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For six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul

Monday, May 24, 2004

Fedora Core 2 Review

LinuxLookup.com: "My first impression was that it looks like RedHat 9. I don't care for the default icon set or the menu layout. The fonts look great, but that has become my expectation. There isn't a reason for ugly fonts anymore, so to trumpet the fact they look good feels silly. The panel is filled with Openoffice.org icons but missing a terminal icon ... The odd thing about Fedora is that it seems to be aimed at novice users but is inconsistent. We are given the choices Web Browser, Email, Music Player and Audio Player, but left with Kopete, Kget, Emacs and so forth. Either your user knows what Kopete is or they don't. If you are simplifying the menu, do it across the board or don't do it at all. This inconsistency extends to the system itself. It is pretty and newbie friendly at first, but if you need basic functionality such as mp3 playback you must hand edit the yum configuration file. Up2date freezes, but the command line program yum works well ... There is just too much that doesn't make sense to me. If I am going for ease of use, why do I have to work to get basic programs installed? If you are going to hold my hand, hold it the entire time. If you are giving me a crippled system for patent and licensing reasons, tell my why and how to easily get around it. Ultimately, it is a shame that a distribution is done so well, but lacking in basic functionality. Fedora should decide who they are aiming their distribution at."

Interesting. I haven't spent enough time with this distribution to say yet, but I was impressed with the fonts and, oddly, how nice OpenOffice.org apps look; they need a nice job skinning those apps to match the Fedora look and feel. Still no luck install Fedora Core 2 in a virtual machine of any kind, but I did get it installed on an old laptop. I'll look at it some more when I get back from New York.

[ Posted at 11:45 PM | Permalink ]