Alan Cox Calls Fedora 18 "The Worst Red Hat Distro"

[lsatenstein]

Logging into the desktop as root is never correct, as it causes all kinds of processes which are not intended to run as root and do likely do not have proper protection against running as root to run as root. Logging into a console as root is of course fine, though some would argue sudo is a superior model.

Hi Adam
I understand that running as root in GUI starts processes that may pose a risk. The alternative of course is to log to virtual terminal and do rm -i or if it existed, mv -i

But, in GUI, the built-in sofware asks me if I want to merge, skip, and/or skip, overwrite.

I have read 17 screens of discussion about "Niaiserie" (French word for blah blah blah stupidity). Bugs are not normal, or desired, but when a design is released, there are times some unforeseen conditions that were not anticipated. That is why we have a version 2, or a version 2.a or even a version 3, 4, 5, until that software is considered legacy pure.

Fedora 19 will show great improvements in anaconda, in all the facets of installation. Be assured that there is ongoing work to polish the logic, to cover unforeseen situations, and of course, improvements in the software.

I value my opinion about Fedora well above the opinion expressed by Alan Cox. Fedora 18 past the installation is ROCK SOLID for 99.999% of what people use it for. (I do networking, writing encryption code, ERP and database, emails, browsing, writing with word processors, spreadsheet and programming in C, C++ and Qt). I will start teaching myself Python next. Does Fedora satisfy my needs? Definitely.

Here is how I will be helping. When the time comes, I will have set aside 2 disks for F19 testing. (2x$50 for two 500gig satas) One machine I reserved for 32bit systems, the other for 64bit systems.

Please stop complaining and instead, ask how you can help to improve Fedora, to report bugs or buglets (little bugs) and feel good that you were a contributor that made a difference.

[uid313]

I did not think to do sudo dolphin or sudo nautalis or sudo nema. Now that I know, I will not bother with logging to root, except in virtual console mode so that I may change ownerships of files that are moved or copied.

So far there is no graphical "chown" or "chgrp" that I could use in GUI mode. It is coming some day, right?

In virtual console mode you should not login as root either. There you should use su or sudo.

I don't know, I am not aware of any. You can try check on Freshmeat, or you could code one yourself in Python with GTK3 using GObject Introspection.

[lsatenstein]

I was imagination dead.

That's horrible. You are supposed to do this, or an equivalent thereof:

kdesu dolphin .

I did not think to do sudo dolphin or sudo nautalis or sudo nema. Now that I know, I will not bother with logging to root, except in virtual console mode so that I may change ownerships of files that are moved or copied.

So far there is no graphical "chown" or "chgrp" that I could use in GUI mode. It is coming some day, right?

[pingufunkybeat]

Alan disagrees. https://plus.google.com/111104121194...ts/dEW3SeRT2ih

"Never had time to go Gentoo'ing. I think it serves an important purpose and has its place but I've seen openoffice compile once, and that was enough"

:rofl:

[kigurai]

Alan Cox expressed his disappointment. He switched to another distribution, and I believe in the end, he will leave that distribution for another.

Alan disagrees. https://plus.google.com/111104121194...ts/dEW3SeRT2ih

[lsatenstein]

I don't think you understand what a 'customer' is. All unsatisfied Fedora 18 customers are, of course, entitled to all their money back.

What I wrote was a perfectly genuine reply to a reasonable question. Why did we not wait until the Fedora 18 installer was perfect before releasing it? Answer: because Fedora 18 is not just the installer. Making it perfect would have been several more months of development time, during all of which, work on F19 would be held up to some degree and all the other stuff in F18 would not be reaching our user base. We shipped F18 when the installer was in an acceptable state (as defined by us), not when it was perfect. We never claimed it was perfect; in fact we explicitly warned that it was imperfect and provided links to ample documentation on both the new design and on the known issues in it.

BTW, my 'rockstar developer lifestyle' during F18 development involved two months of working on installer testing an average of 80 hours a week, including some weeks over 100 hours. It's SO MUCH DAMN FUN.

===
Adam, been there, have done that, and then got KITA. Only someone who walked the go live route as you (or I) have will understand.
I downloaded Fedora 32 for one system and F64 for two others. I then discovered a Fedora 18 spin from Russia, I installed that, I liked all their choice of add-ons and reinstalled it everywhere I had the Fedora18 DVD installation. The spin uses and adds to the Fedora 18 DVD.

I tested cinnamon on F18, and have abandoned Gnome until Fedora 19, if there will be a Gnome for Fedora 19. Cinnamon rocks.

[lsatenstein]

When there is Fedora 18 bug that is severe, issue a Fedora18a

re: systemd-cryptosetup-generator: Failed to create unit file .... : File exists

that's a bug ... minor in that it doesn't impact function, but it's annoying. I've been seeing it since I first installed F18 beta. It's here:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=879431

Anaconda crashed horribly for me trying to install an encrypted LUKS root with btrfs ... in the end I got it working with ext4 by creating the partitions manually. Assuming these bugs are fixed now that it's shipped. Still very rough around the edges, I'm not a big fan of the new Anaconda but can see where the design choices are coming from.

Did not realize the super-annoying lack of logout was a "feature". Oh god, I can't believe there's actually a code branch based off detecting the number of interactive users and hiding the logout button.

