Fedora desktop experience: Great, but not quite all I need
Wolfgang Gill
wolfgang at rpi.net.au
Wed May 5 01:53:30 UTC 2004
On Tue, 4 May 2004 18:21:33 -0500 (CDT), Benjamin J. Weiss wrote
> Just wanted to share a quick review on my attempt to replace Windows
> on my desktop at home.
>
> Below are the things I do with the computer and how well they
> translated to Fedora:
>
> 1) Email. I had some problems getting Evolution 1.4 to talk nicely
> with my RH 9 email server via imaps and smtp-auth over tls. I'm
> still working through that, but I got email working by allowing
> relay from the desktop box. My wife is getting used to the
> interface, but it's no big deal for her, so that's a plus.
>
> 2) Digital Camera. My wife has two digital cameras:
> - Kodak DX 3500. gtkam worked just fine, saw the camera and I
> could see all of the pics. The software's not as easy to use as the
> windows software that came with the camera, but I think I can get
> Kim to use it.
>
> - Olympus C-750 UltraZoom. I couldn't get gtkam to initialize the
> camera, no matter what camera I selected. The autoselect kept
> finding it as a C-2040Z, which would have been fine if it could have
> initialized the camera. I suppose I'd have to use one of those card
> readers, but I don't know if any of them read Olympus xD cards.
> This one's a deal-killer for my wife. I'll have to dual boot if I
> can't get this one working.
Updating to a newer version of gtkam should help with that.
> 3) Office suite. We've been using Open Office at home for about a
> year now on Windows, so the switch to Fedora was a no-brainer.
>
> 4) Games. My wife loves tux racer. :) She wishes we could get
> frogger, but tux racer is okay with her. I haven't tried installing
> Neverwinter Nights on Fedora yet, but I hear that it works just fine,
> so games shouldn't be a problem.
Yeap, NWN does run quite nicely on FC1. BUT, you will need 3D hardware
acceleration for it to work properly.
> 5) Video. I couldn't even get my video off of my Canon Optura 20
> camcorder and onto the computer with dvgrab. I've left a message on
> the dvgrab message board and haven't heard back these last few days.
> I found a couple of messages in archives that hint that ieee1394
> isn't working properly yet in linux, so that may be why I had the
> problems. I could control the camera, but just not capture the
> video over the firewire port. Go figure. I may try again when I
> get the new motherboard installed. I don't think it's the board,
> though, since this works flawlessly in Win2K.
I found that Kino works nicely in capturing video from my Canon Camcorder via
it's firewire port (IEEE1394). And allows you to do some editing as well.
> I found a couple of video editing applications that look like they
> might be pretty cool, though I don't know if they'll replace DVDLab.
> However, since I can't even get my video, there's no way to tell.
> This one's a deal-killer for me, as that's one of the major reasons
> I've upgraded my PC, so that I could do home video.
>
> Bottom line: Fedora is almost there for my personal needs. Great
> look, good experience, but not all of the apps I need are working
> yet. For now, I may have to look at purchasing XP to take advantage
> of the SATA ports on the new motherboard.
>
> Hope this helps somebody out there.
>
> Ben
Wolf
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