Guest post by Phoronix has a done a set of benchmarks with the Fedora 12 Intel driver and concluded that it performs better than previous releases of Fedora. “Compared to Fedora 11 especially, Fedora 12 offers much-improved Intel Linux graphics. Besides just the frame-rates being better, when using Fedora 12 we have encountered less problems with kernel mode-setting and quirks with different hardware configurations. In fact, the Intel experience is quite pleasant atop Fedora 12. This is good news for those running Fedora 12 now and should be even better news for those that will receive these updated packages in their distributions next year.”
This is great news! Intel chipsets should really be a flawless experience in Linux. Intel wireless seems to usually be flawless, and now that Intel graphics is getting nice improvements, Intel+Linux should be a really nice package.
Well, speed hasn’t been my problem with Intel graphics lately; drawing things correctly has.
Mesa 7.5 is the last version that could run Celestia correctly; with the versions in K/Ubuntu 9.10 and Fedora 11, the Earth is covered with moving noise, clouds don’t align to continents, and the rings of Saturn look like either uniform red lines or huge flat polygons. I wonder if that’s fixed for Fedora 12.
As much as I loved Fedora 11, I gave Fedora 12 a go and I’ve since moved to OpenSuSE 11.2 because of the atrocious bugginess of Fedora 12. Xorg 1.7.1 included with Fedora breaks compatibility with Nvidia drivers, strange wake up problems, keyboard suddenly stops working which never occurred with Fedora 11.
I know this isn’t the place to moan and groan about the faults with Fedora 12 but I do believe that it is necessary to raise issues one has with Fedora 12 so that there is meaningful and balance assessment of what is being discussed.
As a Fedora user you should have expected nvidia drivers to not work right now. It always takes a little bit of time for nvidia to release new drivers that work with new X.
The keyboard and wakeup problems are another story.
Edited 2009-11-24 16:42 UTC
I guess it kind of serves me right for upgrading as soon as it came out – but at the same time I do think that if Xorg is as buggy as I experienced with the lag between driver producers and distro release, maybe it is best to stick with old reliable.
Worked with OpenSuSE which uses the older 1.6.5 of Xserver which is very reliable, none of the problems. I’d like to think that the problems I experienced will be fixed in the future but it depends on a lot of things that have been promised but never delivered on.
“because of the atrocious bugginess of Fedora 12. Xorg 1.7.1 included with Fedora breaks compatibility with Nvidia drivers, strange wake up problems, keyboard suddenly stops working which never occurred with Fedora 11.”
Point one, well, that’s not a bug, is it? Anyway, it’s not true, except for the legacy drivers for old cards. The current NVIDIA current-gen driver works fine with X server 1.7, it’s not a problem at all. http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-nvidia.html#f12 is a good reference for getting it running on F12, if you really need the proprietary driver. Unless you need 3D acceleration for something, you shouldn’t.
Could you be a bit more specific about your other two problems? It’s rather hard to know what the issue might be with the level of detail you’ve provided there.
Somewhere along the line, the term “bleeding edge” came to be regarded as a positive term. It’s come to mean that you get all the latest and greatest. What has been forgotten, or at least de-emphasized, is just who it is who gets to do all the bleeding: You.
A distro with a rapid release cycle which includes all the very latest *cannot* have anything approaching a consistent level of reliability. It might be “good enough” for some who don’t have anything critical depending on it. It might *seem* to be “good enough” for some who don’t *think* they have anything critical depending on it… until the day that they really do need it to work… right now… and it doesn’t.
Linux and its associated desktops have evolved to the point that the advantages of “bleeding” are limited, compared to what they used to be. But the disadvantages of “bleeding” are the same as ever. Even worse, really, since we have become ever more dependent upon our computers.
Most users… even hobbyist/enthusiast users… are better served by the more tried and true distros. I’m content to leave most of the bleeding to the massochistic users.
I fled in another direction. But I sincerely hope you enjoy your OpenSuse experience.
Edited 2009-11-24 17:30 UTC
The direction you “fled” in didn’t turn out to be that different anyway considering that Linux distributions all share the same components. To quote from the article
“The Intel Linux driver stack can be attributed with many firsts, but continually pushing this driver while putting out quarterly timed releases has led to some pains. Earlier this year in fact the driver stack was rather buggy — especially in Ubuntu 9.04 — that impaired many users with stability issues, performance problems, and other headaches. ”
For the last couple of releases, the best performance and stability was via Fedora due to backported fixes but let’s not reality stop us. Continue.
