Fedora and MP3 [LWN.net]

Fedora and MP3

Posted Apr 6, 2006 2:54 UTC (Thu) by yodermk (subscriber, #3803)
Parent article: Fedora and MP3

Fedora is *not supposed* to be a distribution for the masses and, IMHO, promoting it is if it were is just asking for trouble. FC5 on my work computer (a fairly new desktop with an Intel motherboard) only does video with the VESA driver and I still have not gotten sound to work (even though it detects the onboard chip). I tried to give FC4 to a couple friends and both had trouble. (One is now happily using Ubuntu, the other's computer is simply messed up and doesn't even run 'Doze reliably.) Anyone who uses Fedora needs to know how to dig through forums and howto repositories.

I think the solution for "the masses," at the moment, is unfortunately for-pay distributions such as Linspire. They can do everything legally and have some income to hopefully put together a solid product that will work right on most hardware.

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Fedora and MP3

Posted Apr 6, 2006 5:15 UTC (Thu) by loening (guest, #174) [Link]

I gotta second you here, and I think it points out that ESR's whole premise is wrong. Fedora, at least in its present incarnation, is never going to take over the world with or without MP3.

I've been a Redhat/Fedora user since the Redhat 4.2 days, and as much as it breaks my heart to say so, there's no way I would recommend Fedora for a casual user. Fedora is simply Redhat's Beta program for RHEL, and you really can't expect much more. It's pretty sweet when things work, and I love being on the cutting edge of things. But when things go wrong it's never a simple point and click to fix things. If anyone wants to prove me otherwise, I've got one word for you: SELinux. Whether you like it or not, maintaining a system running SELinux is a whole extra level of complexity over the already overly complicated task of running a Linux system.

I would love it if Redhat had a stripped down version of RHEL that was cheap and appropriate for the consumer. Your standard consumer doesn't ever want to reinstall the OS, so the 5-year upgrade cycle is key. But from what I can tell, Redhat is simply not interested in the consumer desktop world. The support burden's higher then business workstations/desktops, and the price people are willing to pay is to low. I think Redhat and Fedora have both conceded the consumer desktop market for the conceivable future.

Fedora and MP3

Posted Apr 6, 2006 7:33 UTC (Thu) by tomsi (subscriber, #2306) [Link]

I would love it if Redhat had a stripped down version of RHEL that was cheap and appropriate for the consumer.

I second that. I have been playing around with CentOS 4 (as well as Scientific Linux 4) and find it predictable and stable, which is what a lot of people want. It is a bit boring as it is Gnome 2.8 / KDE 3.2, though.

Tom

Fedora and MP3

Posted Apr 6, 2006 16:16 UTC (Thu) by NRArnot (subscriber, #3033) [Link]

Thirded. Would recommend Scientific Linux or Centos for anyone wanting a free tracker of red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The name "Scientific Linux" may be offputting. It's called that because it's produced by people at CERN and Fermilab, but in fact it's a pretty good linux for anyone who wants free (as in beer), easy-to-use, and Redhat-alikeness. Apart from a group of optional additional packages, there's nothing science-specific in there. It's a perfectly fine linux for anyone who wants Redhat flavour but doesn't want to pay. You have the backing of a large scientific community, so its unlikely that any showstopper bugs would be lift unfixed for long.

BTW I have managed smooth upgrades from Fedora 1 and 2 to Scientific Linux and Centos using the "linux upgradeany" option. The only post-upgrade hassle was that yum needed to be fixed, by installing the sl-release or centos-release rpm (using --force) and then uninstalling fedora-release. YMMV, have not tried escaping from FC3, 4 or 5 yet.

Fedora and MP3

Posted Apr 18, 2006 13:20 UTC (Tue) by quintesse (subscriber, #14569) [Link]

SELinux: I have 3 words "turn it off"

Really now, SELinux is not for the casual user and just like I won't let my mother install Windows on her system herself I won't let her install Linux herself either. Using it though is a whole different game though, I'm pretty sure she wouldn't even know the difference.

The problem is not those casual users and the problem is not the expert users either. It's those in between, the ones that know enough to start fiddling with their system but not enough to do so on Linux.

But even so, the Linux experience has improved immensely and you can do a lot of "fiddling" without ever having to resort to arcane shell commands and the like.

And have you lately installed a Windows system? And have you done so looking at it from the point of view of a non-expert? Because when I last did it and tried to do it "according the book", installing Windows and then inserting driver disks and such, I got left with an unstable system filled with shitty 3rd party drivers (this included ones from renowed brands as nVidia, nothing wrong with the Gfx drivers, but the nForce stuff just sucks).

I also have this Philips Webcam which has no XP drivers (and according to tech support there never will be because it's an old model) which is a bitch to get to work on Windows (and if it works it will leave the system unstable, which is to be expected with unofficial drivers and such). On Linux? It just works. No drivers to install, nothing.

Does this mean I think Linux is as good or better as Windows in all aspects? Of course not, there are still a lot of things that could be improved, I just think there are a lot of situations where even casual users can benefit from using Linux.