Fedora review

Tue Jul 19 04:40:50 UTC 2005

Hi All,

Although that was fairly constructive in relation to adding the wiki in
the browsers for further clarification and helping out new users to links
and the like could we possibly add fedora forum and maybe fedora faq.  The
only problem that might happen with adding those is that they suggest
multimedia support and that might go against the grain of fedora or what
fedora stands for.

I think Karsten listed all the major ones that I read and I thought that
weren't right.

I installed FC4 and had no issues in fact I think its a major improvement
granted there are bugs but being bleeding edge was the reason for me
getting involved with fedora.  I wonder whether he filled bug reports?

IMO most of the complaints centred around multimedia which I managed to
get going very quickly anyway in my install.  He's trying apt compared to
yum albeit it worked before but the repositories take time to update for
apt. Compared to yum which updates rapidly.

Also I believe the majority of apt repositories are NOT fedora-extras or
the 'genuine' fedora repository correct me if I'm wrong.

The problem is this is a linux guy that has spread FUD and I'm not sure
how many people believe him so I'm wondering how many people /won't/ try
fedora because of this.  Its hard enough facing other OS FUD let alone
facing it from inside.  I'm assuming that its a fine line between honest
criticism and actual misinformation.

IMO as well is that articles like this need to be dealt with in some way
by the 'marketing' group so that as a group we can progress towards people
knowing exactly what fedora is and isn't.  The long term users understand,
but the new users don't understand and they would be reading articles like
this and saying well thats a buggy os I'm definately not trying it now.

I don't feel that we want Fedora to become an experienced user distro
because fresh blood is great for finding bugs as well as putting genuine
ideas forward that people maybe have not considered.

-- 
Regards

Marc Wiriadisastra
Choice Tyre Wholesalers

> On Tue, 2005-07-19 at 09:15 +0800, Marc Wiriadisastra wrote:
>> Hi All,
>> I don't know if this has been posted on the list or not but situations
like this need to be looked at because it can only hinder the progress
of
>> Fedora over time unfortunately.
>> http://distrocenter.linux.com/distrocenter/05/07/11/2327245.shtml?tid=107&tid=127
>
> I don't think this has been posted, and we definitely appreciate
postings to this list of all review of Fedora.  Rahul, for one, takes
the effort to contact writers and set them straight on the facts.
>
> I can see what directions in that article I think need correction.  I'm
curious what you see?
>
> * Worrying about OOo being beta.  FC is specifically cutting edge.
Mincing words about beta in a release is contrary to the spirit and
history of highly advancing open source.  Beta and release are
> subjective terms.
>
>    "While I've had no problems with it and no crashes, a beta release in
>     what is considered to be a stable operating system feels out of place."
>
> * Totally not understanding the story behind patent infringing
> technologies.
>
>    "Worse, Fedora Core 4 gets low marks for multimedia. I encountered an
>     overwhelming number of bugs in this area. There is no support for
proprietary formats such as Windows Media, DVD, and MP3, though
having used past Red Hat/Fedora releases, I would expect nothing
more. Previously, enabling these multimedia types was not a hard
task, but this time, it's daunting."
>
> * Not even attempting to understand the difference between what is in
the distro and what is supplied by other repositories:
>
>    "I tried enabling these proprietary media files the same way I did
>     this in previous Fedora releases, which was to install Apt4RPM, a
great package management tool, and use that to install the necessary
packages. That worked in previous Fedora releases, but not in Fedora
Core 4."
>
> All in all, a very annoying read.  Thanks for sharing with us. :)
>
> - Karsten
> --
> Karsten Wade, RHCE * Sr. Tech Writer * http://people.redhat.com/kwade/
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>                        Red Hat SELinux Guide
> http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/selinux-guide/
>