20031125 Tuesday November 25, 2003

Fedora like OS X? Is Fedora like OS X? It almost seems like it - everything "just works." Well, at least after my 2nd format-and-install it does. Last Wednesday, I tried to upgrade from Red Hat 9 to Fedora Core 1. It didn't go very smoothly and the upgrade wasn't possible (installer said not enough disk space - I know there's enough). I ended up doing a format and clean, and got most things working but my USB Printer. I spent hours trying to get the damn thing working on Friday night (until 3 a.m.). I spent more time compiling things and trying to get it to work on Saturday (insert picture of me banging my head against the wall). Finally, I gave up on Saturday night and reverted back to Red Hat 9 (it worked before). Formatted and installed. Then I spent all day Sunday trying to get DNS/DHCP and HPOJ (Printing) working. It worked before - what the hell?!

And then on Monday morning, I found the simple-ass solution that was staring me in the face the whole fucking time: Turn off the printer and turn it back on. I found it on a mailing list or something. So, since I knew the solution, and I still hadn't gotten DNS/DHCP/Samba working on RH 9, I decided to upgrade to Fedora (again) last night. Again, same error - on a new 30 GB hard drive - not enough space to upgrade. So I formatted and installed. Lo and behold, I power cycled the printer and everything worked! I installed Dynamic DNS (I did have to run rndc-confgen) and configured Samba to recognize my printer. Viola - in under 20 minutes after I installed Fedora - everything worked. I spent 15 hours trying to fix something that eventually took 1 hour to fix. While setting this stuff up, and everything "just working" - I thought "Fedora is just like OS X - everything just works." Now if I could only get a Ximian Desktop for Fedora.

Notes to self: You're a Linux rookie. Don't mess with the default config. Don't bang your head against the wall for more than an hour. Don't try to upgrade Red Hat 9 to Fedora. Posted in General at Nov 25 2003, 02:19:39 PM MST 2 Comments

Comments:

Do not install Ximian Gnome it messes up the rpm database and.the packages are older. What you should do is install open-carpet (http://open-carpet.org) or configure apt-get repositories to get all the cool add-on software.

Posted by Unknown on November 25, 2003 at 02:28 PM MST #

I have to agree with that comment. Although I do like ximian, it makes up2date painful (its bad enought as it is) and upgrading old apps tricky. I am only now what "rpm hell" as my sys admin calls it, really means. will look at open-carpet.org, thanks...

Posted by bren on November 25, 2003 at 04:14 PM MST #

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Matt Raible is a Web Architect who enjoys developing applications with open source technologies. Contact me for rates.
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