On 11/25/06, John Babich <
jmbabich@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
It's an unofficially supported distro. Basically Ubuntu has said if you don't use Gnome for your desktop then good luck. KDE can of course be installed afterwards but post install KDE or Gnome installations tend to be messy and very time consuming. At least the last time I've done it which was 3 or 4 years ago.
I hate the default install options of Fedora so much that I ALWAYS choose custom install. Some really excellent software like K3b, Midnight Commander, ncftp, KDE and any KDE apps and the list goes on of stuff left out of the default Fedora install. I also have a preferred partitioning scheme and the default install wants to wipe that out. One of the things I'm covering in the Admin doc is potential partitioning schemes commonly used and the positives and downsides of each.
Thank you. I plan to visit that frequently.
Aye, Fedora as long as you do a custom install will do a nice job of installing KDE. Except for grabbing some extras like MP3 support which Fedora doesn't have the luxory of supporting thanks to RIA, I'm very happy with the KDE install. I click a few extra utils that i like using while I'm adding KDE, then afterwards I hit gnome-yum, sourceforge and freshmeat and I have all my favorite apps.
Though I have some feature requests. I tried to make one through bugzilla but the walk through dialog spun Firefox into some sort of endless loop. I went to bed, got up six hours later and it still hadn't finished populating the package list. I'd report it except LOL. I'll try in a few days to skip the wizard and see if it'll give me the normal Bugzilla. One of those requests would be an easier way to save what packages are installed. I'd love nothing more for Fedora to read what I had installed last time, present me a custom install where I could go through and add or subtract software rather than doing it every time by hand. The alternate is just as bad by editing the install files manually and only worth it if you are doing large numbers of installs. For example I just went up to FC6 on this machine from FC3. (Been running FC5 since it came out on one machine, almost that long on my third) Spent a good part of a day with gnome-yum re-installing files, then another few hours downloading tarballs of stuff that wasn't in any repositories.
Not with Fedora Docs. Folks here are very friendly. I'm talking about the wider Linux community. Think of it in these terms. VB has billions of lines of code out there. One of the things that have literally kept many people using windoze is VB. Believe it or not years after the last and final release there are still thousands of coders hacking more VB code. Gambas and the Mono project offer two different alternitives to VB yet nobody knows about them. Suggest a non-C like language to many Nix people and they get this really sour look on their face. LISP, Smalltalk and dozens of other non-C like languages have excellent support on Linux. Nobody knows about it. Think about this as a TCO proposal to a company. Move to Linux and they save the cost of the OS, buying the latest Microsoft visual studio/ More code will port from VB to Gambas than from VB to .net so they save countless man hours while porting to a more secure, stable OS that doesn't require the frequent hardware upgrades that windoze requires. Most windoze users think of VI and Gnu C when they think of Linux. That's an image we want to change.
Fedora by default doesn't install Gambas or most of the non-C languages. Hell the default doesn't even install most compilers period. Even if you never write a line of code dozens of apps will complain if you don't have Perl, Python and others. What do fresh windoze users do when they want to use the equiv of Access for example? I've found a few, haven't had a chance to check them out but out of three I figure one ought to be pretty good.
A new Linux user is going to want to know what to use in place of the apps they are used to using. That is not cut and dried in Linux. Many of the lists that do such are poorly maintained or give only really basic options. Might be a good document for us to add. It also might be a really good idea for many of those apps to be in the default install.
Aye, hoping to do my part on that.
To be honest unless disk space is at a premium choosing to install only one of those gives a user half a desktop. Grip, K3b, Gnome-yum and so on. Neither desktop is complete in my opinion. A user can muddle along with apps that are not as good but exist in the given desktop. For the complete Linux experience, at least from a GUI standpoint both should be installed. Between both desktops and the 1,500 +other apps/utils I install I'm still using less than 5 gigs disk space on my / partition which includes every one of the default partitions except /home. I'm like a kid in a candy store every time I visit freshmeat or pull up gnome-yum LOL. For most users 5 gigs is nothing. At least a gig of that 5 on mine is stuff most people wouldn't install. So your talking 3 to 4 gigs of stuff that give a Fedora user so many good tools to work with. Allows users a great amount of choice. If Konquerer isn't doing it for them then they can use MC or Nautalis for example. While using KDE as the window manager. If they are using Gnome apps like K3b are really nice things to have installed default.
I'd be happy to start on that soon as I finish the Admin docs.
