Ubuntu Versus Fedora

[Syrinx]

My ancient computer finally bit the dust a few days ago. I've got a "new" one now, and want to install a Linux distribution. (I put "new" in quotes because it's not the latest and greatest, but much better than what I had become accustomed to. It's a Pentium 4, 2.4 GHz, with 512 megs of DDR. I think I will upgrade to 2 gigs pretty soon.)

I can't get broadband, except for satellite, where I live. I'm planning to go over to a friend's house Friday night and download a distribution. I'm thinking of either the new version of Fedora that comes out today, or Feisty Fawn from Ubuntu.

Would Ubuntu even be installable on a dialup machine? If I understand correctly, most of the applications are installed over the 'net. Would this be feasible with only a dialup connection at home?

On the other hand, I could download the Fedora iso's, at my friend's house, burn them and install from those.

I would be interested in hearing opinions of this particular situation, as well as on these flavors of Linux, and any others that you care to mention.

Thanks!

[SKKY]

1. You do have a bit of a dilemma there, huh?

I would download the Ubuntu iso and install it at your friends house (will he/she be so accommodating?). Then, using this guide as a reference (http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Feisty), install all the major programs you'll want anyway (i.e. Flash, Java, Real Player, Adobe, etc). After you've got your programs installed and are pretty happy with your set up, do a "sudo apt-get update" and "sudo apt-get upgrade" to make sure you have the latest patches and updates. It may take a while, say 5-6 hours or so, but in the end, I think you'll be much happier with Ubuntu than Fedora. One more important note, make sure your modem is supported. I've had issues in the past with the modem on my laptop and desktop, so double check the model and make sure it's got drivers available. Either way, good luck, and keep us posted on how it goes.

[Syrinx]

2. thanks for the advice

That link looks like some good stuff. Thanks!

[longship]

3. No Contest here. Ubuntu wins easily.

There are several reasons--all good--for preferring Ubuntu over Fedora.

Ubuntu uses the Debian cutting edge repository. This has two huge advantages over Fedora. First, the Debian package tools are far-far superior to RPM. If you are new to Linux you'll not have had to experience the dreaded "RPM HELL" where multiple, mutually exclusive updates are trying to load simultaneously. Debian packaging is more robust and has nearly no aberrations like that. Second, Ubuntu has a wonderful dev team which keeps the packages clean and mean. This means that you're going to get the latest releases with Ubuntu and have few problems.

Good luck to you.

[Syrinx]

5. thanks!

I've actually been using (mostly) Linux for about eight years. I've used Linux From Scratch for the most part, but that had become very frustrating.

I didn't make it over to my friend's house last Friday night. I just decided to bite the bullet and download the iso over dialup. It only took about forty-five hours. :)

I've got a question. What's the difference between the "Add/Remove" application and the Synaptic Package Manager?

So far, I think I'm pretty happy with Ubuntu. The biggest mistake I've made with it so far is accidentally deleting three mp3 albums. I copied them over to the cd/dvd write thing in Nautilus and thinking that they had been physically moved somewhere, deleted the originals before I had burned the disc. I guess I was looking at some symbolic links there. :(

I'm loving the package management thing. It's made it so easy to include gtk AND kde programs on the same system, even on dialup.

I'm wondering which video player you prefer. Totem is the default one, which is surprising to me. I had never heard of that one and expected mplayer to be the standard.

As soon as I increase my ram to at least a gig, replace the junky onboard graphics, get an LCD monitor, increase my hard-disk capacity to at least half a terabyte, and figure out someway to get broadband, I think I'll be quite pleased with my setup. ;)

Thanks for checking in!

[JPettus]

11. Some Ubuntu thoughts

I prefer movieplayer or mplayer to Totem. I have far fewer problems playing whatever I want to play with it. Totem plays most of what I want to view but sometimes I find I have to switch in order to watch something that isn't working with it. (Probably a codec issue but haven't really delved into it since there are other alternatives that work even better.)

As for Add/Remove versus Synaptic, I like the ability to scroll through and read the descriptions and ratings on programs in Add/Remove but if you have a program problem where some files interact badly with others already installed, Add/Remove gives you too little information about which program. If you go to Synaptic Package Manager, it has less information or ratings to help you decide, so you make some of your decisions more in a vacuum if you haven't already researched them, but Synaptic will tell you precisely what programs play badly with others, and which others.

I tend to mostly run Add/Remove (which I think is a series of scripts using "apt-get") and use Synaptic for Problem diagnosis.

