Fedora 16 instabilities

[David A. De Graaf]

Here's why Fedora 16 isn't ready for prime time. 
Many of these have been BZ'd, without effect.

- I won't even discuss the gnome3 controversy.  I've used xfce for
  many years and am very happy with it.

- The worst aspect of Fedora 16 is it has made computing a stochastic
  process.  Instead of the rock-solid behaviour of previous releases,
  Fedora 16 behaves randomly.

- On two laptops with encrypted disks, when booting, one asks for the
  passphrase once; the other twice.  The second request can only be
  seen if rhgb is removed from the kernel boot line, and you watch the
  systemd spewage carefully.

- The command 'reboot' typed in an X terminal emulator, sometimes
  works; but often hangs the machine, requiring pressing reset.

- Shutdown takes much too long, and often fails completely, like
  reboot.  This is quite annoying, especially with laptops.

- The 'df' command has been rendered nearly useless due to the
  voluminous extraneous output.

- The mount command, which was once useful, isn't any more.  It's
  simply unreadable.

- The systemd system has replaced the simple and easily understood
  sysv init system with a jumbled mess.  The output during boot is
  scrambled and the terminology is grossly verbose and confusing.
  It may be a tiny bit quicker to boot on a multicore machine, but the
  loss of comprehensibility and reliability is much too high a price.

- The systemd alternative to editing /etc/inittab with runlevel = 3
  is grotesque.
  
- /var/log/boot.log is empty, sometimes.  When it is written, it
  contains no dates.

- If 'startxfce4' is used at a console prompt to start an xfce session,
  root windows have $DISPLAY undefined, and cannot run privileged
  programs.  Critical tabs in various windows (shutdown, nm-applet
  editing, etc.) are greyed out.  A workaround is to create $HOME/.xinitrc
  with this cryptic line:
    ck-launch-session dbus-launch --sh-syntax --exit-with-session startxfce4
  and then use 'startx', as if starting gnome.   :-(

- grub2 fails to correctly initialize /boot/grub2/grub.cnf when older
  kernel objects are present in /boot, and alternate root partitions
  exist.

- grub2 sometimes sets the default kernel to an older one; sometimes
  to the newest one.

- Changing UID's to start at 1000 instead of 500 is just annoying.

- The latest kernel, 3.1.7-1.fc16.x86_64, causes skype to crash
  unless it is run with strace, in which case it fails to fail.
  Go figure!

- With earlier kernels, skype was merely unreliable, sometimes with no
  microphone, sometimes no sound, sometimes no video.  The popup that
  announces an incoming call fails to appear - sometimes.  Despite its
  non-open status, skype is a critical utility.  Some way must be found
  to support it so it is reliable.  Making changes to the kernel that
  destroy it is not acceptable.

- Some programs fail at random, unpredictible and unrepeatable times.
  Qtstalker occasionally simply stops working.  It's window can be
  deleted, but a zombie remains.

- Systemd doesn't know how to tell time.  During boot, time is off by
  4 hours, then is fixed when ntp gets going.  Perhaps as a result,
  sometimes, not always, X starts with a screensaver.  It's random!

- The cups print system can no longer print full Legal size pages.
  The print space is shifted upward and truncated.

- The /etc/rc.d/rc.local file has been deleted.  It can be recreated,
  but you must know to start it with   #!/bin/sh   and make it
  executable.  Why not simply retain a properly constructed dummy?

- gkrellm -s remotesys   often quits without reason.  Then, sometimes,
  it cannot be restarted without rebooting  remotesys.  
  More randomness.

- When xfce is restarted, the session manager restarts gkrellm windows
  with the bottom section truncated - sometimes.  Another randomness.
  The full length can be restored by manually running the
  Configuration popup and changing some item, then changing it back.

- The session manager for xfce seems unable to restart roxterm
  windows, but can handle xterm's fine.  Why?

- On one laptop the NumLock will sometimes turn itself on.  This can
  be annoying if a password must be typed.

- On one machine, the password had be typed quickly in a console.  The
  root password was too hard to type to meet that requirement.
  However, if it was entered by cut-and-paste, it was OK.
  In X, there was no problem.

- On one machine (of seven) the CD drawer pops open at random times.

- An older nvidia NV18 GeForce4 MX 440 card requires the earlier
  version of the nvidia driver - which is no longer supported.  The
  nouveau driver doesn't work nearly as well.  A perfectly functional
  video card is rendered disfunctional.

- Libreoffice insists on making files inaccessible via nfs.  
  A workaround is to edit /usr/lib64/libreoffice/program/soffice to
  comment out these two lines:
    ## SAL_ENABLE_FILE_LOCKING=1 ## export SAL_ENABLE_FILE_LOCKING
  but this must be redone whenever a new update comes along.

- The rt2500usb driver for my DLink USB wireless transceiver won't
  work reliably unless I disable power management with:
    iwconfig wlan0 power off
  However, trying to do this automatically in a control file,
    /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/16-power
  only works sometimes.  Another puzzling and annoying randomness.

- A directory, ~/.gvfs, cannot be read even by root.  This should be
  impossible in a sane Linux system.  This unacceptable behaviour can
  be expunged by removing the gvfs-fuse package, which takes with it
  the shotwell, totem, and totem-nautilus packages.  So far, I haven't
  noticed any loss of functionality.

- The microphone on one machine (but not others) wouldn't work until I
  added a cryptic line to the beginning of
  /etc/modprobe.d/dist-alsa.conf:
    options snd-hda-intel model=auto

- Fedora 16 simply cannot be used with mythtv.  It refuses to detect
  any of my three TV receiver cards.

- The mythfrontend program wouldn't start on a remote machine until I,
  cryptically, removed ~/.ICEAuthority.  I have no idea what this is
  all about.

- Firefox can be configured to print a header and footer to record
  the URL, etc.  However, the cups printers refuse to print it,
  truncating this useful info.

- My son, after reviewing this list, adds some more:
  Pnmixer fails to start roughly 1/3 of the time - meaning no sound -
  in XFCE4.  (I don't have pnmixer installed, so cannot confirm.)

- Login and logout can take a variable length of time - from roughly
  one second to roughly one minute - for no apparent reason. So far
  this happens only on a newly built machine.

- The problem of gkrellm not properly redrawing on restart may have
  been fixed.  We'll see...      IT'S RANDOM!!!


-- 
        David A. De Graaf    DATIX, Inc.    Hendersonville, NC
        dad at datix.us         www.datix.us