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ClamWin, ClamAV are fine for remedial action. The best remedy, as in all things, is prevention and that can be accomplished by moving to systems that are resistant to malware. Here even the consumer unions fall flat on their faces and fail to mention the Linux distros. Most mainstream distros are years ahead of Windows as far as ease of use, maintenance and speed. The main weakness of real systems (non-M$) is that Web 2.0 script crap.

Here you sound like a troll. There are no sources for any of your claims and they are false.

Here are the sources, try any one of them:

• Fedora w/KDE default
• Fedora w/GNOME default
• Ubuntu w/Xfce default
• Ubuntu w/KDE default
• Ubuntu w/Gnome default

XSS? Search Google.

Note, different than Windows, easier to use and worlds easier to modify and customize. KDE passed XP in usability years ago. It's not 1996 anymore.

ClamWin, ClamAV are fine for remedial action. The best remedy, as in all things, is prevention and that can be accomplished by moving to systems that are resistant to malware. Here even the consumer unions fall flat on their faces and fail to mention the Linux distros. Most mainstream distros are years ahead of Windows as far as ease of use, maintenance and speed. The main weakness of real systems (non-M$) is that Web 2.0 script crap.

Here you sound like a troll. There are no sources for any of your claims and they are false.

Here are the sources, try any one of them:

• Fedora w/KDE default
• Fedora w/GNOME default
• Ubuntu w/Xfce default
• Ubuntu w/KDE default
• Ubuntu w/Gnome default

XSS? Search Google.

Note, different than Windows, easier to use and worlds easier to modify and customize. KDE passed XP in usability years ago. It's not 1996 anymore.

https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/packages/name/fedora-ksplice

fedora-ksplice
Script Collection for Using KSplice on Fedora Linux

fedora-ksplice is a collection of shell scripts to use ksplice in a Fedora environment.

The scripts allow to prepare a kernel for use it with ksplice.

fedora-ksplice-prepare will download the source rpm of the current installed kernel. After this the kernel sources will be created in the rpm build directory. Additional the ksplice subdirectory with the System.map file will be created.

Fedora-ksplice-create will apply a patch given as an argument to the kernel sources prepared by fedora-ksplice-prepare.

Fedora 11 Screenshot Tour

So... just like Ubuntu only blueier.

Perhaps we could roll a new Ubuntu sub-project: Blubuntu

Maybe you'd prefer the release notes or the tour instead?

Maybe you'd prefer the release notes or the tour instead?

Fedora 11 Screenshot Tour

--

I like it except it doesn't have X feeture :)

create a guest account.

I agree. Note that if you're running a recent version of Fedora, there's a built-in 'xguest' SELinux profile which is completely locked down -- that might interest you, along with the fast user switching.

Yep, and OS X 10.5 has a similar Guest account... you turn it on through the Accounts panel. Once enabled, it adds a 'Guest' link to the login page - clicking that creates a temporary user profile (totally restricted of course) which is completely deleted when the Guest logs off or the machine is shut down. Only downside is that it's quite easy to click by accident when trying to log in with your own account - and because it doesn't require a password, starts the login process immediately!

create a guest account.

I agree. Note that if you're running a recent version of Fedora, there's a built-in 'xguest' SELinux profile which is completely locked down -- that might interest you, along with the fast user switching.

It's called multiseat. It's a feature that's targetted for the next version of Fedora Linux . I'm not sure if there's any way to do it under windows but vmware or virtualbox might help when Fedora 12 comes out.

Anon to preserve moderation.

Security flies out of the window any time you let an idiot loose on a computer, whether it's windows or linux. The person who opens all email attachments on windows is the same one who will pick up rootkits in linux.

Reliability: My kids turn off their windows machine by pulling the plug, at least twice a day. It comes back up every time with no fuss, and will only force a disk check once a month or so.
The same thing on all the linux filesystems I've tried will force a full disk check and quite often result in corrupt data.

Speed is no longer something to write home about. For the past few years, every distro I've tried at home is as slow or slower than windows.
Yes, you can get minimalist distros or compile everything by hand for specific optimizations, but that's not something you could sell to the average home user.

For hardware requirements, compare fedora with XP
Where fedora wants 400MHz, 256MB and 2.7GB HDD for a desktop system, XP wants 300MHz, 128MB and 1.5GB HDD.

For servers, I wouldn't even consider running windows, but for the home desktop linux just doesn't offer me enough to switch (no matter how much I wish it was otherwise).

I have Fedora Core 1 on a VM and their repos are still alive and well. Look for them at http://archive.fedoraproject.org/.

