Fedora User Testimonials

[Firewing1]

Hey,
I thought I'd take the liberty of starting this thread as FedoraNews.org issue 20 said.
My experience with Fedora is excellent. I started with RH9, and then upped to FC2, and now I'm at FC4. I'm using Gnome, and it's really easy to use and setup. I had Fedora running in under 1 hour, and it took me another 3 to configure it and tweak it to just the way I like it. I now am using Audacity for audio editing / recording, grip to rip CD's at 30x speed (!), SmartPM for package managment, XMMS for audio, Limewire self-explanitory, Sun Java JDK, and everything's in GUI. It's great. I also have a Nvidia card, with Livna RPM it was a breeze.
Plus, my system boots in about 30 seconds. Everything I wanted to do in Windows I can do faster and easier in Linux. Even OpenOffice.org I find now easier to use than the competition, MS Word.
Even better, I have friends always calling me up for help with Adware and Virus removal. I think of Linux an laugh.
Good job Fedora and Red Hat, keep it up!
Firewing1

[naidim]

I first tried using Linux with RedHat 7. While it installed okay, it was not as intuitive as I was hoping, and as I had little time to spend with it, it was just another hobby I didn't have time for.

Just as Fedora Core 3 came out, I had just gotten a project where I needed to learn Linux, fast. I downloaded the ISO's and withing a few hours I had burned them to CD and was up and running. Fedora made my transition from Windows to Linux easy and painless. I've had a few issues learning everything I need to know, but no where close to the problems I've encountered since switching to Windows from the Amiga.

[XCOLDFUSION]

I'm such the Fedora Core 4 (Linux Newbie) It's incredible. I'm getting a new book and cant wait to see what I can do with this machine. All I had to do was upgrade my NIC and everything works great. I'm going to build me a better machine for fedora core when I get more money. I'm a pc builder, webmaster, network admin (Windows Server) and soon to be a linux freak. I read some posts about the GUI lacking.....Gnome rocks. Just can't wait to learn more!

[Zigzagcom]

I just bought "Red Hat Fedora and Enterprise Linux 4 Bible" by Christopher Negus (WILEY).
By far the best book out of all I have on Fedora, worth every penny.

And yes, Fedora rocks.

[XCOLDFUSION]

I have the same in PDF format but ty for the post

[RedFedora]

I recently got an e-mail from an ex-roommate of mine. During the time we
lived together (a year or so ago) I introduced him to Fedora Core 2. In his
recent e-mail he stated that he now uses Windows XP at work and
misses the simplicity and stability of Linux.

I think this is a great testimonial from a man who only uses computers for
e-mail, music playing, web browsing and document writing. He can't write
a line of C or use a command line and he misses Fedora. What a great
sign Linux is becoming more user friendly.

[Twey]

My first experience of Linux was when I found a Fedora Core 1 DVD on a magazine I installed it (dual-boot WinME), and it was good. However, I wondered what other distros were like, so I bought and installed Debian Woody. Still being rather new, and having only dabbled slightly in a few of the less arcane commands, I fought my way through the myriad config options and the flipping massive pkgselect utility, including such amazingly relevant packages as "OdontoLinux! - a Linux dental practice managing suite," only to totally and utterly fail to start X. The error message? A big, blank ncurses box, with the title "Error." After a couple of weeks fiddling around with obscure environment variables and config files in an unfamiliar CLI environment (I'd previously only used DOS), I gave up and switched back to Fedora, and that's what I've stuck with (along with a little OpenSuSE and a brief affair with Ubuntu) ever since. Early last year I deleted my Windows partition.

[a thing]

Easy to install+tweak, works out of the box and has a lot of packages with a good package/dependency downloader/installer. What more do you need?

[Firewing1]

exactly.
Firewing1

[weinerdogus]

My first time with linux was in April of this year. I installed FC3 on a box with an AMD 1800+chip, ASUS A7N8X-VM mobo, nvidea nforce2 chipset, integrated GeForce4 mx graphics. Much to my surprise, everthing worked out of the box as i was used to windows and several additional driver cd's. With help from the forum, i was able to get a nvidia GeForce FX5200 pci card working. This was a dual boot system that i was sharing with my son. I turned it back over to him cause he said i was spending too much time on the thing (playing with linux. it's kind of addicting). I dusted off an older HP PIII-1g box that was not being used and installed FC3 on that. Again, everthing worked out of the box. I originally had it set up to dual boot with windows, but when FC4 came along, i dumped windows and FC3 and only use fc4 now.
I have tried other distro's (Ubuntu, Xandros, CentOS) but for me FC4 works the best. I recently had the pleasure of reinstalling windows XP on one of the machines at my wife's work. In the time it took me to gather up the additional cd's with drivers and download the ones i didn't have, i could have installed linux and had it up and running. I am more than impressed with the amount of support that Fedora has for existing hardware. My experience so far has been an extremely pleasant one and i very much look forward to FC5
regards

