Impressions so far with FC 8 and Kubuntu Gutsy

[Gordon Messmer]

Terry - Fedora Core wrote:
>
>    1. That saves me hours and days and a lot of frustration when I get
>       a message that such and such file is missing. What file? Where
>       is it? What package is it in? That last question can be a killer.
>

Sure.  One of my favorite features of yum is that it can do 
"localinstall"s, and resolve dependencies for you, and that it can 
install a package based on its name, the name of something that the 
package "provides", or a file in the package.  It's taken all of the 
work out of dependency resolution.

>
>    1. The little things make the big difference - like being able to
>       use the middle and right mouse buttons to increase window size
>       vertically or horizontally separately.
>

I'm not longer intimately familiar with KDE.  Under Gnome (with 
metacity), you can use Alt + middle mouse button to resize windows.  If 
the mouse is near a corner, you'll resize the window in either 
dimension.  If it's closer to the center of any edge, you'll only move 
that edge.  It' should be trivial to resize a window vertically, or 
horizontally, or both at the same time.

>    1. Also, when moving a window to the side, under KDE it kind of
>       stops and clicks into the side of the desktop. I don't have to
>       finagle with getting it there.
>

Metacity does the same thing here.  On my multi-monitor desktop, they 
"click" against the edge between the two displays, too.  Are you using 
Compiz?  I've tried it a couple of times, and keep going back to metacity.

>
>    1. Other than the way that SELinux seems to have messed up things
>       until I set it to "permissive mode", almost everything in Fedora
>       Core 8 worked after the install (at least the second install 
>       :-) ). There weren't any of those little gotcha's that such and
>       such isn't installed for that to work, install such and such a
>       package - see point 1 above. OK, I had some problems, but
>       nothing that hasn't worked out with a little intelligence.
>

Take notes on what's broken, and share them here.  There's no shortage 
of developers who really want SELinux to "just work".  I've been running 
SELinux in enforcing mode on all of my desktops and servers for some 
time now.

>
>    1. Does the fact that it is proprietary bother me - not at all - I
>       spent a lot of money on their h/w so why not use it fully with
>       s/w they provide for me to do that.
>

It's a question of values: Why should it be that you can only use the 
software fully if you run their proprietary software?  After all, I can 
use my AMD CPUs fully without anything special or proprietary from AMD.

It /should/ bother you that their software is proprietary.  It should 
bother you all the more because you've paid them a lot of money.  You're 
their customer.  The money that they have is the money that you've given 
them, and they won't tell you how your video card works?  Why do 
business with people who treat you that way?

I'm not going to go as far as to say that Fedora should actively prevent 
loading software that isn't Free, but their commitment to Free Software 
is what makes the distribution so worthy of our support.  Aside from 
Debian, I don't believe that there's any significant distribution with a 
comparable commitment to the goals and ideals that got us where we are 
today.

>    1. It is free as in beer (well after having bought the h/w it is 
>       :-) ) ? Under Fedora Core, I don't know if there is a way to do
>       that. Ok, principles are great, but being pragmatic works very,
>       very well also.
>

There's a certain amount of pragmatism involved...  Red Hat faces real 
legal issues if they distribute software in violation of its license, or 
of patent law.  Neither Red Hat nor the community can properly diagnose 
bugs when software that guards its operation is running in kernel mode.

Red Hat and Fedora are better off for not including proprietary 
software, and we're better off not buying hardware that requires it, for 
pragmatic reasons.