Thanks for the kind words.

Support calls are for MCSEs. :-) (Must Call Someone Else)

I hope Linux does become more popular- only in a way that no one actually knows *what* it is. Except all of us "hobbyists" who are suddenly in high demand because we can actually run Linux.

Take for example the news yesterday that AOL and Sun are partnering to sell cheap desktop PCs with AOL, XP and Star Office (re-branded as AOL) for something like $300.

Tuck into your mind the mentality of the average AOL user- big buttons, simple to use.

Now throw in some imagination. AOL buys Mandrake and Nintendo. Now they've got an OS support division and a hardware production facility.

Drops a 40 GB HD in the Game Cube, as well as a second DVD/CD drive. Calls it AOLive Cube.

Imagine the branding. AOL's consumer base with Mario's name recogntion.

Plays games. Internet ready. Productivity included software included. Plays DVD's. Hooks up to a TV or a monitor. OS runs off of the second DVD drive. Upgrades are available *for free*, even in the grocery checkout line. Just pop-in the new disc and use the old one for a coaster. Darn near virus free.

In short- it becomes an appliance. Task oriented. Almost bullet proof. Sells for $149.95.

And what OS do you think that would run on? ;-)

Wouldn't be a far stretch to apply similar ideas to a corporate system. The average admin assistant wants e-mail, web, word procesing and a spreadsheet. 4 icons. Interface by Hasbro.

7 posts and I already like this guy!

Welcome jwb!

Awwww...... shucks.......

Hehehehehehe.

Thanks! 7 posts and I like this forum!

Yeah, welcome jwb!

You know, I kind of agree with the points you made... but, you didn't understand this announcement like most computer amateurs still on windows will.
I have a friend of mine which was willing and ready to make the switch, until he heard of this.
+Windows aficionados are already celebrating, gettin' on their high heels, sayin' even Linux's boss say it sucks.
But that no true: for one, he's not the boss, 2, linux DOESN'T suck...

I'm not pissed off because the low-level users won't switch: I don't care about them!
I never wished a *'monkey'* user would switch, like you pointed out, changing OSes doesn't affect them, make it look the same, and they probably won't notice you switched for them...
My concern is that the 'potential' linux users may not switch because of this *error*.

He didn't say that.

In this discussion, could we please keep close to the quotes in the referenced articles? Szulik is pretty specific on what area he thinks Linux is not ready in yet.

That's a pretty superficial point of view. What does that mean, he was "ready to make the switch"? Didn't he check whether everything he had planned to do with Linux would have been possible? If he did and if he's certain he can handle occasional command-line usage, what would stop him from switching? Or would he be one of those users who try Linux and complain loudly about lack of games, lack of commercial grade multi-media applications and plugins, lack of device drivers for most recent hardware, lack of easy-to-install drivers and applications?

I agree with you lokee- it was bad press in many ways, especially for the efforts that are being made in the Linux community to attract "average" users.

What we can do, I think, as Linux advocates, is keep in mind the users who are switching and why. A more technical Windows user often gets into Linux not for the source code, stability, etc., but simply for the love of trying something new. For example, if your friend enjoys playing around with a computer to find out why it ticks- encourage them. Be realistic, though. Some things are very different. Things that seemed one way in the Windows world seem totaly foreign in Linux. Show them that, all rhetoric and philosophy aside- Linux brings fun back to computing. Which is, oddly enough, the thing that drew Bill Gates into it. He's like the Grinch. He forgot what the fun is about. Maybe his heart will grow 3 sizes one day. ;-)

One way or another, Windows *will* be replaced by another operating system. Might be Linux. Might not- maybe Linux is the OS that sparks the next OS. It may take 5 years, 10 years, even more. Windows and Microsoft may never fully go away (Which is not really a bad thing, either. The Linux community is all about choice.) Show your friend that they are able to get in on a great evolution/revolution in computing.

Think about it this way. In automobile terms. Around the turn of the 19th/20th century, there were hundreds of car manufacturers. Most were corner shops, building their own type of car. Few standards existed. Then Henry Ford came along with the Model T, and changed the entire industry. Yet even more than that, consider what the auto revolution brought about. Interstates. Drive thrus. Interstate commerce. It was society changing. The car created a major societal change- far beyond just being a box on wheels that moved people from A to B.

I really believe that we are in the pre-Model T days, so to speak. We haven't even begun to imagine the changes all this will bring about.