I’m quite happy with the performance of my Intel GMA 4500 under the distro to which I fled from Fedora.
However, to be fair, I was going to compare it, head to head, with the Fedora 12 Live CD. But I’m just getting a black screen where I would expect to see a login screen, after booting the CD.
The “reality” of Fedora 12’s “black screen” is, indeed, stopping me from making a direct comparison. Then again, perhaps these results are the most useful comparison. (And no, I’m not interested in wasting any more of my time in Fedora’s Bugzilla.)
Better luck with Fedora 13, I guess…
Edited 2009-11-24 19:00 UTC
I doubt a vague description like that is useful in bugzilla so its good that you didn’t bother. Any time you “waste” in providing feedback benefits every single distribution since Fedora by the being a leader in integrating the latest upstream components will merge any fixes upstream.
A quick check would be to be boot with “nomodeset” to disable kernel mode setting and see if that helps. If it doesn’t more hardware details would be useful.
And yet KMS has worked perfectly for me for the last two releases of the distro to which I fled. It seems that it’s Fedora which needs the help.
Make your distro stable enough to even test, and I will test it. Until then, I have more productive things to do with my time.
Edited 2009-11-24 19:16 UTC
Ubuntu didn’t even enable KMS by default the release before the last one and they don’t ship the latest Xorg either. They still had many Xorg issues
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/904#Performance%20…
You have time to comment in length in every Fedora post but not time to provide any details? I don’t believe that. A little less attitude and more constructive approaches would be useful.
Im starting to belieave distro’s who call themselves ‘bleeding edge’ are crap.
Bringing the latests to users isnt hard. Bringing the latests __with quality__ is what should be achieved.
Fedora and Ubuntu released KDE 4.0 and improper graphics stacks to users, only to stay bleeding edge.
(just an example)
Upstream –> Distro –> User
This is our stack. In this ‘bleeding edge’ model, upstream and user are hurt. Look at KDE. Users were moslty f–ked up due to early adoption by distro’s. KDE people were hurt and their branding went into trouble, even with the fact that they warned everyone NOT to use 4.0 in that way.
Dear distributions, please, stay logical.
Edit: I forgot to mention that there are some exemptions. For example Debian Sid is bleeding edge, but in a logical way, IMHO.
Edited 2009-11-24 19:32 UTC
I came to the same conclusion some time back. Although I would note that only one major distro that I know of is officially described as “bleeding edge”, and that is Fedora. Ubuntu does not describe itself as such.
Agreed.
My gripes about KDE4, in general, are well known around here. I will give Ubuntu credit for having at least held off on KDE4 and PulseAudio inclusion for at least a sane, if not actually adequate, period of time, hoping that they would finally stabilize. Unlike the officially badged “bleeding edge” Linux distro. And I would note that KDE is not the default desktop on Ubuntu. It is simply an option which can be installed by the user *after* installation.
There is a great deal of discussion going on right now to determine which X version goes into the next Ubuntu release. And it seems pretty clear that it will not be the latest. Most likely it will be the same as in Ubuntu 9.10, which is proving to be pretty stable.
But “The Bleeding Edge” is a very strict master to those who serve him. There is little question regarding which version must go into distros in that category.
Edited 2009-11-24 19:46 UTC
Well, Kubuntu included 4.0 as soon as it was ready. I blame them.
Im happy that Ubuntu people are discussing about next verion’s X. This means they’ve learnt.
Edited 2009-11-24 20:07 UTC
No. While Fedora jumped and included the very broken 4.0.3 immediately in Spring of ’08, Kubuntu more conservatively stayed with 3.5.9, and did not switch to KDE 4 (4.1.2) until Fall of ’08.
Still too early. But at the time, it was being claimed that KDE 4.1.x would fix the massive issues with 4.0.x.
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=fedora
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=kubuntu
Edited 2009-11-24 20:21 UTC
No, Kubuntu 8.04 had two versions, one with KDE 3.5.9 and one with kde 4.0 [only community support].
Most users as expected tried 4.0 version and… BAM: they hated KDE and Kubuntu. Lose Lose situation.
