For last 7 days or so, I was unseen. I got fed up with Fedora. It simply started doing things I really didnt like. I was really waiting for Fedora 7, to have Fedora Server, Fedora Desktop – Gnome and Fedora KDE. But it was too agonizing to wait, and I predict that Fedora KDE version is going to be bad incredibly buggy.
RedHat, come up with RPM, so get used to dependency hell. However yum is amazing, but it was really going on my nerves with its respos. Fedora came up with Gnome, so KDE is really … talking about Gnome and KDE. Some of the Fedora anaconda (installer) algorythms are just … weird. In case you dont customize the package selection right away, you’ll get Gnome desktop. In case you installed both KDE and Gnome, and you decide to remove Gnome, yea I really wanna see the look on the face after you do this.
Same goes for, if you include Xen virtualization, your kernel source is just going to be … not there. Going wider with anaconda algorithms is development. Wormux would compile and work normally, while other time with all development tools installed, after compiling it would just go wrong, give me weird “breakouts”. That is it was really playing “bingo” when it’s going to compile normally and when it’s not.
After fixing libata problem, I found a new problem. On alsa, when you pause your song on amarok, go hibernate, “wake up” you would have sound. I figured out how to do a fix, but dont touch kernel, and dont touch alsasound as a script o_O
Kernel is kind of bloated, Java is a story itself … here is a really Fedora way to install and setup Java.
To me that is really funny, placing it normally to /usr/java will … ok. After you do the symbolic link to place it into Firefox, Konqi etc… which is normal to implemnt Java plugin into your Firefox. Azureus, would work, it would say there’s no Java. Or Java jars would load. LimeWire? It wouldt install saying its dependencie is Java. If you intsalled it with rpm -i –nodeps it would work.
Besides all that, Fedora is pretty good. On desktop it’s perfect. Berly however, after using it for almost a month got annoying as hell. 0.20 being late, which is ought to fix major bugs, was 2 days long. Berly, it would crash, not on daily basis, but it actually can lead to completely X break.
Alsa Fedora is also responsible for ext3, and even more interesting, during install you could only choose between ext2 and ext3 … This is also what I didnt like about Gentoo. Choice is the most important thing for me, on Gentoo you had a choice, but ext3 was still recommended.
It was time, for something something else. I translated Fedora a lot, put it up from I dont know what place to number 15 on the overall list.
And then it happened. Someone said go to Gentoo, which I did. My opinion on Gentoo was that it was too wierd, but very interesting. Then it started, I started installing it from the from console, first I didnt rely on it’s handbook, and had to do it all over again and follow the handbook. Which is awesome. However, I also messed up choosing reiserFS instead of ext3, so I had to do it from the begining again. Once you mess up during install, restart the whole installation process.
I left it for the morning and went to bed, finishing half of the installation or so. Woke up, continued with install. To be honest, whole console situation suprised me, install was very interesting … and I dont know how to describe it better then it was actually producing butterflies inside of my belly. But, by the time I was on somewhat 90% of installation process, I really got tired of it and I didnt even boot in the distro. What got me tired is pretty much, that you were really doing everything from the scratch.
And best words to describe it all would be, that it remainded me of LFS … Finally finished installation, spend more then 24hours tweaking and installing it. Finished installation, wanted to boot X, it wouldnt boot … made X boot. Now the interesting part, it was fast, but then emerge kicked in. To get OpenOffice, I would compile what? Days. Anything I wanted it would compile, I would often forget even what I was doing. And sometimes I would really like things that take enormous amounts of time to compile, to just install from the package within few minutes.
Too time consuming, emerge idea is very very interesting, but way whole distro is done, read besides emerge part is just … plain, bad. Since Gentoo, is certainly not something you should avoid, I’ll just say this distro isnt for my choice.
Then Fedora vs Slackware kicked in. I couldnt even remember how to solve my libata problem on Slackware, I know what I needed to do but I forgot a large part. Other things were weird too, and it all came with compile your own kernel or die flavour. Then I would install Fedora back, saying that I’m definetely staying on it. But after Fedora would do some of the mentioned problems, I would just get back on Slackware. Lack of sleep, lack of everything pretty much, but I simply couldnt remain satisfied on Fedora. Or Slackware.
Until yesterday, after 7 days of just install/remove, and then it hit me, after I saw what would Fedora KDE look like, and that you were literally unabled to fix problem for upcoming Fedora KDE version … just made me really sad.
Then I installed Slackware, saying myself that this time I’m really going to make it work. I said good bye to Beryl, to all the fancy things, to yum, to that awesome desktop linux solution.
Slackware, is the one of the most ugliest (IMO) distros out there. Because it’s just so raw, but that old school hardcore look provides you butterflies. “smps” helped me solve my libata problem (part I simply completely forgot about) I compiled rest of the things as I want it. Didnt even do anything on the looks, except doing gtk-qt-engine. Tonight while I was out, thought that I’ll play on my Slackware really made me happy.
I thought this time I would leave Slackware for good with Fedora (after Mandriva), it wasnt successful. None of the distros is perfect, but Slackware is my choice for the linux computing. This time I’m really giving up on looking for better, because I’m already using the best.
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