FC5: first impressions

[Rahul Sundaram]

On Fri, 2006-03-24 at 16:01 -0500, Dimi Paun wrote:
> Now that I past the installation of FC5, I can share some of
> my impressions. BTW, I've been running Red Hat since 4.0, so
> I'm a long time user of everything Red Hat.
> 
> I'd like to start by saying that this is a nice step forward
> from FC4. There's a lot to be happy about: new versions, nicer
> eye-candy, much faster in places. Good job!
> 
> I'd like to stress the "faster" part. This is a very important
> criteria for a good desktop experience, and I'm really glad
> we finally see some much needed improvements. It took _seconds_
> in FC4 to start a simple app like gedit, now it's around a second.
> Also, Firefox really shines, and for the first time it's actually
> a better browser than IE for reading LKML [0].
> 
> I can go on and on about the number of improvements, but that
> would be boring, so I'll start with the complaints :). BTW, I
> run GNOME, and try to keep things as standard as possible.
> 
> So here are my complaints, in order of importance:
> 
> 0. Missing terminal on desktop menu... just kidding! :)
>    You guys were right, I can live without it. Mea culpa.

Good to see the hundreds of mails on the thread we had earlier wasn't
entirely a waste. The release notes has information on bringing it back
if you need it btw (yum install nautilus-open-terminal).



> 
> [seriously now]
> 
> 1. Metacity's new window in the background
>    I can not stress how big of a problem this is for me.
>    I have used it since it was introduced, in the hope that
>    I'll get used to it. I didn't. Not only it does the wrong
>    thing for me in 90% of the cases, it also forces me to
>    use the mouse a lot more, which is painful for me.
>    A few google searches and browsing through GConf did not
>    reveal a way of disabling it.

We have a bug report open it. Upstream has tentatively agreed to make it
a option disabled by default


> 
> 2. Evolution can't print
>    Nowadays I get quite a few invoices via email, and not being
>    able to print them is a big problem. Evo will just print the
>    headers, but not the content. Even the Print Preview shows
>    just the headers with an empty content. What gives?!?
>    BTW, same behavior was present in FC4, I was hoping FC5 will
>    fix it.
> 

Do you have a bug report open on this?


> 3. Gedit's tab
>    Not only I find these tabs simply the wrong interface, but
>    unconditionally having one even if I have only on file
>    open is irritating me to the point that I avoid that app
>    even when I need it. It's ugly, it takes vertical space, etc.
>    Again, I found no way of disabling this silly behavior.


Might request a option to turn this off in bugzilla.gnome.org or post to
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/index.html

> 
> These are my top 3 problems. There are others, but they pale in
> comparison. If I missed a simple way of fixing them, I'd appreciate
> any pointers.
> 
> Thanks for an otherwise fantastic distro guys! All the pain, blood, 
> and tears that you guys put into it is very much appreciated.
> 
> -- 
> Dimi Paun <dimi at lattica.com>
> Lattica, Inc.
> 
> [0] Go to the LKML archive, say here
>     http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0603.1/author.html
>     scroll to the middle of the list, click on a message, and then
>     click the Back button to go back to the list. 
>     See how fast it renders the list again. 
>     Until now, IE was way faster, but not anymore!

You are talking about Firefox 1.5's fast back feature that stores a
rendered copy of the history in it's cache. It might gobble up some RAM
if you browse a large number of sites with huge images in it but it's
good otherwise. Thanks for the feedback. 


Rahul