Anaconda



  • Apologies for copying and pasting this straight from my blog, I started writing a blog post about it and then realised "Oh, this could go on TDWTF". So here you go!

    A few weeks ago, I downloaded Fedora Core 5 and burnt it to a DVD. I finally got round to (trying to) install it yesterday evening.

    All I can say is, what a freakin’ disappointment.

    Why oh WHY does Anaconda always seem to crash on me? This has happened now for the past two versions they’ve released (four and five). For version four, I just assumed that it was a dodgy CD, but two times in a row? This has got to be more than a coincidence.

    What basically happened is that around 96% of the way through copying the files, it came up with a message saying that a particular package was corrupted - the only options given to me were to retry or reboot. This in itself is a WTF - it should at least give the option to “ignore”, so that it can just ignore any packages which might have been corrupted, and then you can maybe download the proper versions from the net once it’s all there (or, at least, fail gracefully). What actually happened is (after I’d selected the option to ‘retry’), it then waited for about ten minutes, before coming up with a message saying “An unhandled exception has occured. This is probably a bug”. And then made me reboot.

    Needless to say, the system was NOT in a consistent state when I rebooted, the installation was only partially completed… I managed to back up my files, but couldn’t start the GUI and had to do it all from the commandline.

    What I don’t get is why this happened two times in a row on my installations of Fedora Core, but has never happened on any of my other Linux installations (and I’ve tried about four *nix distros - Gentoo, CentOS, Ubuntu and FreeBSD).

    Needless to say, I am now switching away from Fedora Core. If the upgrades between versions are going to be this painful, I don’t want to use it anymore — I’m going to stick with something like Ubuntu — you can upgrade automatically and it downloads all the required packages from the net, rather than having to download a whole CD (or four CDs in the case of Fedora) or a DVD.

    Postscript: so, OK, it might not be *that* bad, but I just needed to vent...



  • Ubuntu is great. If you are not heavily invested in another distro, use it. With easy ubuntu, you can even install those closed-source codecs, drivers etc. without pain.



  • @PhillS said:

    What basically happened is that around 96% of the way through copying the files, it came up with a message saying that a particular package was corrupted - the only options given to me were to retry or reboot.

    It would be my guess that the packages are not really broken, the installer is -- and has been at least since Red Hat Linux 9.0.

    Back then, there was a way to get the thing installed if you were really determined:

    • Launch the installer, note down the name of the "broken" package.
    • Reboot, launch the installer again from the very beginning, deselect the "broken" package, note down the next "broken" package.
    • Repeat until the installer finishes successfully.
    • Install the deselected packages (and yes, this worked from the very same CD images).


  • @Phil the ruler of heck said:

    It would be my guess that the packages are not really broken, the installer is -- and has been at least since Red Hat Linux 9.0.

    Back then, there was a way to get the thing installed if you were really determined:

    • Launch the installer, note down the name of the "broken" package.
    • Reboot, launch the installer again from the very beginning, deselect the "broken" package, note down the next "broken" package.
    • Repeat until the installer finishes successfully.
    • Install the deselected packages (and yes, this worked from the very same CD images).


    I can well believe it! I don't want to put up with this kind of thing again.

    ammoQ - Ubuntu will be the next thing I install on my machine! I've been using it a bit recently and really like it. In fact I've just installed it on my wife's laptop (she's not great at computers but she's managing fine with it - the only thing I couldn't do is get the PCMCIA wireless network card working, it doesn't seem to have any drivers at all for the 2.6 kernel - even ndiswrapper doesn't seem to like it).

    Thanks for the heads up about easy ubuntu - it sounds good!


  • @ammoQ said:

    Ubuntu is great. If you are not heavily invested in another distro, use it. With easy ubuntu, you can even install those closed-source codecs, drivers etc. without pain.


    Some time ago i tried to install an Ubuntu Version for trying out on my machine. There were already an Linux system and a windows system installed on the hard disk. But when i first set up partitions I had reserved some space for another linux system. So itold the ubuntu installer to use that free space.... messed up my partition table pretty bad :/

    To be honest it was a pretty early version of Ubuntu but I'm a burned child now and mostly stay with vanilla debian nowadays.