One thing about using Ubuntu on an older machine. The full featured desktops like Gnome and KDE as well as Open Office that are featured in Feisty and Gutsy can be pretty resource intensive. If you find it's running very slow you may want to look at installing Xubuntu instead. It's designed for the older, less resource-capable machines, features lower overhead applications and plays pretty well out of the box as well. It should run considerably faster for you.

[Occulus]

13. I guess I'm special, or cursed, or something

I could not figure out how to do even the most basic of operations with Ubuntu. Wait, I'll explain.

My primary monitor is also my HDTV. This presents unique problems when dealing with every flavor of linux I've ever tried; I've not been able to find or make a modeline for my TV that allows true 1280x720 or 1920x1080 resolution; my Gnome/KDE desktop (Fedora, and why in a moment) sits at 1280x800, and it's not "true" 1280x800 visually. I get a one-inch black border all the way around the screen, with my TV set to "stretched" instead of "16:9". I should make note, I'm using a DVI out -> HDMI in conversion cable from my PC to my TV. There is a PC video port on the TV as well, but I haven't yet used it.

Xorg seems to care very little for this setup. In Ubuntu's case, the GUI wouldn't load at all, but for some reason, there's no default root account, so I couldn't get away from the locked, black screen, even with a CTRL-Fkey combination. Booting directly into text mode was no help at all; I couldn't see anything I was typing, nor a good deal of the output, due to the TV's massive overscan when displaying pure text at a console.

Fedora is the only distro I've been able to get xorg to work properly (I'd very much like to know why). Even at that, as I mentioned above, I still have an inch (now that I look closely, it's more line 1 1/8") of underscan, though, and I don't think I can fix that without writing a custom modeline. I could learn how to do that, but it's just not that critical.

Please understand, I'm not really complaining about Ubuntu, as this appears to be an xorg issue. I'm just saying that under my special configuration- and I have a suspicion, based on my searches for solutions, that this is true for a lot of HDTVs displaying linux running xorg, not just mine- I couldn't properly configure it. Maybe if I installed the OS using a regular monitor first, and then manually set my resolution in xorg.conf before connecting my TV, I'd be able to run the OS, but if it resets the resolution automatically, I'm still hosed. I've heard great things about Ubuntu, and I'd love to give it a shot, but I have a feeling it really just doesn't like the twiddling I'm doing with the display.

[JPettus]

16. The root account is disabled by default in Ubuntu

To enable it, you simply need to use the passwd command to change the password for root and then it will enable the account.

[SecularMotion]

4. A vote for Fedora

I just installed Fedora 7 - I've been using Fedora since 3. I tried Ubuntu & Xandros - each have unique features and they might be better for someone migrating from Windoze but overall I'm just more comfortable using Fedora w/Gnome as my desktop. Here's a link to a very thorough tutorial.

http://www.howtoforge.com/the_perfect_desktop_fedora7

[Syrinx]

6. thanks for the link

Red Hat was my very first taste of Linux. I think it was version 6.0, might have been 6.2.

Linux was really buggy back then. Well not so much Linux, but Gnome and KDE were.

I've been a Linux "hobbyist" for quite some time, but there comes a time when I just want to get my tasks accompished! Know what I mean? I think the OS has achieved that for real now, if my brief time over recent days using Windows XP is any indication. I found XP frustrating as hell to use. But I managed to download Ubuntu with it, so I'll cut it some slack. :)

[CK_John]

7. I got an ActionTec 56k external (serial) modem on eBay for $8, Ubuntu 6.06 no prob. n/t

[hunter]

14. Venturing into Windows XP has become utterly loathsome to me.

I used to be sort of indifferent about it, but now it feels like a stagnant pond to me, with dead fish floating on top. Even when Microsoft dyes the water blue and rakes out most of the visible cruft and dead fish, it's still yucky.

The first serious (not 8-bit Atari or Apple) OS I used was Unix, so when I started using Debian instead of Windows it was like coming home again.

Ubuntu or Debian are the operating systems I prefer now, and I don't expect that will change anytime soon, if ever.

[RoyGBiv]

15. Same experience ...

I used Unix in high school 'cause all the computer nuts would go down to the local college and use their systems to hack away at stuff. "Hack" in the traditional sense. We had Apples at school and would mess with BASIC of course, but that was just annoying really.

