Did I make a mistake in starting with Fedora Core 4?

[Dave Gutteridge]

    Thanks for the words of encouragement, Jim.
    The main reason I switched to to Fedora was because I was already 
doing the bulk of my work with open source software. Firefox, 
Thunderbird, and OpenOffice are what I use 90% of the time on my 
computer. So even though I knew Fedora was not as "plug and play" as 
Windows, I thought it would be workable since these programs were native 
to Linux.
    I expected it not to find things like my Canon scanner and my 
Kenwood USB audio connection, as those are a bit obscure as hardware 
goes. But, happily, Fedora detected them and they work fine.
    Having a major deficiency like not being able to read data DVDs was 
unexpected. Especially as Fedora installed just fine from one of the DVD 
drives that it now won't reliably read.
    If I can get past this one obstacle, I would love to continue using 
Fedora. There's a lot I like about it. And I'm willing to learn 
UNIX/Linux commands to settle into the environment. But I don't think 
I'm being unreasonable in thinking that Fedora should at least read from 
DVD/CD-ROM drives, that I'm not being a particularly whiny user in 
wondering why there are difficulties with this basic hardware.

Dave