It's an interesting point you make.
Currently it's worth avoiding netbooks that have the following hardware:

1. Intel GMA500 aka Poulsbo graphics chipsets. There is no FOSS driver for these. That's because there's a PowerVR core in them. The Fedora Project's Adam Williamson seems to have found some partial drivers hidden away in a quiet little Ubuntu repository where they were dumped by the Intel team. But success seems partial. So for now avoid anything with GMA500.

2. Broadcom wireless. Again avoid these Broadcom 4322 like the fscking plague. Dan Williams (again a Red Hat / Fedora person) has a fairly scathing take on them based on his experiences of trying to get suspend/resume and wireless to work consistently.

3. Elantech touchpads. Bastien Nocera (what is it with all those Red Hat people, don't they like closed-source binary drivers?) may have had some success at wringing some code out of Ubuntu and Intel people to share with the rest of us, but it still seems uncertain.

4. CPU. The Intel Z-series draw less power than the N-series apparently.

5. RAM expansion. Lots of the netbooks have a single, soldered slot. So if you like being stuck with 1GB of RAM while you try to run OpenOffice.org-3 then go ahead, have fun.

So, the bottom line is that the Dell Mini 10v might be OK as regards the graphics (it's GMA950) which in turn means that it doesn't do HDMI and has an unfortunately lower vertical resolution than the Mini10v, but the wireless sucks and the touchpad probably sucks, the RAM is fixed too low.

Looking at the HP Mini 1000s its difficult to tell what wireless they use. Graphics are GMA950 unlike the older HP2133 which used Chrome9 graphics chipsets for which VIA has failed to release FOSS drivers.

Seems like a lot of the netbook producers (even those such as Intel, Dell and Ubuntu that pay lipservice to "Open Source") are having a hard time being honest and straightforward with us.

Thanks for the permission to post.

Did you read the rest of the post where I laid out that the NIC, the printer, and multiple monitors failed to work? Using the nv driver by default yields crap results. Yes, I know you can change the driver out, but even having done so, how can I easily get my ancillary monitors to extend my desktop nicely? Windows does it in a few mouse clicks and works very well. I am, of course, completely capable of editing the xorg.conf file myself, because I know how to do such things.. but that isn't really the point is it? The point is that these are things that don't work properly. So, yes, I consider that the inability for either Ubuntu or Debian to easily understand my graphics cards and monitor setup to be a failure in usability.

Don't get me wrong, please. I use Debian at the house for quite a bit, as well as my beloved FreeBSD box, but I recognize the shortcomings in them. To make a blanket statement about the amazing "just works" of desktop linux is just laughable. My Wacom Intuos begs to differ.

Now, to address your anecdotes:
XP was released Aug 24 2001
Vista was released Jan 30 2007

Which you are comparing to:
Fedora Core 11 which has not been released yet according to both:
http://fedoraproject.org/
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=fedora

So, I am not sure what you are looking for here. It seems rather silly to debate stability and feature sets of operating systems that are at a minumum over 2 years apart, and the benchmark is a distribution that has yet to release.

'No reliable sound system, no reliable unified software audio mixing '

'!PulseAudio is a next generation sound server for Linux, making all sorts of "ear-candy" possible: from dynamically changing the volume of individual applications to hot-plugging support for many different devices'

Most of the tasks which you list below can be handled by Fedora-originated, distro-agnostic tools such as YUM or PackageKit. (Well, YUM is only distro-agnostic to the extent that it must be an RPM-based distro).

Thanks for answering. I haven't used an RPM based distribution since Suse 7.2, so I was somewhat behind.

* suggested packages, ie., packages has a list of packages which enhances the package in quesiton.

PackageKit does this in recent versions of Fedora, see this link for information on Fedora 11 font and mime-type installation.

* recommended packages, ie, packages which are not strictly required but should normally be installed with a package.

Not sure about this, seems like the previous point?

* support for packages deprecating and/or providing other packages

From reading the link, I think you misunderstood me. Probably my fault... but cute integration feature on that page :) Sort of like missing-command but for file types and fonts.

What I meant that when installing a package, there are often related packages. A stupid example: I install a compiler. Now, having a compiler without its standard library is technically possible, but probably not what the user wants. Hence, the compiler would *recommend* installing the standard library, which would mean that the package manager installs the standard library unless the user somehow tells it not to (config, command-line switch). Also, the user might want to have API documentation for the standard library (if the user are going to write source code for that language), but might not if the user is just installing to compile some code somebody else wrote. Hence, the package manager *suggest* installing the documentation, but does not do so by default.

