I’ve pretty much taken a break from Linux for quite a few months now. I did dabble around in Fedora a bit around April, but outside of that I was either playing w/ the iMac I owned briefly or one of the pre-release Windows 7 builds. When  I decided to sell the aforementioned iMac, I decided to purchase a notebook, and I picked a Lenovo Y530 which also turned out to be quite an awesomely compatible Linux machine when tested w/ a Live USB, so I decided to make it my “Linux Box”. But what distro to run? I liked Fedora when I tested out the pre-release builds, but did I like it well enough to live w/ it as a full-time OS? I used to be a die-hard KDE user, but I switched to GNOME around the time of the KDE 4 release – was KDE 4 ready to win be back? These were questions I had to answer. Anyway, here are a few brief “non-review” reviews of a handful of distro’s on my specific machine.

KDE vs. GNOME:

Sorry – I didn’t get around to really testing KDE 4 this time around like I wanted. I did create a Fedora 11 KDE Live USB and I have played around on it a little, as well as a KDE 4.3 Live CD from openSUSE. I think KDE 4 *is* getting “better”, but I think I’m pretty much set in concrete as a GNOME user from now on.

Distros:

Fedora 11:

Fedora actually wound up being the “winner”, and I’m going to do a separate post on Fedora 11, and how I have it set up, but here are a few of the reasons I ended up picking Fedora:

* All of my hardware works
* Large, friendly community
* Rooted in Enterprise Linux (anything I learn in Fedora can be applied to RHEL/CentOS/SL)
* It’s not Debian or Ubuntu (Means nothing other than I can learn a “different” way of doing things)

That’s all I’m gonna hit on for Fedora – I’ll save the rest for the dedicated Fedora 11 post.

PC-BSD:
Wanted to try – never could get the ISO to download – gave up. PC-BSD guys – you should work on getting more mirrors and/or Torrent seeds out there!

Debian Testing/Sid:
Never could get Testing or Sid to install using the businesscard.iso for the testing distro, which is usually how I set these up. Regardless of whatever mirror I would choose, or regardless of if I chose Testing or Unstable, the install would fail at some point during the “Base Install” stage. I’m assuming it’s just where the cycle is at in dev. at the moment. I tried to install Lenny & upgrade, but like Ubuntu Hardy (8.04) I think Lenny is just too old for my hardware as I couldn’t get X to work.

OpenSolaris 2009.06:
This is an interesting OS. I’ll be honest, I never intended on staying with this when I installed it, and I knew I was just playing around from the beginning, but honestly, I *think* I *might* could live with OpenSolaris long term IF I wanted to devote the time to learn a new Operating System, because this isn’t Linux by a long shot Everything did seem to work ok out of the box, and I even got VirtualBox set up and working. Some things I noticed – ZFS LOVES it some RAM – used up almost my entire 4GB of RAM almost instantly, but I guess that’s a good thing since unused RAM is wasted RAM, however the machine got slower, not faster, and seemed to be swapping. Also this has to be the S-L-O-W-E-S-T booting Operating system I’ve ever used!

OpenSUSE 11.1:
I like openSUSE – I like their GNOME implementation, if for no other reason than it’s “different”. They do a great job with making KDE 4 almost usable, and the OS is always stable. However, as much as I “should” like openSUSE, I’ve never been able to get it running stable for more than a couple of days on any machine I’ve ever tried to run it on. I don’t know where the problem lies, but I simply don’t get along with it somehow. I think I end up trying to over-tweak it since it has a butt-load of services and stuff turned on by default, and it is surely the most bloated of the mainstream distro’s. In short, I like it, they have a great community, and it may be a great distro for you – it’s just not for me. Do be sure and check out Suse Studio though – it’s the coolest thing since sliced bread and Velveeta cheese

Ubuntu 9.04:
Man…I don’t even know where to start with this one. It was the last distro I tested, mainly becuase I had the preconcieved notion of it working the “best” and had planned to stay with. I used Ubuntu full time from 5.10 until 7.04 – as of 7.10, things started going downhill for me, and I wonder just what is going on. The community is beyond huge, the distro has come closer to becoming a Mainstream OS than any other Linux distro has (Dell, etc.) yet it seems to get WORSE with every release. Even the “LTS” 8.04 was an utter disaster for many people. Is it a situation where there are simply too many cooks in the kitchen? Is the distro just too big with too many packages and too many volunteers? Is Ubuntu just riding a wave of success and as a whole lost some of it’s drive to take things to the “next level”? I mean they have been talking about a new theme for over a year – since 8.04 – it STILL hasn’t happened – they can’t even decide on a new color scheme – that, to me, speaks volumes on the state of the development process at Ubuntu.

