My first post on this list was a comment on this passage at Distrowatch beginning by "The topic of CentOS": http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20090629 Fedora is plainly described as "broken" and "unstable"! Want something that works? Piggyback Red Hat on CentOS! And, of course, all over the place, in forums and mailing lists, some very dedicated loudmouths are spreading the news. They're experts, they know! And just don't tell them Fedora could be made more user-friendly, you would ruin their geek experience! I'm no expert, but I've installed quite a few distributions along the years and Fedora certainly isn't worst that any other. Despite using the 64 bit version, it is neither broken nor unstable. Many of the bugs it has are also present in other distributions where you've also got to go application shopping because some default ones are lame or broken. (In Fedora, Totem and Brasero, for instance.) But there's one *stoupid* thing that really puzzles me. When I rebooted after installation, I noticed there was no pause for choosing the kernel. I thought maybe that was because there was only one kernel installed. But, then, a new kernel arrived and nothing changed. "What if the new kernel doesn't work", I thought. Of course, my hardware being already recognized, there was little chance of this happening, but why take chances to save a few seconds at boot time? I went to System, Administration, Bootloader and changed for a default of 8 seconds, which is the minimum required to have... 2 seconds to switch kernel. (At 5 seconds, there's still no pause.) Safety first! Thanks to Tim's good advice, I then chose to work with kmod-nvidia for my video card and then found some good explanations on rpmfusion to get rid of the Nouveau driver. I installed Compiz and so on. Lots of fun to eventually give some Mac users a ride for their money. Then, yesterday, came a new kernel with a bunch of updates. I installed all of them. "You need to reboot", I was told. I did, got into a 800 x 600 login screen and never could log in in graphic mode. I never thought the precaution I had taken would be useful so soon. Nowhere did I see any advice explaining that this default setting has been made by phonies whose only goal is to save a few seconds at boot time. The previous kernel worked as usual. The kmod update arrived less than 24h later. I upgraded. The new kernel now works fine. Now, imagine a newbie coming to Fedora. A selection of upgrades is suggested. He has absolutely no idea of what is what and just clicks "upgrade everything". He might not even be aware that a new kernel has been installed. He's asked to reboot, he does, then can't log in anymore. The upgrade has broken his system!!! What's the solution? If he's not completely pissed off at this stage, he will boot with his LiveCD and seek help. He will, I suppose, be told to log in as root and... with vi, modify grub. Of course, the experts giving him this advice won't teach him how to use vi, you know command mode, insert mode and so on. Newbies have to RTFM!!! But newbie won't RTFM, he'll just fdisk /MBR . Another user lost for Linux. I'm trying to figure out what our great experts would lose if there was a pause for choosing the kernel. If they don't like this setting, they wouldn't have to use vi, just the Administration menu. All it takes is a few seconds and, thereafter, they would never have to suffer a pause when they reboot every six month. What's the name of the guy responsible for this mess? Can you imagine proselytizing Mac users and having to make sure they understand they will have to change a default setting, otherwise, they may be locked out of their system? But loudmouths keep on evangelizing that 1% of the market share after 18 years is a proof that Linux is doing really good... Meanwhile on state televisions WMV is thriving, just as DOC and XLM formats in the bad old days. Who are these everything-is-perfect loudmouths working for? Linux? Really? I can't help but wonder, despite the help they may provide on various groups to make themselves a reputation, if those people are anything but Microsoft/Apple shills. Linux needs a better market share and it could get it easily without making geeks angry. -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
