A Mac User Tries Linux Part 2

This is the second part of a series I am writing that shows Linux through a Mac users perspective. Part 1 focused on choosing a distro, downloading the software and burning it to a disk. By the way the first part (for those of you who missed it) can be found here. This second entry focuses on the Installation and configuration of my new Fedora Core 4 setup.

Installation

Unfortunately this was a mixed bag. There was so much to like about the Fedora install process and yet things didn’t quite go as smoothly for me as I had hoped. But I am getting ahead of myself so let me start at the beginning. I first made sure that the boot order was set to CD then HDD. Once I had made sure of that I inserted the first install disk, restarted the computer and waited for things to happen. And happen they did in the form of a nice Fedora splash screen telling me that I was about to embark on an exciting computing adventure. Well, ok, maybe it just said hi but that’s what I felt like. Anyway, you work your way through a couple of intro/license screens before getting to the real heart of the matter, the installation options.

I must give some credit to the Fedora guys because the screens that help you customize your soon-to-be Linux box were amazingly helpful. On the right side you have the current set of options and on the left you have a help bar that tells you what each option means and how it might effect your system. Once again this is a very nice touch for those of us who might not be very familiar with Linux or Fedora. The installation process can be broken up into two main sections, partitions and packages. The first, partitions, is wonderfully helpful if you want to setup a dual boot machine, already have a dual boot machine and just want to upgrade your distro or just want to install this new distro in a new partition. The second part, package management, does a good job of letting you keep it simple if you want or customizing things to fit your taste. The simple way to do thing is just select what type of user you are and click install. And you have the choice of setting up a system for a Home User, Power User or System Admin (think server type stuff). If you choose to customize things then you can systematically choose what you want in your system. I decided to install some developer tools and compilers just in case I ever wanted to code anything when my Mac was down. I installed the Open Office suite for productivity but left out most of the multimedia apps because I have a Mac for that. I threw in some games, a few basic server options and a handful of other packages that I felt I might need one day. All in all it was very nice to have that level of control over your system.

Now that I have sung their praises let me break the bad news on you. Installing FC4 takes a long time. A really long time. I am talking “watch Jessica Simpson put together a puzzle” long time. I sat down and put the first disk in the drive at 6 p.m. and didn’t take the last disk out of the drive until 10 p.m. I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t install everything. Now, my experience (hopefully) wasn’t what most people go through. You see, I had a few mishaps along the way. My first problem occurred when I was midway through the second install disk and everything just quit on me. Restarting the computer showed me that I had a new, unfinished partition on my system. That wasn’t very good, to say the least. Ok, so this time I start over and after chewing through the first install disk I get another, different set of errors that causes me to reboot again. But the third time was a charm and everything installed correctly, if a bit slowly. Even if I hadn’t experienced those first two crashes it still would have taken me about 2 hours to wipe the drive and install what I needed. Now, I was running a 866 Mhz PIII with only 256 MB of RAM, not exactly a speed demon by any measure. However, compare that to the 30 min. it took me to wipe and install OS X on my 400 MHz G4 PowerMac. Clearly there is room for improvement.

Summary
The install process was very easy to understand and quite powerful in its features. And even though the process was very long it was worth it to finally be able to boot Fedora on my old Dell. I raised my hands in triumph screaming “Yes! Yes! Finally it is done!” to which my wife looked at me like I had lost my mind.

Overall Experience
6/10 (would have been 8/10 if it hadn’t crashed twice)

The installer looked nice (not as pretty as OS X’s installed but quite functional none the less). The help section was very welcome and reassuring. The ease with which you can partition your system to accommodate a prior Windows install would be very helpful for some users (I didn’t need it because I did a clean install removing Windows entirely). And the straightforward way in which you can setup your system is easy enough for beginners and powerful enough for administrators. The only blemishes on this record were that the installation died twice before finally taking and the overall speed with which it installed was uninspiring.

Configuration

Of the two most popular desktop managers, KDE and Gnome, I had used KDE more and thus preferred it over Gnome. However, being the open minded individual that I am, I decided to test both out for this article. When you boot into Fedora for the first time you are presented with Gnome and so I puttered around with it for a few minutes trying to get a feel for it. After a while I decided to switch to KDE and see how it had changed in the last few years. It was here that I ran into a little trouble. Neither in the help section nor any control panel that I could find did I see a way to easily switch to KDE and back again to Gnome. Maybe there is a way and I missed it (if so someone please tell me) or maybe there just isn’t a way (in which cases that kind of sucks).

I was able to eventually change over to KDE but that involved editing a the /etc/sysconfig/desktop file as root and changing DESKTOP="GNOME" to DESKTOP="KDE". Not a major hassle but it would have been nice if their was an easier way to do that. After using both Gnome and KDE I once again chose KDE. Maybe it’s the look, maybe it’s the way things are setup on the screen but either way I just find that I enjoy KDE more. That and the K-Gear logo is much cooler than the Gnome-footprint.

So, since I have chosen a desktop manager it is now time to customize it to fit my style. I decided to keep the default four desktops, though I did put a different background on each. I enlarged some of the system fonts so I could read them easier. After that I added a few buttons to the launch bar at the bottom, added a menu bar to the top of the screen (a la Mac OS X style), changed the system theme and tweaked a few other minor points. All in all after just half an hour I had everything set just how I liked it and was ready to roll. Not bad, not bad at all.

In OS X you go to the System Preferences to modify settings, in KDE you will find a similar, though more complex, method in the KDE control center. It isn’t as intuitive as OS X’s way but it allows for far more customization. Though sometimes that can be a bit much, I mean, really, do you need 16 different ways to display a clock? But overall I really enjoyed the level of configuration that Fedora offered.

Summary
Switching between KDE and Gnome wasn’t as easy as I had hoped but it is still quite posible. The sheer number of different attributes you can change is staggering when compared to OS X. Now, that is a good or bad thing depending on your point of view. And while I am quite happy with OS X way of handling system preferences it is still very nice to be able to delve so deep into the guts of a system.

Overall Experience
9/10
Great variety of ways to make your environment suit your needs. The Control Center is easy to get to and is laid out fairly well. Though some of the options could be designed better. For example, when choosing a desktop background you have to click on a drop-down menu and then click on the desktop you want. That new desktop is then displayed in a box to your right. That is all well and good if you only have 12 backgrounds but if you have 50 it can get a little tiresome. OS X has a much better system of letting you see all of the backgrounds at once (at least in that category). It is little things like that that really detract from the experience. It is having to do 3 clicks when it could be done in 2. Disastrous? Not hardly. Perfect? Not yet.