Friday, January 07 2005 @ 03:07 PM EST Contributed by: glosser
Here's an article from Linux Magazine about bringing up a fresh Fedora install to "useable" status. Those of us who have attempted this know that sometimes outside help is required. :)
While I currently prefer Fedora over any other distribution for general purpose desktop use -- although I still think Xandros is the best Linux out there for newbies -- Fedora can be unstable and it does have some major shortcomings. For instance, the base install is missing key pieces such as multimedia support for stuff like MP3 and video files.
But, after playing with Fedora for about two months, I finally have it working to the point where I'm productive and it does everything I want it to do. However, to do that, I had to become intimately familiar with Fedora's built-in software update mechanism. Because Fedora is a constant work-in-progress, updates to the base Fedora system are extremely frequent. You should update your system at least once a week to take advantage of new features and important bug and security fixes.
Yum! Software Updates are Tasty!
Fortunately, software updates and remote package installs with Fedora can be a painless process if you have a fairly decent Internet connection (DSL or cable modem) and you point your Fedora file repository configuration files towards a fast mirror. In Fedora, remote package updates are accomplished with the built-in Yellow Dog Updater Modified tool, better known as yum.
By default, if you're using the release version of Fedora (Fedora Core 3 entered beta just as this article was being penned), your yum configuration file (located in /etc/yum.conf) is probably set to grab updates from the official Fedora Core feed at Red Hat. But, since everyone and their brother is trying to hit that one all the time, it's the slowest and most unreliable server, and during peak hours, it's probably going to time out on you.