9.04 was very broken for me with my Intel graphics. I’m not getting into that, as it’s very well documented in other places on the web, but there was also something going on w/ brightness and power management. My screen would just randomly get brighter and then dimmer with no warning, and never would go full brightness. I then tried upgrading to the development branch of 9.10 as I heard that fixed many of the Intel issues, and I *thought* I had a stable distro/install and was pretty happy until for no apparent reason my machine just randomly started hard locking. I lived with it a few times, but after that, it was time to move on – and back to the first distro I tried, Fedora 11, which has been awesome. This whole thing disappointed me, as I was pumped up having an “all Intel” machine as I’d always heard that was the sure-fire way to ensure full Linux compatibility. The fact that Ubuntu would release, knowing all too well those Intel regressions were there, JUST to stay on time with their precious little 6mo release cycle is disheartening, and I think I’ll stick with Fedora from now on, as they are always more cutting edge, better with upstream and as leading edge as they are, they aren’t afraid to push a release back if something is broken!

So, there you have it – my brief run through some distro’s in the Summer of ‘09!

The one that works the best for you.

I’ve been experimenting some lately – thinking outside the box. I’ve been trying to analyse the way I interact with my computer, and how it changes depending on what Operating System I am using. (Yes, I’m that much of a Nerd). It does make a difference.

I have 3 bootable OSes on my machine at the moment. Over the past week or so, I’ve not been “suspending” my machine, but rather shutting it down, and I’ve set my BIOS to display a boot menu. I have to consciously decide which OS.

My choices?

Fedora 11 Snapshot

Windows 7 RC

Leopard (Hackintosh/OSX86)

Each OS is very different, and have different interfaces. Which is the best, which is the worst? I don’t think I can answer that. I have come to some conclusions though.

Fedora is very interesting, and I’m constantly learning something, and trying new things. As much as I like it, and enjoy learning more about it, it kinda gets in the way, and I end up treating the OS itself as an application, rather than a platform upon which to run applications.

Windows 7 is new and exciting. It is viewed by many to be the saviour of a large company in the US Pacific Northwest, and fixes many problems owned by it’s predecessor.  As “new and exciting” it is, after a little use, it just becomes “more of the same”. Outside of a few new features, there really isn’t that much exciting after all, and it does what it does well. It can get out of the way, and simply play a supporting role, once you get past the newness.

Leopard, ironically, is the one I end up booting into. I spent most of yesterday in Fedora because of an online “class” being held in IRC involving KVM and libvirtd, but for the most part, since getting a working “Hackintosh’ system going, it’s where I’ve been “living” most of the time. What I’ve noticed about Leopard is that once you get it set up, it just does it’s thing, and you forget that you are running a “OS” and you focus on running your “Applications”, which is what an OS is supposed to do.

The point of this post – it goes back to Linux (as do most of my posts). Historically, Linux has tried to compete with Windows, and win over Windows users. I think this is the biggest mistake. I think Linux should strive to be more in the vein of what the Mac OS can do – run applications, and get out of the way. The first part is the hardest – we need to get “familiar” applications in Linux first. There is a lot shared under the hood between the two OSes (UNIX roots and all), and I don’t think this will be hard to achieve.

Do you agree? Post your comments below.

Be sure to check out the Fedora Classroom Wiki Page for full information and times for the talks scheduled for tomorrow. All classes will be held in IRC in the #fedora-classroom channel on  irc.freenode.net.

I will be attending the “Introduction to libvirt – The virtual machine manager” class by  Kevin Fenzi for sure.

Be sure to check the wiki to see if there is something you are interested in learning more about and drop by!

