Fedora Core 9 - WORSE than Windows Vista?

First off, this will be meaningless to folks who do not use linux.

I spent almost a week getting a clean torrent of the DVD iso of Fedora Core 9. With my new iso burned, I upgraded my FC6 server. Well, I tried to. I had to redo /etc/fstab so it used "LABEL=" syntax. Had to google around to find this out, as I wasn't familiar with this syntax.

So, I go and let the system reboot, and it dies. Reboot. Die. Reboot. Die. reboot. die. The problem this time? I had to append "selinux=0" to grub (/boot/grub/grub.conf), the 2nd line I think. Okay, now I can boot the system. I go to log in at the prompt (the gui prompt, I should say), and after logging in, the system is dead. I see a background, and can roll the mouse, and that's it. Not much of a gui.

I google more and find I'm not alone, and there isn't an easy fix either. I did find Ctrl-Alt-F1 will bounce me to a command line, which was very useful. From there I found out I had no networking running either. Reboot, reboot, reboot, no network on boot. I ended up having to turn off something called "NetworkManager" with "chkconfig NetworkManager off". What is "NetworkManager"? I don't know but I do know if it's running, I get no networking. Sounds like Vista? Oh yeah.

So, I modded /etc/inittab so that the system would boot up runlevel 3 instead of 5, so I could at least get a command-line boot that works.

So after many hours of problem solving, I have a system that is new, improved, and worse than the one I had a decade ago. I think Windows Vista has met it's match. Fedora Core 9 is my nomination for most disappointing OS experience. Ugh.