So, I installed Fedora Core 4 a couple of days ago.
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And then I uninstalled it.
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It turns out that GCC 4 is very particular about what it likes to compile. XdTV refused to compile, as did my custom kernel. This isn't strictly speaking a showstopper, but I would have lost the ability to watch TV on my PC. Somewhat bizarrely, using GCC 3.2 from the compat RPMs also failed on both the kernel and XdTV, so I had no option but to reinstall Core 3.
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The reason I originally installed FC4 was to try to get GCJ to compile some Java apps I created a while ago, but the same compiler errors I was getting previously appeared again, so that was a bit of a disappointment too (I'm using some syntax particular to Sun's Java 5, so this is to be expected).
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To be fair, none of this is RedHat's fault - GCC4 is very new, and most apps will still be catching up, so I'll have another go if the kernel changelog has anything about GCC4 fixes, and I can find a TV app which isn't TVTime and which compiles.
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As it turns out, all this was to my advantage anyway, as I did a 'network install' using the 'minimal' installation option when I reinstalled FC3, and added just the packages I need through YUM. This has reclaimed a lot of hard drive space, as I was able to completely dispense with KDE and a lot of other things which had been included as dependencies for apps I don't use any more.
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Also, the GTK theme in FC4 is very nice, so I'll <EM>have to</EM> install it at some point. I especially like the progress bars...
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