chris (the developer of Kororaa) had a chance to "tame it" more first, with bug fixes integrated and hopefully, a more refined installer.


As much as I like having the latest software available (which Fedora provides, especially if you enable extra repos like RPMFusion), it's just not worth effort (at least to me), to install a new release of it, until some of the "quirks" are worked out.

 

[Don_Campbell]

Jim Cockfield wrote:

Don_Campbell wrote:

CAcreeks wrote:

Jim Cockfield wrote:

The problem with Fedora is that their production (a.k.a., stable) releases tend to be alpha/beta quality compared to other mainstream distros...

I think that overstates it by a long way. Unlike Ubuntu and therefore its derivatives, Fedora has a lot of professionals employed by Red Hat doing development of various technologies. Some of that stuff gets into Fedora as "previews" that you use knowing that it is sort of an advanced beta. The rest is pretty much cutting edge but definitely not beta. It's a distro that will have about as up to date "fresh off the press" software as you're likely to find in a mainstream distro.

Yep. I pointed that out in my previous post. If you want the latest software, Fedora is the way to go.

But, I also pointed out that Fedora is more of a "test bed" for Red Hat (as anyone that's been around Linux for long realizes). Because the software is "bleeding edge", some of it is just not ready for "prime time"

In any event, the new installer the developers went with for Fedora 18 is a great example of software that's just not ready. Frankly, I'm shocked that they went with software that bad for a production release. As at least one of the reviewers commended, it's "dangerous", since the icons don't give you any information above the drive manufacturer's IDs for the drives, and they're displayed in reverse order (with an icon for sdb shown to the left of the icon for sda).

I didn't try the new installer since I went directly for their new upgrade method. It worked pretty well for most folks whose comments I read. For me, it tripped over some 32-bit F17 files that I installed in an otherwise F18 installation in order to get a couple of 32-bit kluges of google's to work. I think that's a pretty unusual use case so I didn't fault them so much on that.

I think I'll install F18 in a VM just to see what the new installer looks like. I have to admit I had always thought of anaconda as being one of Fedora's finer touches.

Yup, I read what you had written earlier. I was simply quibbling about the "bleeding edge" comment as a generalization. My point was that most of the stuff approaching "bleeding edge" has tended to be exactly the server/enterprise kind of stuff meant for RHEL. Things like their cloud and virtualization stuff and perhaps their new firewall. I'm not running a cloud or using Red Hat's virtualization stuff so I don't worry about that stuff resembling beta. I was warned by the Release Notes to back off of the new firewall if I didn't want to fiddle with it and bingo--took me a short second to do so. The iptables version works for me since I'm not providing any services beyond my LAN and almost none on the LAN.

Anyway, I'm pretty happy with F18 except stuff that Fedora isn't responsible for: Gnome 3.6.2 broke a couple of my favorite tweaks. I'm working around that pretty easily with a keyboard shortcut but I've installed cinnamon for a new look. I didn't like it in earlier incarnations. KDE gives me a little vertigo that I don't need.

Of course, lack of time zone selection is another (although less serious) with the new installer.

IMO, the new installer is alpha quality at best, and I just don't understand why they'd use it versus the more proven anaconda installer, unless they decided to put it out there for more feedback from the community so they could refine it for Red Hat, even though it's not ready for prime time in Fedora at this point.

I've seen that kind of cr** with previous Fedora releases. So, that some of the developers get a salary from Red Hat is not always a good thing from my perspective, as they're probably more likely to include software in Fedora that isn't ready for
"prime time" usage to get more feedback to improve it for future Red Hat projects.

I almost installed Fedora 18 yesterday. But, after a quick look at it in a VM, I decided to wait until Chris (the developer of Kororaa) had a chance to "tame it" more first.

As much as I like having the latest software available (which Fedora provides, especially if you enable the RPMFusion repo), it's just not worth effort (at least to me), to install a new release of it, until some of the "quirks" are worked out.