[Snokesmurf]

Maybe I'm swearing in the wrong place here, bu tim my eyes I'm not happy right now with fedora, or maybe i should say linux generally. Take In mind I haven't followed the development and this is a first time installation.

Have a amd x2 3800 running on a MSI mb with x200 chipset. Installation is a pain with variables and cyptic acpi=off. INstalled on a Sata disk first, but here it just wouldn't boot on SMP kernels, stopped with starting red hat nash 4.5xxx. Would run on only none SMP kernels. Oki i swopped the SATA drive for IDE and tried reinstall. WOW, just push enter and the whole thing started. Without problems, really fast install also I would like to say. No troubles here during install. Even got SMP kernels going without prob.
Off course the world wasn't that simple. I started using the system and soon found that things were not entirely okey. Mouse clicks won't behave, well they do, but sometimes doesn't. It's like click open a window and it closes right away. writing with keyboard is a night mare because a singel punch can give about 5-10 of same letter. Weel searched around some info on it and seems a problem with timing of processes. My processes goes too fast.
Well long story fast, it's a lot of fiddling getting things going. Lot of time in research and to get it going, some string which means nothing to me to add in boot or another config file, I don't even have a clue to what they mean and don't care. This is not really user friendly.
I'm no fan of Windows, it's to much **** but it's a much more plug an play install and don't say Linux is just as easy, it isn't. Guess it's getting better, but linux is not really a threath towards windows in any future with all these issues when you have problems.

That said, I ain't giving up yet. My threshold is higher, still have hopes this will work out okey.

[JN4OldSchool]

Too right SNOKE, Linux aint as easy as Windows. I dont care what anyone says, Linux is hard for a first timer to get up and running. But keep your chin up, once you get it rolling and find out a few basics you will swear by it. Your experience sounds like my experience with SUSE. Maybe I learned from that or maybe my hardware just liked FC4 better, but I have had no major headaches with Fedora. Just take one problem at a time and keep plugging away. There is a great thread in the hardware section about SATA drives. Would be a good place to start.

[Christy]

My boyfriend is really into Linux. He started me with Mandrake 10.1 last Christmas. Never really did much with it (I wasn't all that adventurous at the time). Then he switch to FC3 and I decided to give it a try (so I was triple booting WinXP, Mdk 10.1 and FC3). Then when FC4 came around I killed off Mdk and triple booted WinXP, FC3 and FC4. Then I got a new computer and am dual booting FC4 and WinXP. Because pretty near all the software I need for school is Windows based, my XP partition isn’t going anywhere anytime soon (I’m a GIS student, and other than GRASS, all the software we use is Windows based). FC has taught me a lot. Considering that my BF moved on rather quickly to Gentoo, and more recently Ubuntu and refuses to fix my FC problems until I’ve either tried and royally screwed up my system, or tried and gotten no where (he’s not a huge FC fan, but to each his/her own, right?), I have been left with the internet, a search engine and my root password to figure out the problems I encounter. I love it!!

[Firewing1]

I found something negative; Customized FC RPMS. EG:
- Firefox doesn't have the default Firefox theme; the "default" one has been modded to resemble the 'clearlooks' theme
- OpenOffice 2.0 can't change languages
I'm sure there's more if we look into it -- Fedora's great, but it would be greatER if we could have the Firefox theme back (the original is much nicer-looking) and if we could have lanuage support in OO.org.
HOW TO FIX BOTH:
- Download Firefox source, and copy the classic.jar file (in "chrome" folder) to /usr/lib/firefox-1.#.#/chrome
where 1.#.# is your version number
- font > character, selecting the language.
Firewing1

[Jman]

You can get and apply any additional Firefox themes you want.

FYI, OpenOffice.org language support has been split into open-office.org-langpacks.

Keeping on topic, I followed Fedora Core from the split of Red Hat Linux (started with a RHL web server) and now use it for my primary machine, and various test boxes. I like the rpm package concept. It's a fast moving distro, and I like playing with the latest and greatest.