I’ve been using Presto in Fedora 11 Preview (Rawhide), and it’s absolutely awesome! If you are running Rawhide, simply run yum install yum-presto. You can often save tons of bandwidth as it will download smaller delta RPM’s and rebuild them when running updates…I’ve had some updates reduced by up to 95 megabytes thanks to yum-presto.

I was planning to do a full-fledged post on this today, as I was expecting this to be a part of Fedora 11, but apparently it won’t quite be ready by the time  Fedora 11 is released, but hopefully will by by Fedora 12.

If you are running Rawhide however, be sure to check it out!

No, no, no…

This isn’t some “how-to” post. This isn’t about things I’ve learned about RPM’s, or yum or KVM…nothing like that. This is about things I have learned about what Fedora is about as a project, and what it’s mere existence means to the entire Linux landscape - in fact, I might stretch that even more… This is about why Fedora, along with other Linux distributions is so important to Linux, Computing, the Internet and beyond.

In this post, I will make some profound statements. Many “fanboys” will not agree with some of the things I am going to say, but if you will think outside of your boxes, you might be able to see the whole picture.

Many people say that Linux can never be a viable player on the desktop because there are too many distributions. I don’t think that is a problem, because the way I see it right now there are only three Linux distributions that are not only constantly innovating, but shape the entire face of Linux, and Open Source Software as we know it.

So, what are the three distributions?

• Ubuntu, which brings the Linux desktop to the masses.
• openSUSE, which brings interoperability to Linux.
• Fedora, which brings the best new technology and features of Open Source software to the enthusiast.

Ok, we’ll start with Ubuntu (since it’s probably the most obvious to most people):

Quick Note: I will go ahead and say that although Ubuntu is built upon Debian, it’s not one of the three. I think, personally, that Ubuntu could exist on it’s on without Debian at this point. Ubuntu is no longer a sanitized snapshot of Debian “Unstable” (Sid) as it was in it’s infancy - in fact, aside from sharing a package manager, there is little compatible between the two now…at least from the way I understand things…I could be wrong, however.

There is one very important area that Ubuntu has been very successful, and that is bringing Linux and Free, Open Source software to an entirely new audience. As important as that is, that doesn’t bring new features into the world of Linux. That doesn’t bring new areas of interoperability into the world of Linux, and that does not make Linux as a whole “better” (although it might make it more “popular”). Ubuntu has found it’s niche - it’s single, yet very important role in the entire Linux landscape - make Linux and FOSS popular with the general public, and not just something for us “geeks”. That doesn’t mean that Ubuntu never sends patches or new features “upstream”, because it does. However, most of what goes upstream from Ubuntu are more like refinements of features that were pioneered in the other two distributions I will discuss in this article.

In other words, Ubuntu is a popular Desktop Distribution, it’s releases are usually stable on a wide range of hardware, and make Linux consumable for even inexperienced users. However, in order to achieve this, it has to be somewhat conservative with what new features it includes and releases as part of it’s stable distribution. Ubuntu relies upon other distributions to pave the way, and bring in the major changes. Ubuntu brings new shutdown menus and a notification system. While those are great things to bring to the table, and add a lot to the distribution, it isn’t ground breaking stuff by any means.

Now, what does openSUSE bring to the table? Simple - Interoperability.

Many Linux fanboys got their panties all in a wad back in 2006 when Novell signed a patent agreement with Microsoft. I’m constantly amazed at how much of the Open Source community just puts on blinders and hates Microsoft for no apparent reason other than just hating them. I love OSS, and I love the model, but get real folks, it is SOFTWARE - not a religion. Don’t take things so personally. Microsoft creates and sells Closed Source software, and makes what is quite literally not only the most used desktop Operating System in the world, but the most used Office Suite as well (not to mention all of their many other products). I don’t hate Microsoft, In fact I use their products every day. I use Windows, I use Office - I couldn’t do my job without them (in fact, Windows is a large part of my job as a Network Administrator, since we have mostly Windows servers at work). In fact, I’m even typing this on a Microsoft Keyboard! They make good stuff. They are big, and they are powerful. By signing the patent agreement, Novell has had the ability to innovate in ways other Linux distributions can’t. Many great Open Source projects have come out of Novell: Mono and Moonlight are two very important examples, but also the Novell build of OpenOffice.org is by far the most widely used in all Linux distributions, and I always recommend the Go-oo build to Windows users wanting to try OpenOffice (the Mac-centric NeoOffice is also based on Go-oo as well). Also, just today, HP announced a new line of business laptops available with Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop (or SLED). SLED is by far the closest thing to a true “drop-in” replacement for MS Windows in most business environments, and has excellent interoperability features with Active Directory and Exchange.  These are some examples of what Novell has done.

