Fedora Download Page Useless

[Rahul Sundaram]

Vytas Valas wrote:

>I went to the trouble of downloading the DVD iso file
>for 32 bit systems. The webpage says to use a program
>called shalsum to check the download. There is NO
>PLACE AT ALL on the download page or anywhere else I
>can see to find the shalsum program to check the
>download prior to trying to burn it to a DVD disk. I
>doubt I am alone in feeling mislead by the RedHat
>people when their webpage says use a program which is
>NOT available.
>  
>
Ok. I understand the frustration. The website could use a revamp with a 
better design, better content and updates but for this particular issue 
(help is most welcome. ping fedora-docs or fedora-marketing list if you 
are interested), here is what happened. Before the release, I googled 
for a good sha1sum utility for other platforms besides Linux. Linux 
distributions usually include sha1sum utility, Fedora does and it can be 
installed using "yum install sha1sum" so not much of a problem there.  I 
ended up with several links to particular ftp sites amoung which nearly 
all of them were already overloaded potentially from Fedora users 
themselves . Some of them looked like personal websites and others 
werent really generic project pages

ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/binary/sha1sum.exe
http://mirrors.rootmode.com/ftp.gnupg.org/binary/sha1sum.exe
http://www.slavasoft.com/fsum/
http://www.slavasoft.com/hashcalc/

Linking to these websites from the Fedora download page would require 
that the project page be a generic one like sf.net. Linking to random 
personal webpages or commercial webprojects without getting explicit 
permission from them. Bandwidth costs a huge amount. That is a 
liability. Linking to particular mirrors is a bad idea too especially 
when they are overloaded since the users wont be able to reach those 
webpages anyway. I shooted off a mail to the developer of 
md5summer(.org) requesting that he add sha1sum to his project. Now if 
you really want the download page to point to a sha1sum utility it would 
be good to get some links from non-commercial websites like sf.net or 
freshmeat.net or which are known to work well and dependable  in Windows 
or OS X or any platform of your choice.

Alternatively there is always google and the mailing list archives with 
a good number of users actively helping each other. Hope that helps

regards
Rahul