Let us call this something else. {formally Fedora 3 sucks)

[Gerald Thompson]

akonstam at trinity.edu wrote:

>
>We may be all involved in Fedora Development in some way but not in
>the same way. There are some that are more equal than others. It is my
>position that any program that is distributed on the CD-s of a Fedora
>distribution is fair game to be discussed on the list both positively
>and negatively.
>
>  
>
Fair enough, people should be able to make negative criticisms about the 
packages in the FC3 distro.  However, blanket statements that FC3 sucks 
without ever reading any documentation or searching for a solution to 
the problem on the Internet is not constructive criticism, it is laziness.

I had a problem getting Samba running through iptables on FC3.
- I had two options, post to the list and say FC3 sucks
- or go to www.samba.org and read the howto first
- I chose to go to samba.org first, and low and behold I found the 
solution to my problem.  It is a known issue, but there are ways to 
resolve it by just adjusting a few settings.  I can even totally resolve 
it if I set my Linux box up as the domain master for the samba network.  
Now I have no trouble accessing my network shares in nautilus.

I see a lot of blanket FC3 sucks on this list all the time, and I am a 
new to intermediate user myself.  I don't know all the commands, I use 
the gui to configure almost everything, I only know how to edit a very 
few of the system files, but I get by.  I get by reading documentation, 
reading the message list, searching on google, going to fedorafaq.org, 
going to www.tldp.org, going to the web site of the package maker, 
xfce.org, gnome.org, samba.org, apache.org, etc...

Of all the types of software available on the Internet, Open Source, 
GNU/LINUX software has the most free documentation available on the 
Internet.  Yes there are definate issues in Fedora that need to be 
addressed, if a person has tried to find the answer on the web and 
couldn't find it, then by all means they should post to the list about 
their problem.  They should also check bugzilla and see if the problem 
is already known or not.  But if they are having problems getting 
something running and they just post to the list FC3 sucks because my 
java doesn't work.  Even as a new user I get annoyed with these people 
for not even reading anything about a way to possibly solve the 
problem.  I use suns jdk/jre rpm from their site and I haven't had any 
issues with web based java, but I also know there are packages available 
from jpackage as shown on fedorafaq.org that have been better tested 
with Fedora to work with java based software.  I know this because I 
read up on it on a website with detailed information provided for free.

Someone who is new to Linux may post to the list saying "help new linux 
user, not sure what to do", I don't mind these people, they aren't being 
jerks by saying FC3 sucks, they are just new, they don't know where to 
look for help.  In a case of someone who is just new we can point them 
to different places on the net where they can find the answer and even 
give them the answer they are looking for.  But these FC3 sucks people 
are just trying to encourage everyone to hate them.  Yes constructive 
criticism is useful to the group, and it furthers the product itself, 
and I even like reading some of the technical arguments that start up on 
the list, but these are constructive arguments where both sides have 
taken the time to at least look up some of the information on the 
Internet.  The "FC3 sucks" people are just trying to start a flame war.

Gerald