Except that Fedora is listed in RedHat's own PR that it is NOT a product of RedHat and won't be supported.
The whole issue of Linux's future on the desktop depends on development of a customer support system that can not just rival MS, but crush it.
Once people realize that they can run all the software that 90% of desktop users use for a lot less money (won't be free) and that they can do it on their old (and cheap) PC's, whichever product sits in that niche will be sitting on a money machine that will let them turn back to the server market and take a bigger market share here using the combination of their money and their corporate good will.
This is how MS beat Novell, they used their flow of cash from CompUSA, etal to built NT and go after the server market. It was "Gee this server is seamless to my Win based users, and handles the webpages, etc normally, so lets use more of these NT boxes and drop Novell."
A company like Novell can take Ximian and SuSE's technology and provide actual customer support, and marketing and then go after schools and universities who would be naturally inclined to use a cheaper OS on their machines they already own, as opposed to staying on the MS treadmill (the new OS gets fatter, the machines are too slow, the machines get upgraded, the OS gets fatter to keep up, etc).
Be careful about SuSE. Their support is really bad. Even if you pay for extra support, it will usually be unable to answer questions about peripherals like USB driven devices (ie: PDA's). I am not sure RH is better, but I am disappointed in SuSE and will likely switch to a diferent distro if a better desktop distro comes along.
The most important thing SuSe 8.2 Personal Ed. is missing is decent customer support. Very European (lazy, and really unhelpful.) The online site has no useful help functions. The email site will only help with the actual install. (So if you are up enough to send an email, then they won't help you.) The phone site is only open from 9 to 3 M-F, so I can't call from my desk at home to go over a problem with it in front of me. They don't cover USB devices, so I can't get help installing my Visor. Their paid service will also not cover the visor install or other USB install issues. They refered me to a listserv that appears to be run or atleast frequented by SuSe programmers, but no one ever replies to a post. If SuSe ran their customer service like Microsoft, it would be geometric improvement, and you know how little that would mean to the average user...
Two things this experience has taught me:
1. SuSe is not a company I want to do business with.
2. Software reviewers need to start including customer service in their reviews. (Had I known that SuSe sucked at customer support, I would have looked at Mandrake or stuck with a Debian distro like Knoppix or Morphix. No customer service, but none advertised or expected.)
Ditto from the Cornhusker state. A new Linux user, myself, I love the user interface and the ease of saving files in various formats. Even on my old beater machine at home, OO keeps up with MSO-XP that needs a faster machine to run.
Complete props to all at OO.org! Happy 3rd and many more.
The FCC is in charge of administering and setting regulations of the communications industry by act of Congress. The FCC, like many regulatory agencies, makes unpopular calls sometimes. This is one of them, though not with me. The deregulation of radio in terms of the old Fairness Doctrine allowed an explosion of talk radio and saved the AM stations from ruin.
The prinicpal reason so many liberals are afraid of these new regs is that for generations, they have controlled the media, and with these new regs, they are afraid that conservatives will push them farther to the margin. (Couldn't happen soon enough for me...)
Not only does the OS cost less, but it runs nice on old machines. My home PC is an old Celeron. Win98 was slow, XP would barely fit and run slow, yet the machine itself is in good order.
To throw it away and upgrade just because MS chose to write an OS that is too big for anything short of a Pentium 3, is grossly wasteful.
The hardware upgrade cycle must be atleast two years longer running Linux than running WinXP AND you can have your expensive engineers working on cars, instead of fixing the latest DCOM hole.
I am a new Linux user and have been happily surprised with the version of KDE that comes with Knoppix.
I would suggest that KDE and Gnome could be shipped in Live CD distributions so that new people could play with each before buying the Linux version to hard install.
I don't think that the choice of KDE versus Gnome or some other desktop would stop me from changing to Linux. The price difference between the commercial versions of Linux and WinXP Pro is just too great to ignore.
As long as there is some way to check both out and pick the desktop GUI that a user likes best, it should be no big deal.
This is what is motivating me to consider changing to Linux on my home desktop. The MS support is lacking, they have canned all support for win98 (what I have now). I don't want to pay $159 for Win XP Pro, especially if a year from now, they come out with a new version that I will have to buy then.
Marcel Gagne has a new book out that was on ScreenSavers a week ago that was supposed to contain steps for a relatively painless conversion. Any one have contact with the book or the process of conversion on a home PC?
