Slashdot Mirror
Fedora Core 2: Making it Work
Joe Barr writes "Linux.com is running a followup article by Ken Barber to his initial review of Fedora 2. This time he explains how to tame the GNOME and Fedora 2 problems he noted the first time around and get them both in working shape.."
" the best way to mitigate the myriad problems in GNOME 2.6 is to include KDE in your install"
Article with a built-in troll!
Nifty timing, since I just finished installing Core 2 on my box a few minutes ago. Not much in the article that informed me as such though.
I seem to notice an emerging pattern with Fedora releases though. RCs, avoid them all, they won't work properly, unless you really do want to do bug testing (not a bad thing). Final releases, avoid them too, at least for about a month or so. Let the updates filter in, and then you should be good. Plus, that gives a good amount of time for the 3rd party apt/yum repositories to starting filling up, which they seem to be doing rather nicely lately (though of course not on a par with debian, but good none the less).
the solution to this problem was that FC2 enables IPv6 by default which led to the noticable delay. After adding:
towhile (!asleep()) sheep++
As long you don't quit on the spatial mode Nautilus as quickly as the author you don't need to make any changes.
Personally, I always rearrange the GNOME panels from the default Red Hat/Fedora layout to the default GNOME layout (Applications, System menu on the top panel). But that's my preference, and certainly not something I should shake a stick at the Red Hat/Fedora guys.
Perhaps the author would enjoy reading The Spatial Way then debate the merits rather than pull a "my desktop doesn't look they way it used it, it must be broke".
First and foremost, I am totally in favour of review, comparisons or anything that gives an insight into the different distros, compares them of just plain discusses them. With this said, does any half-page with a couple of screenshots deserves to be called a "review" and being widely advertized on Slashdot? Dont's think so. The author took the time to install FC" (great!), had a couple of problems (dont we all), did not even test anything else than Gnome and made this into an article? Now give me a break! Mentionning NVidia drivers was nice... a couple of allegetly missing programs - great! And ... that is all? I teach 7,8 and 9 grade students... any of them could write something like that, and to be fair, they wouldnt get more than "good" for this. For an article in LinuxMagasine.. this is a disgrace. "This time he explains how to tame the GNOME and Fedora 2 problems he noted the first time around and get them both in working shape.." (from Slashdot)... where are the explanations?
Ask ten "Joe SixPacks" to install FC2 and run it for half-a-day.. you will get a noce combination of non professional users opinions... summarise the discussion going on on FC2 newsgroups.. you will get a long list of problems, complains and solutions.. but, for God's sake, don't just post a page of non-interesting, plain stupid "experiences" and call this a review!
"
http://www.automatiq.se
I more think of fedora as a distro more for advanced or intermediate hobbyists than for newbies. It's close to being ready out of the box for joe everybody, but not quite there yet, and even then, if they follow their roadmap, will always have testing/unstable aspects to it, done on purpose. It's for people who don't mind and want to be beta testers, people in the linux enthusiast community. It's supposed to be one step ahead of the official redhat "stable" version, and even the redhat stable version is just now being touted officially as suitable for a corporate desktop with professional IT admins on staff, not for the home user, not yet anyway. I use fedora, and I know I'll have to tweak some stuff when I get it and install it. It's still pretty dang good though, I haven't run into any show stoppers yet with it,any that really concern me anyway, and I'd consider myself only barely above newbie status, especially on the command line and being able to diagnose and repair/modify things. Media playback for all the formats gives me the most grief. Fixing the MP3 "problem" was easy, geting other propietary media formats to work cleanly is another issue entirely. I don't have a lot of USB or wireless, etc, so I can't comment there.
Do you honestly expect Joe Sixpack to install Linux? I think the problem is not that we need to make Linux installable by Joe Sixpack, but rather that we need to get OEMs to install and configure Linux.
Have you ever met a "normal" user who could install Windows? Most installs of Windows are done by OEMs or from a specially tailored OEM install disc. If users had a special install of Linux that included support for all of their OEM hardware do you think they could install it?
I think a more widespread adoption of Linux will start with business. You will have IT depts that start using it and eventually replacing Windows with it. Once the more technically inclined start to use it at work they try it at home. There will be problems, but who cares? As more people start to use Linux the answers to their questions will be posted to forums, discussion sites, usenet, whatever. The same way that Windows help has become so common.
One last question: Why is there an impression that Windows is easier to install/fix than Linux?
My opinion is that most users know how to speak "Microsoft". i.e. They know how to formulate questions that are worded in the common language used to describe the Windows environment. Back when I worked on a HelpDesk and fixed 100% Windows machines I was able to quickly locate answers to my technical questions. Forward 6 years to today: I still occassionally fix Windows PCs, but the majority of my work is on Linux. I can fix problems in Linux because I know how to speak the "Linux" language. I can do a Google search and get productive results because I know how to search for Linux specific answers.(I know Google has a Linux Specific search, but s/Linux/MacOS X/ and the point still stands)
In conclusion, I don't think we need to make Linux so easy to install that Joe Sixpack can do it (he can already _use_ Linux), I think we need business to start adopting it. The masses will follow.
Cheers,the_crowbar
Have you read the Moderator Guidelines
I think a lot of people are under the impression "Yeah, Fedora is just Red Hat under a new name". Fedora is a completely different beast all together. I wouldn't put Fedora in the same class as Mandrake or Suse. Fedora is muich more cutting edge/ development oriented. The type of crowd that actually should be using Fedora aren't going to have to boot back into Windows to read info about their problem. They will boot back into their other linux partition, mount the Fedora partition, chroot to it, and fix the problem.
isn't the adoption of "Linux" already blown?
Fedora is wrongly reccomended to those that haven't already adopted linux completely. Everyone really should stop using Fedora and Red Hat synonimously because they aren't. If you want to adopt people to Linux, reccomend Suse or even Mandrake. Reccomending Fedora is like reccomending Debian to a newbie.