What would you like to see in Fedora Core 4?

[Sammy]

hmmm... some things for Joe Schmoe, who just wants it to work.

not FC4, per se. but....
XMMS is quite nice, but a wee bit better designed options setup and better autodetection of CDAs (Joe wont know /mnt from /mount... XMMS assumes mnt, and doesnt check for mount)
Xine seems buggy (Joe just wants to watch his vids without crashes)
But... the codecs need improvement for high bitrate (those with faster processors might notice)

in FC4... (some are GUI related for Joe, but need to be addressed to compete with Windows)
Probably already done... more view options in Nautilus
Improved installer (Joe should stick with basic install, but might not if adventurous. but be prepared anyway)
full CDRW support (dunno about licensing problems, but Joe needs to bring work home sometimes)
NTFS preinstalled (write would be good too) (Will Joe dual boot? ff work demands it... so again be prepared)
gDesklets and Karamba alternatives built in... and more effcient (Joe likes goodies. The OSX toolbar is nice)
KDE, grey out or remove HD choices that should be unavailable in the file browser (swap, root. others) so Joe wont mess with things he shouldnt.
a few more basic taskbar options included by default
In general, less of a need to use the command line (which Joe considers voodoo)
Built-in firewall (boo if you like)) ala XP. Joe doesnt know much about them, and thinks a trojan is something he carries in his wallet on Friday nights. He never knows when he might get lucky after all.
As everyone has already said, better 3D support. Joe likes to relax and blow away the bad guys occationally.

Joe is not a dummy. But just needs everything to work well... and with as few headaches as possible when he has to fix something. Fix what he can anyway.

Cheers

[ksss]

I have just installed redHat 9 (just to see if the LILO bootloader worked for me, grub didn't) and some nice feauteres is missing in fedora. In RedHat 9 you may select any package you want, for example kernel development missing in fedora, and in the and you get a confirmation and 3 choosies about depencies: install the missing rpm packages, or delete the dependet rpms, or do nothing. Now, I get openoffice installed even if I have deselect all office packages. Quite disturbing.

[Finalzone]

XMMS is quite nice, but a wee bit better designed options setup and better autodetection of CDAs (Joe wont know /mnt from /mount... XMMS assumes mnt, and doesnt check for mount)
Any media path use /media instead of /mnt.
Xine seems buggy (Joe just wants to watch his vids without crashes)
You mean the frontend is broken. Totem, Kaffeine or MPlayer(not the Windows version) are a good alternative
But... the codecs need improvement for high bitrate (those with faster processors might notice)
By default, FC will never include any proprietary format due to US patent issues. Repository such as Livna and RPMforge fill that void but they are not included in the default FC.

in FC4... (some are GUI related for Joe, but need to be addressed to compete with Windows)
Probably already done... more view options in Nautilus
User can customize his/her GUI for his/her taste. Themes are available on http://art.gnome.org. The limit is user's imagination. For KDE users, http://www.kde-look.org

Improved installer (Joe should stick with basic install, but might not if adventurous. but be prepared anyway)
Users can choose the default setting such as Desktop. User can later choose to install desktop environmnet such as KDE. Fedora installer is by far superior to Windows XP.
full CDRW support (dunno about licensing problems, but Joe needs to bring work home sometimes)
Not licensing issue as I am able to burn CDRW without a problem on Fedora.
NTFS preinstalled (write would be good too) (Will Joe dual boot? ff work demands it... so again be prepared)
Patent issue here since NTFS is Microsoft partition. However, user can easily NTFS supports via this website (http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/rpm/)
gDesklets and Karamba alternatives built in... and more effcient (Joe likes goodies. The OSX toolbar is nice)
That is the job of second party repository such as Livna or RPMforge (dag, freshrpms, etc.)
KDE, grey out or remove HD choices that should be unavailable in the file browser (swap, root. others) so Joe wont mess with things he shouldnt.
a few more basic taskbar options included by default
In general, less of a need to use the command line (which Joe considers voodoo)
Built-in firewall (boo if you like)) ala XP. Joe doesnt know much about them, and thinks a trojan is something he carries in his wallet on Friday nights. He never knows when he might get lucky after all.
Fedora Core already enable Firewall by default since the installation. It is superior to WinXP version on that part.
As everyone has already said, better 3D support. Joe likes to relax and blow away the bad guys occationally.
Not possible to include 3D support by default FC due to its open source nature. Remember that WinXP does not include that support by default either as you will need to download the driver from Nvidia CD or Nvidia website for example.

