[Fedora-marketing-list] Fedora Core 6 Pre release review

[Rahul Sundaram]

Hi

A comparative review on Fedora Core 6.

http://djst.org/blog/2006/10/03/fedora-core-6-vs-ubuntu-610/

I have added detailed responses as comments on this and a previous blog 
item on Fedora since I couldnt find a email address to drop in a mail to 
the author.

Rahul

[Dimitrios 'sehh' Michelinakis]

On Fri, 06 Oct 2006 20:43:20 +0530 Rahul Sundaram <sundaram(a)fedoraproject.org&gt;
wrote:

>  A comparative review on Fedora Core 6. 
He is right indeed.

- the icon theme is indeed outdated, VERY outdated and missing many icons

- firefox 2.0 beta is great and stable to use for most things, definetly an advantage to
include in Fedora than the old version

- fedora is the slowest Linux distro i've ever used! He is right to bash on fedora
like that, my Intel P4 1Ghz machine with Windoze XP Pro boots in 7 seconds flat! while my
Athon64 X2 3800 Dual Core boots Fedora Core 5 in a few minutes!!! jesus! 

- the initial boot text is indeed ugly and geeky. We either have a full graphical boot,
from start to end or we don't have one. Right now we are half and half, which looks
very unfinished and ugly.

- yum had problems on my system as well, weird messages about cache not beign writable
when it updated fontconfig and other stuff like that. Its also dead slow...

- Compiz was a fiasco as well. We've seen the videos from the Novel presentation and
what we have in fedora is just two effects (out of 20?). Ofcourse it didn't work at
first (like it happened with the author of the review) and even after i got it working i
found too many bugs to actualy keep it running (ctrl-fX keys wouldn't work,
couldn't change virtual desktops with ctrl-left arrow, etc).

- my media keys on my IBM ThinkPad wouldn't work either. I had to set them up
manualy.

- The fedora sound theme is indeed a joke... thank god its disabled by default. The GDM
beep is... well lets just say its better to be deaf than hearing the PC speaker beep every
time GDM loads.

...

too late for FC6... lets hope things improve in FC7...






-- 
Dimitrios Michelinakis

[Marc Wiriadisastra]

On Fri, 2006-10-06 at 19:07 +0300, Dimitrios 'sehh' Michelinakis wrote:
>  On Fri, 06 Oct 2006 20:43:20 +0530 Rahul Sundaram
> <sundaram(a)fedoraproject.org&gt; wrote:
>  
>  > A comparative review on Fedora Core 6.
>  
>  He is right indeed.
>  
>  - the icon theme is indeed outdated, VERY outdated and missing many icons 
Possibly although thats a conceptual thing.  I actually like fedora's
icons and layout.

>  
>  - firefox 2.0 beta is great and stable to use for most things, definetly an advantage to
> include in Fedora than the old version 
Firefox 2 is still in beta there is a significant issue with FF at the
moment.  
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/30/173234&from=rss

Firefox by the sounds of it will get renamed.  For a 'full' transcript
have a read of the debian bugzilla  I think it is.  The page is huge and
basically states what FF's standpoint is on using firefox.

>  
>  - fedora is the slowest Linux distro i've ever used! He is right to bash on fedora
> like that, my Intel P4 1Ghz machine with Windoze XP Pro boots in 7 seconds flat! while my
> Athon64 X2 3800 Dual Core boots Fedora Core 5 in a few minutes!!! jesus!  
Use bootchart to measure it if you can then you can see whats getting
booted up on both.

Also Ubuntu is trying
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=271532&highlight=upstart
Upstart instead of init now they seem to be heading to the direction of
running it fully.  It will be interesting to see how it performs
hopefully it improves the boot process even more.

Other factors I'm not sure why but fedora seems less responsive compared
to ubuntu.  I'm not sure where to lay the blame.  My comparative figures
come from playing games using cedega.

Thats not to say fedora is bad I had worse results with vanilla debian.
Yet on boot up and responsiveness on the desktop it was great.

Could it be kernel?  I know ubuntu separates there server kernel's and
the desktop kernels?  Is this an option?
>  
>  - the initial boot text is indeed ugly and geeky. We either have a full graphical boot,
> from start to end or we don't have one. Right now we are half and half, which looks
> very unfinished and ugly. 
Not sure which part you mean tbh

>  
>  - yum had problems on my system as well, weird messages about cache not beign writable
> when it updated fontconfig and other stuff like that. Its also dead slow... 
No issues for me on this the only problem I've had with yum is generally
I find 6-10 mirrors that have incorrect signatures.
>  
>  - Compiz was a fiasco as well. We've seen the videos from the Novel presentation and
> what we have in fedora is just two effects (out of 20?). Ofcourse it didn't work at
> first (like it happened with the author of the review) and even after i got it working i
> found too many bugs to actualy keep it running (ctrl-fX keys wouldn't work,
> couldn't change virtual desktops with ctrl-left arrow, etc). 
Is this in fedora core 5?  or core 6?  core 5 I got to work.  I couldn't
get novel's to work :(  However, there is no support for either just yet
I don't think or if there is its package level since it is alpha/beta
software at the moment.

