decoherence
May 2nd, 2011, 02:16 AM
Hi all! First off, sorry if this is not the correct place for this. I justified to myself putting this here as I think that most of the people who would find this post interesting will be reading this particular section of the forum.
Here are a few notes on my recent experience trying Fedora. For the record, I've been using Ubuntu since Warty and before that, Debian since Potato. I have historically steered clear of RPM-based systems, preferring Arch or FreeBSD for an occasional alternative to Deb-based systems.
Just to be clear, my intent is not to proselytize or present either Fedora or Ubuntu as superior. You won't find any opinion in these few notes and as little as possible in the summary at the end.
By the same token, I'm aware that there are a few people complaining about Unity and who may be interested in hearing a few notes about an alternative. Personally, I don't even have 11.04 and my preferred user interface is xmonad/dmenu, anyway.
Finally a reminder that F15 which features GNOME 3 will be released Real Soon Now. As with both Ubuntu and Fedora, things are subject to change and YMMV.
OK on to the notes, which may well seem anti-climactic now due to all my kowtowing.
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Immediately recognized dual screen setup on desktop computer and automatically created an extended desktop. (nvidia card and, presumably, nouveau drivers)
No obvious way to install nVidia proprietary drivers -- contrast with Ubuntu's Hardware Drivers program.
3D acceleration disabled in Nouveau -- no obvious way to enable and may not be supported.
Tried to open an MPEG4 encoded AVI with Totem. It searched for a suitable codec but was not able to find one. Error dialogue contained a link to a Fedora Project wiki page.
"Unfortunately, the codec you were searching for is not available in Fedora."
The page also contained a link to fedorasolved.org which in turn sent me to rpmfusion.org.
The process for installing RPM Fusion's repositories is to click on the appropriate link on their web page and click OK when the package installer asks for confirmation. The installation of the free repository seemed to finish however the installer program appears to have crashed at that stage. The close button is non-responsive and the close box in the title bar graphically responds but does not function.
The program does not grey out as it might in Ubuntu (tho i'm not able to test whether this program would) nor is a Force Quit dialogue displayed after a period of inactivity. Is this an Ubuntu-specific enhancement to GNOME?
Unsure of which process to terminate, I simply logged out and logged back in. Upon logging back in, the free repository still did not appear to be installed.
Successfully installed both free and non-free repos using the command line instructions on RPM Fusion's page.
Re-opened the MPEG 4 program in Totem and it offered once again to search for a suitable codec. This time it found them immediately and one auth dialogue, a few clicks and a download later and... uhh it still didn't play. But when I closed and re-opened Totem it did.
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To summarize my experience so far, Ubuntu seems a bit more user friendly but at no point did I feel like I was 'up the creek' with Fedora. The only thing I had to do differently is read through a couple of web pages which Fedora itself pointed me at when it was unable to accomplish what I had asked. Ubuntu seems to do a better job of handling this automatically which is a good thing as Ubuntu documentation doesn't seem to be as cohesive as Fedora's.
This appears to be mostly an idealogical difference. It seems the Fedora project will not do anything to help you install non-free software but it will point you in the right direction. With this in mind, Ubuntu may seem to be a better system for new users who want things to 'just work.' That said, Fedora's excellent docs and the fact that it points you to them means getting non-free stuff running is quite easy. The largest problem, in terms of user experience, is that the RPM Fusion web links to add repositories didn't seem to work, requiring me to resort to the command line (which, granted, was a simple copy/paste. But still... command line! oooOOOoooOOOoooh!) The Fedora Project has no direct control over RPM Fusion.
Anyway, I hope this was useful or at least interesting to someone! Thanks for reading.
Here are a few notes on my recent experience trying Fedora. For the record, I've been using Ubuntu since Warty and before that, Debian since Potato. I have historically steered clear of RPM-based systems, preferring Arch or FreeBSD for an occasional alternative to Deb-based systems.
Just to be clear, my intent is not to proselytize or present either Fedora or Ubuntu as superior. You won't find any opinion in these few notes and as little as possible in the summary at the end.
By the same token, I'm aware that there are a few people complaining about Unity and who may be interested in hearing a few notes about an alternative. Personally, I don't even have 11.04 and my preferred user interface is xmonad/dmenu, anyway.
Finally a reminder that F15 which features GNOME 3 will be released Real Soon Now. As with both Ubuntu and Fedora, things are subject to change and YMMV.
OK on to the notes, which may well seem anti-climactic now due to all my kowtowing.
------
Immediately recognized dual screen setup on desktop computer and automatically created an extended desktop. (nvidia card and, presumably, nouveau drivers)
No obvious way to install nVidia proprietary drivers -- contrast with Ubuntu's Hardware Drivers program.
3D acceleration disabled in Nouveau -- no obvious way to enable and may not be supported.
Tried to open an MPEG4 encoded AVI with Totem. It searched for a suitable codec but was not able to find one. Error dialogue contained a link to a Fedora Project wiki page.
"Unfortunately, the codec you were searching for is not available in Fedora."
The page also contained a link to fedorasolved.org which in turn sent me to rpmfusion.org.
The process for installing RPM Fusion's repositories is to click on the appropriate link on their web page and click OK when the package installer asks for confirmation. The installation of the free repository seemed to finish however the installer program appears to have crashed at that stage. The close button is non-responsive and the close box in the title bar graphically responds but does not function.
The program does not grey out as it might in Ubuntu (tho i'm not able to test whether this program would) nor is a Force Quit dialogue displayed after a period of inactivity. Is this an Ubuntu-specific enhancement to GNOME?
Unsure of which process to terminate, I simply logged out and logged back in. Upon logging back in, the free repository still did not appear to be installed.
Successfully installed both free and non-free repos using the command line instructions on RPM Fusion's page.
Re-opened the MPEG 4 program in Totem and it offered once again to search for a suitable codec. This time it found them immediately and one auth dialogue, a few clicks and a download later and... uhh it still didn't play. But when I closed and re-opened Totem it did.
------
To summarize my experience so far, Ubuntu seems a bit more user friendly but at no point did I feel like I was 'up the creek' with Fedora. The only thing I had to do differently is read through a couple of web pages which Fedora itself pointed me at when it was unable to accomplish what I had asked. Ubuntu seems to do a better job of handling this automatically which is a good thing as Ubuntu documentation doesn't seem to be as cohesive as Fedora's.
This appears to be mostly an idealogical difference. It seems the Fedora project will not do anything to help you install non-free software but it will point you in the right direction. With this in mind, Ubuntu may seem to be a better system for new users who want things to 'just work.' That said, Fedora's excellent docs and the fact that it points you to them means getting non-free stuff running is quite easy. The largest problem, in terms of user experience, is that the RPM Fusion web links to add repositories didn't seem to work, requiring me to resort to the command line (which, granted, was a simple copy/paste. But still... command line! oooOOOoooOOOoooh!) The Fedora Project has no direct control over RPM Fusion.
Anyway, I hope this was useful or at least interesting to someone! Thanks for reading.