Joe is not a dummy. But just needs everything to work well... and with as few headaches as possible when he has to fix something. Fix what he can anyway.
Support like this forum is here to help new users.

[Finalzone]

I have just installed redHat 9 (just to see if the LILO bootloader worked for me, grub didn't) and some nice feauteres is missing in fedora. In RedHat 9 you may select any package you want, for example kernel development missing in fedora, and in the and you get a confirmation and 3 choosies about depencies: install the missing rpm packages, or delete the dependet rpms, or do nothing. Now, I get openoffice installed even if I have deselect all office packages. Quite disturbing.

kernel-devel ins now known as kernel-uname.src.rpm. See the release note from Fedora Core 3 for more detail. The current system-package is depreciated as yum is the deafault package manager and yumex (developers by a Fedora users) is the current frontend.
Fedora Core is in current transition as System Package will be replaced by a new frontend package manager that will use yum.

[a thing]

Automatic Samba detection+configuration
SuperKaramba

[strikeforce]

I'll say it again in the hope that it gets added. A dmix dsnoop configuration utility that runs through a series of tests to make sure that its all working. I have sound but because of my cheap sound card I can't get very good sound in games and also 2 sounds and or using the mic and listening can't happen for me.

That to me is the one of the final things that needs to be completed. Since I can play most games I like using cedega.

[Sammy]

Many many great suggestions already...

improved does not = more windows-like. But it does mean making it easy for non-techies to do what they need/want without the hastle or learning curve. Also, when the dominant player does something out of the box, and Linux does not, then Linux is at a big disadvantage. No excuses like 'they can go get it on their own'. I have heard several people tell me that despite all the coolness they hear about Linux, they also hear about how tough it is to get it working right, whether we agree or not. So they stick with what they know works for then without much fuss.

Its a difference between making an OS for more technically savvy people who dont mind spending time figuring out how to get even common things working or making one for the average computer user who doesnt want to do this. If they dont what to fgure things out, then accomidate them. There is no 'cant'. If the people want it, then do it. If they think something is difficult or unintuitive, fix it. Figure out the problem, add what they want, or get the rights to use something. As correctly pointed out to me, often this must be done by others (yes nVidia). But RH et al must work harder for them to do it. There is no 'working hard already'. For all the evils of MS, they do this. So does Apple. The customer is always right. If this simple thing is ignored. Forget about competing with MS. Linux wont even compete with OSX.

Yes many things need to happen first. First would be the major players banding together. If they cant even stop competing with themselves ('flavors' is just a way of saying there is no unification of purpose), then its dead in the water.

[fc_jeff]

Xfce

I'm saddened that FC4 is dropping Xfce from the core 4 discs (along with Abiword, Gnumeric, Koffice - probably to make room for Eclipse and other Java stuff). I don't mind downloading from Extras, but I think Xfce should be more of a frontline feature of any distro nowadays. IMHO, after using Gnome and KDE extensively for over 3 years, I find Xfce to be superior to both Gnome and KDE in most departments.

Xfce is small and fast, yet very full featured and very easy and fun to use.

[the_profiler]

Xfce is small and fast, yet very full featured and very easy and fun to use.

that one is subjective.. (or maybe relative) :D

[Goppo]

- As cscheng said, a YUM gui. That would also replace "Add/Remove Programs" which doesn't work very well in my opinion. It doesn't even say I have gnome installed, but that's what I'm using.


I'm sure theres a program called YumEX that is a GUI program installer/remover and updater.

[Pudduh]

Yeah searched for it, seems to be a Japanese department store :P

[Sammy]

thats the one. you need one of your Japanese friends to show you where to download from :P

[strikeforce]

I'm sure theres a program called YumEX that is a GUI program installer/remover and updater.


Theres the link for you.

http://yumex.sourceforge.net/

[FXRS]

Only quams I have and I haven't used FC in a while is the wifisupport. I've been using Ubuntu even before it became final and I noticed in the last release (Hoary) which many of you know is one cd that I can sit here on the loveseat with my laptop, throw in the cd and it will install the madwifi drivers for my card. No need for a cat5 cable connetion first an then install the madwifi drivers later. It is a sweet deal if you ask me.

But like my daddy always said.. Sh** in one hand and wish in the other and see what one comes first. :p

[dave_a_mbs]

Online Doc base with generic HowTo for most common applications including examples, assuming total ignorance of user.

Somehow understanding crumbles before the onslaught of chaos when something doesn't work, leaving a global uncertainty in which nothing makes sense. While experienced users can troubleshoot on the basis of prior knowledge, isolated newbies have no recourse when even a single, but significant, term is not understood.