Does that make sense? It is a very nice way to split up dependencies: must-have, probably-should-have, might-want.

Again, thanks for information. Package manager is one of those programs that fascinates me, but it's not really feasible to use a lot of different ones at one time.

Seems like Fedora is over 80% Fedora-derived according to Fedora Weekly News.

* unused packages removal - ie, if a a package is only installed as a dependency, and if no package which depend on it are still installed, the package can be automatically removed.

This is handled in Fedora with the use of the yum extension package-cleanup and using one of the "leaf-node" options.

* suggested packages, ie., packages has a list of packages which enhances the package in quesiton.

PackageKit does this in recent versions of Fedora, see this link for information on Fedora 11 font and mime-type installation.

* recommended packages, ie, packages which are not strictly required but should normally be installed with a package.

Not sure about this, seems like the previous point?

* support for packages deprecating and/or providing other packages

Obsoletes: is a feature of RPM since way-back

* support for running configuration utilities and such during installation

Again, since way back whenever it has been possible to run scriptlets in RPM specfiles.

Fedora 11, which is due to be released in about 3 weeks, will have OO3.1

oh i forgot to add it's available for RHEL/CentOS systems through EPEL
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL

> >Beware if you have an older ATI card you might run into problems.
> "Older," in this case, defined as anything prior to the HD3x00 series. My experience with 9.04 and a 2600XT is less than ideal.

One of Fedora's recent test days (in preparation for Fedora 11 which is due out soon) found a number of problems with ATI cards. Hopefully by the time F11 ships (in about a month) a number of the issues will be sorted.

Fixes made for Fedora will eventually benefit Ubuntu users using the OSS ATI drivers too

> >Beware if you have an older ATI card you might run into problems.
> "Older," in this case, defined as anything prior to the HD3x00 series. My experience with 9.04 and a 2600XT is less than ideal.

One of Fedora's recent test days (in preparation for Fedora 11 which is due out soon) found a number of problems with ATI cards. Hopefully by the time F11 ships (in about a month) a number of the issues will be sorted.

Fixes made for Fedora will eventually benefit Ubuntu users using the OSS ATI drivers too

People keep referring to Linux as if it were a single OS, and I believe that is very much the intent of Microsoft.

There are hundreds of active Linux distributions, each with a unique focus and out of the box functionality. Some are security leaders (like Fedora) that have driven security in Linux development.

However, when comparing to "Linux" (the collection of active distributions), the distribution with the weakest security can be held up as an example of how poor Linux is in this area.

Rather than play via Microsoft's rules, folks need to clarify their arguments. Linux is about freedom, which includes the ability to run a distribution that has no security features active whatsoever.

If security (or any other attribute) is the attribute under discussion, hold up the distribution that best exemplifies it.

Every distribution can be made to do anything (it is Linux after all), but most of these discussion center on the out of the box experience - which is actually pretty poor on windows, since it comes with nothing but the base OS.

It's not gratuitous; it's because MD5 and SHA-1 are no longer safe to use. See this FC11 feature note for more info. Note that FC11+ RPMs can still be converted to cpio format using rpm2cpio and unpacked using cpio.

IcedTea - http://iced-tea.org/wiki/Main_Page

Red Hat is already doing this. IcedTea has been released as a official supported and certified version of Java. Red Hat shipped this with their Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 operating system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icedtea
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/packages/name/java-1.6.0-openjdk
http://packages.ubuntu.com/jaunty/openjdk-6-jdk
http://packages.debian.org/lenny/openjdk-6-source

https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/packages/bugs/java-1.6.0-openjdk
http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/packageinfo?packageID=5920

IcedTea - http://iced-tea.org/wiki/Main_Page

Red Hat is already doing this. IcedTea has been released as a official supported and certified version of Java. Red Hat shipped this with their Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 operating system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icedtea
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/packages/name/java-1.6.0-openjdk
http://packages.ubuntu.com/jaunty/openjdk-6-jdk
http://packages.debian.org/lenny/openjdk-6-source

https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/packages/bugs/java-1.6.0-openjdk
http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/packageinfo?packageID=5920

IcedTea - http://iced-tea.org/wiki/Main_Page

Red Hat is already doing this. IcedTea has been released as a official supported and certified version of Java. Red Hat shipped this with their Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 operating system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icedtea
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/packages/name/java-1.6.0-openjdk
http://packages.ubuntu.com/jaunty/openjdk-6-jdk
http://packages.debian.org/lenny/openjdk-6-source

https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/packages/bugs/java-1.6.0-openjdk
http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/packageinfo?packageID=5920

It's 2.6.29 of course, but here's the document that says it: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Beats/Kernel

And if you could expand to explain how Pulse Audio differs and what benefits this will have for end-users? Or even for developers of existing applications too, such as Audacity/Jokosher/Rhythmbox/$general_audio_application.

