New User With A Suggestion

[Arthur Pemberton]

On 3/15/07, Jesse Petre <jmpetre at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello Developers,
>
> I'm not entirely sure if this is the right place for me to be making this
> suggestion, but I strongly felt that it needs to be made.

Well this isn't the developers list, but that's okay.

> I've a very inexperienced linux user, and decided to give Fedora a try.

Glad to hear that, sorry that your first experience was bad, don't
judge Fedora too harshly by that.

> This was three days ago, and only just today can I log into linux.

In future, head over to irc://freenode/fedora as soon as possible,
your problems would have been solved much quicker.

> The root of all problems came from the X config being installed with a
> default bit-depth of 24-bits.  My monitor does not support 24-bit color,
> only 16 and 32, so after installing Fedora, my monitor would simply flash
> "input not supported".  This may sound like a simple problem to you, but to
> me, a very inexperienced user, I was baffled as to why my monitor would not
> display the screen.

It is actually quite a simple problem, but it is however difficult if
you haven't had that much experience.

> It also was not helpful, at all, to leave out X
> configuration during the installation.  I could have easily reinstalled
> Fedora, multiple times if necessary, and messed around with display settings
> to my heart's content.

I agree, I am one of those who is very much against not having the
graphical setup as part of the fresh installation, it was there in
Fedora Core 5. I have had this very problem myself at least 6 times.

> I am familiar with this.  I am not familiar with
> learning how to switch to a virtual console, learn how to find the Xorg
> configuration file to edit manually (because system-config-display won't
> work -- it runs in 24-bits)

Also true.

> , and learn how to use an extremely confusing
> text editor (vi) from the console.

Fedora comes with a much simpler text editor, aimed at newbies, called 'nano'

> Ultimately, my prime and strong suggestion is to change the default
> bit-depth installed to 16-bits, or at the least, allow users to configure X
> during the installation process.

I agree with your later suggestion, I have been told that the problem
will be fixed by Fedora 7, I am not sure how they intend on fixing it,
but I have been assured that the developers are  aware of the problem.

> If this is the wrong place to be sending a suggestion, please let me know,
> and thanks for reading :)

You're welcome.

> Jesse

Peace.

-- 
Fedora Core 6 and proud