My desktop machine in my home office has been running Ubuntu since September of 2004 but after several updates and who remembers what installed and un-installed over the years was very ill. The last update to 7.10 fixed some of the problems but created some new ones; the final straw being complete lock-ups every 36 to 48 hours. By complete I mean that the machine would not respond to a "ping" and the video was frozen.
So, a clean install of Linux was needed. Rather than just install a *buntu or Debian, I decided to revisit my first love, Red Hat now Fedora. The last version of Fedora on my desktop machine was Fedora 2 but I have Fedora 5 (upgraded from 4) on my MythTV frontend in the bedroom and also use CentOS (RHEL clone) on my home & the LUG file server.
So, I downloaded and installed Fedora 8 from the Gnome based Live CD (there is also a KDE version) and then went about installing and fixing a few things. The Live-CD is a reduced set of the basic applications. For example AbiWord is installed instead of OpenOffice.
Since the machine is on a local network and is behind a secure firewall, I disabled "Selinux" and the firewall during installation. Instead of the default firewall support in Fedora I prefer "Firestarter" for firewall support.
Fedora's package manager (Yum) is slow but most of the problem is caused by slow mirrors. However, there is a plugin that can help called "yum-fastestmirror". If you add additional repositories, you will want to install the "yum-priority" plugin to keep other packages from removing and replacing core packages with their own version. To get direct access to multimedia packages, you'll want to install "livna-release".
Fedora has the same "Services" GUI app that RHEL does and it makes it very easy to disable unneeded services. I had to turn off NetworkManager and turn on standard networking to get my static IP and wired Ethernet working properly. Turned off a few other services like "bluetooth".
Fedora has replaced Gnome's esound with Polk-Audio and removed the "gnome-volume-manger" GUI app. As a result, I was initially unable to turn on the tone switches for the Audigy 1 ES sound card. As a result, the treble and bass controls did not work. It took about an hour and a half to figure out how to get around this problem, By default, the alsamixer CLI application only showed a single slider for "Pulse Audio"; not the hardware settings as in previous Linux releases based on esound. However a command-line option came to the rescue:
$ alsamixer -c0
This brought up expected view with all the hardware settings. Highlighting "Tone" and pressing the "m" key toggled the tone switch on and both the treble and bass controls worked!
The GOOD:
=========
1. Desktop Effects with ATI 9600 Video card work OK.
2. The machine can "Hibernate". This is a first desktop machine that I have had hibernate working!
3. Seems Stable, no lock-ups!
4. Fast boot-up (~45 seconds) and shutdown (~30 seconds).
5. Browse Local Networks works (Broke in Ubuntu)
The BAD:
=======
1. NFS shares mounted in /media or /mnt do not show-up as icons on the Desktop. However, if this behavior is desired, it can be simulated by adding the shares via "Places - Connect to Server".
2. Fedora's Yum RPM mirrors are slower than Debian's or Ubuntu's but performance is improved via the "yum-fastestmirror" plugin.
Overall:
=======
Fedora 8 is a keeper!
Other Tasks Performed:
=====================
1. Removed "totem" and installed "vlc" and the related mozilla plugins.
2. Installed both "java" and "adobe reader" directly from the vendor's website. Mozilla java plugin must be symbolic linked manually but adobe's acrobat reader plugin was linked automaticly.
3. Adobe flash 9.48 was installed via "yum".
4. Installed Openoffice Writer * Calc.
5. Installed "Grip" for CD Ripping and Encoding to MP3.
6. Enabled MP3 playback by installing "gstreamer-plugins-ugly"
7. Converted AlbumArt DEB package to RPM package and installed for automatic Album Cover Art retrieval. Note: This GPL2 package and the maintainer has disappeared on the net, so if anyone wants the binary package, just ask.
8. Installed "Easytag" for editing ID3 tags on encoded MP3 files.
9. Installed gFtp
10. Installed tsclient with vnc support.
11. Installed Frozen-Bubble!
12. Crossover Office. (Copied over cxoffice and .cxoffice folders and just reinstalled CX6.2,
13. Installed gkrellm, hddtemp, lm_sensors.
14. Installed Thunderbird.
15. Installed & configured "iscan" Epkowa (Epson) Scanner App.
16. Installed "Inkscape".
... Yes there was a lot more!
Useful websites:
===============
http://www.fedorafaq.org
http://fedorasolved.org/post-install-solutions
http://www.fedoraforum.org/
http://www.gagme.com/greg/linux/f8-tips.php
http://www.my-guides.net/en/content/view/91/26/1/4/