  • @PhillS said:

    What I don’t get is why this happened two times
    in a row on my installations of Fedora Core, but has never happened on
    any of my other Linux installations (and I’ve tried about four *nix
    distros - Gentoo, CentOS, Ubuntu and FreeBSD).


    ahum...



  • @zamies said:

    @PhillS said:

    What I don’t get is why this happened two times
    in a row on my installations of Fedora Core, but has never happened on
    any of my other Linux installations (and I’ve tried about four *nix
    distros - Gentoo, CentOS, Ubuntu and FreeBSD).


    ahum...



    Yeah I know FreeBSD is another OS, hence me putting "*nix" rather than "Linux". Sorry if that wasn't clear, I do realise Linux != BSD :)

    Assuming that's what you mean, anyway...


  • Well, I agree. But you havent see the new Yast! in OpenSuse 10.1
    Makes me growl "atLast!" when it finally crawls to life.



  • @ammoQ said:

    Ubuntu is great. If you are not heavily invested in another distro, use it. With easy ubuntu, you can even install those closed-source codecs, drivers etc. without pain.


    I've been much happier with FC 5. What's the appeal of Ubuntu for you? (I'm not trying to attack here. Maybe I'm just missing the beauty of Ubuntu. GUIDE ME!)

    sincerely,
    Richard Nixon



  • @Richard Nixon said:

    I've been much happier with FC 5. What's the appeal of Ubuntu for you? (I'm not trying to attack here. Maybe I'm just missing the beauty of Ubuntu. GUIDE ME!)

    sincerely,
    Richard Nixon


    I haven't actually used Fedora 5 so I couldn't really say at the moment. I used Fedora 4 for about a year, but I don't know how much has changed in the new version.

    What's your experience been of using the two? How do they compare?

    I've just found Ubuntu to be a bit smoother. For example, it detected and configured my wireless card automagically, all I had to do was put in the WEP key. Contrast that to Fedora last year where I had to spend ages fiddling around with ndiswrapper (well, Ok, an hour or two, with some help reading a couple of articles on the net). It's quite a polished distro, which the "I just want it to work!" side in me likes.



  • @Richard Nixon said:


    I've been much happier with FC 5. What's the appeal of Ubuntu for you?


    Quick and painless installation, nice desktop (Kubuntu, since I prefer KDE over Gnome), easy software installation from a vast repository by apt-get or adept. I don't know Fedora, so I cannot compare.



  • @PhillS said:

    @Richard Nixon said:
    I've been much happier with FC 5. What's the appeal of Ubuntu for you? (I'm not trying to attack here. Maybe I'm just missing the beauty of Ubuntu. GUIDE ME!)

    sincerely,
    Richard Nixon


    I haven't actually used Fedora 5 so I couldn't really say at the moment. I used Fedora 4 for about a year, but I don't know how much has changed in the new version.

    What's your experience been of using the two? How do they compare?

    I've just found Ubuntu to be a bit smoother. For example, it detected and configured my wireless card automagically, all I had to do was put in the WEP key. Contrast that to Fedora last year where I had to spend ages fiddling around with ndiswrapper (well, Ok, an hour or two, with some help reading a couple of articles on the net). It's quite a polished distro, which the "I just want it to work!" side in me likes.


    I do not use a wireless card in any of the machines I have running FC so I cannot speak to how well 5 would pick them up.

    Of course, I don't have any very specific criticisms of Ubuntu - it was more of a feeling of unease that I got. I do recall that after the installation completed, I opened a terminal window and found that gcc wasn't installed, it was only a matter of time before I dumped it. Yes, it was easy to get gcc on there and perhaps there was some part of the installation where I failed to select gcc but my opinion is that I want a distro that I have to fight with not to get gcc installed.

    sincerely,
    Richard Nixon



  • @Richard Nixon said:


    Of course, I don't have any very specific criticisms of Ubuntu - it was more of a feeling of unease that I got. I do recall that after the installation completed, I opened a terminal window and found that gcc wasn't installed, it was only a matter of time before I dumped it. Yes, it was easy to get gcc on there and perhaps there was some part of the installation where I failed to select gcc but my opinion is that I want a distro that I have to fight with not to get gcc installed.


