Hmm.. decided to try out Fedora Core to see what all the fuss was about.. saw that FC2 was scheduled to come out soon, so I waited for it. I downloaded it with BitTorrent, made sure to leave the client running until I had uploaded more than I downloaded. BitTorrent is so cool. (Had difficulties getting a bittorrent client installed on Mandrake 9.1, got into some dependency hell having to do with python, and actually ended up using another computer to download and burn the FC2 cds... hoping I can use it easily in FC2)
I install Fedora, and decide to keep it simple and try the recommended experience of a "personal desktop" since that's pretty much what I plan to use it as.
It installs just fine, and the first thing I look to do is browse the web. The little icons down on the taskbar/panel are a little bit funky, but I figure them out. No button for the command line.. hmm.. I take a second to add that. I also add the "show the desktop button" while I'm at it. I launch up the web browser, which I find is Mozilla 1.6. I'm partial to Fire*, so I go looking to the hat button, then internet, and notice in the "internet" listing of programs that it's simplified to "Web Browser" (and "email", "irc client", etc.) .. it never mentions which web broswer it is, it's just "web browser"... hmmm.. simplification, I guess.. not what I'm used to, but hey, let's give it a whirl before passing judgement. It seems odd that they include "email" and "evolution email".. kind of wandering from the "present only one program to do something and don't say what the program is" thing I thought they were going for.
Oh well, I'll get Fire* installed later.
The next thing I wanted to do was to check out whether I could copy an audio cd easily. I had been getting strange segmentation faults with cdrecord on my Mandrake system when trying to do DAO (data cd's were fine). Google was no help to me when I tried to check it out back then, so I just sorta decided to wait until another distro came along and see if it worked well in that.
So I go and get one of my wife's CDs (she listens to difficult to replace cds in the car, so I prefer that she listens to copies to preserve the originals) and a blank and throw them into the respective drives of my box. I put in the audio CD in first, and was pleasantly surprised to see the cd audio player pop up automatically.
After a second or two, though, I noticed I wasn't hearing anything. Yep.. I don't have that cable connecting my CD player to my sound card. I _hate_ that cable, always in the way, snagging on something, etc... Fair enough, default configuration of the player won't play without the cable. Let's see if there is a setting to get it to play without the cable.... *NOPE*.. argh.. without being to involved in that program's development, I guess I can't understand why it would be very hard to program that in as an option... Ah well, I know XMMS has it, I'll have to install that later. Anyway, I'm not here to play a cd, I'm here to copy it.
I put in the blank, and up pops a window entitled "CD Creator". I'm impressed that they've got that working so smoothly.. very reminiscent of what I liked about WinXP (from what I've seen of it). Then I try to use it.. it pops up with a blank window, mind you, with a menu bar of "File Edit View Places Help". I tour the menu options and nothing makes sense to me for what I want to do, so I surrender and hit "Help |Contents"...
Up pops "Introduction to Nautilus File Manager", and at first I think, "Oh great, the typical Linux thing of useless help...", but actually I think the answer is there on the tenth line of text in the window.. "Write data to a CD".. Keyword-- data.. in the vernacular of cd burning "data cd" is different from "audio cd".. so I'm guessing Fedora Core 2's little impressive CD Creator will always come up wrong when I want to burn an audio CD.. it's not just that the "person desktop" install decent packages.
Ho humm.. I'm a little bit... bemused by now, and thought I'd put some feedback someplace where someone might find it useful, so I google for fedora core forum and find "www.fedoraforum.org/".. I head there, looking forward to all sorts of good advice from more advanced fedora people, and maybe a place to make my tiny voice heard.. fedoraforum.org replies back to me:
Quote:
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FedoraForum.org is moving to another server. You will not see this message if you are on the new server after the DNS resolved. Sorry for the inconvinient.
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This just isn't my day..
oh well... I'm off to fight with this system a little bit more.. I think I'm going to turn off the spatial browsing crud.. (I've read some hype about it, but never really been convinced in the words.. I thought the experience of it might convince me, but so far.. meh... just annoyingly limited-- maybe I'm just an idiot).
I also don't seem to be able to play any movies.. I'll have to install something for that.. I've heard freshrpms is a good place to go for fedora stuff.. any other suggestions?
For me, so far, Personal Desktop's choice of applications has been a little bit underwhelming. (Reasons: not a fan of spatial browser, default CD player can't be made to work without the cable, default installation doesn't appear to be able to burn an audio cd, default installation doesn't appear to be able to play a movie, default installation obscures several progam names)..