I don't use Gnome very often. Mostly on machines where KDE isn't there or helping a user who chose Gnome as a desktop manager. So I would use the Gnome guide as an example for the KDE guide but would not modify it directly. If I saw something I wanted to add or suggest I'd contact the author directly.
Except for corporate users and untrusted family members most people running Fedora I think will have local root.
Unless they are non-technical or not as technical as they think they are :) I prefer to give local root to users. Things like configuring printers, installing software and modifying the environment are pretty essential to most users. They are also things that most users coming from the windoze world are used to being able to do themselves. Found that I spent less time fixing machines where people abused local root powers than doing mundane tasks for people who didn't have local root. Machines got scanned for rootkits and I laid eyeballs on the logs of machines pretty frequently so things went fairly smoothly.
So in my opinion %70 or more of Fedora users are going to have local root. Most users not on a machine they own will not have root access to the servers they are connected too. So there is value in covering both situations.
On 11/25/06, Dan Smith < draciron@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Ubuntu does have Kubuntu, a separate distribution. Anyway, some good news
for Fedora KDE users:
It's an unofficially supported distro. Basically Ubuntu has said if you don't use Gnome for your desktop then good luck. KDE can of course be installed afterwards but post install KDE or Gnome installations tend to be messy and very time consuming. At least the last time I've done it which was 3 or 4 years ago.
There is a plan is to merge Fedora Core and Extras in FC7. This
eliminates one barrier. There will be no second-class citizens, but
there will still be default apps at installation time. I hope that a
complete KDE can be installed from the start with the merger of the
repositories. I use both KDE and GNOME. Getting a *complete* KDE
installation on
FC6 is a bit of a pain. What can be installed by default vs choice at
install time is being actively discussed. Now's a good time to push
for more KDE.
I hate the default install options of Fedora so much that I ALWAYS choose custom install. Some really excellent software like K3b, Midnight Commander, ncftp, KDE and any KDE apps and the list goes on of stuff left out of the default Fedora install. I also have a preferred partitioning scheme and the default install wants to wipe that out. One of the things I'm covering in the Admin doc is potential partitioning schemes commonly used and the positives and downsides of each.
- Other Fedora Project members are pushing to integrate KDE more
cleanly into Fedora. See http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/UnleashKDE.
Thank you. I plan to visit that frequently.
Fedora Core and Extras include GNOME, KDE and XFCE (Yes, I even use
XFCE on low-end machines). You can add others. It so happens that GNOME
is the default windows manager. This, of course, makes GNOME an easier
install.
Aye, Fedora as long as you do a custom install will do a nice job of installing KDE. Except for grabbing some extras like MP3 support which Fedora doesn't have the luxory of supporting thanks to RIA, I'm very happy with the KDE install. I click a few extra utils that i like using while I'm adding KDE, then afterwards I hit gnome-yum, sourceforge and freshmeat and I have all my favorite apps.
Though I have some feature requests. I tried to make one through bugzilla but the walk through dialog spun Firefox into some sort of endless loop. I went to bed, got up six hours later and it still hadn't finished populating the package list. I'd report it except LOL. I'll try in a few days to skip the wizard and see if it'll give me the normal Bugzilla. One of those requests would be an easier way to save what packages are installed. I'd love nothing more for Fedora to read what I had installed last time, present me a custom install where I could go through and add or subtract software rather than doing it every time by hand. The alternate is just as bad by editing the install files manually and only worth it if you are doing large numbers of installs. For example I just went up to FC6 on this machine from FC3. (Been running FC5 since it came out on one machine, almost that long on my third) Spent a good part of a day with gnome-yum re-installing files, then another few hours downloading tarballs of stuff that wasn't in any repositories.
Clique behavior is always bad for FOSS. One of the goals of the Fedora Docs
project is to lower the barrier of entry. We should have a "big tent".
Not with Fedora Docs. Folks here are very friendly. I'm talking about the wider Linux community. Think of it in these terms. VB has billions of lines of code out there. One of the things that have literally kept many people using windoze is VB. Believe it or not years after the last and final release there are still thousands of coders hacking more VB code. Gambas and the Mono project offer two different alternitives to VB yet nobody knows about them. Suggest a non-C like language to many Nix people and they get this really sour look on their face. LISP, Smalltalk and dozens of other non-C like languages have excellent support on Linux. Nobody knows about it. Think about this as a TCO proposal to a company. Move to Linux and they save the cost of the OS, buying the latest Microsoft visual studio/ More code will port from VB to Gambas than from VB to .net so they save countless man hours while porting to a more secure, stable OS that doesn't require the frequent hardware upgrades that windoze requires. Most windoze users think of VI and Gnu C when they think of Linux. That's an image we want to change.
