Fedora Core 3 woes

OK, so I misjudged a lot of things. The PCQLinux people did at least take care of a few things.

Fedora (from Core 1 and upwards) has done away with MP3 support due to worries over codec licenses. This I discovered when I tried to play my collection. As I have not yet succeeded in getting my modem to work, I had to search forums by rebooting to Windows.

Before that, I tried to install VLC (older version), but lacked a few libraries. I thought of downloading the FC3 version today, but at 15 MB, it's a bit too large to get away with for the connection I shouldn't be using. So I'll wait for an update by Digit then (and update this blog, too).

In the meanwhile, I tried to build MPlayer from another CD that has everything in source form. Found that I lacked some libraries for the GUI. Then I tried updating packages, thinking the ISOs on my hard drive would work, but NO. Apparently, Redhat (and/or the developer community) still believes in hardcoding (I remember the claim PCQuest made for PCQLinux 8). The stupid package management tool (system-config-packages) still does not offer a way to set options. It steadfastly sought the libraries from the CD.

I therefore had to burn all 5 CDs. Didn't know that Nero required me to be an Administrator to burn CDs, so wasted some time. Finally succeeded burning four of 'em, but halfway down burning the last rescue CD, there was a power BLIP (it had rained, you see, and I needed less than a minute!), and I have still not managed to buy a UPS (no money!). So goodbye, 9 bucks.

Tonight, I'll try to build MPlayer again. Hopefully there won't be any flags during configure or errors during make.

I have resolved to be a Linux-only user by the time Fedora Core 4 (final) is released. Let's see if this resolution goes the way of all my earlier ones.