Problems with Fedora Core 3

David — Thu, 13 Jan 2005 00:30:55 +0000

For a number of months I have been using Fedora Core 2 very happily to run a MythTV/games system. Unfortunately as of about a month ago MythTV development on FC2 stopped and now only focuses on the Fedora Core 3 release. This development freeze left me in the lurch with only a partially working MythTV setup (due to dependency issues). Consequently I took the plunge and downloaded the FC3 DVD. Little did I know this process would eventually lead me to stop using Linux on my home workstation....

The install process went well and it sure was nice not to have to swap CD's at random times during the installation. After installation I was reintroduced to the same old Fedora headache's such as the yum package management system, no mp3 playback and no sound on rebooting. The first two issues were quickly resolved with the installation of Synaptic and a few mp3 libraries. The later problem was more difficult and it turned out FC3 was not storing my alsa.conf settings on a reboot. I resolved this by adding a line to my rc.local file that restored the correct settings. All these things were only inconveniences but still took a long time to resolve. I was happy with FC3's speed, default selection of packages and the pre-packaged NVidia kernel modules.

For a little while things went well but I was having serious problems with MythTV. The ivtv kernel module for the TV tuner card was refusing to load on boot and I was getting no sound on playback. To make matters worse the SELinux file system permissions system would often get slightly screwed up (probably as a result of my MythTV actions) and cause serious problems during shutdown/startup (file access permission errors). Fortunately I found an error to this with a command line SELinux tool that reinitializes all your file permissions.

Unfortunately at the point where I just about had everything working a casual package update of an XML library left Gnome plus a number of other essential programs unable to startup or shutdown. This was the final straw, I contemplated reinstalling FC3 but didn't want to go through the same trials as before. I then thought about another Linux distribution but couldn't think of any free distribution with the features of FC3. Debian/Ubutuno are okay but I am a fan of the Redhat/Fedora installation process.

Then I read news of Apple's plans to release a US$500 Mini Mac and my mind was made up. I packed up my useful but time consuming Linux system and in the future will purchase a Mini Mac to compliment my PowerBook as a multimedia/games device. Linux in business is great but I believe it has a long way to go before it can be reliably used in the home multimedia environment.

stressfree - fedora

Problems with Fedora Core 3