This entry has been rewritten as How I fixed my Fedora 20 system when it stalled before the display manager appeared. I recommend reading that version.

Update: After booting into runlevel 3 (putting the number 3 into the GRUB boot line), I had no trouble logging into a console. Then I attempted to start X, and the system stalled. It was fglrx/Catalyst that was keeping me from getting to the display manager.

I removed AMD Catalyst. The system started working again. But back under the open-source Radeon driver, the laptop was running 20 to 50 degrees hotter than with the proprietary Catalyst driver.

Rather than reinstall Catalyst right away, I decided to try implementing Radeon DPM (Dynamic Power Management). DPM is a feature of Catalyst that is just coming to the open-source Radeon driver.

I'm running kernel 3.12.10, and Radeon DPM won't be implemented by default until 3.13. For now it has to be switched on with a kernel boot parameter.

The last time I tried forcing DPM in GRUB, I didn't get good results. This time it worked great.

I tested it by adding radeon.dpm=1 to the GRUB the boot line. The CPU temperatures and fan speeds were comparable to what they were under Catalyst (cooler and slower, respectively), and 3D hardware acceleration was working.

I did get something else from running Radeon instead of Catalyst: The screen dimming/brightening when running on battery power works (unlike with Catalyst). That means the screen dims when the laptop is not being used but brightens up when you start using it again. With Catalyst you had to manually increase brightness after returning to the machine.

So I modified GRUB to take radeon.dpm=1 permanently (instructions forthcoming).

The Linux gods give. And take. With Radeon (and not Catalyst) I lost suspend/resume. I'm not happy about it.

But having a working system again -- and having it without the bother of an unpackaged, closed-source Catalyst driver -- is a fair tradeoff. For now.

The original, before-I-fixed-it post starts below:

Ever since I got suspend/resume working in Fedora 20, I've been rebooting maybe once a week. That's because I love suspend/resume.

I love being able to close to laptop lid to put the machine to sleep and open the lid to wake it up.

But since the battery was running low last night, I decided to do a full shutdown.

I turned the laptop on today, and it wouldn't boot into Fedora proper.

I can boot into rescue mode, and all my files are there and look fine (that's the good news). But sometime during the boot process it just stalls. And there's nothing I can do to get it to finish booting and give me either a console or desktop.

Read the rest of this post

With the release of Fedora 21 delayed by at least three months due to the ramping up of the Fedora.Next initiative, the project's current release, Fedora 20, is likely to be the closest thing users will ever get to a "long-term support" release from the Red Hat-sponsored community project.

And I plan to enjoy it.

Read the rest of this post