I've recently updated several computers to Fedora Core 1. Having ran it for a week on my main workstation (a Compaq Evo N800c laptop), I have to say I'm quite satisfied with it.

At first, I was a bit hesitant to make the upgrade, as it seemed like quite an invasive operation. However, the process went quite smoothly, even though I did it as an "apt-get upgrade" instead of with a CD-ROM upgrade (on all three machines). This despite the fact that my workstation in particular has a lot of third party packages installed as well.

I had already earlier replaced RH9's GNOME 2.2 with 2.4 packages graciously provided by Matthew Hall (thanks Matt!), as well as installing a lot of other stuff you can find notes about in my earlier notes. This proved not to be a problem at all, thanks to my old habit of never installing anything past the RPM system (I routinely create RPM packages myself, if I can not find the program as a ready-made package - which rarely happens any more).

Having changed all my apt repository configs to point to Fedora alternatives, I only had to manually resolve a couple of conflicts. Most of these were a matter of uninstalling an old, conflicting package, and perhaps afterwards reinstalling the equivalent afterwards if apt did not automatically pick one up. The only really questionable point was krb5-libs - lots of packages have a dependency to libcom_err.so.3, which was provided by RH9's krb5-libs-1.2.7, but is not provided by Fedora's krb5-libs-1.3.1. For now, I resolved that by installing both packages (library packages often allow nonconflicting duplicate installations, this being no exception), and adding an Allow-Duplicated { "^krb5-libs$"; }; clause to apt.conf.

Compared to my earlier notes, this time I dropped GStreamer's repository (it is not very well maintained, and doesn't have a Fedora version). Fedora includes GStreamer, but Matt's archive, mentioned above, is usually a bit more recent. Matt also has a more up-to-date build of GNOME packages. I've also used Dag Wieërs's repository for some additional multimedia stuff. Encouraged by the easy upgrade, I'm also testing out Linux 2.6 from Arjan van de Ven's repository.

On the Fishpool server, the setup is more of a standard FC1 installation, as desktop/multimedia packages aren't needed, and the site doesn't require Java. Having SpamAssassin included in the standard distro is cool, but the lack of Tripwire is not (RH9's Tripwire doesn't work at all). Still thinking about how to fix that.

My earlier problems with the Evo screen sometimes getting corrupted on VC switches haven't repeated yet. I don't know if it's the 2.6 kernel or FC's updated XFree86, or whether I just haven't seen it yet.. The graphical boot is sometimes cool, sometimes not (my old laptop, still running 2.4, needs to have tpconfig run to disable trackpad tap gestures, and that doesn't work while /dev/mouse is opened by gpm or X).

Update: It must be a linux 2.6 kernel thing, but my cdrom no longer seems to work. I disabled the use of ide-scsi since it's been deprecated, but still I can not get any program to recognise discs I insert in the drive. Haven't yet tried booting back to 2.4 to try if it still works there. Solution: duh.. forgot to remove hdc=ide-scsi from the boot options.

Comment by james on Wed, 26 May 2004 19:09:28:
Hi, I was wondering if you ever got tripwire working on Fedora Core 1? I have been trying, without success, to find someone who has made a good configuration file for this. My email address is james at patentcomplete dot com. Thanks, James

Comment by oa on Wed, 26 May 2004 20:20:57:
Yes, I did - it was later introduced by FC1 updates, although it seems to have been removed afterwards (apt no longer finds it). I'm not sure I actually like Tripwire 2.3 better than the 1.x used by RH9, but in any case, I did manage to make it work. You might want to look at something else as well, such as AIDE.

Comment by Larry Kavara on Fri, 17 Sep 2004 19:25:40:
Hi ¡¡ I'm thinking to change to Fedora, but I'm not sure about doing that because I have a now a wireless network card and I do not know if it is going to work with that. Anyone have a wireless network card working on Fedora? Thanks

Comment by oa on Fri, 22 Oct 2004 23:22:29:
Wireless cards work with Fedora just as well as with any other distro - tweaking required, drivers may not be installed by default. I got a Compaq WL200 installed in the machine's multiport bay, and after installing the Orinico USB driver, it works fine.