This article is intended on helping those that are interested in either switching to Linux or are curious as to what Linux has to offer. Flexbeta tries to cover the basic components of a desktop and how Fedora can perform these basic tasks.
Fedora: Road To The Desktop
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Good article. Fedora is a great distro for the switcher. My parents run fedora and they love it.
Even though a distro like Mandrake 10 could easily replace my mothers windows-install I have a hard time finding arguments that would convince her to use Linux. I mean, linux doesn’t offer anything that Windows doesn’t have, at least not in an average users point of view. They have pretty much the same features and the same user interface, and are both stable. And she doesn’t care too much about the politics involved.
With a system like BeOS, although it doesn have as many apps, I find it a lot easier to point at things which are different from Windows. Different doesn’t have to be better though, but that’s up to the user.
Political reasons aside, which arguments would you use to convince someone, who already own windows and all the apps he/she needs, to switch to linux?
“which arguments would you use to convince someone, who already own windows and all the apps he/she needs, to switch to linux?”
Security and stability are the usual arguments. There are lots of MS Windows specific viruses out there and Linux boxes are slightly more resistant against crackers. Not sure if I would use the security argument myself, because it smells a bit like FUD (i.e. spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt). However, I COULD try to convince someone that the future of the desktop scene rests heavily on Linux, so that it’s useful to learn it as soon as possible. 🙂
Fedora not automatic mount usb memory
Fedora not automatic mount HD windows
Fedora not mouse install rpm software
Fedora not install digital conection monitor
COMERCIAL Mandrake: yes, yes, yes, yes….
Fedora does not support ntfs
Fedora does not support mp3
Ha, Mandrake does not support ntfs, they include it. I dare you to try write to it and sue them if something goes wrong.
Fedora is 100% free software. anything questionable is left out.
Automatic mounting of USB software and the like is always a hack. A proper solution is coming. Its called “project Utopia” with a proer HAL. That will properly manage volumes. Seems teh kernel too has now got good volume support.
I can double click on an rpm and have it install in my Fedora!!
I use Fedora at the moment. It runs VERY well on my AMD64 machine. I am waiting with baited breath for Fedora Core 2 to be released for AMD64.
I find it excellent and very suitable to my needs.
I’ve used RedHat, SUSE, Mandrake & Debian in the past and will do so again in the future. I’ve never had a major problem with any of the major distros – I don’t expect I ever will.
I’m currently involved in a project to migrate 20 corporate servers and 120 corporate end-user clients to a totally Linux based platform.
Will the users require MP3? No
Will the users require USB hot-plug? No
Will the users require a stable desktop? Absolutely
Will the users require high uptimes from the servers? Absolutely
To all those who knock a distro – don’t bother. One mans meat is another mans poison. If you don’t like it – don’t use it. Constructive criticism is always welcome, but other forms of criticism are entirely unwelcome.
Have respect for others and others may respect you.
Cheers
<pokingfun>
im sure your parents dont love it
they may appreciate it or accept it but i doubt they ring you after checking their email and say “leroy, thankyou so much for installing fedora i really love it”…
</pokingfun>
I’ve recently looked at Fedora. I’m wondering how companies make their own distros. Oftentimes, I read that XYZ distro is based on ABC linux. What does this mean? I mean, if distros are based on each other, wouldn’t they all have the same features and benefits? Or, do some distros include proprietary items that don’t fall under GPL?
This is quite interesting and may be fun to try to create a distro if I could understand how it is done. Then, for example, I could attempt to build a distro based on Fedora or Suse…cool.
I’ve been using Fedora Core 1 One for 7 months now, I feel it as fast as the day I installed it on my XP 1800+.
I have mp3 support installed with a single click, ntfs support also installed with a single click on a RPM file, Java, Flash, Xmule, many things. It is a wonderful distro.
I will just uninstalled to install FC2 with GNOME and Kernel 2.6.
The best of all, its Free.
“Political reasons aside, which arguments would you use to convince someone, who already own windows and all the apps he/she needs, to switch to linux?”
Speaking for myself: economics. Windows comes installed, but the programs people need don’t, and older versions of a lot of software that people may already own don’t work on XP. There’s virus and firewall software to buy, $70 annually. I needed a good photo editor for digital photography, $99. Finance software, $50. And the list goes on.
Linux programs may not be as easy to use sometimes, but they’re included and a little effort on my part doesn’t hurt.
Windows is nice, I like it and use it still. I just see no reason to keep throwing money at it.
