Every time Fedora comes out with a new version the usual suspects all write about how wonderful it is. I'm not one of those people. I'm the kind of guy who puts the DVD in and install it on a real computer and see if it works. If it doesn't, I slam it.
So I get it downloaded and try to install it on an Asus motherboard that's about 2 years old. It has a dual core Athlon processor (939 pip) so it's at the sweet spot of what Linux likes to run on. I ran the install and it came up in 800x600 mode. Not smart enough to figure out I'm running a 1024x768 screen, but what really bothered me was that the cursor was invisible. In order to get the cursor back I had to get rid of the graphical boot. (I didn't like the graphical boot anyhow but it should have worked).
After getting it to come up I tried to get it into 1024x768 mode. I'm running an older LCD generic monitor. It's a Samsung 570V. Every time I tried to set the configuration to 1024x768 it would change it so bizzare settings like 1300xsomething. I spent 2 hours screwing with it and failed to make it work. Nothing I did worked and if it doesn't work when I do the ordinary right thing then who's fault is that? Not mine. FC6 works.
The next thing I did was download the Live CD. I chose the x86_64 version with KDE because I like KDE. So when I go to burn the CD the ISO image is too big. The image is about 900 megs which is too big for the CD. So - I report it on Bugzilla and here's the response:
Please do not reply directly to this email. All additional comments should be made in the comments box of this bug report.
Summary: 64 bit KDE live CD too big to fit on CD
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=242185
jkeating@redhat.com changed:
What |Removed |Added
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Status|NEW |CLOSED
Resolution| |NOTABUG
------- Additional Comments From jkeating@redhat.com 2007-06-01 21:49 EST -------
It is not labeled or advertised as a "LiveCD". It is a Live Image, this particular image is for DVDs or usb sticks of appropriate size. We cannot fit it on a CD without sacrificing a bunch of applications. x86_64 hardware is far more likely to have a DVD reader in it.
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Clearly they don't give a damn if it works so I'm not going to report any more bugs. The comment that assumes all 64 bit CPUs have DVD drives is beyond rediculous. Most of my servers neither have CDs or DVDs because servers don't need them. Why waste valuable power for equipment you don't need unless something is broken.
It also didn't work when trying to burn it on a DVD and it didn't work installing it to a USB stick. So I downloaded the 686 version which was smaller and it burned onto a CD. I booted it up. There are a lot of error message on the screen but it did come up. One of the things I wanted to do was get a good USB boot so I don't have to haul around a CD drive to boot from when I want to fix my servers. So after booting up I saw there was an option to install the Live CD on a hard disk. So I put my USB stick in, wiped out the partitions, and tried to do an install.
The install looked a lot like the regular Redhat installs. I chose to let the system choose the partitions automatically. It did, but after a few more dialog boxes it decided that the root partiton wasn't big enough to install. So instead of a 1 gig flash drive I tried a 4 gig drive. I got the same error, not enough space.
Then I tried out the CD to see how I liked it. Tried to run Firefox but it wasn't there. As far as being useful it have very little. It's definitely not a Knoppix. Even basic tools lik fdisk were missing. As far as I was concerned it wasn't as good as the rescue CD.
My conclusion, the folks are Fedora should at least test the release to see if it works. I say that they should show up at a Linux users group and pass out copies to see if real people can make the software work as it's supposed to. If they had tested this before they released it they would have known it was seriously broken.
Just because a product is free doesn't mean that if it's sucks that no one should complain. Being free doesn't lower the bar. The bottom like is that Fedora 7 doesn't yet work and it should be unrealeased and then rereleased when it passes the install test. F7 isn't done yet. Send it back to the kitchen and cook it some more.
Letter to the Editor
Memorial Day doesn't seem any different than any other day because under Bush every day is Memorial Day.
Letter to the Editor
You would think that news that Bush stole the 2004 election too would make the news. It did. But not here in America. The BBC broke the news as the top story about "voter caging" in the 2004 election. Caging is a way of massively disqualifying voters. It's a go to jail felony that was revealed last week when Monica Goodling testified that the justice department was involved in rigging the 2004 election.
Similarly just a few days ago Bush signed a directive granting himself extraordinary powers in the event he declares an emergency. The orders designated NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, as a Homeland Security Presidential Directive, gives Bush the powers of a dictator. Yet you won't see that story in America's news.
What we do know is that Paris Hilton is going to jail, Britney Spears is a tramp, and Lindsay Lohan crashed her car DUI. That's why we need to have a Clinton as president again because when Clinton was president if the presidents 5th cousin worked for the government it was a major scandal. With Bush as president the news is suppressed. If not for the Internet we wouldn't know what's happening in our own country. We think it's bad when Hugo Chavez takes over the media in Venezuela but the same thing has already happened here. America has a dictator and the media is his state run propaganda machine.