Why Fedora ?

[Derek Martin]

On Thu, Nov 03, 2005 at 01:57:50PM +0000, Timothy Murphy wrote:
> > You mean like the recent update to Xorg that rendered many machines
> > completely borken unless you are enough of a system expert to manage a
> > forced boot to run level 3, locating the old Xorg packages in the yum
> > cache and manually force a '--oldpackage' install with rpm from the
> > command line?
> 
> I guess it is just a matter of terminology,
> but I would not use the word "unstable" to describe this.
> I would just say "the latest version of X does not work on my machine".

The word "stable" (as an adjective) has two primary definitions:

  1) unchanging
  2) able to remain operational indefinitely (or something to that
  effect)

Something which is "unstable" is the opposite of the above.

If the latest version of X doesn't work on your machine, then by both
definitions, that's pretty unstable.  If the current version of X has
a big security hole, and the new version doesn't work, that sort of
leaves you between a rock and a hard place...  Not a good situation to
be in if you're a new user.  That would turn me off right away!

> Incidentally, couldn't you get to a text console with Ctrl-Alt-F1?
> If so, I would hardly say one needed to be a system expert -
> just to have read one or two basic documents.

You might, if you know to do it.  Or to look for those documents.  Of
course, most people expect to do their research on the Internet, and
for the majority of people, that means that X needs to work.  Sure,
there are text-only browsers, but a) you have to know about them to
use them and b) they're clunky and hard to use for a wide variety of
web pages, due to the nature of web design these days.  So for the
average newbie, they're just lost if X doesn't work.

> I have a fairly esoteric collection of computers,
> and didn't find FC-4 any more or less of a problem
> than any of the RedHat or Slackware distributions I've tried.
> In fact, FC-4 is the _first_ distribution for which X worked
> "out of the box" on my Sony C1VFK Picturebook
> since Xorg started.
> (I've always had to compile X with a patch for this machine,
> as has everyone else with a Picturebook.
> Apparently the patch has now been included by Xorg.)

You're a pretty clueful user, by that standard.  Newbies don't compile
their own software, and probably wouldn't know where to begin.  You
can't apply your own standards uniformly across the user community.

I have to admit, I quite like Fedora, and I think it is one of the
best distributions available for desktop usage.  BUT, I also have to
admit that I've been using linux for 10 years, and can dance my way
around nearly any problem I encounter.  What works for me doesn't
necessarily work for someone who's never sat in front of a computer
before.

-- 
Derek D. Martin
http://www.pizzashack.org/
GPG Key ID: 0x81CFE75D

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