If you use Fedora and you want to be able to do useful things like play MP3s or DVDs you need to add an external repository like FreshRPMs or Livna.  This is because MP3 playback is covered by patents in the United States, libdecss may be illegal to distribute, and a license agreement is required to playback DVDs.  Ever since I tried Debian, I liked their way of doing things.  The nonfree packages are in the official repos; they’re just disabled by default.

Recently I wanted to install VMWare on Danielle’s computer.  I’ve installed Kubuntu on her Linux machine (Toad) and I wanted to get a clone over her Windows computer onto there in VMWare player.  I used VMWare Converter to create the VMWare clone of her Windows  computer and then put it into the Kubuntu box.  But then there was a bit of a problem:  the Ubuntu repositories did not have VMWare Player.  I went to VMWare’s site and they only had rpms and the source code.  I was hesitant to compile VMWare Player from source.  I was sure it would be a monstrous mess.  After all, I’d had problems with much less complicated programs.

Well, the entire upgrade process is not yet over, so I don’t want to get too excited, but I think this may solve my problem.  I started a yum upgrade on my living room computer  - which will one day be my MythTv PVR (once I get the necessary hardware).  It went through the dependency check in roughly 4 minutes or less.  It’s now downloading 951 MB of updates, so it may be a while before it’s ready for the next phase.  Still, if this works, I know what I’m going to do with my main computer.  I really hope this can eventually become a supported method of upgrading.  It seems to be a lot faster and doesn’t require me to uninstall all of my third party programs.

It’s still right at the end of that little progress bar. The HDD activity light on my compute continues so I’m hoping it’s not frozen, but just working on figuring out the dependencies on all of my packages. I’m going to give it until I get home today and maybe until I go to bed. After that I’ll have to rethink things - perhaps uninstalling those non-Fedora packages…. q:o(

I tried upgrading Fedora 7 to Fedora 8 a few times when it first came out and it kept getting stuck at 26% in the dependency checking phase. I went on the fedora IRC room and I was told to remove my non-Fedora repos. I didn’t listen because that’s always the first thing they tell you to do and, in my experience, it never seems to be the true culprit. Then I found out online that the update servers were swamped when Fedora 8 first came out. Also, freshrpms didn’t appear to have any RPMs yet for Feodra 8. Tried it again today and it appears to be going much better. It’s taken around 2.5 hours, but the dependency check is almost done. I’m hoping to be able to upgrade today. This last part has been especially slow, so I’m hoping that within the next hour or two I’ll be able to start the actual upgrade process. I’ll post what happens here in case others are having similar problems.