The first version of Windoze I was forced to use extensively was 95, and I still remember the first thought I had when I sat down in front of it. "Well this is a pile of crap." And then I went about my search for all the command line tools I'd used for a few brief months with 3.1 before the so-called upgrade. (Got the job where I was forced to use this about 3 months before 95 came out.) On 3.1, the only time I even used the windowing system was when net browsing or some such thing. Everything else I did from DOS because it was faster, easier, and it didn't crash on me half the time. Been through every incarnation since, and I've hated all of them. I'd prefer DOS if that were the only other option. Back in the day when FidoNet forums were the way to communicate in discussions if you didn't have easy Usenet access, there was a DOS based FidoNet reader called Bluewave that was just cool. No "Windows" equivalent ever came close to measuring up, and then Windows 2000 broke it completely ... not that there's much demand for FidoNet clients anymore.

I'm fairly accustomed to XP and use it at work, but I installed Cygwin on it the moment I was able to corner an IT admin and brow beat him until he got so sick of me he just gave me admin permissions so I'd leave him alone. I don't *like* Windows and never have. I'm called prejudiced, but there's no "pre" to it.

When I converted to Linux at home, I finally felt comfortable again. I still use Windows for games and other odd things, but I find myself not even wanting to play the games because I don't want to bother booting Windows. Since my troubles with NVidia drivers began on my Windows partition, it's gotten worse, and I'm not sure I'll ever get the motivation to fix it on this machine. Some basic part of me that wants to "solve the problem" no matter what the evironment is being pulled by the issue, but even that guy has thought of half a dozen other projects that would be more interesting because they don't require us to deal with MS.

[JPettus]

17. Same here

I started off with Windows 3.1 and DOS and preferred DOS. The command line made sense to me. I finally made the switch to Linux after installing Ubuntu for the first time after spending a year or more installing and removing multiple other distros and just prefer it to even XP, which I consider the only halfway decent GUI OS that M$ ever came out with.

Now I have to make the switch back to Vista for a couple of reasons. Just got the wife a new laptop that came with Vista so I know I will be doing tech calls with her on it. (I'm currently working in Afghanistan while she's still back in the States). Also, while I have the webcam working in Linux now, the newest versions of Yahoo won't work with the Kopete webcam requests. When I send an invite for her to view my cam, she gets a message that I invited her but I am using an older version of Yahoo and need to upgrade to the newest version in order to work.

So, at least for the next few months I'm back in Windoze hell. At least we can use the cams and enjoy seeing each other regularly.

[RoyGBiv]

18. Have you tried Pidgin?

Formerly Gaim?

I don't use a webcam, so I dunno if it would work any better or not, just curious.

http://pidgin.im/

I'm going to be forced to deal with Vista for similar reasons. A friend just got a new laptop that came pre-loaded with Vista. She's already having problems figuring stuff out, so I guess I'll have to sit down with it and play some to see if it can be forced to submit.

[JPettus]

19. Pidgin is what I normally use

But it doesn't support webcam.

And,the wife wants to see my smiling face. I may go back and look at aMSN again but I don't know if it supports yahoo IM's and the wife won't want to change to MSN when she can ask me just to boot to Vista (and she's also running Vista).

[landdaddy]

8. Just installed Ubuntu Feisty Fawn x86_64

and as NooB I've got a lot to learn but I like it so far. Should you ever need large software packages and only have dialup or Satellite, like myself, I found a great service called On-Disk that downloads, burns and ships to you for a small fee. I bought 4 disks (various Linux flavors), had 'em in 4 days and cost me $22.64 ttl. Check 'em out: http://on-disk.com/index.php .

[Syrinx]

9. thanks for the tip

I had heard of places to get cheap distros and such before, but had not heard of a service quite like that. I wish I had thought of it myself. ;)

[mainegreen]

10. In my experience I prefer to use Ubuntu, but found the installer for Fedora to be better.

Ubuntu's installer failed (both the normal and the alternate installer) on about 50% of the hardware I've tried.
I've never had a failure installing Fedora.
But, if you can get it installed, Ubuntu is nice.
:shrug:

[JPettus]

12. I agree with that

Though for me, I thought the nicest thing about the Fedora install was that it's partition guide was a bit more intuitive than Ubuntu's. Fedora's will give you the option to use the existing Linux partitions to reinstall over while Ubuntu's made me choose between using the whole drive or going into the setup and manually setting up my own partitions. I'm ok with it but someone less techie might struggle and when first getting into Linux I didn't know as much about what partitions the OS needs and how to set them up as I do now. (I have to dual boot for the time being since I installed Vista to learn more about it so I can support it with others.)

Otherwise, I thought the Ubuntu installation was actually easier.