--
JimC
------

 

[Phil_MI]

Don_Campbell wrote:

Jim Cockfield wrote:

Don_Campbell wrote:

CAcreeks wrote:

Jim Cockfield wrote:

The problem with Fedora is that their production (a.k.a., stable) releases tend to be alpha/beta quality compared to other mainstream distros...

I think that overstates it by a long way. Unlike Ubuntu and therefore its derivatives, Fedora has a lot of professionals employed by Red Hat doing development of various technologies. Some of that stuff gets into Fedora as "previews" that you use knowing that it is sort of an advanced beta. The rest is pretty much cutting edge but definitely not beta. It's a distro that will have about as up to date "fresh off the press" software as you're likely to find in a mainstream distro.

Yep. I pointed that out in my previous post. If you want the latest software, Fedora is the way to go.

But, I also pointed out that Fedora is more of a "test bed" for Red Hat (as anyone that's been around Linux for long realizes). Because the software is "bleeding edge", some of it is just not ready for "prime time"

In any event, the new installer the developers went with for Fedora 18 is a great example of software that's just not ready. Frankly, I'm shocked that they went with software that bad for a production release. As at least one of the reviewers commended, it's "dangerous", since the icons don't give you any information above the drive manufacturer's IDs for the drives, and they're displayed in reverse order (with an icon for sdb shown to the left of the icon for sda).

I didn't try the new installer since I went directly for their new upgrade method. It worked pretty well for most folks whose comments I read. For me, it tripped over some 32-bit F17 files that I installed in an otherwise F18 installation in order to get a couple of 32-bit kluges of google's to work. I think that's a pretty unusual use case so I didn't fault them so much on that.

I think I'll install F18 in a VM just to see what the new installer looks like. I have to admit I had always thought of anaconda as being one of Fedora's finer touches.

Yup, I read what you had written earlier. I was simply quibbling about the "bleeding edge" comment as a generalization. My point was that most of the stuff approaching "bleeding edge" has tended to be exactly the server/enterprise kind of stuff meant for RHEL. Things like their cloud and virtualization stuff and perhaps their new firewall. I'm not running a cloud or using Red Hat's virtualization stuff so I don't worry about that stuff resembling beta. I was warned by the Release Notes to back off of the new firewall if I didn't want to fiddle with it and bingo--took me a short second to do so. The iptables version works for me since I'm not providing any services beyond my LAN and almost none on the LAN.

Anyway, I'm pretty happy with F18 except stuff that Fedora isn't responsible for: Gnome 3.6.2 broke a couple of my favorite tweaks. I'm working around that pretty easily with a keyboard shortcut but I've installed cinnamon for a new look. I didn't like it in earlier incarnations. KDE gives me a little vertigo that I don't need.

Of course, lack of time zone selection is another (although less serious) with the new installer.

IMO, the new installer is alpha quality at best, and I just don't understand why they'd use it versus the more proven anaconda installer, unless they decided to put it out there for more feedback from the community so they could refine it for Red Hat, even though it's not ready for prime time in Fedora at this point.

I've seen that kind of cr** with previous Fedora releases. So, that some of the developers get a salary from Red Hat is not always a good thing from my perspective, as they're probably more likely to include software in Fedora that isn't ready for
"prime time" usage to get more feedback to improve it for future Red Hat projects.

I almost installed Fedora 18 yesterday. But, after a quick look at it in a VM, I decided to wait until Chris (the developer of Kororaa) had a chance to "tame it" more first.

As much as I like having the latest software available (which Fedora provides, especially if you enable the RPMFusion repo), it's just not worth effort (at least to me), to install a new release of it, until some of the "quirks" are worked out.

 

[CAcreeks]

Don_Campbell wrote:
I've never used deb/apt but rpm/yum is a perfectly acceptable way to get software. Yum does the resolution and fetching of dependencies as I think apt does for Debian derived distros. Essentially, yum is to rpm as apt is to deb.

I believe that is correct.