I was unaware of that. But if Kubuntu, a somewhat less official spinoff of Ubuntu, did release an unofficial version as “Community Support Only” and people used that and were disappointed, I would tell them what I tell potential Fedora users: If you want stability… don’t do that.
At a certain point, people really do need to take responsibility for the decisions they make.
My gripe is with unstable distros whose advocates actively try to deny the fact. Or try to take all the credit for being bleeding edge when there is credit to be snatched, and then deny being bleeding edge when the requirements of PR dictate so.
Sounds like whatever Kubuntu release you are referring to was honest and upfront.
Edited 2009-11-24 20:35 UTC
“I came to the same conclusion some time back. Although I would note that only one major distro that I know of is officially described as “bleeding edge”, and that is Fedora. Ubuntu does not describe itself as such”
Fedora doesn’t describe itself as “bleeding-edge” anymore than Ubuntu does and anyone with a bit of clue can really see that any distribution with a six month release cycle will likely have similar upstream components and hence share similar features *and* bugs whether they want to admit it or not.
On occasions, Ubuntu will ship something more bleeding edge like a development snapshot of GRUB2 and on other occasions, it will be Fedora. There is *more* in common across distributions these days and that’s a very good thing, silly fanboyism aside.
Well, there goes your credibility. Are you seriously claiming this? Really? Of course, as the official Fedora PR rep here at OSAlert, I guess you had to say that.
Everyone who thinks that Fedora does not present itself as “bleeding edge” please raise your hands. :-0
Its very funny to see you talk about credibility after all the past assertions you have made. I would like to point that you were not making claims about what others said about Fedora but rather making the claim that Fedora is the only distribution that calls itself “bleeding-edge”. I dispute that claim in two different ways:
a) You haven’t added a single reference to a place where Fedora officially calls itself bleeding edge unless you are referring to development releases.
b) Fedora or Ubuntu or any distribution with six month releases has about the same amount of bleeding edge components regardless of whether they want to admit it or not.
How about prominently on the front page of the fedoralinux.com site:
“Fedora is a Linux-based operating system that showcases the latest in free and open source software.”
Please don’t embarrass yourself by hair-splitting about the the word “bleeding” not appearing there. It would make you look desperate. The intended meaning is quite clear.
And yet the links to the software version tables at distrowatch clearly put the lie to what you are claiming. It is your claims, and not mine, which lack a certain level of concreteness.
Edit: Plus, the churn doesn’t stop there. Even after installation, Fedora just plunks updates from the upstream down the pipe. Even new major kernel versions get pushed down the pipe several times over the (short) life of a Fedora release. Fedora is simply not managed for stability. It is managed as a shiny, gee-whiz distro where stability is not a major concern.
Edited 2009-11-24 20:51 UTC
Now you have admitted a failure to find a single reference to backup your claim that Fedora officially describes itself as “bleeding edge”. If you want to equate “latest” with “bleeding edge”, you might want to read the Ubuntu announcements.
You mean the same distrowatch which shows several places where Ubuntu is more bleeding edge than Fedora including core components like GRUB and upstart? Sorry, no cookie for you.
Well, you did opt to embarrass yourself. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
This is just too easy.
I called you out again, one more time on your claims. You are just trying to weasel out as usual. Let me know when you can stand behind your claims and I will discuss it with you.
And I’ll bet that you you really think that you have done that. I also suspect that other OSAlert readers can decide for themselves on that point. I’m not worried.
Yes, the readers can decide for themselves. The real irony and funny part is where you picked the text I wrote (yep, that’s me who front the front page text) and then used my words to argue against me about what my intended meaning was. I am pretty sure that I know better the meaning than you do.
The real funny part is that I even bother to discuss these things with Fedora’s head PR person. (Why am I not surprsised that you maintain Fedora’s main marketing site?) Anyone who has ever tried to “discuss” a product’s pros and cons with a PR rep for that product will recognize the futility of that exercise immediately.
Edited 2009-11-24 21:18 UTC
Now I am being promoted to “head PR person”. Why, thank you. You are very entertaining. Keep it coming.
Rahul, I wouldn’t bother replying. It’s been true for the last few years on OSAlert the same 2 or 3 trolls appear on every fedora article with incorrect, vague & disingenious remarks and no details or facts to back them up when questioned. Better off leaving them to enjoy the intellectual company of creationists.
