[iamroot]

I've just downloaded and burned FC4 onto cds and before upgrading from FC3 to 4, I wanna ask if anyone here has installed FC4 and tried it out. Are there any problems with it? I remember that FC3 sucked quite badly when it first came out and has problems with alot of things like udev and the nvidia drivers.

[danleff]

I installed Fedora Core 4 test 3 on my box a month back, no problems.

Just this morning, i tried the full release of Core 4 and it choked on my second hard drive partitioning scheme and bombed out, stating that hdb5 (one of the partitions on the drive) was busy. It is a reiserfs partition install of SuSE.

I'm trying to decide if I want to wipe the drive and start over. It's interesting that the test version installed with no problems. Nothing has changed on the hard drive.

[iamroot]

Does the nvidia driver work out of the box? I remember it didnt work out for FC3.

[iamroot]

How bout the nvidia driver? I've read some installation guides and apparently installing nvidia drivers in FC4 involves some modprobing and chown. Has anyone tried installing nvidia drivers in FC4 yet?

[Wilhelmus]

I installed FC4 DVD version on Sunday. Only problem was with framebuffering. I have not yet installed drivers for my Geforce.
I am planning to install them with this guide:
http://stanton-finley.net/fedora_core_4_installation_notes.html#nVidia

[iamroot]

Damn. So the nvidia drivers really dont work out-of-the-box with FC4.

[Wilhelmus]

Installed nvidia drivers. No problems so far... *knocks wood*.

[iamroot]

You mean you just installed the driver, changed the config file and it works?

[danleff]

Have not done this in a while. Wilhelmus, do you still have to change to init 3 to do the install? Given the licensing problems with NVIDIA, most distros don't include the drivers as part of the install process. You have to do it after the installation.

Hmm... maybe I'll give it a go in Debian. I just figured out how to install Debian 3.1r0a on the sata drive in my box with kernel 2.6.11. I'm working on a how-to article. Speeds things up quite a bit when compared to regular IDE drives that I have.

I keep coming back to Debian. The new release is great!

[iamroot]

You still need to go to init 3 to do the install. What I was asking was whether any additional hacking is required to get the driver working other than the regular install steps.

Urm. Pardon me for saying this but what makes Debian so good? I like Debian for it's Free Software guidelines and their non-commercial approach but in what way is it better than other distros like Fedora?

[Wilhelmus]

Originally posted by iamroot:

Quote:

You mean you just installed the driver, changed the config file and it works?

Yes. Downloaded, init 3, sh nvidia*.run, edited xorg.conf, modprobe nvidia, init 5.

[danleff]

Originally posted by iamroot:

Quote:

Urm. Pardon me for saying this but what makes Debian so good? I like Debian for it's Free Software guidelines and their non-commercial approach but in what way is it better than other distros like Fedora?

hehe...as one becomes experienced with Linux, you appreciate the stability of Debian. To borrow from a movie quote;

With stability, comes great flexability.

A lot of good distros are based on Debian...Linspire and Knoppix are just two examples.

Debian takes their time with releases, which results in a very stable product. I like the ability to fully customize my installation and add packages easily, as I need them (apt-get).

Most users want a lot of features that work out of the box. They also want the latest, which is not always the best.

Eventually, they want to tinker and add something to their installation. Hence, a good deal of posts here are related to users trying to customize their Mandrake or Fedora installations.

While frequent releases do provide more timely improvement in hardware compatibility and sometimes user friendliness, the expectation is that every piece of hardware out there should work.

My systems are not exotic, so Debian works well.

The more that distros try to customize their products to be more user friendly, the less flexability and choice seems to be a result, with complex fixes being needed.

A lot of good folks here spend hours finding and developing these fixes, which is why we are all here.

[iamroot]

But why Debian? Why not Unbuntu or some other Debian-derived distro that has a secure code base and more up-to-date packages?

[SoulNothing]

Ubuntu is by no means stable compared to debian sarge. Just use sarge and youll know what i mean. I switched from fedora core to debian a while back, and am quite pleased. Debian offers you the ability to use whatever software you want to use bleed edge or a version old but rock solid. Also the package management while there may be some issues is very good and offers a wide range of selection. There are all these other distros based on it, but they will usually make there own pacakges and use the latest stuff. Debian goes through and makes sure each package is very stable, for multiple architectures. However most debian derived distros come from sid, which means the packages arent very stable. It can be one of those tinkeres distro or a easy to use distro. It really just leaves the packages be.
My biggest gripe with ubuntu is that it is more of a debian splinter, than a debian based distro. Meaning the packages do not work well with each other. Debians just one of those distros you should try its a learning experience as well.

Danleff i agree with you though no matter how many other distros i have installed debian is my default.