Fedora Core 4 reviews?

Well, it seems faster. And the new Firefox with the mplayer plugins is great too.

Other than that it is not very much different.

New ooffice is something that I still have to try.

Go to fedoraforum.org and check out the HOW-TO section. There is a yum how-to all and at the bottom of the first post are the new FC4 repos.

ughh....eww....FC. never installing that crap ever again. Bring me debian

Have you even tried FC4? I hate all the stupid SuSe and Debian whiners... all they do is bitch bitch bitch just because Red Hat is the top dog. Debian.... bah... at least it isn't SCO Linux.

Have you checked DistroWAtch lately? Ubuntu is #1 by a long run, a very very long run. I tried FC2 and FC3 and neither of them could do sh*t out of the box. Hell, they even failed to boot right 5 out of 6 times, there would always be an issue. As always, FC is bloaded like a mutha, which in turn makes it much much slower than it needs to be. Then we have RPM....although they finally came up with a way to make up for the lack of apt-get, they are only posers, Debian did it first, they did it right. Then they also uglify gnome beyond recognition, just stock untouched gnome is so much EASIER to look at and use. I can keep going.....but I won't want to shame you even more.

I tried ubuntu, and FC4 detected my laptop hardware better than ubuntu did. I liked ubuntu, but I run FC4 right now. I started out with redhat 6 so i'm familiar with the redhat line, and I just personally prefer fc4.

Before anyone bitches at me, i'm running a debian net install on another PC, and I also prefer APT to yum, especially synaptic over yum-extender.

Rawr, sorry abf, I hate to be a bitch, but that comment about "stock, untouched gnome" just irks me. Every distro customizes gnome, including ubuntu.

Check out:
http://udu.wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopArtwork

It has all their plans for customizing the gnome desktop for breezy, including customizing and using the clearlooks theme (which FC4 also uses).

But dont get me wrong, I love ubuntu, i love the whole idea, and as soon as some issues are fixed, im heading straight back to it. I also prefer the ubuntu theme and stylings to FC4's.

/end rant

i know ubuntu edits gnome....but they don't CHANGE the basic structure and appearance. that is waht i meant. like if you go from Debian with generic gnome --> ubuntu, you'll be fine. going from generic debian gnome ---> RH....kill me now

Redhat/fedora has always done me well. I have used suse and debian and others and I almost always had to upgrade lib file's where as I always had the right ones with redhat/fedora.

Really, in the end, all most of them are doing is collecting the open source code and tweaking it to fit their image. They do add utility in the sense of ease of loading but for the most part its all share ware.

The kernel for Suse and the kernel for Redhat are basicly the same thing but with Redhat I had less problems with adding other share ware. Other people have probably had different experiences but for me redhat has always been the sure fire way to get a linux box running.

I don't have problems with any of them. I prefer SUSE just because you can sort of tell that there was a lot of Unix experience behind the creation of it. Both SUSE and Red Hat do their own special things with the kernel.. they usually are very different in certain areas.

I deploy SUSE just because it's easier for people to administrate it. Very few surprises. Many things are setup in logical ways. Red Hat always seemed a bit "cowboy" to me.. but good for people that like reading instructions and performing a lot of manual steps. But if I'm going to have to do that, I'd rather use a Debian derivative (Ubuntu?... maybe that's a bad example since it strives to be very managed).

Hard to lose with any of them. If SUSE went away tomorrow and I had to use Red Hat, that's ok.. I can deal with it (with some pain of course). Anyone who has used both in the enterprise can testify that Red Hat is the Sun of Linux... that is, it's popular, but really doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles (things that make you say.. "wow, that was smart!" or "hey, now that's a good idea!").

RH has always been pretty basic in construction. Suse on the other hand has a lot of pretty cool stuff (Yast for instance) that just make it more workable. On the other hand, all this "cool stuff" makes it slow like no other, especially under Gnome (granted its a KDE-centric distro). A big turn off from both of them for me is the 4/5 cd install. I am sorry but I don't have the time to download 4 ISO files. I just wantt to do 1 (2 at the most) and be done with it. I would rather download the stuff I need from the net when the config is done than have a million packages on the CDs I will never use. Another big turn off si that they are both RPM. I know that lately RPM distros have been making up for the lack, but not all of them just yet. Of course I am talking about the ability to install a piece of software and all its dependancies with 1 command, or 2 clicks of a button much like Gentoo's Portage or Debian's APT.

FC uses yum, which is basically a carbon copy of apt and works just as well, IMO. However, it doesnt have any good gui frontends like apt/synaptic, making it lacking in the visual department, otherwise the dependency hell isue has been fixed.

read my comment carefully, i did say that RPM based distros are starting to make up for the lack of apt, yum being the answer in FC, they are just not all the way there yet.

I guess Im old school but I still config/make/install most of my apps after I have gotten the basic OS setup the way I want it.

I like knowing that the applications are compiled specifically for my system.

One of the main reasons I like Redhat/Fedora is how easy it is to do a basic build.

I just started using FD4 a couple of days ago and I must say I like it a lot. Im not a huge linux person, I basically play around with it an a spare box. But I like the Gnome interface of FD4 over the KDE because its more mac-like in my eyes, and I hope to soon buy a powerbook! Now before someone flames me for liking FD4/Gnome, I have not used any other linux distro besides Mandrake10/KDE so right now FD4 is about all the linux I know.

It seems easier to install stuff on it than the other Fedora cores, right now I am trying to get TV Tuner card working and it just isn't happening, but from what I have read its been hard on FD4 anf hauppage anyway. I also started playing with the Turbo Print driers for my ip4000 printer and the crossover office software, both make everything almost automated. Both went into FD4 right the first time too!

I must say though it was a little tricky at first to get MP3 support into the built in apps, but I got it. And I am also kind of at a loss as to how to get some of the software to install correctly sometimes. As someone said before, most of the good stuff out there is manually compiled in fedora and even though I am following the steps, I still haven't got it to work. But practice makes perfect, and at least I am having fun.

For anyone using Gnome under FD4, is the mac interface pretty much the same at where the programs list is, utilities, ans the shut down stuff? Never had a chance to really go through a mac, But I like how most of the stuff in linux is a mouse over away instead of multiple clicks in windows. And no memroy leakage!

As soon as this semester ends I am going to ghost my 700m and try FD4 on it. The main thing stopping me now is that I need access to Microsoft and Adobe programs that are required for class. As soon as the crossover office is compatible with the new office and adobe CS2 I am linux all the way on my desktop!

Thank you for taking the time to read the postings of a linux noobie, But we all have to start sometime, eh?

just so you know, you can always dual boot something like i do on my laptop. i have 14gb windows, 1gb swap and everything else linux (ubuntu hoary + kde + fluxbox) and thats on a 60gb hard drive. works out pretty well. use linux for everything and windows for gaming

in order to appease you in the fact that i might speak unjustly by talking from my bad experience with FC2, FC3, and RH8, i am downloading the FC4 x86-64 isos right now and will give it a run over the next week or so. If in deed it works and looks great, maybe I will even keep it, but if it doesn't, i shall write a post here with my little review, or rather a list of all the things that didn't work right and other things that piss me off about it. At any rate, its anybodys game.