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Really? My impression was the exact opposite, Fedora is losing the professional feel that it once inherited from Red Hat.

Shiny spheres, glowing DNA strands, the rounded type and the...what is that, fairy dust? That's not at all professional in my opinion.

It's not to say it looks bad, but it looks like something from Digital Blasphemy (http://www.digitalblasphemy.com/dbhome.shtml), not something from, what I would call, a professional Linux distribution (or a pro designer).

To each their own I suppose.

Yes well, it's better than alot of distro artwork i've seen including SUSE. Look pro not is.

"""To each their own I suppose."""

Indeed. I use CentOS 4.4 on my customers' machines and (currently) Ubuntu Dapper with the Human theme on my desktop.

I don't find Fedora's new theme to be unprofessional, exactly... but just cold. Very, very cold and impersonal.

I guess you have a different idea of what professional means than many people. I don't see a huge deal of changes in Core 6 compared to Core 5 but the bottom line is that Fedora is one of the very few distros that has consistency and coherence through out the desktop. I really can say the same for Ubuntu although so many people seem to be bedazzled by it. What I like most about Fedora is that it actually has some vision. As far as professionally looking goes I guess you'd say that MasOS X is really unprofessional and yet so many professionals use it and love it... Plus if you don't like the default graphics you can always change them to something else. Real easy for the desktop and slightly harder for the boot up screen.

They need to redo the icons though. They are looking old looking now.

They are redoing them they just aren't going to be done for a few months and therefore aren't included in the default install. (The "Echo" iconset)

For a preview:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork/EchoDevelopment

If you had said that the artwork was beautiful, I would have been the first to agree. This looks like the work of a professional artist, no doubt about that.

However, if you look at it with the eyes of a user interface designer, it is far from professional. To him the pattern of the desktop should not only fill the function of being pleasant to look at, it should also fill the function of helping the user to orientate.

Just like you may remember that you read something on the top left page in the middle of a book, the pattern could help you remember where you have put your icons, but the pattern should in itself carry as little information as possible, to give the contents more mental focus.

By having a clean background objects on the desktop will stand out and be easier to find. If you have some kind of pattern it should preferably be non figurative, and the smallest detail in the pattern should be much larger than the largest icon size.

Having background detail that is about the same size as icons will also make icons harder to see to visibly impaired.

The new default background in FC6 is MUCH BETTER than the one in FC5, but its still not good enough. It shows that the fedora team doesn't consult enough with people knowledgeable in usability and accessibility.

Anyway, people will most likely change their backgrounds to pictures of their children, girlfriends or cats, without any usability concerns, but I think that what is installed by default should be vied and vetted with usability as well as beauty in mind.

Another problem is that the DNA spiral gives me wrong associations. I start to think about live things, and before I know it I think about viruses, but that's probably just me.

The new default background in FC6 is MUCH BETTER than the one in FC5, but its still not good enough. It shows that the fedora team doesn't consult enough with people knowledgeable in usability and accessibility.

It is very important for people like you to list a suggestions for improving the usability. At least, background can be changed. Currently, Artwork team is discussing about improving theme for Fedora. Participation from users is greatly welcome.

same thing happens every release, look at when Fedora Core Release 5 came out, as per usual, some of the official asian mirrors had it first (a day or two before the official release date)

http://osnews.com/story.php/14024/Fedora-Core-5-Released/

and some people complained about it, and then got on with downloading it, installing it and loving it

cheers
anyweb

Edited 2006-10-22 20:59

Thom ALWAYS DOES THIS!!!

Maybe he get's kicks out of screwing up distributions and mirrors desperately trying to sync.

Thom: Of course there will be ISO's somewhere on the web; respect their authoritae!

i cannot understand how there is people that use the file manager with default settings in fedora.

Simple, we have large screen estate (others change this setting). I wouldn't even noticed this fact if I wouldn't be interested why one of my friends was bashing spatial so much.

One minute at 1024x768 when spatial was enabled was enough to make me hate it there too, hell... it is impossible to work with that crowd of windows on such small screen estate. But having 1920x1200x2 everywhere I can't do anything but to love spatial. Organizing is just so much simpler.

But, then again I can't help but to agree with you. Defaulting to browse mode would be better since there are probably more people with smaller monitors around.

Hey, I never thought of that before. I've tried spatial a few times, and saw some benefits, but not enough to put up with it. But at the time I had < 1024x768.

Now I want a bigger monitor. Who knows what else I could be missing?

I'm quite the opposite.
After using spatial mode for so long, I almost dread having to go back to systems that use the old browser paradigm.

older != less efficient

Organizing folders using spatial mode drives me nuts. It is much easier and faster using a file manager displaying a tree. Keep two side by side and drag and drop files between them. Try that in spatial mode and you will get tired pretty soon.

but you != others

I use spatial exclusively, for example, and find the browser interface cumbersome.

On the other hand, on windows I only ever use browser windows (explorer), because the alternative is awfully implemented.

On KDE (the 2 or 3 times a year I use it, I use the browser also. It's just the Gnome version of spatial navigation that's really comfortable.