>  
>  - my media keys on my IBM ThinkPad wouldn't work either. I had to set them up
> manualy. 
I remember there is a package that gets all the media keys working
straight away.  The package name escapes me.  It is in fedora core 5
cause I use them :)

>  
>  - The fedora sound theme is indeed a joke... thank god its disabled by default. The GDM
> beep is... well lets just say its better to be deaf than hearing the PC speaker beep every
> time GDM loads.
>   
Unfortunately I have to agree with you on this one.  It seems to have
been forgotten.  When you log in there is nice music or at least there
is on mine.  Seeing the new upcomming ubuntu I would say thats snazzy.

>  ...
>  
>  too late for FC6... lets hope things improve in FC7...
>   
I hope its not to late :(
>   

'He said that fedora feels like a corporate desktop'  I actually agree
with him it feels to me that its sturdy, strong, stable but not sexy.
Not in the looks of it because I actually prefer fc's look :)  Just home
user use.  I suppose as a shocking analogy Windows XP Home and Corporate
comparison or XP and 2003 (I think thats the version)  I don't know much
on windows :)

My 0.02

Marc Wiriadisastra

[Gain Paolo Mureddu]

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Marc Wiriadisastra escribió:
>  Also Ubuntu is trying
>  http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=271532&highlight=upstart
>  Upstart instead of init now they seem to be heading to the direction of
>  running it fully.  It will be interesting to see how it performs
>  hopefully it improves the boot process even more. 
I thought there was work in
progress for a new init system, called
initng if I recall correctly, which supposedly would load and process
start up scripts in tandem rather than sequentially. Stuff which can
be loaded all at once will be loaded at once, and that which require
prior stuff is loaded when the reqs are met. I thought Fedora was
going to use this type of init system instead of upstart (or upstart
could be a new name for initng from what I can make out of that post).
This with login-early would greatly improve boot up times. I thought
some of these stuff is what makes XP boot so fast (at least concurrent
loading of services and an early login, while the system finishes
booting when the users start their sessions).
>  Other factors I'm not sure why but fedora seems less responsive compared
>  to ubuntu.  I'm not sure where to lay the blame.  My comparative figures
>  come from playing games using cedega.
>
>  Thats not to say fedora is bad I had worse results with vanilla debian.
>  Yet on boot up and responsiveness on the desktop it was great.
>
>  Could it be kernel?  I know ubuntu separates there server kernel's and
>  the desktop kernels?  Is this an option?
>  
Most certainly this is a kernel issue. I'm betting this has to do with
the internal Hz value used in the kernel. This determines the tick
frequency. By default the vanilla value is of 100Hz, and I believe the
Fedora kernel also has this value. Increasing this value to 1000Hz
improves a great deal the desktop "perceived performance", not actual
desktop speed, but much greater interactivity. There are other values,
but I believe (from reading some "performance patches" documentation
and mailing lists, like that for Con Kolivas' patch) that the safe
value for server machines is 100-200 Hz, while for desktop
interactivity the recommended is 1000Hz. There was a time when the
actual CPU speed would have a great impact on this (make Hz value half
of that of CPU... If you had a 2 GHz CPU use a 1000Hz value, if you
had a 1 GHz CPU use a 500 Hz tick value, and the like), I think this
no longer applies. Plus there are lots of patches the Fedora kernel
incorporates over a vanilla kernel  which may induce a performance
hit, most of them deal with security issues (security > speed). That's
one of the reasons why I usually run custom built kernels (trying to
keep most of Fedora's patches) with some other performance enhancement
patches (beyond sources for instance).

Wine and Cedega really benefit from a higher Hz tick rate and other
enhancements found on CK-based and Andrew Morton's patches (though
Andrew's patches are considered to be much more experimental stuff,
while CK is considered to be stable stuff).

The impact a kernel can have on a system's performance is quite big,
however for the last couple kernel updates, I have not been able to
tell any really significant difference (except for a few) between
custom built kernels with additional patches and Fedora's stock
kernel. Not even when patching without Fedora's patches and only
applying performance enhancers to a vanilla kernel. One particular
area that could be much better, though is the use of more current
libata on fedora kernels, as S-ATA performance with stock kernels is
not as high, another reason why I use custom kernels.