So the claim you made didn’t hold up, which is how he embarrassed himself? I don’t follow…
What do you think? Does Fedora aim to be cutting edge or not?
“Bleeding Edge” was the term you used, which is not an aim.
I honestly don’t think I can call it any more bleeding edge than ubuntu as on two occasions they have pushed an update that renders the machine unbootable _for everyone_ and don’t get me started on pulseaudio on it, Kubuntu generally or more recently the whole Karmic farce.. Regardless I don’t think you could consider either anything but on the cutting edge, both release around the same time each with _mostly_ software that hasn’t been exposed in any of the other distros (outside of rolling release ones).
Post install fedora has churn and ubuntu has community supported backports (lets be realistic, people use them and they are even less supported than fedoras churn)
This is going to be a continual problem until mainstream users just start accepting you can’t have cutting edge software without bugs. There are distros with 9 and 12 month releases for a reason. Bitching about a problem you have on OSAlert or wherever and not posting a bug reports is really not helpful. All that leads to is a circular motion of people from one cutting edge distro to another proclaiming their previous one sucks and issues get fixed far more slowly upstream.
Does it really matter exactly *how* it’s said. That whole bit has been a diversion from the real issue, which is release policy.
As an admin of XDMCP servers running CentOS, Ubuntu, and previously, Fedora, I can say without reservation that there is a very noticeable difference in the number of early morning calls reporting overnight update damage, and not in Fedora’s favor. Night and day difference. CentOS actually does the best on that, but has other issues. Its trouble reports come during the day and are generally of the form “I got a PDF in an email that gives an error when I try to print it”.
You cannot seriously be comparing the literally gigabytes worth of churn in Fedora’s standard update repository to people opting to enable Ubuntu’s backports to get a few newer packages. That position would be absolutely ludicrous. Fedora pushes out major kernel updates as just regular old run of the mill updates, for Christ sake!
To that end, it would help greatly if overenthusiastic advocates of truly cutting edge, bleeding edge, however you want to say it, distros (Fedora) stopped trying to convince them that cutting edge, bleeding edge, whatever, can really be stable. (Don’t blame the users. Blame the blue-sky advocates that lure them in.)
In lieu of that, since it is not likely to happen, religious distro-fervor being what it is, it helps if there are at least a few voices contradicting the propaganda.
Are you serious? There is absolutely no way *in hell* I would ever run fedora or ubuntu on a server. I pretty much constantly run fedora on updates -testing and rarely if ever have any breakage (since fc 2) maybe i’m just lucky who knows *shrug* but the point is it’s a high risk activity and you don’t run high risk software on servers. By contrast i’ve had updates ubuntu has pushed that have completely trashed the install.
That’s because its actually a server distro.
They are actual “stable” releases, no experimental crap added. Ubuntu pushes experimental crap that has been denied by upstream into their kernel (and gnome and other things) time and time again with tremendous frequency. Look at karmic and you can see the result of that. All sorts of BS patches for pulseaudio (by people who don’t understand how it works) that make it worse than it already was. We can hardly call that “Stability” either.
This is certainly not specific to fedora as you like to claim. But it’s a lot easier to maintain stability when you don’t replace half of the boot process, Xorg and possibly the desktop enviroment every other release.
It sounds very much like you’re using cutting edge distros in inappropriate places and expecting a flawless experience. As is often said the most common sources of computer problems are between the desk and the seat.
Edited 2009-11-25 13:07 UTC
Saving the “Best” for Last – Fedora 12
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http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,1000000567,10014494o-2000498448…
Ubuntu users are great, but Fedora just seems easier to me and always just works.
Anyone who wants stability can always stay one release behind in their favorite distro.
.
All distros need users interested in and capable of contributing to open source through their own contributions, which doesn’t have to be code. End users have a role in making GNU/Linux better.
.
Fedora users working together with Ubuntu / GNU/Linux users.
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I have an ATI graphics card, but somehow I get some glitches on KDE4 with F12. Strange colours as rectangles. On GNOME it seems to work. Any ideas?
I’m using HD3650
There is a around of KDE updates among others being pushed out recently. Make sure you are updated and see if it gets better.