    Well, Ubuntu is a distro that doesn't install much during the initial install process (no, you didn't fail to select gcc, Ubuntu doesn't ask much), just a basic system for the common user; everything else is easy to install by apt-get or adept. IMO, this is not a disadvantage; it just means that after installing the CD, you choose what else to install, press the red button and wait till it's done.



  • @ammoQ said:

    @Richard Nixon said:

    Of course, I don't have any very specific criticisms of Ubuntu - it was more of a feeling of unease that I got. I do recall that after the installation completed, I opened a terminal window and found that gcc wasn't installed, it was only a matter of time before I dumped it. Yes, it was easy to get gcc on there and perhaps there was some part of the installation where I failed to select gcc but my opinion is that I want a distro that I have to fight with not to get gcc installed.


    Well, Ubuntu is a distro that doesn't install much during the initial install process (no, you didn't fail to select gcc, Ubuntu doesn't ask much), just a basic system for the common user; everything else is easy to install by apt-get or adept. IMO, this is not a disadvantage; it just means that after installing the CD, you choose what else to install, press the red button and wait till it's done.


    Everything is easy to install with FC using yum. It just means that after installing it, I don't have to then install gcc.

    sincerely,
    Richard Nixon



  • Can't you just download a minimal CD and get what you need off the net? That's usually what I do, though I use Gentoo usually, and all the have for download for x86 is the minimal CD.

    I used to use Debian exclusively and was deeply in love with it, but I hated how slow it was to get packages to the stable tree and using the experimental one alllll the time - but Gentoo has been a treat for me :D

    And this is from the guy that hates Linux and considers it a toy OS. Real admins use Solaris :D hehe.



  • @Jeremy D. Pavleck said:

    Can't you just download a minimal CD and get what you need off the net? That's usually what I do, though I use Gentoo usually, and all the have for download for x86 is the minimal CD.

    I used to use Debian exclusively and was deeply in love with it, but I hated how slow it was to get packages to the stable tree and using the experimental one alllll the time - but Gentoo has been a treat for me :D

    And this is from the guy that hates Linux and considers it a toy OS. Real admins use Solaris :D hehe.


    Is this a reply to one of my posts?

    sincerely,
    Richard Nixon



  • @Richard Nixon said:

    @Jeremy D. Pavleck said:
    Can't you just download a minimal CD and get what you need off the net? That's usually what I do, though I use Gentoo usually, and all the have for download for x86 is the minimal CD.

    I used to use Debian exclusively and was deeply in love with it, but I hated how slow it was to get packages to the stable tree and using the experimental one alllll the time - but Gentoo has been a treat for me :D

    And this is from the guy that hates Linux and considers it a toy OS. Real admins use Solaris :D hehe.


    Is this a reply to one of my posts?

    sincerely,
    Richard Nixon


    Oh, no, it was meant for the OP.



  • @Richard Nixon said:

    @ammoQ said:
    @Richard Nixon said:

    Of course, I don't have any very specific criticisms of Ubuntu - it was more of a feeling of unease that I got. I do recall that after the installation completed, I opened a terminal window and found that gcc wasn't installed, it was only a matter of time before I dumped it. Yes, it was easy to get gcc on there and perhaps there was some part of the installation where I failed to select gcc but my opinion is that I want a distro that I have to fight with not to get gcc installed.


    Well, Ubuntu is a distro that doesn't install much during the initial install process (no, you didn't fail to select gcc, Ubuntu doesn't ask much), just a basic system for the common user; everything else is easy to install by apt-get or adept. IMO, this is not a disadvantage; it just means that after installing the CD, you choose what else to install, press the red button and wait till it's done.


    Everything is easy to install with FC using yum. It just means that after installing it, I don't have to then install gcc.

    sincerely,
    Richard Nixon

    I have just installed Ubuntu for the first time and I'm another convert. I found the fact that the installer installed so little very refreshing, my only critisism being that maybe it installed too much. I suppose if you need a system to install gcc by default, stick to FC or any other distor, but IME they all seem to install crap I didn't want if I do the easy install, or it's a painful process marking all the packages I do want at install time. Ubuntu really has fixed one of my major gripes with Linux installers.