The main reason for eliminating one or the other is to make life simpler for Linux application vendors. Unlike windowing systems where it's largely a matter of personal preference, a packaging subsystem just needs to deal with dependencies, etc. As you say, both YUM and Apt are capable of doing this.

Deb/Apt came before YUM, so I feel that is the one Linux should go with. It's not up to me, however. RedHat has NIH syndrome when it comes to RPM. For some reason SUSE followed.

 

[kelpdiver]

Phil_MI wrote:

I have used a multitude of Linux distros Debian, Mandrake, Slax, Red Hat to name some and Fedora is my "daily driver" and have used it since first released in 2004. Linux operating system is not for everyone but almost everyone uses it as it working behind the scenes running servers, handheld devices, tv set top boxes etc. N.A.S.A uses or has used Fedora/Linux so it can't be all that bad.

phil

And here we're at the heart of it. People can choose any variant they like...but if their interest includes professional career development, it's counterproductive to avoid Redhat and rpm/yum, and somewhat of a waste to pursue others. Though with that interest in mind, I'd skip Fedora for RHEL (or the free Centos).

Ubuntu certainly has grown into a major force, but seems like they may have gone off the deep end running down rabbit holes. the parent Debian is already a faint memory.

That said, for home uses like mediatomb or mt-daapd, I'm more likely to install an ubuntu variant in a VM.

 

[Don_Campbell]

Jim Cockfield wrote:

Don_Campbell wrote:

CAcreeks wrote:

Jim Cockfield wrote:

The problem with Fedora is that their production (a.k.a., stable) releases tend to be alpha/beta quality compared to other mainstream distros...

I think that overstates it by a long way. Unlike Ubuntu and therefore its derivatives, Fedora has a lot of professionals employed by Red Hat doing development of various technologies. Some of that stuff gets into Fedora as "previews" that you use knowing that it is sort of an advanced beta. The rest is pretty much cutting edge but definitely not beta. It's a distro that will have about as up to date "fresh off the press" software as you're likely to find in a mainstream distro.

Yep. I pointed that out in my previous post. If you want the latest software, Fedora is the way to go.

I also pointed out that Fedora is more of a "test bed" for Red Hat (as anyone that's been around Linux for long realizes). Because the software is "bleeding edge", some of it is just not ready for "prime time"

In any event, the new installer the developers went with for Fedora 18 is a great example of software that's just not ready. Frankly, I'm shocked that they went with software that bad for a production release.

As at least one of the reviewers that have looked at it have commented, it's "dangerous", since the icons don't give you any information above the drive manufacturer's IDs for the drives, and they're displayed in reverse order (with an icon for sdb shown to the left of the icon for sda).

I didn't see that in the VM install I did so I do not know for sure if that's the way things were with the release version. What I saw was the "disk" from a previous Linux install clearly identified but it was virtual so it is hard to know what a more complex setup would report.

Of course, lack of time zone selection is another (although less serious) problem with the new installer that more than one reviewer has commented [negatively] about.

What I saw was a newer version of the same old time zone selection. SameO sameO. Selected a town with Pacific TZ and off I went. I saw no confusion and no inability to select a time zone. It was easy and obvious.

IMO, the new installer is alpha quality at best, and I just don't understand why they'd use it versus the more proven anaconda installer, unless they decided to "put it out there" for more feedback from the community so they could refine it for Red Hat, even though it's obviously not anywhere near ready for prime time in a production Fedora release at this point.

In my VM a development system with Gnome 3 was installed in about 5 minutes from a virtual DVD that was an iso file mounted as a DVD in the VM. Very fast, worked right out of the box. I kind of wished that I had done a DVD based upgrade instead of fedup upgrade.

I've seen that kind of cr** with previous Fedora releases. So, that some of the developers get a salary from Red Hat is not always a good thing from my perspective, as they're probably more likely to include software in Fedora that isn't ready for
"prime time" usage to get more feedback from Fedora users to improve it for future Red Hat projects.

