FC6: some impressions

Dimi Paun dimi at lattica.com
Tue Nov 21 22:30:51 UTC 2006


Hi folks,

Congratulations for FC6, great work! I've been a long time
RH/FC user ('95), so I'm pretty excited about this release.

That being said, it's been a very rough experience from the
POV of a desktop experience. In fact, rather frustrating
and disappointing.

Before I list the problems, let me just list a few datapoints:
  * I try to keep a clean install, as close as possible to standard
  * I use my desktop for email, browsing, VOIP, and hacking.
  * I don't need proprietary 3D drivers, no games.
This is a very typical and non-taxing usage. Like for many (most?)
people out there the email, browsing, CD burning, and VOIP accounts
for probably 98% of what I need the desktop for.

So, considering this quite typical use case, this is what I
get from the upgrade from FC5:
  1. Sound stopped working on my Intel ICH5 AC'97 Audio Controller
     https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=216056
     This killed VOIP on my box.

  2. Evolution hangs when sending email
     https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=208227
     https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=208724
     This renders Evolution almost entirely useless,
     making this a critical bug.

  3. Evolution continued to not print email bodies
     https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=186653
     A long standing and crippling bug in a business
     environment where you receive invoices via email
     that you need to print.

  4. CD burining in Nautilus is broken
     When clinking on the "Burn to CD..." button nothing happens
     for >30 of seconds, then dialog appears. Clicking on the
     drive dropdown to select another drive results in the same
     freeze lasting 20s or so. A non-technical user would have
     had to reboot the box!

  5. Firefox starts using 100% after some time.
     No bug report here, as I haven't figure out what to report,
     but this makes browsing a painful experience. Slow, sluggish,
     with hangs that lasts 10s of seconds. Every time I close a
     Firefox window GNOME asks me if I want to kill it since it's
     not reporting, etc. Horrible.

Considering these bugs, what is left of my desktop? I can't
use email, no sound/VOIP, CD burning is boken, substandard browsing.

I am not complaining about 3D drivers, fancy features, or Windows games,
but absolutely basic desktop features.

My question is: Quo Vadis? Shouldn't these problem been caught by QA?
Aren't these issues considered show stoppers for a Desktop distribution?

-- 
Dimi Paun <dimi at lattica.com>
Lattica, Inc.





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