Fedora Core 6 - The Installation Experience

The installation guide for Fedora Core 6 has a section on downloading and burning the right version of the installer software. It wasn't much help with this, and it was no fault of FC6.

So we'll put aside the gripes I had in actually getting a disk burned in both Windows and Linux. Windows was the first to screw up - it nearly burned my disk properly. I didn't find out until I sat down at the computer to do the install, and then hurriedly tried to download the CD version and burn that from KB3 on my CentOS server (which only has a CD chugger, it cant cook DVDs). This second problem wasn't even down to the OS - the site I'd been downloading from decided it was going to terminate the 650Mb download of each disk when they're 9% complete (about 55Mb of the way in). I have a DVD burner in my laptop (the target computer) but I'd changed the hard disk over ready for the install... So, I change it back, boot up FC5, kick off the download of the DVD, go to bed, get up in the morning, kick off a DVD disk burn, go to work, get home and finally, finally, get to run the installer.

So, at long last, we're now able to look at the operating system.

For anyone who's already familiar with Fedora Core and RedHat installations, the installer for this distribution will come with no surprises. Personally, I was pleased that they'd tarted it up a bit, the whole thing is becoming much more polished these days - and it was good before. The installer is a bit of a breeze; the operating system goes on with little fuss, if anyone has ever had to re-install Windows XP, they'll know what a pain in the ass it can be - and then you've got to download drivers from all over the place because you cant find your original install disks that came with the computer (well I do - so I'm assuming that others suffer the same fate). There is a glitch in the FC6 install for me though. This new version offers the chance to enhance one's install by referring to extra software repositories on the internet at install time. Wow. Except that when I clicked on the 'fedora-extras' tickbox, it crashed the installer. So I didn't even bother adding anyone else, such as Livna or Dag.

The install went particularly quickly; I was impressed. Last time I installed Windows it took me about 3 hours, this took less than half an hour (although I did just pick the option for office productivity, and a few extra apps from the list - but I'm an advanced user, I'll add Kaffeine later...)

Now on to system startup. Changes from FC5? Well during boot up it still cant allocate memory resource for the card reader on my HP laptop! No big loss, it doesn't have a slot for SD cards anyway, and my USB reader works a treat (note, that the card reader does work from Windows, but I never ever use it...). The bootup mechanism is quite a bit quicker. In default install mode there are way too many services started in the background, and it still manages to boot up quicker than FC5. That was quite impressive. Oh, and theres a nice new font on the loadup screen, which is a welcome improvement.

The login screen is a spiffy new layout, this is one I've not seen before. I'll get bored with it before the week is out - but this is Linux so it's easy to change. Logging in is easy - first time logins are a bit slow, but it's creating the home directory contents to drive (in this case) Gnome; I've not yet tried KDE. Personally, I prefer KDE, because it's always been nicer, but I find myself using Gnome more - it just seems easier to find stuff, perhaps the more boring and less obtrusive the desktop, the better it is for such stuff.

Next I'm on to configuring the system. First up, getting all the available updates. I know how to do this, open a terminal, su to root, run 'yum -y update' and go make coffee... Only on this occasion it says 'yum is already running' or something along those lines. My first assumption is that it's running updates in the background. Nope, wrong. It is running in the background but it's not actually doing anything useful (or quickly). It's checking for updates, after five minutes or so, it pops up a box saying there are 79 updates available. I open the tool from this pop-up box and it lists them for me. Now the fun starts, and I dont even have my coffee yet.

First time through the update tool, I just try to run them all. Then I get a message saying that it cant download headers for one of the packages. OK, deselect the package and try again. Another one, different package this time. OK, I've been here before. I remember FC2, where my /var was too small to download all the updates available after a new install, so I did them bit by bit by hand. Only now this new update tools doesn't let you select or deselect all, or select by dragging or select bunches of them, it lets you hightlight one and tick or untick its box. So I untick my way to the bottom and select the top few packages and get them installed, then the box closes. Despite there being more updates available, the box is bloody gone. That's not very helpful. I cant even re-open it, 'cos it's off in the background checking for more updates... It's not often I'm critical of a Linux system, but here I really cant see why it operates this way. It builds in frustration to an extent that I'd think this software came out of Redmond. The update tool ('pup' I think it's called) is clearly a new bit of kit, and needs work. So I turn it off, stop the backround yum process, add the Livna repository from the command line (it's a one-liner) and go get kyum... Life is now more manageable, but it still cant satisfy some dependencies for a couple of the packages (kde-base is one), so those updates will have to wait. At least I got a coffee this time.

Now on to setting my stuff up the way I want it. While waiting for the updates to appear (and I'll be honest - the updates were significantly faster than they ever were with FC5) I managed to turn the font size down. The laptop has a 1280x800 display - I dont see why that means we have to suffer a font that only lets me have three characters across the screen at any one time...

I set up my wireless connection. I had all sorts of problems with NetworkManager on FC5 - it would involuntarily decide to jump networks, close the wireless connection altogether and attempt to spanner my wired connection. It wouldn't just do this all the time... It would wait until the most comically appropriate moment, such as when I'm about to send an email to my boss explaining why I would be late into work, or when I was 95% of the way through downloading the latest OpenOffice updates. Oh, and it only worked while I was logged in through the X terminal, too, so it was completely useless. I hand cranked wpa_supplicant, and that worked a treat. The same cannot be said for FC6, however. I got the broadcom BCWL5 driver, used the bc54xx-fwcutter tool to strip the firmware out of it, bunged the firmware into /lib/firmware, and fired up the driver. With wpa_supplicant running in the background it kicked up, the wireless connected and it was all peachy. For about ten minutes. Then it stopped working. It's not worked since, and I spent most of the rest of the evening trying to make it work. Bugger.

Time for bed rolled round, so I switched once more to wired network, downloaded kaffeine, and shut it all down. I took it up to bed, plugged in my DVB-T usb box and started the laptop up. Unlike FC5, however, and despite having a 2.6.18-summat kernel, there is no support for my TV device. I bet I need some kind of module to enable it - but I cant check 'cos the wireless lan doesn't work, and I've no network cable up here. So no telly tonight then. I turned the computer off; this seemed to cheer the missus up.

What's left to do then? Well the wireless isn't working properly, so that needs doing - it's probably highest priority. Nothing else will be tricky - the word processor is installed, the tv dongle will work after getting the right module 'yummed' onto the system, all the peripherals work (except the card reader... which I care not at all about). Oh, and the Livna nvidia drivers dont work yet - some sort of GLX problem. Without that I cant play games; and that, my friends, is what computers are really all about.