[c4raku]

you mean comments like -just edit the thingamagig line in the whosawhatsit file in the /youllneverfindit directory to match your discombobulator- dont help newbies?

seriuosly though, to most people thats how alot of the jargon around linux forums and on how to guides looks.

[dave_a_mbs]

Yeah, Kinda. After tweaking my framis in an effort to get two Pops per Push, I figure the world needs information in words of less than one syllable with definitions borderinig on laconic (eg: "A bus is like a wire that connects things." instead of "There are various types of busses in use to bridge switches into routers, as will be discussed in Chapters 3, 4, and 6."), and it should be aimed especially at those who are unaware of having framises to tweak. I said it better under DW6000 Setup for Very Newbie.
Without info, a lot of potential is going to waste. It isn't just jargon, but expansion of awareness that RHL and FC are far more than fancy terminal emulators and a perpetual solitaire game. I see numerous other requests for fundamental data, most of which is available in written form, cross indexed under "things you never need to know untill it's too late."
May your framises never discombobulate - dave

[a thing]

System-config-packages that actually works for uninstalling.

In Anaconda when you select what packages to install and you click on Everything or Mininal, have everything not grayed out so you can have Everything minus a few things or Minimal plus/minus a few things. I like mosft of the packages with Everything, but I really have no need for server packages.

[Knudsen]

How about give the poor penguin his balls back and let him play an mp3? Everytime I try to do something with mp3s that I could do a week ago, before nuking RH7.2 for fedora fc3, the program is either gone forever, broken, or has mp3 plugins removed. I can't play a stinkin' video mpg or mp3 anymore. This is progress? Music Player is F!@#ed, K3b is F!@#ed, xmms is F!@#ed, totem is F!@#ed and whatever it replaced is gone. How about fixing mulimedia so fedora can compete with a 98 box? I guess I could go ogg, so it sounds a little better and won't play in any car stereo, home stereo, or portable known to man.

[nuopus]

Well, if the slowness is real, it should be objectively capturable. Everyone sitting nodding in agreement that Fedora is slow without any hard comparision seems wrong to me and leads to mass psychosis.

Well, the only comparison I need is the fact we have used SEVERAL distributions on the family desktop and FC3 is the only one my wife wants me to get rid of because it is noticably slower than other implementations of GNOME in Arch Linux, Debian, Ubuntu and Gentoo. She is in no way a Linux expert and just notices the way it "feels". I have felt the same way too. FC4 Test 3 seems fast though.

[strikeforce]

How about give the poor penguin his balls back and let him play an mp3? Everytime I try to do something with mp3s that I could do a week ago, before nuking RH7.2 for fedora fc3, the program is either gone forever, broken, or has mp3 plugins removed. I can't play a stinkin' video mpg or mp3 anymore. This is progress? Music Player is F!@#ed, K3b is F!@#ed, xmms is F!@#ed, totem is F!@#ed and whatever it replaced is gone. How about fixing mulimedia so fedora can compete with a 98 box? I guess I could go ogg, so it sounds a little better and won't play in any car stereo, home stereo, or portable known to man.

Look at the fedorafaq it explains how to install the mp3 plugin. Also it explains how to set all of that stuff up. Unfortunately due to licensing I believe and or legal issues they cannot distribute players with mp3 built in.



Well, the only comparison I need is the fact we have used SEVERAL distributions on the family desktop and FC3 is the only one my wife wants me to get rid of because it is noticably slower than other implementations of GNOME in Arch Linux, Debian, Ubuntu and Gentoo. She is in no way a Linux expert and just notices the way it "feels". I have felt the same way too. FC4 Test 3 seems fast though.


I have to agree with this statement. I've just gone and tested 3-4 other distro's and the slowest seems to me to be FC3 which is unexpected. I'm hoping the tweaks that are available will improve the speed but I don't think so.

One thing I like about Gentoo is it has the customised kernels for every type of processor. Thats what I would like to see more kernel ranges similar to Gentoo where its processor specific since i686 to me isn't as tweaked as pentium-4.

[nuopus]

I have to agree with this statement. I've just gone and tested 3-4 other distro's and the slowest seems to me to be FC3 which is unexpected. I'm hoping the tweaks that are available will improve the speed but I don't think so.

One thing I like about Gentoo is it has the customised kernels for every type of processor. Thats what I would like to see more kernel ranges similar to Gentoo where its processor specific since i686 to me isn't as tweaked as pentium-4.