Fedora by default doesn't install Gambas or most of the non-C languages. Hell the default doesn't even install most compilers period. Even if you never write a line of code dozens of apps will complain if you don't have Perl, Python and others. What do fresh windoze users do when they want to use the equiv of Access for example? I've found a few, haven't had a chance to check them out but out of three I figure one ought to be pretty good.
A new Linux user is going to want to know what to use in place of the apps they are used to using. That is not cut and dried in Linux. Many of the lists that do such are poorly maintained or give only really basic options. Might be a good document for us to add. It also might be a really good idea for many of those apps to be in the default install.
One obstacle is lousy or non-existent documentation. We can change that.
We can also work more closely with other FOSS projects on a complete
FOSS toolchain for FOSS documents.
Aye, hoping to do my part on that.
A new point:
What are the implications of a choice of either GNOME or KDE at install time,
or shortly thereafter?
To be honest unless disk space is at a premium choosing to install only one of those gives a user half a desktop. Grip, K3b, Gnome-yum and so on. Neither desktop is complete in my opinion. A user can muddle along with apps that are not as good but exist in the given desktop. For the complete Linux experience, at least from a GUI standpoint both should be installed. Between both desktops and the 1,500 +other apps/utils I install I'm still using less than 5 gigs disk space on my / partition which includes every one of the default partitions except /home. I'm like a kid in a candy store every time I visit freshmeat or pull up gnome-yum LOL. For most users 5 gigs is nothing. At least a gig of that 5 on mine is stuff most people wouldn't install. So your talking 3 to 4 gigs of stuff that give a Fedora user so many good tools to work with. Allows users a great amount of choice. If Konquerer isn't doing it for them then they can use MC or Nautalis for example. While using KDE as the window manager. If they are using Gnome apps like K3b are really nice things to have installed default.
We will need an equivalent Desktop User Guide for KDE like what now exists
for GNOME. See http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Drafts/DesktopUserGuide.
This should probably be a separate document for now.
I'd be happy to start on that soon as I finish the Admin docs.
I'm willing to get a KDE version started on the Wiki. I can't do it
alone. Just be
sure to leave the GNOME version intact. Depending on how the default window
manager discussions go, this may eventually need to be merged with GNOME
into one document. Of course, some default apps are really KDE apps. The
user doesn't know it. There is already a degree of integration between GNOME
and KDE. Initiatives exist to make the integration tighter.
I don't use Gnome very often. Mostly on machines where KDE isn't there or helping a user who chose Gnome as a desktop manager. So I would use the Gnome guide as an example for the KDE guide but would not modify it directly. If I saw something I wanted to add or suggest I'd contact the author directly.
We have to remember the target audience in any case. The current DUG is
aimed at users without root access. We don't even discuss updates at this
level. We don't mention GNOME or KDE.
Except for corporate users and untrusted family members most people running Fedora I think will have local root.
Unless they are non-technical or not as technical as they think they are :) I prefer to give local root to users. Things like configuring printers, installing software and modifying the environment are pretty essential to most users. They are also things that most users coming from the windoze world are used to being able to do themselves. Found that I spent less time fixing machines where people abused local root powers than doing mundane tasks for people who didn't have local root. Machines got scanned for rootkits and I laid eyeballs on the logs of machines pretty frequently so things went fairly smoothly.
So in my opinion %70 or more of Fedora users are going to have local root. Most users not on a machine they own will not have root access to the servers they are connected too. So there is value in covering both situations.
In any case, in light to recent events, I suspect interest in KDE on Fedora
will grow.
KDE is a very popular desktop manager. Default desktop on many distros. So for folks coming over from Mandriva , SUSE or who got to learn Linux from playing with Knoppix as an example they are going to want to stay with KDE. Many long time Linux users like myself swear by KDE. In a poll I saw on a LUG the usage between KDE and Gnome was pretty evenly split and about %10 going with really lightweight desktops or the more exotic desktops. No idea if this representive of the Linux community as a whole. I suspect it is.
Drac
-- fedora-docs-list mailing list fedora-docs-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-docs-list
