My two cents
Dave Gutteridge wrote:
Thank you for your responses. It's nice to get a little support, both
technical and in the form of a little encouragement.
Some specific responses.
Was this as clean install?
I would define it as "clean", yes. I did not upgrade of take over any
older versions of Linux. I created a new partition and installed
fresh. The machine dual boots with WinXP, which I hate and would like
to stop using. But can I...?
You can if you're not big into games or pro multimedia
You can mount them but cannot copy from them!!?
So it would seem. Experimentation has taught me that I can put a
CD-ROM in and it will read fine. And I can burn both DVDs and CD-ROMs.
But, if I put a DVD in any of my internal drives, it spins and spins
and usually just gets stuck in there. Sometimes I have to force an
eject by inserting a pin into the small manual eject hole. Other times
it comes up, but if I copy things, it goes super slow (the copy window
says over an hour to copy) and then fail.
The external driver always mounts DVDs just fine. But it has the same
slow down then die problem if I actually try to copy data from it.
When was the last time you did a `yum update` (to update the entire OS)
if not, get to a terminal and type in 'yum -y update'
config-system-packages? Very strange. What error are you getting?
Someone else on this thread said that config-system-package shouldn't
work after the first install. And other people said it's just fine. In
any case, I'm not sure if we're talking about config-system-packages.
I'm talking about the Add/Remove Packages that is available in the
Desktop menu, and has a GUI. Surely *that* should work after the first
install. Otherwise why have a GUI for it?
This thing didn't work for me in FC2 or FC3. I didn't even bother in
FC4. If you want a gui to manage your packages, I suggest you install
Yumex. To do so, as root run `yum install yumex`
Does the sound card otherwise work?
I have an external USB Kenwood stereo system that works great. I can
play MP3s, AVIs in Xine, and system sounds come up fine. The only
place I have noticed sound not happening is when something gets
launched from Firefox, mainly Flash.
What desktop environment are you using?
Which app?
Gnome Pilot. I have to admit, I didn't have high hopes for getting my
Palm Pilot to work under Linux, so I didn't crack my head against this
problem too long. I'm more concerned about getting my DVD drives
working and my Tablet configured.
How did you add ntfs support?
http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/rpm/fedora4.html
Worked great when I first installed, and for the first few reboots. In
fact, it was the one RPM that went completely problem free and as the
installation instructions said it would.
And then one day I notice the NTFS partition didn't mount, and no
longer auto-mounts at boot, despite me not having configured anything...
What were you running before? How about trying a multi-boot environment
with a more stable version such as FC3 or CentOS4, and leave the FC4
stuff to age a bit before giving up entirely.
In another thread I was lead to understand that there was "no
downgrade path" to FC3. I would assume that switching to any other
Linux distro at this point would mean wiping things out and a new
fresh install. This may sound like I'm just whining, but at this point
if I have to wipe things out, back them up, and do the whole thing
over again, I think I'll probably just give the partition back over to
Windows. I mean, I'm really rooting for Linux here, but I'm not sure
if I'm rooting for it enough to keep installing the OS until I get it
right. Is that unreasonable of me?
Like something or not, you have to know when to give it up. Even then I
can't actively support a switch to Windows. But if all these problems
are making you really unproductive, you might as well stick with Windows
till FC5, or try a paid for desktop ditro.
That is an oxymoron. Hard core computer users are not deterred by new
software distributions. They live for the challenge of breaking in a
new distro.
I think you misread me. That's exactly what I mean. I am *not* a hard
core computer user. I'm sort of "medium-core". So therefore I do not
want to break in new distros. I'm contemplating throwing in the towel
and leaving the new distros for people who have cores that are more
hard than mine.
As I suggested, if you're taking that much of a beating, try a distro
specifically made for users like yourself.
On the other hand, a rational computer user would install FC3. There
is less anguish. You benefit from the suffering of other early
adopters. And with the delayed release of FC5 there is the added
bonus of getting Fedora Core software support for a longer time span
than any of the releases to date.
This is the part that threw me. I don't get this system of numbering
for FC releases. People talk about this like it's normal or something,
and maybe it is and it's the way software companies like Adobe and MS
that are doing it wrong, but I would have thought that version 4 would
replace and be better than version 3, which would be better than
version 2... By "better" I just mean bugs and issues in the previous
release are fixed, and if there are new bugs, they are a part of new
features. If FC4 had the words "beta" or something to indicate that it
was *less* stable than FC3, I would have gone with FC3. How was I
supposed to know that FC4 was the least stable version? As I wrote
this, I rechecked the web site, and I didn't see anything that clearly
states "this is less stable than FC3". It seems to indicate that FC4
is a wonderful thing and it's the one you want if you're making a
fresh install of FC.
Well you kinda did. I suggest you read Fedora's mission statement
http://fedora.redhat.com
Dave
