Switching to LINUX from Windows

[BonniesTUX]

I would be very appreciative of the efforts of Fedora Developer Team and Red Hat Team for the fedora 11 Leonidas and continuous developments.

I recently switched completely from Windows to LINUX. Initially it took a day or two to understand how LINUX works and to get familiar with. But, with all excellent support from community forum members, it was so easy to set-up additionally required applications as well.

I would definitely recommend fedora 11 to an average computer user, LINUX offers all features with great similarity as compared to other operating system. Operation of Linux is little-bit different as compared to Windows in terms of installing new applications, but, it is not difficult to understand and follow simple instructions. Functionality wise LINUX is more powerful than Windows. It would not be difficult for Windows user to switch to LINUX and give TUX a try!
Even though fedora 11 met more than my expectations, requires native supports for few more applications. Overall not bad, Good Show!

I personally like fedora 11 more than Windows. For me it was not so difficult than what I was thinking prior to the migration to LINUX. I really fallen in LUV with TUX.

Keep up Developers.
Thanks...

[JN4OldSchool]

Hello BonniesTUX,

Just checking through your posts after reading your views on codec support in Fedora in another thread. I just want to welcome you to Linux. You should understand a couple things though. First, and most importantly, desktop Linux is usually NOT a commercial product. This means a few things for you. I know it is hard to wrap your mind around this, but essentially these distros do not make any money except through donations. Being aware of the Mint situation I can tell you that these donations are just about enough money to support one person/family full time IF they live very frugally. It is a labor of love not reward. Most, and I mean most Linux developers work at other full time jobs. You do have your enterprise Linux distros that make money by offering support, and I suppose these companies generate decent to great revenue, but distros like Fedora, Mint, Arch, and the thousand other small affairs are just not in this league. What this means for you is this is not a commercial "product" where you can demand performance/quality/support. It is a "take it as it comes" proposition. Do be aware however that these distros are usually quite happy to receive feedback and suggestions, though some more than others. Mint is notoriously open to this, in fact I have personally witnessed several forum suggestions get implemented in the next Mint release within months. They are listening to the user and their goal is to give you what you want. Fedora has some different goals in mind. That said, this brings up point two. This forum is not an "official" support site nor is it an open channel to the Fedora developers. There are a few who probably read these posts, but if you really want to give feedback to Fedora then you need to pursue this in their proper channels. I do not have these links but any of the community managers/administrators in this forum can help you here and point you to the place you need to go to be heard.

One other note, for most of us it is NOT about trying to be better than Windows. Most of us, the sane ones anyway, recognize that it is a Windows world. We do not "compete" with Windows because we are something totally different. It is a different mindset. We use Linux for the sake of Linux, because we enjoy the Linux way of doing things. Most of us did switch from Windows, and most of us probably did this because we felt Fedora (and Linux) was better than Windows. But there are good and bad points to any OS.

I am happy to read this post from you after reading the other one. I hope you can come to understand the reason for the somewhat negative feedback you received. It is simply a different way of looking at things. Once you get past all the small hurdles you sound like the type that will really enjoy the freedom this OS brings to the table. I wish you luck.

[bob]

(Aside to Sean: Look up there! We put a FedoraProject Jump button in the top of the Forum so you can easily click to where the info is. And, it only took us 5 years to get around to it - fast for us! :D )

[JN4OldSchool]

(Aside to Sean: Look up there! We put a FedoraProject Jump button in the top of the Forum so you can easily click to where the info is. And, it only took us 5 years to get around to it - fast for us! :D )

Shouldn't have shown me that Bob! Now I know how to get hold of the chuckleheads!!! :D

[bob]

And, to BonniesTUX, have you found this site yet? http://www.dnmouse.org/autoten.html Our own Dangermouse has created a handy clickable tool that will make your world nearly perfect.

[stevea]

Odd thread but here goes - I definitely would NOT recommend Fedora for the average computer user.

Fedora has a lot of newer packages and therefore bugs. Fedora does not include a lot of proprietary packages that can be had in end-user Linux distros. Fedora includes a handful of packages like LVM and sendmail that make more sense in an entreprise operation than on an end-user desktop.

No - most end users would probably be happier in the long run with an Arch, Mint, Kubuntu type end-user distro.

I see this every 6 months when a new Fedora distro appears. A lot of Linux noobs appear on this forum, and 75% are *lucky* and have a good first time experience w/ the install and another 25% have a bad experience and complain. What you don't seem to realize, BonniesTUX, is that the next package that is revved or the next Fedora Release that comes out is likely to break your system or some of the hardware.

Look around this forum for the past few weeks,
there are some pretty regular problems with F11 not installing correctly,
sometimes not recognizing the CPU or the vid,
there are cases of F11 not booting after install,
i've seen several networking problems wrt sendmail,
no one is happy w/ Amarok since ~F9 when it changed revs.
there is a constant stream of pulse audio problems.
--
Maybe next month or maybe next year one of these types of bugs will bite you. Something you're used to and rely on will disappear or be badly broken. If you can't deal with that you shouldn't be using Fedora. Most end-users can't deal with that IMO. They want an system that "just works" and fedora is a system that "mostly works", but is always "in progress".

This is NORMAL for Fedora and it's not about to change just b/c someone shows up and suggests otherwise.

Just as an example - I installed a bunch of updates on my laptop F10 yesterday and now I can only barely select a desktop item with the left mouse button (mostly comes out as a single-click instead of select). So I'll either back-rev the change or change the mouse driver params. If things like this frustrate you or make you want to re-install, or shut-off updates - you shouldn't be using Fedora.

---

If you want to experience the latest FOSS packages, and have the ability to install previous rev packages when one fails, or use an alternative, or even pull sources & build a package when needed - then Fedora is just right.

[bob]

(We keep Stevea around to scare small children at Holloween :D)

The inverse of his statements is that Fedora is not boring, ever! It generally all works together very nicely, but when something breaks, help's right here at the Forum, providing you can ever get back online.... :rolleyes: And, if you love to tinker, this is an excellent distro. We've all kept the install discs handy and had the pleasure of wiping and starting fresh more than once. Frankly, distros that are set up, work perfectly and require few updates are a bit boring to me. I started with FC-2 as a noob and have kept my old bald head in the game ever since, so if I can do it, it's not beyond anyone's abilities.

[JN4OldSchool]

(We keep Stevea around to scare small children at Holloween :D)

The inverse of his statements is that Fedora is not boring, ever! It generally all works together very nicely, but when something breaks, help's right here at the Forum, providing you can ever get back online.... :rolleyes: And, if you love to tinker, this is an excellent distro. We've all kept the install discs handy and had the pleasure of wiping and starting fresh more than once. Frankly, distros that are set up, work perfectly and require few updates are a bit boring to me. I started with FC-2 as a noob and have kept my old bald head in the game ever since, so if I can do it, it's not beyond anyone's abilities.

Tell me about it. I have Arch on both my desktop and my main laptop, both running Fluxbox and both set up perfectly, running only the tools and apps I need. No corruption, no foolishness, and both work to perfection.

So now what? :confused: :rolleyes:

Luckily I am playing with F11 in my spare time, but I am satisfied that it is solid and really dont see much more I really want to do there. I am thinking about dumping it and maybe installing Arch with KDE (as I dont want to corrupt my main install). I dont know, once these distros are set there really is little to do. Just keep them updated and hope they dont break. With Arch being a rolling release...well...Maybe I need to build another computer so I can play? Yeah! Now, how do I talk the wife into that? Maybe I will buy a rpstitz computer and just tell her I need to support my bud...:p