    Another reason I like Ubuntu is the detection and setup of my atypical audio setup. So far noone else has got it right and I've needed to tweak. My previous favourite in this regard was Debian etch with a few hours of hacking and tweaking, Ubuntu was performing better after less than 30 seconds of copying and running scripts.

    Very happy for those reasons. While yum can do what apt can do and FC can do what Ubuntu can do, I find it less work to manage the Ubuntu system for what I use my PC for. It certainly out performs windows as far as audio goes on the same hardware, and it's heaps easier to setup and manage then any OS I know of bar OSX.



  • @Some Idiot said:

    Another reason I like Ubuntu is the detection and setup of my atypical audio setup. So far noone else has got it right and I've needed to tweak. My previous favourite in this regard was Debian etch with a few hours of hacking and tweaking, Ubuntu was performing better after less than 30 seconds of copying and running scripts.


    This is the reason I'm not sure of even trying out any Linux distro. I like to be a carpenter (1337 hax0r), and don't mind making my own hammer and screwdriver (custom web CMS, write little apps), but I do NOT want to go around mining the iron and chopping the wood for those tools as well.

    Running scripts? Hacking to get hardware to work? I'm still something of an end-user and I'd prefer things to just work. Any ground to my fears?



  • @dhromed said:

    @Some Idiot said:
    Another reason I like Ubuntu is the detection and setup of my atypical audio setup. So far noone else has got it right and I've needed to tweak. My previous favourite in this regard was Debian etch with a few hours of hacking and tweaking, Ubuntu was performing better after less than 30 seconds of copying and running scripts.


    This is the reason I'm not sure of even trying out any Linux distro. I like to be a carpenter (1337 hax0r), and don't mind making my own hammer and screwdriver (custom web CMS, write little apps), but I do NOT want to go around mining the iron and chopping the wood for those tools as well.

    Running scripts? Hacking to get hardware to work? I'm still something of an end-user and I'd prefer things to just work. Any ground to my fears?

    Not with Ubuntu - or most end-user aimed Linux OSes (SuSE, etc), unless you're using the very bleeding edge in hardware, or very specialized hardware - which then usually you'll have to find the drivers yourself. If they exist.



  • @Jeremy D. Pavleck said:

    Can't you just download a minimal CD and get what you need off the net? That's usually what I do, though I use Gentoo usually, and all the have for download for x86 is the minimal CD.


    I don't think Fedora has a minimal CD :-(

    I like Gentoo as well. I think it's got the best package management system I've seen in a Linux distro, I like the way it compiles everything for your hardware which makes it really fast... the only problem is, the compiling used to take aaaaaages on my old machine! Stuff could take a long time to install when compared with a binary package.



  • My $0.02

    Ubuntu and Fedora are very similar I have found. I can't really prefer one over the other. The scripts out there that setup the stuff like 3D acceleration, mp3 codecs, for ubuntu are really nifty, and the only thing fedora has to compare is fedora frog.... which leaves much to be desired imho. If you like getting dirty, and want the absolute fastest system, then expect to spend a month tweaking a stage1 gentoo install. MMMMMMmmmmmmm...... Most people don't want to spend that much time getting a system working though, so Ubuntu and Fedora are the leaders of the pack for everything else imho. If you find that you are having trouble with hardware with one, then try the other. I like how synaptic includes some of the non free repositories right off the bat, and you can select to use those repos from a gui. Also, even though there are many guis for Yum, they aren't quite up to par with synaptic yet imho. Fedora does have the advantage of being able to install many, many, many packages at installation time, but that's really onle an advantage to someone with dial-up or no internet connection. The ubuntu community has grown REALLY big recently as well, and there's a howto for everything under the sun... although the howto for booting from software raid was to simply "install onto non-raid, recompile the kernel, copy the partition to the raid, modify the boot settings (grub config), and go!"... That doesn't count lol...

    Linux rules. The only bad thing about it is that there is too much choice. Because of this, many people do things different ways, and it confuses newcomers. There really are millions of ways of doing everything in linux. Finding out the right way to do it for your distribution is the true obstacle!


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