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
