Fedora Desktop future- RedHat moves

[Francis Earl]

Well, I haven't seen Ubuntu even suggest alternative hardware that isn't
dependent on closed source drivers to do what the user wants. I also
haven't seen anything pointing out any of the various Xiph tools, and
offering ways to allow users to turn their mp3 stuff into oggs (maybe an
interface via their build system that the user can throw MP3's at and be
notified when they are encoded into mp3's would be a nice simple way of
doing this - most existing tools are rather technically inclined
currently) instead of just allowing the user to install these codecs at
will with no notification.

They are doing good things with Java and Flash with the information
provided, but even then if you watch users, they'll just look for a next
or ok button, and hit it without reading a word.

You can't force a user to buy new hardware, but informing them in a
constructive way of what to look for next time might be helpful.

Similarly, users just want to play their media, so if you explain and
give them an easy way to encode their media via vorbis or theora that
might be helpful also.

There are so many things Ubuntu could be doing, but currently their
approach seems to be focused on having as many people running their
software as possible, regardless of ethics involved. That way they can
work their Landscape product into corporations where its users have
successfully convinced management to deploy Ubuntu. Landscape, along
with Launchpad, is proprietary software used for systems management.

On Tue, 2008-04-22 at 20:21 -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
> Francis Earl wrote:
> >
> > It is those things though that halt growth on consumer desktops, so
> > until such issues are resolved, Novell and Red Hat will never appeal
> > much to Joe User. Technically uninclined people do not care about such
> > issues, they just want to play their media library, use their webcams
> > and other similar things, and have their games work.
> > 
> > Until Red Hat and Novell can answer these questions in a way that allows
> > them to profit enough to appease shareholders, they will never have a
> > good consumer desktop product offering. I think Ubuntu is
> > counter-productive to that goal though, they are just ensuring consumers
> > continue to not care, rather than trying to really inform them in an
> > effective way.
> 
> What would you like to inform them about?  That it's a bad idea to use 
> an OS that doesn't include licensed codecs as part of its cost and 
> doesn't run itunes?
> 
> -- 
>    Les Mikesell
>     lesmikesell at gmail.com
>