[Fedora-marketing-list] FC6 Reviews

[Gian Paolo Mureddu]

Thomas Canniot escribió:
> http://www.softwareinreview.com/cms/content/view/57
>
>   
For this review I have to totally agree on the wireless support (or lack 
there off) in Fedora, but that's never stopped me and many others to try 
and get our cards to work. It could certainly be better and easier, 
sure, but it is not necessarily a top priority, desirable, sure! Many of 
the points this author highlights are sad but true, many do not depend 
on Fedora (like the extra packages repos not being compatible with one 
another, which is responsibility of the repository packagers and 
maintainers), but it could certainly be easier to add new repositories. 
Making it so, not necessarily states that Fedora endorses the use of 
proprietary software, but the fact that some dubious packages live in 
other repositories, is a fact that other distros (even 
all-mighty-Debian) have come to realize, and they clearly state that 
these are beyond their control, so the same could hold true for Fedora 
in the future.

I certainly don't understand the comparison with Ubuntu, the author is 
CLEARLY an Ubuntu user (and Fedora basher), I've used that distro, I 
don't like it, just as he doesn't like Fedora. Sure, there are certain 
areas where Fedora can improve, and that's why users can file RFE's 
(I've submitted my share, and will probably keep doing so). I don't know 
what he means by "lost identity". Of course Red Hat Linux lost its 
identity! It ceased to exist! Fedora (as somewhat rightly said by the 
author) picks up where Red Hat Linux left off, and to *some* extent 
could considered the continuation of, but they're different things, one 
was a product, the other is a [community] project. Contrary to what the 
author says, I think Fedora's identity is more mature with Fedora Core 6 
than any previous release, one thing though, I hope that the "genetic" 
theme persists as part of the identity with any degree of variation and 
"evolution" (intrinsic to genetic material :-) ), making it part of the 
Fedora identity (along the "infinity and beyond" bubble logo).

Two lamentable incidents were brought up (with a vengeance) by the 
author: The infamous Anaconda crash when adding repositories which and 
the interface had to be manually configured, or when adding iSCSI 
volumes (not mentioned by the author, but ultimately related to his 
problem), and the problem with wireless setup. I regret his focus on 
proprietary, as far from the objective of GNU, Linux and many other Open 
Source initiatives to "Open" the Web, he seems to be content with it 
remaining closed... Anyway, that's a philosophical issue not concerning 
Fedora (as such), I guess the fact that he compares vis-a-vis Fedora to 
Ubuntu speaks good for Fedora, as Ubuntu is quickly becoming "the 
defacto standard" distribution for new users, which means that there are 
some rough edges around Fedora which have to be polished out, but that 
it is at least at the same level as Ubuntu, but not quite "usable" for 
new users. This had been the intended way for Fedora for most of the 
past releases, Fedora (to the best of my understanding) was not targeted 
at the totally new GNU/Linux user, but more towards the seasoned to 
power user, without it being as "hard" (complex, really) as Gentoo or 
LFS, which is why I have always liked Red Hat products, and Fedora is no 
exception, which I'm infinitely grateful for. However Fedora CAN be used 
by new and inexperienced users, they need more hand-holding, but in the 
end they get the hang of it fairly quickly.

With the renewed focus on providing within the distro and community that 
hand-holding new users need only speaks good for Fedora, as it remains 
the same for experienced users, but gets friendlier for newer, to me 
that's as close to perfection you can possibly get ;-) << Fanboy-speaking.