Fedora Core 9 on a Thinkpad T60

Every time I come back to Houston I get brazen about testing out a new Linux distribution. I’m not sure what it is — likely some combination of not having schoolwork and not killing time at Posse or (lately) the Flying Saucer. The trend is especially evident around certain parts of the year, namely immediately after finals or during the summer when I’m not responsible for keeping track of lots of digital classwork.

Since Fedora Core 9 has been making the news lately, I decided to give it a shot. I began by downloading the i386 net install CD and creating a blank virtual machine with an unregistered evaluation copy of VMWare Workstation. The eval copy is free to download, and creates virtual images but is crippled so it won’t play them. I fired up the clean virtual machine file in VMWare Player, which is free (as in beer) software. No dice — for some reason the net installation wasn’t working for me, in spite of the fact that I had network access. Same with trying to install it in VirtualBox. I think it was probably an issue with the mirrors I was using, but I didn’t bother to follow it through.

My next thought was to actually grab the x86_64 livecd and try that. I got it working in VMWare Player. It seemed nice. I backed all my important stuff up (including my unfinished checkout of scart), and booted to the CD. Again, it seemed nice. Unfortunately, Desktop Effects weren’t working. I tried enabling them manually. No dice. I tried installing the ATI driver and restarting X. No dice. I searched for a fglrx package. No dice. I googled it. No dice.

Sure, it’s possible that desktop effects will start working if I do a proper install. Not having compiz, though, is kind of a show-stopper for me. So, in the meantime, I’m sticking with Hardy. If the ATI issues clear up, I might give FC9 another shot. But until I’m assured that I won’t have to deal with it, I’m not willing to scrap my current setup.

By the way, did everyone remember to RSA and DSA keys?