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
--
Open WebMail Project (http://openwebmail.org)





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