I just installed Fedora Core 5, and let me say...

[SKKY]

...IT ROCKS! By far, bar none, the best Linux Distro around, IMHO. It runs about 10 times faster on my 6 year old
Dell Laptop than either Suse or Ubuntu.

[qnr]

1. Glad it works so well for you. Me, I don't consider any distro "best" -

even though I'm a developer for one and naturally biased towards it - but I understand what you mean.

[RoyGBiv]

2. Does it use Gnome by default?

If I run a Gnome session with SuSE, it speeds things up significantly. KDE is a resource hog, but it surely has some pretty eye-candy if you're into that sort of thing.

But, I know what you mean. A lot of the major distros cram so much into a default installation, seemingly without optimization, that it can bog things down. I use KDE, but I've tweaked SuSE enough now (custom kernel, turned off things I don't use, etc.) that it's pretty speedy. I've used other distros temporarily, however, that make me realize it still has some sluggishness to it at times, which I blame on KDE and my habitual need to play with that eye-candy. :-)

[SKKY]

3. By default, I really don't know because I never, ever install...

...the KDE Packages.

[FormerDittoHead]

4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .because. . .? n/t

[FormerDittoHead]

5. I'm still waiting for it to finish installing...

I decided to try it out because two rack lease companies I deal with now offer it...

The INITIAL INSTALL took OVER three hours on my AMD 3.0ghz/512 megs.

NOW it's running the update and that's going past an hour now (broadband).

FC4 SUCKED, IMO - it had known bugs during the install!

I ONLY HOPE the FC team has started to UNFUCK the update process. I'm SO TIRED of wanting to install a program to find myself in "dependency hell"...

[FormerDittoHead]

6. Found out why it was taking so long...

1) only 256 megs (which isn't TINY, but this IS 2006...

2) my 6.3 gig hard drive (it was a test, ok?) ran out of space and it was thrashing for its life...

Ordered a new hard drive (how cheap are these things gonna get? 250 gigs for $60 w/Rebate at CompUSA...

[RoyGBiv]

7. The servers ...

I've always had the same problem with Fedora's update servers. I'm usually so frustrated by the time I get the system installed that I'm already fed up messing around with it and don't want to do any of the other things necessary to get it running like I want. To be fair, though, those servers aren't run by people will billions of dollars of backing, and a lot of other distros have the same issue. Some of SuSE's servers are just as bad.

Three hours for the initial install does seem extreme. Were you doing a network install, or was this from disc?

As for new hard drives, they can't get cheap enough for me. I'm starting to collect the things like I collect socks. :-)

[FormerDittoHead]

8. disk install. the drive wasn't accessing..

I'm thinking I need more memory on the unit.

the online update was extensive. I only wish that they keep UP with the updates...

The updating process and installation process has ALWAYS been the weakness of any distro.

As for hard drives, I calcuated that it's cheaper to buy hard drives than to use DVD dual layer disks - INSANE!

[FormerDittoHead]

9. Clarification

The CD would read, then the HD would be thrashing away for like 15 minutes, another short CD read and so on.

I should note that before the update, everything basically worked, hardware, etc.

So except for whatever explains the install taking so long, everything else seemed to be ok.