Re: Fedora and long threads - positive rather than negative!

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

 



G'day,

Figured it may be an appropriate time to chime in here.

I have been a Fedora user since FC4.  Prior to that, I used Mandrake.
Prior to that I used Slackware.  During this time, we have seen a
quantum leap forward in desktop Linux distributions (obv.)

I recognize that I am not a typical user.  I am a developer - and I
enjoy tinkering.  However, I have experienced a few things that have
relevance to a typical user.

Back in FC8 time, I purchased a (relatively new for the time) HP laptop
with an OEM version of Vista on it.  At the same time, I purchased an HP
printer (that had been out for a while before the laptop).  I didn't
actually blow Vista away right away.  I tried to get it running
reasonably well.  I started by spending about an hour creating restore
DVDs - because, of course, OEMs no longer ship media (and Windows lacks
an online install ;-) ).  I then proceeded to install the printer -
expecting that its manufacturer was the same as the laptop OEM  -
surely, drivers would already be on the laptop.  There were no drivers
for the printer on the laptop, and the printer (despite being labeled as
Vista ready) had no Vista drivers on the media provided.  So I went to
download the drivers.  2.5 hours and a couple of reboots later, I had a
Vista laptop with the printer installed.  Similar story with the scanner
that I already had - to the tune of 2 hours and a single reboot.
Wanting to play a couple of 3D games, and the OEM drivers sucking
hardcore, I went over to NVidia's site, and downloaded and installed -
another hour and a half and a reboot.

So, all told, 8 hours and countless reboots later, I had a functional
desktop with printer, scanner, reasonable video drivers.  But no dev
tools, no office suite,...

I finally decided to blow Vista away and install FC8.  Within an hour
and a half, I had a functional desktop (connected wirelessly to the net)
- with a full office suite and set of dev tools.  I plugged the printer
in - FC8 auto-detected it.  I plugged the scanner in, FC8 auto-detected
it.  I spent about half an hour downloading and installing NVIDIA linux
drivers.

After about 2 hours, I had a functional laptop under FC8 - that had
everything I needed installed.

Around the same time, my father-in-law bought his first computer (*no*
prior computer experience).  With XP OEM'd.  He didn't buy Office, or
any additional software for that matter.  Within a week, the box was
infested by malware, running slowly, and just not suiting his needs.  He
asked for help.  I set him up with Fedora, and he had a fully functional
desktop that allowed him to do everything he needed.  He was ecstatic.
"That Linux thing is much easier than the other thing we had on there
before."

Since then, the Fedora experience has continued to improve.  My recent
upgrade to FC12 has experienced only one major hiccup - the NVidia
drivers.  I'm sure this has been beaten to death, but from an outsider
looking in, the decision to ship with the nouveau drivers without
preemptively ensuring the ease of installing the proprietary drivers was
a really rough decision for end users.  But I can now sync to my iPod
Touch (not out of the box), the desktop looks sweet, and apps have kept
up to date.

Overall, I'm incredibly happy with Fedora, and will continue using it.

PK

On Fri, 2010-04-02 at 18:18 +0100, mike cloaked wrote:
> Occasionally there are long threads in the Fedora forums which start
> with flame baiting by one or other poster and quite often run for ages
> without reaching a sensible conclusion but generate bad feeling and
> not much else.


-- 
users mailing list
users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To unsubscribe or change subscription options:
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users
Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
[Index of Archives]     [Older Fedora Users]     [Fedora Announce]     [Fedora Package Announce]     [EPEL Announce]     [Fedora Magazine]     [Fedora News]     [Fedora Summer Coding]     [Fedora Laptop]     [Fedora Cloud]     [Fedora Advisory Board]     [Fedora Education]     [Fedora Security]     [Fedora Scitech]     [Fedora Robotics]     [Fedora Maintainers]     [Fedora Infrastructure]     [Fedora Websites]     [Anaconda Devel]     [Fedora Devel Java]     [Fedora Legacy]     [Fedora Desktop]     [Fedora Fonts]     [ATA RAID]     [Fedora Marketing]     [Fedora Management Tools]     [Fedora Mentors]     [SSH]     [Fedora Package Review]     [Fedora R Devel]     [Fedora PHP Devel]     [Kickstart]     [Fedora Music]     [Fedora Packaging]     [Centos]     [Fedora SELinux]     [Fedora Legal]     [Fedora Kernel]     [Fedora OCaml]     [Coolkey]     [Virtualization Tools]     [ET Management Tools]     [Yum Users]     [Tux]     [Yosemite News]     [Gnome Users]     [KDE Users]     [Fedora Art]     [Fedora Docs]     [Asterisk PBX]     [Fedora Sparc]     [Fedora Universal Network Connector]     [Libvirt Users]     [Fedora ARM]

  Powered by Linux