A lot of things have changed. For example, you can now change the volume of every playback stream seperately. Then, we have better hotplug support: Just plug in your USB speaker and it will appear in your mixer (as long as you use pavucontrol, of course, PA's native mixer tool; the classic gnome-volume-control which we still ship is not hotplug-capable). You can move streams during playback between output devices. With a single click in our "paprefs" tool you can aggregate all local audio devices into a virtual one, which distributes audio to all outputs, and deals with the small frequency deviations in the sound card's quartzes -- and that code even deals with hotplugging/unplugging. If that checkbox is checked, just plugin in your USB headset and you get audio through it. (This is actually pretty cool, and it might be something we enable by default in F9)..

Fedora supports the PS3, so why putter around with YDL?

They even expect a GCC for the SPUs by the time Fedora 11 is released.

I can't wait for Fedora 11 to come out. EXT4 will be the default file-system. Seems like the KDE 4.0 fiasco all over again.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Ext4DefaultFs

Fedora XGuest is much better than anything you can find on Windows:

Creates xguest user as a locked down user

Installing this package sets up the xguest user to be used as a temporary
account to switch to or as a kiosk user account. The account is disabled unless
SELinux is in enforcing mode. The user is only allowed to log in via gdm.
The home and temporary directories of the user will be polyinstantiated and
mounted on tmpfs.

It might not do exactly what you want. No biggie, just create a custom policy to allow what you want, there are GUI tools to help with that.

Sorry, just checked the actual machine and it's Fedora 10 that worked fine out of box. Fedora 9 did have a problem with the wireless drivers, but everything else worked fine. Instructions here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EeePc for putting fedora on your Eee

I'm typing this from my 901 running Fedora 9.

It does not work (completely) out of the box; the things that you need to tweak are the following:

Boot Fedora from USB, by downloading any live iso (or the netinstall if you are short on space) and following http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraLiveCD/USBHowTo (or the relevant page in the manual: I'm frankly more happy with the manual)

Install the whole thing (SSD users might want to check out Theodore T'so blog on how to correctly format an SSD to have semi-decent performances)

See that it works "sort of"

Check out http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Eee_PC. It does not have all the solutions but has valid pointers for googling.

The GMA950 is going to be a pain as usual, so if you plan to run compiz like I do you should google for optimizations of the driver.
It mostly boils down to inserting
Option "MigrationHeuristics" "greedy"
in the Device section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf but this might be outdated information.

However, this is to improve performances, the stuff will work (just slow, and compiz can REALLY slow down apps like Firefox)

I'm typing this from my 901 running Fedora 9.

It does not work (completely) out of the box; the things that you need to tweak are the following:

Boot Fedora from USB, by downloading any live iso (or the netinstall if you are short on space) and following http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraLiveCD/USBHowTo (or the relevant page in the manual: I'm frankly more happy with the manual)

Install the whole thing (SSD users might want to check out Theodore T'so blog on how to correctly format an SSD to have semi-decent performances)

See that it works "sort of"

Check out http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Eee_PC. It does not have all the solutions but has valid pointers for googling.

The GMA950 is going to be a pain as usual, so if you plan to run compiz like I do you should google for optimizations of the driver.
It mostly boils down to inserting
Option "MigrationHeuristics" "greedy"
in the Device section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf but this might be outdated information.

However, this is to improve performances, the stuff will work (just slow, and compiz can REALLY slow down apps like Firefox)

OpenChange is planned for inclusion in Fedora 11.

I hope not. I'm have used kubuntu since 0606 and been happy about it and recommended it to everybody. But I stayed on 0804 with still has kde 3.5, and now I'm looking for an alternative distro.

Ubuntu / Kbuntu are bastardized distros. Ubuntu has to learn that there's a difference between trying to create a more user-friendly distro and "more Windows-like experience". And Xubuntu is a mess.

Try openSUSE (and use this link to get all the media codecs with one click). Try Fedora. Try Mandriva Heck, try Slackware.

Ah diddums. I'm a programmer too. Please go here and copy my code as much as you want. The only restrictions (for which I too rely on copyright law) is that you do not take the code and hide it away from me. I don't really need copyright law for that - it just happens to be my only option at the moment. I'd be happy with a law that encoded just the freedoms to share and not make proprietary.

