Hello there!

I'm a newish Linux user, starting off on Mandrake 8.0 or so, moving onto Debian Woody, then Vector, Redhat 9, then Damn Small Linux, then Slackware 9.1, and finally Fedora Core 1. I liked Debian the most, however, the install was a nightmare. I had a hard time with installing hardware, too.. and me manually setting up the internet connection sent me onto another distro. Slackware was like this too, so I quickly gave those up. Now that I look back at it, I reckon I could do it now with the experience I have.

However, Fedora Core 1 was amazing install. It just detected everything, set up the internet perfectly, all my hardware just worked. It's great. I would almost recommend it for Mums (almost!! as long as there's a half-skilled linux user overlooking). This is definitely what we need in order to push Linux on the desktop. Yum is brilliant. Never failed on me.. it's beautiful! I do enjoy a nice day of tweaking with installing hardware as much as the next man, but it is good to have it do it for you, especially if you want to install it on many different computers with different hardware (and may be unsure of the actual details).

For work purposes, I can't afford to be having OSes cut out on me and a whole load of problems when I want to do work.. so this is why I love Fedora. It's there I want it, and I can tweak around to a good extent without mucking stuff up.

I didn't like it how it auto-booted into X, so I quickly disabed that feature. (For system recovery, messing with X settings, wanting to do full-console work, etc). This absolutely is better than Windows, with the exception of gaming and shovel-ware (and stuff for work... like Microsoft Publisher (have to use that software)). This will change, though. In time...

I'm a GNOME user, so I loaded that up, started messing around with options, configuring backgrounds, changing icons, it was all pretty simple.

Got Firebird, Frozen Bubble (few problems with that, but it worked out), FooBillard (cool billiards game), updated Gaim.. flash support, got XMMS to play MP3s.. happy days.. upgraded the kernel (through yum) many times, no probs. got my Nvidia driver to work.. easy stuff.. installed fortune to give me random quotes on login.. excellent

I started doing a bit of programming.. excellent platform (linux) to learn on (perl, c, c++ and bash) . Set up my own firewall and loaded it at boot.. did the iptables tutorial..

It's superb.. I am teaching my family how to use it too.. I will install Fedora 2 on my mum's computer once I try it out first.. just need to figure out how to do a persistent 56k connection despite if X is running or not - so it checks the email every 5 mins or so, so she doesn't get kicked off the net. that shouldn't be hard though.

I created a user for my brother, too.. it's excellent.. he seems to like it. I tell him what I'm doing at the command line, for example.. explaining what each one means.. good good

I think I'm finally stepping up to the plate

I use the command line heaps now, and love it. I'm comfortable with it.. need to man a lot, but I'm learning. If I was to install another distribution, it would be LFS. But that would be purely to learn more about Linux.. not as a functional desktop (too much hassle chasing and compiling all the updates). I might do that actually, as a little project on the side

I'm really looking forward to Fedora Core 2!! I will be sure to suggest ideas for Fedora Core 3

I would like a bit of feedback from you crazy Fedora Core 2 testers actually.. not the bugs stuff.. but the general usage of it with the 2.6 kernel, etc...

Good day, sirs!!

Glad you got XMMS to work, because I sure as heck can't. I can't renistall it either because the RPM won't let me reinstall, and I can't remove the RPM because it says it is missing files. XMMS was "playing" my mp3's but it kept converting them to WAV's stored in my /home/davidv and then it would "play" but no sound would come out. Yes my sound card is working =)
Help a out would you?

I'm kinda in your position too, I recently got into the whole Linux craze about a week ago, and am really excited about the possibilities.

Me and another guy are building a Linux server for our church, and since I had ZERO experience with Linux I decided it might be helpful to have a Linux box I could mess around with. I had used an XP machine as my backup/server PC and decided I'll just throw a Linux distribution on it and use it as my backup/server/experimental PC.

Luckily I ran across the Fedora distribution, it only took a couple hours to install Core 1 (my PC only has a 300 MHz processor), and it detected all my hardware, except for the sound card. And I was up and running. Then since my backup drive was NTFS I scoured the net on how to get an NTFS drive to show up, and had that up and running in a few hours. Then I decided to wipe it and make it an ext3 filesystem, and now it's up as my backup drive.

So all this stuff is brand new to me, but it's really exciting learning a new OS!

linux_newbie07: I think you have the wrong output selection... converting mp3s to wavs is used to burn cds (that are compatible with CD players).. XMMS may have selected this mode by default. try going to options->preferences->output plugin (drop down box).. either eSound or OSS.. try them all... turn the volume up.. and go for it..

djtipmothee: good on ya! try doing stuff from the command line, such as moving files and everything.. you can learn some really nifty tricks that are excellent for making backups etc etc.. (bash scripting is great to learn too)