I do like Gnome 3 ... even if 3.6 dumbs down the preferences even farther (had to go to dconf-editor to enable horizontal scrolling with my touchpad). In Activity view there used to be a toggle between Windows and Applications (gone now, boo).

GMenu ... did not even realize that was a thing until a thread yesterday. So *not* discoverable.

Something so invisible needs to be killed. Gnome needs to stop hiding UI elements, it kills everyday usability. OS X has a few things absolutely right, like the app menu bar locked at the top of the screen (I can find the File menu of the current app with my eyes closed) and the Dock, which I can drag files to, it shows me notifications, I can use it as a plain launcher, it's on the screen all the time and so there's muscle memory always knowing where to go.

But at the end of the day Fedora 18 is better than 17, so it is the best and not the worst Red Hat distro. So many nice things like all the hardware buttons on my Samsung 9 worked out of the box.

Mint14 was issued with a bug that was serious. They immediately produced a Mint14a, to replace it (One or two weeks after initial release).

Nothing wrong with Fedora doing the same.

By the way, yum install @cinnamon and use cinnamon in lieu of Gnome. You will be happy. You will be really happy.

[lsatenstein]

Sometimes we forget

It still makes no sense. There are use-cases where a single-user machine needs logout. For instance in a workplace environment where your workstation is also running a file server so you don't want to shut it off when you go home. You want to LOG OUT so your co-workers will not have access to your email but you don't want to shut down the machine. You don't want to leave your session running in the background because you will have open files on file servers and the sys admins will get pissed at you when they want to run backups. For instance at home when you don't want your sig other to be poking through your old love letters, you want to be able to LOG OUT without turning off the computer because you still want to record that tv show using mythtv.

Lock User
is ok for single user systems such as laptops or, as you indicated, servers. There is no reason to keep logged in if you do not want to be. Probably a Gnome Tweak will restore the logout button. I took the simple solution of creating a locked guest account.

[lsatenstein]

Newbies and Fedora

It does always amaze me how people are happy to download an entire *computer operating system* and throw it at their computer - with valuable data on it! - without even reading the damn documentation.

For Pete's sake people, it's an operating system, not a new version of Angry Birds. You might want to read something about it before hitting the big red button. The F18 release documentation is pretty clear on the fact that the new installer UI is a first cut and still has rough edges: this isn't hidden information, it's called out in the release announcement itself. There's a guy on the Google+ thread who says "Not knowing that The World Had Changed, I downloded the DVD of F18 and tried up upgrade my machine" - where do these people come from? And what rock have they been living under while three thousand articles explained that F18 has a new installer? Sheesh.

So yeah: in case you didn't get the memo, F18 has a new installer and a new upgrade tool. They are both v1.0s. As in the case of all v1.0s, you may want to exercise some frickin' caution. If you want a Fedora release whose installer and upgrade tools were stabilized over a period of several years and 20+ releases, Fedora 17 is right in the torrent list. It works fine. If you want a nice polished version of newUI, you might want to wait for F19 or F20. It won't kill you. An operating system installer is a psychotically complex lump of code, it is not plausible that you can entirely rewrite one and get it working perfectly on the first try, and we never aimed to. We aimed to have something that broadly implemented the new design and worked reasonably well in simple cases, and that's what F18 has.

GNOME 3 is GNOME 3. We package it up and ship it. If you don't like it, use something else; Fedora does not skimp on the choices.

===

Hi Adam
After 50 years in IT, I find the anaconda installer a reasonable design. Yes, there are many buglets and cosmetic changes to make to where everyone says it "Kicks Ass" (Canadian Expression).
After RC4 final Go and a week of testing, I told myself, what an easy installer it is. I also, as you know, participated in the debugging. I of course have a few machines, and very much, I prefer real hardware testing to VMs. With VMs, a masking of performance problems is hidden from the user. We think that the VM is a fair scheduler, but it is not always so.

Some of my friends are computer illiterate. They own dual core laptops, and want to upgrade from XP. Four of them followed my signature and downloaded the 64bit linux. They did not read the manual, but just preceded to install and run. So far, only complaint has been for codecs and for playing DVDs. I pointed them to RPM Fusion and thats it.

Fedora has to cater to newbies and to hard core administrators. It is next to impossible to satisfy both crowds. I know that the developers try their best. One thing we must both recognize. Most Fedora developers are under age 25, and not skilled in the ways of Newbies. And that is where you come in. Your role has to be more than testing the end-result, it has to including the approving of the approach and interface. A good program with a poor interface goes nowhere, and gives rise to rejection.

Alan Cox expressed his disappointment. He switched to another distribution, and I believe in the end, he will leave that distribution for another. I say that because we are comfortable with what we know, and are lazy to adapt to new ways to do things.

[lsatenstein]

Only one logon is wrong

[QUOTE=LinuxID10T;308027]Or it is just standard security and you want processes to run in the background (such as in a server environment.) Also, it doesn't appear when you install another desktop environment, that is how I found this out, so wrong on both counts.[/QUOTEOnly

I have a netbook and I run Fedora. With only one logon, the only option left is suspend. On a return from suspend, the mouse pad no longer works. I have not figured out a way to revert from suspend to a fully operating system. Two users allows me to logout and to return without having to reboot. BTW, when I need to type the Euro symbol, I have to quit gnome and return with KDE (Keyboard is Canadian French)