I almost installed Fedora 18 yesterday. But, after a quick look at it in a VM, I decided to wait until Chris (the developer of Kororaa) had a chance to "tame it" more first, with bug fixes integrated and hopefully, a more refined installer.

As much as I like having the latest software available (which Fedora provides, especially if you enable extra repos like RPMFusion), it's just not worth effort (at least to me), to install a new release of it, until some of the "quirks" are worked out.

I have upgraded about a dozen times from systems that had RPMFusion setup as one of the repos. With that as a starting point the upgrade always managed to upgrade both the Fedora-specific files as well as the "extras" in RPMFusion. That's what happened for me this time with the exception of a brief hiccup that was caused I think by an unusual setup that had a mix of 32-bit and 64-bit dependencies for some quirky google stuff that wasn't really setup for 64-bit Linux.

I think you'll like what you get when you finally get it. I'm still hoping that one of my favorite gnome-shell extensions is upgraded but without it I've managed to quickly adapt to a keyboard shortcut to the overview view and so I'm pretty happy. Happier than my experiences with cinnamon, xfce and mate.

 

[Doug J]

Thanks to all for the continuing dialog, I'm reading and absorbing, and it's all very helpful. I plan to start the project next week. A question - are device drivers for printers, tablets, scanners, etc. unique to each distro or distro family/type?

 

[Don_Campbell]

CAcreeks wrote:

Don_Campbell wrote:
I've never used deb/apt but rpm/yum is a perfectly acceptable way to get software. Yum does the resolution and fetching of dependencies as I think apt does for Debian derived distros. Essentially, yum is to rpm as apt is to deb.

I believe that is correct.

The main reason for eliminating one or the other is to make life simpler for Linux application vendors. Unlike windowing systems where it's largely a matter of personal preference, a packaging subsystem just needs to deal with dependencies, etc. As you say, both YUM and Apt are capable of doing this.

Deb/Apt came before YUM, so I feel that is the one Linux should go with. It's not up to me, however. RedHat has NIH syndrome when it comes to RPM. For some reason SUSE followed.

What's your documentation for Deb/Apt came before yum? Might be true but yum has been around for a verrry long time and at least long enough that you couldn't argue just from that time that one was more advanced than the other.

I am not so sure that RH is into an NIH attitude at all. RH was quick to embrace all technologies that they found that they could support. They didn't invent much of it and had no problem using what the GPL allowed them to use.

 

[Don_Campbell]

Doug J wrote:

Thanks to all for the continuing dialog, I'm reading and absorbing, and it's all very helpful. I plan to start the project next week. A question - are device drivers for printers, tablets, scanners, etc. unique to each distro or distro family/type?

 

[Don_Campbell]

Jim Cockfield wrote:

Don_Campbell wrote:

CAcreeks wrote:

Jim Cockfield wrote:

The problem with Fedora is that their production (a.k.a., stable) releases tend to be alpha/beta quality compared to other mainstream distros...

I think that overstates it by a long way. Unlike Ubuntu and therefore its derivatives, Fedora has a lot of professionals employed by Red Hat doing development of various technologies. Some of that stuff gets into Fedora as "previews" that you use knowing that it is sort of an advanced beta. The rest is pretty much cutting edge but definitely not beta. It's a distro that will have about as up to date "fresh off the press" software as you're likely to find in a mainstream distro.

Yep. I pointed that out in my previous post. If you want the latest software, Fedora is the way to go.

I also pointed out that Fedora is more of a "test bed" for Red Hat (as anyone that's been around Linux for long realizes). Because the software is "bleeding edge", some of it is just not ready for "prime time"

In any event, the new installer the developers went with for Fedora 18 is a great example of software that's just not ready. Frankly, I'm shocked that they went with software that bad for a production release.

As at least one of the reviewers that have looked at it have commented, it's "dangerous", since the icons don't give you any information above the drive manufacturer's IDs for the drives, and they're displayed in reverse order (with an icon for sdb shown to the left of the icon for sda).

I installed F18 from scratch inside a VM in something like 4-5 minutes. Quite amazing when the install medium is a .iso on a hard drive instead of a DVD.