Show your friend that they're not just learning a new system. In some small way, they're contributing to a process that will have a huge impact on the entire world. It's one, big collaborative effort. Never have people from so many backgrounds, across so many time zones, with so many languages, cooperated on a single project. The implications will go far beyond the desktop,

Sorry all- off my soap box. :-)

I am just really, really excited about the possibilities. This is world changing stuff.

I have installed Fedora Core 1 as desktop twice - 1 fresh install and the other upgrade from Linux 9 ... Works well overall, except up2date and FLASH need to fine-tune to get it working ... Can play mp3, movies, amsn, yahoo messenger, webmin ... all works fine ...

well fidora .........]
I have been using redhat sience 5 came out. then I swtich to mandrake, and I liked mandrake and as every body know is mandrabugs, but ti is easier, then I came back to red hat sience 7.0 I was using red hat untill today , I have fedora install and I notice few things that I did not like, but any way. we are just seeing the first reales, and as any other distro that is open to developers the first try must be considered as a try, after that, it should definitly show its value.
I will keep using redhat y will take a look for the new incoming core 2. after core 2 fedore will show us what quality of Os will be. if fedore will not fullfill my exprectacion , I may be going to other distro, maybe suse ( suse is novel now )

I agree with both sides of this debate - I like that it's not too popular - but I also understand that If the press had used scare tactic on how "hard" it is then I might not have attempted it. As is with all the good press about it I still hesitated until I could get some time to really come to grips with linux. I am really glad that I did but I fear many would be scared off by the bad press and they may not realize how far it has come as a desktop. In my opinion it is pretty useable as a desktop but not for the PC newbies.

I admit that I was disappointed by the RedHat Abandonment Project, but I have loaded Fedora on seven machines, including an Enpower875 laptop, an old AMD K6-2 450 with 64 MB of RAM with an amptron mother board, and five AMD XP 1400-based machines running ASUS A7V 333 MBDs. It went straight on in all cases. I had to use text mode in the case of the K6-2 due to my lousy Komodo monitor not being identified, but Fedora re-probed the monitor on first boot after the install and managed a set of generic parameters that worked fine.

I also liked the avaialbility of apt and the synaptic GUI frontend from the Fedora howto page [google fedora howto] This is much easier to use than up2date from RedHat and handles the dependencies better. There is no shortage of Fedora RPMs at the RPM repository, although the number of good mirror sites is still low.

Overall, I'm taking a wait-and-see approach. If, as the fedora.redhat.com site claims, RedHat Enterprise is to be a subset of the Fedora packages, The core functionality may still be just as good, and I never bought a RedHat support package in my life, the lack of support is just a continuation of the status quo for me.

rdonovan

I actually love fedora, It looks so damn cool and fills in the places where rh 9 didn't

Well after a few weeks of testing this 'new' distro from RedHat, I am sorry to say this will be the last RH distro I will use. Fedora has been nothing but buggy for me straight out of the box. It crashes virtually every log out of KDE, hangs while mounting and using floppy disks, and is generally half the product that RedHat 9 (which rules imho) was. I tried it on two different machines, and neither one made any difference. I understand it is supposed to be bleeding edge and beta and all, but this is rediculous. I am going to miss RedHat.. :-(

I suggest anyone thinking about downloading this POS, take the opportunity to try a different distro. Fedora is just not worth the bandwidth.

You're misreading the Fedora Project objectives. It's supposed to be leading edge, not bleeding edge. That makes a significant difference. And where you see beta software is beyond me. There are users already who demand much newer and untested software.

Btw, I can't reproduce any crashes with KDE either. Fedora Core 1 runs a good bit better and more satisfactory here than Red Hat Linux 9 (or 8.0, a release which I've skipped nearly in favour of 7.3).

well, well
I have benn using fedora( I am a redhat fan sience 5.x came out). and sorry to say
and I very desapointed in fedora, is stable, but some tools just sucks, ( rpm add and remove)
and other anoying thing is the sound car bug that every body nkows about now.

sorry but fedora needs lots of works out. and I may be using other distro
I WILL MISS ALOT REDHAT < i was so used to it, it was the best of all untill now

There's an official update for redhat-config-packages, and together with up2date/yum/apt-get/synaptic (up2date and yum support out of the box!) package installation is a lot more comfortable compared with Red Hat Linux <= 9. I've seen a lot of praise about that.

http://www.fedora.us/wiki/FedoraHOWTO