Yes, I'm getting paid for this too, by helping paying customers and developing more software and features for them.

Rich.

It's four major versions out of support. Enjoying your unpatched security holes?

> Microsoft can't offer Windows for free until it loses it's monopoly.

Why? They happen to be the absolute LAST vendor trying to sell a PC operating system. So who would they be accused of competing unfairly against? Sun/Solaris? Red Hat? Ubuntu? Apple doesn't really count since they only sell hardware/software bundles. OS/2 is long since in the grave and NOBODY gives a crap about SCO/UNIXWare.

If they strongarm OEMs to preload Windows instead of competing systems it would be an anti-trust problem whether they sell it or give it away.

FirstAidKit

Summary

Firstaidkit is an automated recovery tool that brings together common recovery processes and applies them to a system. The way that Firstaidkit handles the recovery processes is by means of plugins. The idea being that a plugin will focus on a particular issue in the system, like grub, init scripts or Xserver. Firstaidkit is designed to automatically fix problems while focusing on maintaining user data integrity. In other words, Firstaidkit will try its best to fix your system while giving you the possibility to revert the changes.

I never tried this one personally though. Last time I fried my MBR I recovered it "by hand".

Haven't I seen this before - yes, over on Fedora, they have a "spins" functionality, making this an evolutionary, not revolutionary improvement.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/CustomSpins

KDE 4 is unfinished. It says everywhere in the official sources. Since KDE 2 the .5 releases basically where the stable targets. It's only with 4 that with the .0 release they didn't care about finish at all, and thus provides Über-suckage. 4.5 will be the stable finished 4 release. No news here. What's the big fat hairy deal?

How about the fact that distributions all ship KDE 4 by default? If it's not done, don't release it.

Fedora 10: KDE 4.1.2
OpenSUSE 11.1: 4.1
Kubuntu 8.10: 4.1

(The only exception is Debian, shipping 3.something. Of course, that matches the Debian reputation of shipping everything slow.)

You can see some of those benchmarks in this paper which explains the block allocator improvements that have been done in ext4.

Developer count is not what matters. Linux has plenty of great developers. Marketing is what's missing to Linux today.

Sadly, if you google "Ubuntu Marketing", you land on an empty page (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarketingTeam/News). Maybe someone needs to update Google's index :-)

Everyone here knows that Linux has the technical goods to take on Windows. But the cheerleading is missing. Where are the ads (with or without Jerry Seinfeld) and the glossy brochures at Best Buy?

So yes, Ubuntu being sustainable is a step in the right direction.

--
FairSoftware.net -- jobs for geeks by geeks

Interestingly a similar search "Fedora Marketing" points to a much more professional page - http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing. Anybody at Ubuntu listening?

I second Fedora Directory Server/Redhat Directory Server. Also, you may want to checkout FreeIPA
FDS/RDS have a very nice Java GUI to manage or you can use standard ldap command line tools.

http://directory.fedoraproject.org/
http://freeipa.org/page/Main_Page

FreeIPA Is what makes your Plain Jane LDAP server more AD like

Having had a look at the three alternatives you're looking at, I like Fedora DS the most. Thing is, OpenDS and Apache Directory Server run on Java, and that would worry me. Fedora DS does multi-master replication, which is a big deal, and the major feature I really wish slapd/OpenLDAP had -- and Fedora DS is GPL code, too. Novel's eDirectory also does multi-master replication but has commercial licensing costs per client depending on what you're doing with it.

Okay, so there's no Debian package for it, but it appears to be installable via alien:

    http://directory.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Howto:DebianEtch

Presumably your "arguments" don't include the vast developer and language support for Gtk?

Also we're using and compiling Gtk on Windows just fine. It even has nice native look and feel.

Yea, and Pidgin hangs every 5 minutes on Windows. And it does not feel like windows app.

Presumably your "arguments" don't include the vast developer and language support for Gtk?

Also we're using and compiling Gtk on Windows just fine. It even has nice native look and feel.

"At the university I went to the linux lab with Red Hat cost more to license than an equivalent sized XP installed lab"

What was the name of this university and why didn't they go with CentOS or Fedora

"Granted the linux lab was licensed as workstation installs (more expensive, but desktop didn't allow multiple users remoting in)"

Where does it say that ? My understanding is that you pay for a support contract, but as you are in a 'Linux lab' full of huge Linux geeks, you hardly need it :)

"I vaguely remember there was some weirdness with the RedHat licensing for education .. one would assume the linux licensing would have a slight edge regardless of the install type"

What ?