Piece of cake, download eight tons of source, create a tool chain, develop a method of building it all so it works together consistently, write all the scripts and tools and stuff that make a distro complete, like your rc, some plan to update and maintain it etc. Create a second mini distro to boot inside a ramdisk and install all the stuff you build in step 1. Oh and you have to write all the install too. So all in all:
3)You build three op systems, tool chain, init ramdisk and your distro, each one different.
4)A bootable install system.
5)All the trimmings to unite it together…
Now compare that to grabbing someone else’s work and just copying it and changing it a little and you’ll see why most distros are not built from scratch, not too mention you need to be one really well rounded individual technically to get it all done and about 4 months of spare time just to get it on the launch pad.
“Speaking for myself: economics. Windows comes installed, but the programs people need don’t, and older versions of a lot of software that people may already own don’t work on XP. There’s virus and firewall software to buy, $70 annually. I needed a good photo editor for digital photography, $99. Finance software, $50. And the list goes on.”
I’m sorry but outside of the finance software, you can get freeware anti-virus, firewall, and image editing applications off the net. So the economics point is kind of mute unless you are looking for professional grade applications.
I have to admit that my suse 9 does come with a lot of apps. but I can get just as much off the net for xp as well. I still don’t have a reason to use suse 9 as my primary os.
ehm, sure no one needs mp3
6) ????????
7) Profit!
How I would make a windows users switch from windows to linux?
I wouldn’t say too much actually. I would just try to keep it short and tell the person to try out knoppix. And if that person likes knoppix, then get hold of a newbie-friendly distro, AND that person can contact me if he/she needs help with anything.
So in my opinion, the most important thing you do if you will advice people to use linux is to tell them you will help them with support.
Why would anyone need mp3 support when it’s such a lossy format. Switch over to ogg you’ll thank me
.
RE:”Political reasons aside, which arguments would you use to convince someone, who already own windows and all the apps he/she needs, to switch to linux?”
Install SuSE Personal Desktop (Free ftp install) and get your mother to test it. It has not only a familiar feel for newbies to Linux who are long time Windows users but also a lot of similar tools. Also I do agree pointed out the vast difference in security between Windows and Linux but the free factor usely is a selling point. Getting a person to do a keyword search at Freshmeat.net usely leaves them with shock to see the thousands of free apps available. I had someone say to me “What am I going to do with all the Windows software I already purchased?” I said “Replace them with OSS or run them on Wine”.
As for the article I posted at the site. Basically I’m not impressed with Fedora or even the RedHat pricing scheme for their commercial line. I would much rather use SuSE with it’s YAST, SuSE Watcher, SuSE Plugger, etc. She not only looks good but is fun to use.
It used to be Office, then it was instant messengers, stable web browsers, good email clients, etc. Everytime it seems like there is some killer application that keeps me from switching over. My latest attempt to switch 100 % over to Linux failed because there are no equivalent applications to Power DVD and Nero Burning Rom on Linux. There are stuff that “work” but they barely cut it. I’m back on Windows XP. But it is not all bad news, I’m running OpenOffice, GAIM, and Mozilla on XP, and one day, when I’m only running open source programs, I think I’ll be able to finally switch to Linux.
You should try k3b. I read that they have support for DVD burning.
A few examples of alternatives.
DVD/CD Burn Utilities:
http://www.k3b.org/
http://freshmeat.net/search/?q=cdrecord§ion=projects&Go.x=0&Go….
Chat:
http://amsn.sourceforge.net/
http://kopete.kde.org/index.php
http://www.gnomemeeting.org/
Browsers:
KDE Konqueror
Mozilla Firebird
Opera
KDE Apps:
http://kde-apps.org/
Office Productivity:
http://www.koffice.org/
http://www.openoffice.org/
http://wwws.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/
http://www.codeweavers.com/
Games:
http://www.transgaming.com/
http://www.linux-gamers.net/modules/news/
OS:
http://www.waltercedric.com/pc/suse/myExperience.htm
“Political reasons aside, which arguments would you use to convince someone, who already own windows and all the apps he/she needs, to switch to linux?”
Hm, let’s look at my parents’ computer as an example. It’s a Dell with XP, and no, stuff doesn’t all work as it should. The driver for the included printer frequently crashes and has to be re-installed. Spamware and search engines have hijacked IE’s home page, search page, toolbars and error pages. My parents (typical users) use the bundled Outlook and cluelessly open attachments – I wouldn’t be surprised if the thing had 10 trojans and spent all night relaying spam. Every time I see their desktop, it has a dozen pop-up windows for porn. Windows messaging windows frequently accumulate, also advertising more porn and other crap. Networking goes down intermittently. Blue-screens appear frequently, and sometimes the system just freezes. There’s no proper re-install disk, so when the thing finally explodes on them, I ain’t gonna be reloading XP.