Ya, even though FC3 is slower than the others (dont know why), I still use it on my laptop because it is fast enough (hyperthreading have something to do with it?) with the SMP kernel that I do not notice it .. and it has a far more professional "feel" than the other distros.

That being said, the fastest distros I have tried is Gentoo (after a week of compiling) and Arch Linux. The FASTEST to bring up from nothing to a full working system IMHO is still Arch Linux. It installs with a base command line, and you just "pacman -Sy gnome gnome-extras gaim openoffice2 firefox alsa-utils xchat xmms" where it downloads EVERYTHING including detect the X configuration.

Heck, pacman -S mplayer will get a FULLY working multimedia player COMPLETE with WIN32 codecs to play windows media player 9 files. installing MP3 plays like rhythmbox results in full mp3 playback which is also nice.

Although I have fallen in love with Arch, I am falling more in love with the professional environment in Fedora Core. I cannot wait until FC4 final.

[strikeforce]

Ya, even though FC3 is slower than the others (dont know why), I still use it on my laptop because it is fast enough (hyperthreading have something to do with it?) with the SMP kernel that I do not notice it .. and it has a far more professional "feel" than the other distros.

That being said, the fastest distros I have tried is Gentoo (after a week of compiling) and Arch Linux. The FASTEST to bring up from nothing to a full working system IMHO is still Arch Linux. It installs with a base command line, and you just "pacman -Sy gnome gnome-extras gaim openoffice2 firefox alsa-utils xchat xmms" where it downloads EVERYTHING including detect the X configuration.

Heck, pacman -S mplayer will get a FULLY working multimedia player COMPLETE with WIN32 codecs to play windows media player 9 files. installing MP3 plays like rhythmbox results in full mp3 playback which is also nice.

Although I have fallen in love with Arch, I am falling more in love with the professional environment in Fedora Core. I cannot wait until FC4 final.


I haven't tried Arch is it current? Like a lot of the reasons I haven't tried other linux distro's is because the 'support' that there is. Thats my concern whether its a 2.6.11 kernel and the other associated stuff that goes with it. I might have to give it a go I think if its fast.

The reason why is because I have cedega running games so the faster the desktop is the faster the fps running cedega will be.

[nuopus]

I haven't tried Arch is it current? Like a lot of the reasons I haven't tried other linux distro's is because the 'support' that there is. Thats my concern whether its a 2.6.11 kernel and the other associated stuff that goes with it. I might have to give it a go I think if its fast.

The reason why is because I have cedega running games so the faster the desktop is the faster the fps running cedega will be.

Well it is very fast since all applications (and the distro itself) is optimized for i686 platform. It seems to be one of the most current distros, but you can check it out at www.archlinux.org. On their main page they have a nice system of letting you know what is available and gives you a quick way to search for packages.

The needs of the distro are different from person to person. If there was a distro that had the feel of Fedora with the package system and applications of Arch .. this would be the ultimate distro.

[strikeforce]

I definately agree. I think there should be a tweaked pentium4 gentoo like kernel where its more modularised.

e.g. agpgart is compiled into the fedora kernel where as most debian systems as well as gentoo its not compiled into the kernel but modules.

[miamuy]

hi,

1. make a windoze installer or at least present a user with a batch file that will boot windoze with loadlin and get installed from ISO.
2. GUI yum (that "import http_proxy=http://192.168.0.1:80" thing) geez :(
3. GUI rpm
4. at least links (if not installed) of the usually sought packages like samba, mplayer, xine, wine, ... etc
5. another link to enable mounting of vfat partitions (probed after installation)

i think this will make transition from windoze to linux MUCH smoother. it took me 3 days to start installing packages i want (i'm very new to linux).

anyway,
FEDORA rocks!!! i'm beginning to love this OS.

:)

[yiozkok]

I havent seen anything yet! :p Because I couldnt install it on my SATA disk.
So first of all I would like to see that Fedora can be installed on sata disks without any problem. :mad:

[jdinkel]

Not a big deal since I can remove gnome and use KDE anyway, but I would like to see Fedora become more KDE-centric.

[Sammy]

KDE is quite good. Not FCs problem but I would like to see it much more streamlined and its memory requirements be substantially reduced. Or... provide something where resource hungry KDE-specific components can easily be shut off. Easily enough that beginners can safely do it without causing any problems.

[justincataldo]

I'd just like to see all the Windows and Apple functionality presented in a Linuxish kind of way. So it suits me fine. :)