Now, for the final of the three: Fedora.

Fedora, as you probably know is a community project sponsored by Red Hat. Love it or hate it, Red Hat is the single largest Linux company in the world. I would also say that combined, Red Hat and it’s “child” Fedora, and the “step-child” (I say this because it’s not officially sponsored by Red Hat) CentOS together have the largest installed base out there, especially in the Server/Datacenter space. Many of the most popular sites on the Internet (can you say Facebook anyone) are built on top of a Red Hat based foundation. Even Oracle uses Red Hat as the foundation for it’s “Unbreakable Linux”, and then there is also Scientific Linux (another RHEL “rebuild”) that is popular in the Science and Education market, along with the Fermilab’s own FermiLinux.

Where does all of that start? With Fedora of course. I would venture to say, that no other Linux distribution out there brings more to the table in terms of new features than Fedora. Somehow, Fedora, approximately every 6 months manages to take the absolute most bleeding edge, innovative features that the Open Source world has to offer, and present it in a usable stable form for the enthusiast to use (and love).

Fedora has come a long way since it’s early days. Originally, Fedora was broken into two separate sections: Core and Extras. Fedora Core was the sole domain of Red Hat employee’s and community members were not able to commit to packages that were part of Core, while Extras was the community playground (if you will). Since the two areas have merged back with Fedora 7, the line between the two has become very transparent, and Fedora has blossomed into not only a great desktop system, but has continued to innovate in ways that no other Linux distro has. Fedora is like a showcase of things to come in other distributions. The Fedora project is committed to contributing as much as possible to upstream projects, and ensuring that everyone can benefit from what goes on inside of Fedora. Fedora is built upon a set of Foundations that state that it will remain dedicated to Free Software, Represent the Strength of the Community, while maintaining a Commitment to Excellence and to always staying Innovative. Fedora is a leader where others are followers and by means of the shared power and talent of the community always tries to create and improve free software and content, and is committed to contributing everything it does back to the Open Source community as a whole.

Just to give an example of how far ahead of other distributions Fedora is, compare the “just released” Ubuntu 9.04 with the now 5 month old Fedora 10, and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

So, who uses Fedora? Click the link to find out, and read the rest of the page for even more info about the Fedora project.

As important as each of these three distributions are, none would be complete without features, innovation and talent involved in creating the other two. As a result of the hard work of the developers and communities surrounding these three distributions, we are able to have and enjoy many different Linux distro’s, large and small, general and specified, free and non-free. We have a choice, and that choice, regardless of what distribution you choose is wonderful.

My choice from now on however, is Fedora.

(Thanks to everyone in the Fedora community that has made me feel welcome and taught me a few tricks in the process - you’ve all been great!)

I spent some time in #fedora on Freenode tonight troubleshooting an issue I had in regards to virt-manager not being able to connect to KVM/Qemu. The libvirtd service was running, but virt-manager simply couldn’t connect to the hypervisor.

Apparently, that’s because it wasn’t there. This issue probably wouldn’t affect you if you installed from the “Beta” milestone release, but I installed from a newer snapshot, which means it looks like I shook up a bug. In Fedora 11, the QEMU and KVM RPM’s are being merged, and as a result, the yum group “Virtualization” was still trying to pull in the ‘qemu-kvm’ RPM when it should have been looking for simply “qemu”. Once I figured that out, and did a yum install qemu all was right with the world once again

Here is some further reading on the topic if you would like to do your own research.

https://bugzilla.fedora.us/wiki/Features/KVM_and_QEMU_merge