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Except that Fedora is listed in RedHat's own PR that it is NOT a product of RedHat and won't be supported. The whole issue of Linux's future on the desktop depends on development of a customer support system that can not just rival MS, but crush it. Once people realize that they can run all the software that 90% of desktop users use for a lot less money (won't be free) and that they can do it on their old (and cheap) PC's, whichever product sits in that niche will be sitting on a money machine that will let them turn back to the server market and take a bigger market share here using the combination of their money and their corporate good will. This is how MS beat Novell, they used their flow of cash from CompUSA, etal to built NT and go after the server market. It was "Gee this server is seamless to my Win based users, and handles the webpages, etc normally, so lets use more of these NT boxes and drop Novell." A company like Novell can take Ximian and SuSE's technology and provide actual customer support, and marketing and then go after schools and universities who would be naturally inclined to use a cheaper OS on their machines they already own, as opposed to staying on the MS treadmill (the new OS gets fatter, the machines are too slow, the machines get upgraded, the OS gets fatter to keep up, etc).
Be careful about SuSE. Their support is really bad. Even if you pay for extra support, it will usually be unable to answer questions about peripherals like USB driven devices (ie: PDA's). I am not sure RH is better, but I am disappointed in SuSE and will likely switch to a diferent distro if a better desktop distro comes along.
The most important thing SuSe 8.2 Personal Ed. is missing is decent customer support. Very European (lazy, and really unhelpful.) The online site has no useful help functions. The email site will only help with the actual install. (So if you are up enough to send an email, then they won't help you.) The phone site is only open from 9 to 3 M-F, so I can't call from my desk at home to go over a problem with it in front of me. They don't cover USB devices, so I can't get help installing my Visor. Their paid service will also not cover the visor install or other USB install issues. They refered me to a listserv that appears to be run or atleast frequented by SuSe programmers, but no one ever replies to a post. If SuSe ran their customer service like Microsoft, it would be geometric improvement, and you know how little that would mean to the average user... Two things this experience has taught me: 1. SuSe is not a company I want to do business with. 2. Software reviewers need to start including customer service in their reviews. (Had I known that SuSe sucked at customer support, I would have looked at Mandrake or stuck with a Debian distro like Knoppix or Morphix. No customer service, but none advertised or expected.)
Ditto from the Cornhusker state. A new Linux user, myself, I love the user interface and the ease of saving files in various formats. Even on my old beater machine at home, OO keeps up with MSO-XP that needs a faster machine to run. Complete props to all at OO.org! Happy 3rd and many more.
The FCC is in charge of administering and setting regulations of the communications industry by act of Congress. The FCC, like many regulatory agencies, makes unpopular calls sometimes. This is one of them, though not with me. The deregulation of radio in terms of the old Fairness Doctrine allowed an explosion of talk radio and saved the AM stations from ruin. The prinicpal reason so many liberals are afraid of these new regs is that for generations, they have controlled the media, and with these new regs, they are afraid that conservatives will push them farther to the margin. (Couldn't happen soon enough for me...)
Not only does the OS cost less, but it runs nice on old machines. My home PC is an old Celeron. Win98 was slow, XP would barely fit and run slow, yet the machine itself is in good order. To throw it away and upgrade just because MS chose to write an OS that is too big for anything short of a Pentium 3, is grossly wasteful. The hardware upgrade cycle must be atleast two years longer running Linux than running WinXP AND you can have your expensive engineers working on cars, instead of fixing the latest DCOM hole.
I am a new Linux user and have been happily surprised with the version of KDE that comes with Knoppix. I would suggest that KDE and Gnome could be shipped in Live CD distributions so that new people could play with each before buying the Linux version to hard install. I don't think that the choice of KDE versus Gnome or some other desktop would stop me from changing to Linux. The price difference between the commercial versions of Linux and WinXP Pro is just too great to ignore. As long as there is some way to check both out and pick the desktop GUI that a user likes best, it should be no big deal.
This is what is motivating me to consider changing to Linux on my home desktop. The MS support is lacking, they have canned all support for win98 (what I have now). I don't want to pay $159 for Win XP Pro, especially if a year from now, they come out with a new version that I will have to buy then. Marcel Gagne has a new book out that was on ScreenSavers a week ago that was supposed to contain steps for a relatively painless conversion. Any one have contact with the book or the process of conversion on a home PC?