Another reason why some times performance feels quite lower is due to
the way many programs are built. In terms of linking. The more
dynamically linked libraries a program requires, the more time it
takes to load (see firefox's start up times!), however this should be
addressed on FC6, which incorporates ways to boost load times of
dynamically linked code, thanks to improvements on GlibC's routines.
Some time it is strange that a GTK application in GNOME takes almost
the same amount of time to load as Qt application (which has to load
the KDE stuff if it requires it, like K3B). Loading up K3B and firefox
usually take the same time (and lots of disk activity). The situation
is only worse if you have a multilib system (like an x86_64 or PPC64
machine with 32-bit libraries and programs). In my case, 64-bit
firefox loads many times faster than 32-bit firefox (because 32-bit
firefox has to load up a bunch of other 32-bit libs too). I guess some
programs may really benefit from statically linking, at least in terms
of start up times.

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[Rahul Sundaram]

Gian Paolo Mureddu wrote:
>  I thought there was work in progress for a new init system, called
>  initng if I recall correctly, which supposedly would load and process
>  start up scripts in tandem rather than sequentially. Stuff which can
>  be loaded all at once will be loaded at once, and that which require
>  prior stuff is loaded when the reqs are met. 
Initng is already in Fedora Extras after a long review process.


  I thought Fedora was
>  going to use this type of init system instead of upstart (or upstart
>  could be a new name for initng from what I can make out of that post). 
No. Its a new init system written after the review process of initng 
started and we havent decided which init system to adopt or whether to 
write a new one.  Speed is not the factor that would lead Fedora to get 
a new init system. There are a number of other advantages that are more 
important.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FCNewInit

Rahul

[Ambassadors] Re: [Fedora-marketing-list] Fedora Core 6 Pre release review

[Rahul Sundaram]

Dimitrios 'sehh' Michelinakis wrote:
>  On Fri, 06 Oct 2006 20:43:20 +0530 Rahul Sundaram
> <sundaram(a)fedoraproject.org&gt; wrote:
>  
> > A comparative review on Fedora Core 6.
>  
>  He is right indeed. 
I answered several of these as comments in the review but here we go again.

>  - the icon theme is indeed outdated, VERY outdated and missing many
> icons 
The icon theme set is one of most complete cross desktop sets that you 
can ever find. We do indeed plan to replace it however and work has 
already started a while back. It wasnt complete enough to be a default 
icon set for FC6 but the next release should have this

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork/EchoDevelopment

If you are interested, feel free to package this for Fedora Extras now.

>  
>  - firefox 2.0 beta is great and stable to use for most things, definetly an advantage to
> include in Fedora than the old version 
Firefox 2.0 beta has serious regressions in it and is not very well 
tested within Fedora since the beta release came out late in the 
development process of FC6

  - fedora is the slowest Linux distro i've ever used! He is right to 
bash on fedora like that, my Intel P4 1Ghz machine with Windoze XP Pro 
boots in 7 seconds flat! while my Athon64 X2 3800 Dual Core boots Fedora 
Core 5 in a few minutes!!! jesus!

The development release has many debugging options and services enabled 
as compared to the general  releases. If you arent using the development 
release then you wouldnt able to judge the performance of FC6.

>  
>  - the initial boot text is indeed ugly and geeky. We either have a full graphical boot,
> from start to end or we don't have one. Right now we are half and half, which looks
> very unfinished and ugly. 
The quiet option is intentionally ignored during development and test 
releases to enable easier debugging. The other bootsplash methods would 
require kernel patches which we avoid in Fedora.

>  - yum had problems on my system as well, weird messages about cache
> not beign writable when it updated fontconfig and other stuff like that. Its also dead
> slow... 
We had some issues with the new mirror management systems which is not a 
flaw in Yum. Those issues are fairly sorted out now. Recent development 
in Yum has results in significant increase in performance. Refer to 
http://rahulsundaram.livejournal.com/7734.html for more information.

>  - Compiz was a fiasco as well. We've seen the videos from the
> Novel presentation and what we have in fedora is just two effects (out of 20?). Ofcourse
> it didn't work at first (like it happened with the author of the review) and even
> after i got it working i found too many bugs to actualy keep it running (ctrl-fX keys
> wouldn't work, couldn't change virtual desktops with ctrl-left arrow, etc).
Compiz on AIGLX is capable of having the exact same effects as on XGL. 
Some of the Compiz extensions are not in Fedora Core but could be easily 
packaged in Fedora Extras. If you find bugs in the test releases, kindly 
report them http://bugzilla.redhat.com

>  
>  - my media keys on my IBM ThinkPad wouldn't work either. I had to set them up
> manualy. 
Bugzilla again.

>  
>  - The fedora sound theme is indeed a joke... thank god its disabled by default. The GDM
> beep is... well lets just say its better to be deaf than hearing the PC speaker beep every
> time GDM loads. 
There is no Fedora sound theme. We provide the upstream GNOME ones 
disabled by default. GDM beeps seem to be bugs. Report them.


Rahul