I thought the partitioning section was confusing but couldn't tell whether it was also difficult to figure out which drive was which because the VM had only a single drive.

Of course, lack of time zone selection is another (although less serious) problem with the new installer that more than one reviewer has commented [negatively] about.

There was no lack of time zone when I installed. It looked slightly different from the familiar map in the old anaconda installer but it was there, I selected Pacific (using Los Angeles as usual) and off it went. No problem, no confusiong.

IMO, the new installer is alpha quality at best, and I just don't understand why they'd use it versus the more proven anaconda installer, unless they decided to "put it out there" for more feedback from the community so they could refine it for Red Hat, even though it's obviously not anywhere near ready for prime time in a production Fedora release at this point.

Sorry but it looked ok to me. I wasn't familiar with its presentation like I am with anaconda but it worked and the OS is installed and came up asking for a user name and so on just like olden times.

I've seen that kind of cr** with previous Fedora releases. So, that some of the developers get a salary from Red Hat is not always a good thing from my perspective, as they're probably more likely to include software in Fedora that isn't ready for
"prime time" usage to get more feedback from Fedora users to improve it for future Red Hat projects.

I think you're harsh but maybe you've had a rougher experience in the past than I have. I have installed Ubuntu several times in a VM and was never pleased with what I got in the end. Its install went fine but the overall feel of the system was stodgy.

I almost installed Fedora 18 yesterday. But, after a quick look at it in a VM, I decided to wait until Chris (the developer of Kororaa) had a chance to "tame it" more first, with bug fixes integrated and hopefully, a more refined installer.

As much as I like having the latest software available (which Fedora provides, especially if you enable extra repos like RPMFusion), it's just not worth effort (at least to me), to install a new release of it, until some of the "quirks" are worked out.

That's an implied criticism I don't get. If you are upgrading a Fedora system that has the RPMFusion repos set up then the upgrade from the DVD should simply use those repos (if enabled) and get the non-free stuff from there. It has always worked for me and it worked for me with the fedup upgrade method this time.

 

[CAcreeks]

Don_Campbell wrote:

What's your documentation for Deb/Apt came before yum?

The Wikipedia page for Advanced Packaging Tool (APT) says the first release was August 1998. As you know, APT managed the .deb packages of Debian, first released in 1993. I cannot find the exact date when Debian introduced .deb packaging.

YUM was written at Duke University around 2003, but I think it first appeared in RHEL (RedHat Enterprise Linux) version 5 in 2008. Previously RPM package management was as cumbersome as Solaris pkgadd derived from System V.

 

[joey_B]

Doug J wrote:

I have an Intel i7 w7-64 box for my day-to-day computing. This one replaced a Q6600 Vista-32 box that today is basically dedicated to World Community Group (WCG) networked computing, while serving as a backup to the W7 box. Both are on a simple home network, mostly for WCG & file sharing.

I’d like to move the Q6600 box to Linux, while retaining the MS stuff for now. Eventually, I want to cut the cord with MS altogether for both PCs. It’ll be tough to abandon Photoshop, but that decision is yet to come. In the short-term, I’d like to set up dual boot for this one, and bring in Office Libre, Open Office, etc.

I use an ATEN KVM switch so I can monitor & control the 2 PCs and my work notebook with a single keyboard, monitor & mouse. I don’t know how this will play with Linux.

The Q6600 PC is configured with 4 HDs, no issues with disk space for OS & programs:

1 – OS & programs

2 – Clone of #1 (cloned & tested monthly)

3 – Data

4 – Automatic daily backup of #3

Any suggestions on where to start & readings?

 

[Alice_61]

I am very happy with gnucash, http://www.gnucash.org/.


"GnuCash is personal and small-business financial-accounting software, freely licensed under the GNU GPL and available for GNU/Linux, BSD, Solaris, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows."

I switched when MS Money 99 was no longer supported ~2008. Transitioning was slow, but I survived. (I had to export an account at a time.)