Updating Fedora — 2

Continuing my story with updating Fedora 22 to 23.

I am testing the update process on a spare partition on a Thinkpad T400, which uses an Intel GPU and the i915 driver. No Nvidia hardware.

I do not use a boot splash. I like knowing what is happening on my computers.

When I booted Fedora 23 I saw a Failed to start Setup Virtual Console error message. The console font actually did change to what is configured in /etc/vconsole.conf: ter-120n. Thus I do not know the cause of the error message.

When the boot sequence reached the Starting Switch Root there was about a 15 second delay.

I never saw the blue colored “Welcome to Fedora 23 (Twenty-Three)” text. Yet somehow the system “seemed” to finish booting.

I use the quiet boot parameter. When I deleted that parameter I then saw the blue text and the stalling disappeared. I saw something similar to this with another computer running LMDE Betsy. That system refused to load the nouveau driver unless I stopped using the quiet parameter.

These bugs tend to point to the initram. I rebuilt the initram with dracut but no change.

I do not see these boot issues in F22.

Something always breaks. This seems especially true with Fedora, or any distro that has a short or rapid release cycle.

I am unsure of my next move. I am aware that my frustration levels tend to increase with Fedora. Fedora has much to offer, but with the continual breakage the cost is my disposition and stress levels. Being a member of the kernel-update-of-the-week club does not help.

Perhaps Fedora and I need to part ways except for testing and previews. My stress levels do not deal well in a positive manner with the short development cycle. Too bad because I believe many of the developers are skilled and mean well. Unfortunately the development cycle prevents meaningful stability. Perhaps part of the development cycle could change to halt every second or third release for an additional six months and focus solely on bug quashing. Unlikely to happen because one of the reasons-to-be for Fedora is geek creds.

I do not believe I am alone in my feelings or observations. Not just with Fedora but most distros. A little digging around the web reveals a similar frustration. Development proceeds at insane speeds. Users are not allowed to pause and catch their breath. Developers treat software as a personal playground rather than satisfy users.

The interesting part to all of this is how something is broken no matter which direction I go. I am continually amazed at how anything running on Linux is always partially broken. I seem to continually be chasing bugs.

This is the part where Windows and Mac users chuckle and say something like, “Nothing new to see here. Move along.” Yet I am not a fan boy or naive. A little surfing around the web reveals that Windows and Mac users have their share of usability bugs too. I am left to conclude that the common problem is a rush to push envelopes rather than focus on developing robust software that is enjoyable to use.

Posted: January 17, 2016 Category: Usability Tagged: Fedora, General

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