Slightly OT: bad rap for Fedora, and realistic effects

[Dotan Cohen]

On 24/02/07, Temlakos <temlakos at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'll second that. With Fedora, you can get a complete word-processing
> suite (though why they disabled the Replacement list in AutoCorrect for
> OpenOffice Writer, no one has ever explained), compilation and linking
> tools for nearly every programming language of any consequence, your
> choice of two database managers, and a complete set of network
> diagnostic tools.

Great. All these horseshoes want is IE, Office, and MediaPlayer. And
their pirated XP disks already have Office. Here's the proof: people
are receptive to Kubuntu. One disk. It doesn't look complicated.

> Whereas with Windows XP (I can't vouch for Vista) you're limited to one
> each rich-text and plain-text editors, a very crude and non-robust
> firewall, /no/ development tools (and you're lucky to get a Java Runtime
> Environment), and a browser whose chief or only recommendation is that
> Microsoft has convinced a lot of Web sites to "optimize" their content
> for it.

Unfortunately, that's the whole Hebrew internet. All the major Israeli
sites are built with M$ tools and don't even work in Fx on Windows.
I've written to almost all of the sites. Why do you think I'm using a
Gmail address instead of Walla (major Israeli site)? Because they're
written with ActiveX crap for submit buttons!

> Updating can be set to automatic, but it is like walking a tightrope
> stretched over a bed of swords (as you can see in the Joan Crawford
> motion picture /Berserk/) while wearing a blindfold. Once in fact, a
> Windows XP update broke every applications' ability to save new
> documents, or alter old ones. I had to /roll back/ some updates--by
> /trial and error/--to correct this fault.

If you want to tell me that Fedora is any better, go ahead and make me
laugh. A recent update ruined suspend on my laptop: I can only
hibernate now. And every updagte requires that I reconfigure VMWare.

> At least with Fedora you can use a package manager that reads repository
> metadata and tells you what it wants to update, what that package does,
> and what it requires.

True, but that's no guarantee that it will work. And the monkeys who
are called everyday users don't read all that stuff. Few people are
going to take a CS class to operating their OS.

> Now I'd certainly like to see some programs that can help me do certain
> things better than I can do them today. I tried for a week to set up a
> decent environment for creating and burning DVD-Video disks. No joy. And
> right now, an awful lot of sites, many of which are very popular, are
> offering multimedia content in proprietary formats. Until YouTube, for
> example, at least allows an Ogg Theora option, you still have to
> go--er--elsewhere to find reverse-engineered codecs that permit you to
> read more on the site than its text and still images.
>
> Nevertheless, I do the bulk of my work on a Fedora machine, including
> writing and development. And if RH gets ready to implement a 13-month
> security-update support cycle for F7 and beyond, then it will definitely
> become the distro of choice for building a HIPAA-compliant server of
> laboratory and other medical data--which is my current project.

I also use Fedora, and after trying a few other distros I came back to
Fedora. Suse was polished, Kubuntu was easy to administer and use on a
day to day basis, but Fedora is to me the closest thing to a 'real'
OS. That's good for tech-heads like me, who want to learn. Not good
for bonehead 'average' computer users. Ubuntu IS designed for them.
The one-disk install is an extension of that.

Dotan Cohen

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