(can't talk about the apple one, but I hear gnome is inspired to an older iteration of MacOS)

Here you are: (x86_64-dvd)

http://www.mininova.org/get/462974

32-bit torrents:

32-bit DVD
http://www.mininova.org/tor/459996

32-bit CDs
http://www.mininova.org/tor/462126

Honestly, I think the clutter is mostly imagined. I'd rather have a "cluttered" desktop than a cluttered mind.

I find that middle clicking and using shallow directories tends to eliminate a lot of the unneeded clutter.

Ctrl-l also helps immensely, if you know where you're headed.

Fast too, averaging 500kbs+ over here.

I completely agree. The look of a distro is much easier to change than the way it behaves or performs. I rarely like everything about the default look of a system.

Are there really people who choose a distribution just based on looks?

Hard core techies don't, but the average consumer and newbie definitely will make a decision based on looks.

I would assume designer types do, too. In general people with an artistic streak to their character are influenced by the looks and the image of a distro or entire OS. I have found fedora to be a solid distro that has worked well in a number of different scenarios (development workstation, server etc) and the look and feel is so easy to change in most of linux distros anyway

Let's put it this way, one of the big things keeping me from using ubuntu (and nexenta for that matter) is their insistence on using those brown themes.

The time it takes me to completely strip the stock theme, bootsplash, login screen, etc and replace it with something aesthetically pleasing just isn't worth it to me.

i don't think its gonna make a difference whether it has firefox2.0 in it or not, its not a major change, , still has gecko1.8 series unlike firefox3.0 which will have gecko 1.9 so all it'll require is a simple yum update an everyone will have ff2

Edited 2006-10-23 08:22

it's a major change in regards to the speed of the browser.

> I would have waited one more time before releasing
> it. Firefox 2.0 is about to be released and I
> believe it's a key element. I know people will get
> it from Yum but still.

The "2.0" is nothing but marketing. It really has very
little - if any - functionality that is not already
implemented via extensions. See Chris Aillon's response
on this issue in the fedora-devel-list archives:
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2006-October/msg00...
> And also, I think they should start supporting XFCE.

The full XFCE is in Extras (thanks to the great work
of Kevin Fenzi and Cristoph Wickert). Just `yum
groupinstall XFCE` as root (or select it through the
graphical package manager, Pirut).

>> I just got a FC5 dvd in the mail yesterday, and this news comes out

There's no need to be disappointed at all, since Fedora Core 5 is very good as well. It doesn't have the wobbly windows thing all baked in, but AIGLX is not that mature yet, so why bother.

I guess you might be tempted anyway to just forget about the FC5 DVD. In that case it's good to know there are no dramatic changes between FC5 and 6. Of FC5, (which is only half a year old anyway, can you imagine, that's while lots of people are still running an OS that's over seven years old) I can also say it's pretty stable.
FC5 also has Beagle all working well already (the search enige) which is great, it finds words anywhere in any document among your files. No Gnome 2.16, though, but Gnome 2.14.

This was dumb...

Read the entire thread before you post tdehoog...

Edited 2006-10-23 08:42

I don't see what is so new about this spatial thing. Maybe there is something I am not getting, but what are the main differences between this "spatial view" in GNOME and plain "large icon view" in Windows? Or are they just different names for the same thing? From what I've used of it so far, they seem like basically the same thing. What is it I am missing?

No, you're not missing much. Spatial was the way 95 acted by default, after that they moved on browse mode by default. It still acts like that if you check "Open in new window" in preferences. Windows just doesn't save position in spatial mode and lacks few features that nautilus or Finder have. You can't for example expand into subfolders in list view and such. But I don't know if these are spatial requirements. And I think that one requirement is one object per instance. For example same folder could only be open in single window. While MacOS was even more strict. For example if you had folder open and expanded into the same folder with list view, window closed.

But as I already said I can't really say which ones are spatial requirements.

Yes, keeping state (position, size, place, looks) is one of the BIGGEST spatial requirements.

And one object per instance is another one.

Win95 (or xp, for that matter) do not do those, and that's the reason it's not spatial, and I do not use it when in windows.

Windows does browsing fairly well (and promotes deeply nested directory nightmares), so there is really no reason to use spatial in windows.

Here
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/finder.ars
is a pretty indepth analysis.

SuSE new menu as in "big hulking monstrosity inspired by XP's start menu?"

One of the very first things I do on XP machines is turn off that horrible, bulky, unusable mess that is the "newstyle" menu.

If I'll ever use SuSE I guess I'll just do the same

I'm talking about the simplicity and the usability. (e.g. 1. how many mouse clicks are needed to change your screen resolution? 2. how easy to find the setup options?)

BTW I wouldn't say that SuSE's general searching functionality (including files, mails, bookmark) is just a fancy unnecessary feature.

The actual Gnome menu is too big and too scattered in FC5/6. In my mind it is hard to use. It could be simpler and more reasonable.

For applications that are used regularly, you're right. But how many times would one want to change screen resolution? That would be about once or twice after install. So then it is not really that important to get there in one mouse click. It is important that, if needed, it can be found easily. So it should be in a place where you expect it to be.

If I'll ever use SuSE I guess I'll just do the same

You should really try it before comparing it with Windows XP.

What do you mean by 'crisper'? Smaller, less rounded fonts? Smaller borders? Less rounded edges and badly overlapping text?