On Tuesday, 13 May 2008, the Fedora Project released the latest version of their Linux distribution, Fedora 9.

I was able to get my hands on Fedora 9 the previous Friday after it was discovered "in the wild" on BitTorrent networks. I promptly installed it on my Dell Latitude D830 laptop that I use every day for work.

The downside to installing a Linux distribution like Fedora before it is officially released is that you have no access to any updates. You're kind of on your own with what you've got until the official release date.

I wasn't too terribly worried about any of that. After all, Fedora 7 and Fedora 8 were, for the most part, very stable from the get-go.

I think I may have been wise to have waited. Over the last week, I've encountered all sorts of issues. Some have been related to specific hardware I'm using while others are general OS issues. A significant chunk of the issues I've run into are a direct result of my running KDE as my desktop environment. Fedora 9 includes KDE version 4 which is a ground-up rewrite of the fundamentals of KDE.

The experience has given me some flashbacks to 2003 when Red Hat Linux 9 came out with GNOME 2.2. I had been a GNOME user for a couple of years (and used AfterStep as my primary desktop environment before that) and was content with the way the Sawfish window manager worked in GNOME up until Red Hat Linux 9. Now GNOME used the Metacity window manager and I couldn't stand the thing. Where were all my configuration options? What happened to everything I had come to rely on? Well, GNOME had tucked it all away... and made everything work slower while they were at it.

I switched to KDE and found it had advanced leaps and bounds since I had looked at it last. It was mature, reliable, and, most of all, it offered plenty for me as a "configuration nut" to appreciate.

Fast forward to now. KDE4 is cool, very cool, but it's lacking a lot of stuff KDE3 had, understandably. I'm sure it's all forthcoming in due time, but I want it now!

So, below is my current list of annoyances. Some are still outstanding while others I have taken steps to resolve and have documented those steps below so that others may benefit.

Fedora 9 Annoyances

• nVidia video driver - I've got a nVidia Corporation Quadro NVS 140M tucked away in this laptop and to get 2D and 3D accelerated performance out of it, I must use the proprietary nVidia driver available for Linux. I usually get this from the fine Livna repository for Fedora. The kmod-nvidia driver was available from Livna, but it didn't work. I got it to function (details coming) but it's far from perfect.
• Tap-to-click not working on Synaptics touchpad - This is a documented bug and I'm sure Fedora will be pushing a fix soon. In the meantime Bob Kashani at Berkeley has gracefully provided a fix.
• kmix applet is missing - This one is annoying. I have grown very accustomed to having the kmix applet in my KDE taskbar. This gives me a handy mixer utility to control my sound. Without it, I'm forced to launch the kmix application every time I want to adjust the mixer. Lame.
• Font irregularities (related to NVidia?) - Application fonts between KDE and GTK/GNOME applications display differently. This has suddenly been a problem, but it isn't the first time I've seen it. I also saw it with Firefox 3 betas under Fedora 8, but only on this particular system (my laptop) and not on other systems. I blame the nVidia driver.
• Multimedia buttons - The volume up/down and mute buttons just worked out of the box with Fedora 8. With Fedora 9, KDE is completely ignorant of them.
• NetworkManager forgets everything - In Fedora 7, there was a separate KDE NetworkManager component called knetworkmanager which integrated seemlessly into KDE, but major changes within the NetworkManager community forced the Fedora project to adopt the GNOME NetworkManager work for KDE users in Fedora 8 (and Fedora 9). The problem in Fedora is that NetworkManager doesn't seem to be using the GNOME keyring system at all. Every time I connect to a secure wireless network, I have to enter the encryption key or passphrase because it isn't getting saved anywhere.
• KPilot not syncing with Palm Treo 700p via USB - This was fixed with the first Kernel update!
• KDE configuration lacks depth - This is due to the rewrite of everything, but there are things that really bug me: No configuration of the Compose key and I haven't found a way to turn off the silly "Pong" sound the system plays every time I move between virtual desktops.
• No web browser can load Zimbra admin login page - I didn't have any problems with Firefox 2, but neither Firefox 3b5 nor Konqueror can load the Zimbra admin page. Konqueror complains about a script out of control and Firefox 3b5 just sits and spins.
• gpk-application sucks - Pirut (and pup) are gone and now we have this PackageKit suite of applications for managing packages. I think it's a good idea in the long run, but gpk-application has a long way to go before it catches up with how well pirut worked. Just let me install many packages at once, why don't ya?!

Well, there's that for starters. I'll probably be blogging more in the future about these problems in more detail, including, hopefully, how to solve or work around them.