Distrowatch: Trying on Fedora 21

[Madhurjya Roy]

I'm sorry, I almost forgot that this is the marketing list!

Well, I do understand that Fedora is governed by its policies and is
never going to ship any proprietary software and I am perfectly fine
with that.

I also agree that with the vast amount of tutorials on the internet,
it's simple copy and paste that we need to do! In fact, that's the
way, I, myself started with Linux.

Since, deciding to join the project I've constantly tried to convince
people to switch. The thing is that people are already so habituated
to habituated to gui based  tools and installers (read hitting "i
agree", "next", "next", "install")  that they are unable to adjust to
the change. It's not that copying/pasting into the terminal is a
difficult job, its just something that they do not like to. Thanks to
'wine' I could atleast show them a way to run their existing software.

If including a "Enable RPMFusion" button or something like that is
unviable, then I think we should work harder towards making people
realise the advantages of a Linux distro, we should make tools which
would allow people to easily switch to Fedora and that would suggest
open source alternatives to popular proprietary softwares. In case,
open source substitutes are unavailable, we can use the magazine to
provide tutorials to install the excluded non free software. After
all, some people have to rely on proprietary stuff for their work.

It's really disappointing when after giving out a lecture on the
awesomeness on FOSS, people respond with way lesser enthusiasm than
you expect them to! I guess it is not sufficient to convince that way,
people need more. I wish I could build some tools myself but my coding
capabilities are quite limited at present (General C++ and some basic
Python coding is all I know). Hopefully, that's going to change when I
get to join college next year and take up a course on Computer
Science. I have made it a resolution to devote to software development
and learn as much as I can next year in order to be able to produce
something concrete.

I know that the marketing team is already doing an awesome job to
promote Fedora. This is more of an appeal/suggestion to all to put
focus on popularising Linux (specifically Fedora, of course) among
basic users while maintaining and strengthening the amazing relation
with devs, that Linux has always had. :)

Thanks,
Madhurjya Roy
-
I am still at a learning stage. Please, forgive me for my
inappropriate statements, if any.

On 29/12/2014, Ankur Sinha <sanjay.ankur at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 2014-12-29 at 10:14 +0530, Madhurjya Roy wrote:
>> Please be aware that I am just trying to put the common people's
>> viewpoint. This is just an opinion and not any sort of destructive
>> criticism!
>> Last, I would like to express my sincere apologies, in case I have
>> offended someone.
>
> A couple of things:
>
> 1. The issue with mp3 and other non free software support isn't going to
> go away. Freedom is one of our foundations. The best you can do is
> explain to new users *why* proprietary software isn't available in
> Fedora and spread our open source philosophy while you do so. (The
> ethical discussion regarding patents and whether or not someone wants to
> pay for what someone else created is not in the scope of this mailing
> list. It requires an understanding of individual rights etc.)
>
> 2. Installing media codecs is easier than ever. We've put up a note
> here:
> https://ask.fedoraproject.org/en/question/9111/sticky-what-plugins-do-i-need-to-install-to-watch-movies-and-listen-to-music/
>
> It takes one Google search. They don't need to know how to use the
> command line, they just need to copy-paste the command there.
>
> 3. The marketing list is probably not the best place to discuss this :)
> As I said before, Freedom is one of our foundations and I, for one, am
> part of the community because of it. Modification of our foundations and
> policies will require a discussion at a much higher level, maybe the
> council will need to discuss it.
>
> Instead of thinking of this as a limitation of Fedora, you should take
> it as an opportunity to educate people of our philosophy - once people
> understand, they usually don't mind the two extra steps required to
> install codecs and whatnot. Open source is much more than using software
> that you don't have to pay for.
> --
> Thanks,
> Regards,
> Ankur Sinha "FranciscoD"
>
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Ankursinha
>
>