And my in-laws machine, well, they kept having to re-install because of registry corruptions. Using firewalls, virus utilities, and anti-spyware to keep the machine clean was a full-time job for my father-in-law, who is slightly above average as users go. I finally got them on Mandrake 9.2, and boy is it snappy. Smooth sailing from here on, I think.
And the political/ethical side to avoiding Windows *is* important to me. A mega-billion-dollar corporation that gets its business by extorting schools and non-profit organizations and suing its own customers doesn’t need my money. When I can afford it, I’m going to buy Macs.
“Fedora not mouse install rpm software
Fedora not install digital conection monitor
COMERCIAL Mandrake: yes, yes, yes, yes….
Fedora does not support ntfs
Fedora does not support mp3”
Those comments are very disingenuous. Adding and updating
any of these components (even the ones you listed but I left
out) are _easy_.
I know that there are alternatives on Linux for everything. But sometimes the alternative are so bad, they are basically unusable. It just seems there is always that one killer app that is missing and the alternatives are terrible. First it was a good web browser, Netscape was terribly outdated, unstable, and bloated. Then we got mozilla, Opera, and a load of other browsers. Afterwards, it was a good email client. We finally got evolution. Then it was Office. We now have openoffice 1.1, which is the first office suite that is good enough to fully replace MS Office on any platform. So I’m happy, I think I can switch to Linux, and I go for it. But then I find that there are more critical applications I can’t live with. Ex. I can’t move to Linux without Nero Burning ROM. It is simply a beautiful program for burning CD’s and DVD’s, one which Linux has no alternatives. And best of all, it came free with my DVD burner. Another ex., a simple DVD player. Linux doesn’t have any good DVD players. The DVD players it has are missing many features, such as playing the DVD as a real DVD, bookmarks, selecting chapters, changing skins, zooming, etc. There are no PowerDVD alternative on Linux, and PowerDVD came free with my DVD player too.
I’ve used RH the last 4-5 yrs and this looks pretty much the same with a little extra. I didn’t see it in the article but I think Fedora has “APT” which I am looking forward to.
I have signed up for the new Fedora magazine ‘Wide Open’. The first issue is supposed to ship with the new Fedora Core 2, and a Professional Utilities Disk and then 6 times a year along with the magazine your supposed to get the latest Fedora. That ought to keep even us dialup Linux freaks up to date.
Hi
the cd burning point is moot when you use k3b. xine and mplayer can be skinned to look like powerdvd. these are not major points
regards
Jess
It’s my understanding that Fedora is Redhat’s test distro for their enterprise desktop software.
Why not use a distro, such as Mandrake, that is geared toward home desktop usage instead of something that Redhat uses to test their future enterprise versions?
Don’t forget that Redhat abandoned their distro for home users.
Hi
You are smoking crack Redhat dropped retail sales of their Redhat Linux series. Thats not equal to dropping support for home users. I use fedora at home. They cant really abandon my usage of the system
Understand what you are talking about. Mandrake might be more suited for some but I like to use the same system both at home and at work
Jess
simple DVD player. Linux doesn’t have any good DVD players. The DVD players it has are missing many features, such as playing the DVD as a real DVD, bookmarks, selecting chapters, changing skins, zooming, etc. There are no PowerDVD alternative on Linux, and PowerDVD came free with my DVD player too.
playing the DVD as a real DVD -> xine
bookmarks -> ok, not there yet
selecting chapters —> xine
changing skins –> xine
zooming –> xine
a lot of other things –> xine
The only difference between us and suse is a lot of marketing, product development and 60 million dollars of novells money
They do, actually. They’re glad to be free from microsoft’s over-priced software and not having to worry about viruses anymore.
I’ve been back and forth with Linux for nearly 3 years now. For me, the better has been Red Hat. It has proven to be more stable than Mandrake, and some others I’ve tried. I was just wondering what anyone thinks of Fedora. I would more than likely wait for the final version of the Core 2.
My dellima has always been hardware support. Now I’m finding that my sound card, Audigy 2 LS is not supported, nor is my scanner (Visioneer 58000).
Will the be adding more hardware support to the final version?