On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 03:58:12PM -0000, Michael wrote:
> Great post, Bob. My first Linux 'fix' was Kubuntu
> in '06 and I've stuck with it, so I'm curious [as,
> I'm sure are any Fedora users here,] - Could you
> give us a brief idea of what exactly is so wrong
> with Fedora to give it this unique distinction?
Well, Fedora's issue is that it seems to be torn between being a desktop
like distro to attract people disillusioned with Windows and being a
developer's distro.
As the first, it starts doing things to tick off the second--putting in
defaults that might be suited for the neophyte that will annoy the
experienced, such as, in the latest release (all of which are getting so
many posts today on the forums that I'm ready to put up a page about it)
Plymouth is chosen as the default boot system instead of RHGB. (RedHat
Graphical Boot.) The problem is that it doesn't work with many graphics
cards and many beginners think it's broken--with an Intel card, for
example, you see a black screen and fuzzy blue and white bar.
They are making NetworkManager (fondly referred to as NetworkMangler)
the default tool for networks, which can mess up people who don't boot
into Gnome and also those who want a static IP address.)
They have changed it so that the defalt boot, which is into Gnome, will
not allow root login.
All these things turn off the second target group, the developer and
sysadmin types.
So Ok, much of this is like Ubuntu, aimed at the Desktop user. However,
unlike Ubuntu, they don't do sufficient testing, or perhaps are in a
hurry to get things out, so, for example, Plyumouth with its lack of
support for many, possibly even most, cards, pulse audio which only
works out of the box if you use gnome, and even then has some issues I
believe (I don't use it so I'm not sure--nor do I use Gnome), their
default package manager--the old one worked well, but they've pushed
packagekit which has lots of issues still. It might be good one day but
the developer just insists that it's great and those who don't like it
are uninformed. :)
They were going to replace pidgeon which works, with Empathy which is
still beta at best. Fortunately, the Empathy developer said, "Wait,
this isn't ready. I would love people to beta test though." With that
attitude, he got lots of folks that want to help. He's a great guy and
often participates on the forums.
So, the desktop audience winds up getting confused and angry and posting
on the forums, this stinks, I'm going to Ubuntu.
While Fedora has release notes, when Ubuntu does something that might
suprise people, they put the announcement in an easy to find place. The
main Fedora pages just tell you about all the improvements--many of
which, for many people, are regressions.
So, we stick with Fedora for various reasons, in my case, beacause my
job is all RedHat based. Still, it frequently aggravates, frequently
breaks because of insufficient QA, has a horrible bugzilla, which only
some admit is horrible, etc.
So, for developers, it becomes less useful than other, leaner, with less
of the attitude, "The user is dumb."
For desktop users, it just seems to be broken.
So, that's why you'll often hear me say to new users, it's not the best
choice. I'm emphasizing the bad here, in answer to your question.
On the good side, you'll often have the very newest software--for
example, it's got OpenOffice 3 where Ubuntu has OO 2.x--though it's easy
to change that. The whole yum/rpm system has improved tremendously.
They're supporting some popular Atheros wireless cards out of the box
where Ubuntu isn't. (On the other hand, there's good logic in Ubuntu's
action--they figure that as Ubuntu is easier to upgrade than Fedora,
they will have many users just upgrading--doing it the way they're doing
it won't break the user's MadWifi workaround for this card.).
Most of the developers are pretty good--I mention that PackageKit
fellow, but in fairness, at least on the forums, he was seeing really
NASTY stuff being written about his pet project, one that will be good
when finished, able to handle rpm, deb, etc.
So, there's a lot of good about it.
--
Scott Robbins
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