The big What-Why-How

[Stuart Ellis]

On Thu, 2005-09-08 at 14:11 -0500, Tom 'spot' Callaway wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-09-08 at 19:43 +0100, Stuart Ellis wrote:
> 
> > I actually wrote that content in a different context, as a working
> > analysis to show where we differ from other well-known desktops.
>
> I'd almost rather see us do a:
> 
> Here are LOTS of reasons why Fedora is cool/useful/fun.

Agreed. Again, I wrote it up to support an argument that desktops
superficially look a lot alike, e.g. a common Windows setup and a
standard Fedora desktop have equivalent software for a lot of things.

I don't personally advocate putting on it a public Website - my point
was really to *challenge* the usual practice of laundry lists of
applications with no context.

The difference between Linux/Windows is perhaps more in the overall
experience... watching inexperienced computer users on Windows - the
usability of many desktop applications actually sucks unless you are a
power user and understand the conventions, and the lack of malware takes
a lot of the hassle out. IMO, these things are hugely important, but of
course are not actually unique to Fedora.

> We should focus on the specific things that we know we have and that we
> know other popular distros do not

Yes, although the unique technologies are harder to summarize and
demonstrate, because they aren't desktop-orientated in the usual sense.
I think that one common theme is that Fedora/RHEL are uniquely good at
deployment - you can get a well-behaved desktop or server very quickly,
with remote admin features built-in, and can also deploy systems in
large numbers.

Why would someone in the market for an operating system to install care
about deployment or support features, though, or even usability ?

One answer might be that they are installing systems for others to use.
Of course the release cycle goes against that...

-- 

Stuart Ellis

stuart at elsn.org

Fedora Documentation Project: http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/docs/

GPG key ID: 7098ABEA
GPG key fingerprint: 68B0 E291 FB19 C845 E60E  9569 292E E365 7098 ABEA 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/attachments/20050908/89d4ea6a/attachment.sig>