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which moderately easy to use distro?


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as a side note, I really like that Fedora Core has the option to install from iso images that are one a hard drive partition (like Mandriva has too).

I really prefer that because it saves cd's that I would have no use of later, and boot.iso I can burn to cd/rw; and of course such an installation is a lot faster with less hassle than from cd's.

Edited by solarian
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Maybe you won't like some other things about Fedora, say that one:

http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=14009

Let's assume that one is nothing more than a mistake, but...

 

At my Arch Linux things are "a tiny bit" easier...

pacman -S nvidia flashplugin j2re win32codecs

...will bring all the above non-GPL stuff and install it in a snap, taking care of all dependencies.

More than that:

aurbuild -b vmware-workstation

will bring, build+install (always dependencies included) a commercial application, in a manner tailor made for the OS (but no, it won't give you a free licence as well... sorry for that). If you are short of money, what about

"aurbuild -b vmware-player" for a free version of it...

I could go on and on, but you get the point...

Edited by scarecrow
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Even if fedora will ship its isos with a non-GPL blocking kernel, it won't be much of a problem as fedora releases new, patched, corrected, yaddayadda kernels very often. Last time I installed Fedora, they had already fixed kernels available for download, which took me only two minutes to install with yum. So this won't be a BIG showstopper, if it is one.

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How much of a trouble is SELinux?

This particular comment at lwn.net worries me:

(Posted Mar 17, 2006 5:29 UTC (Fri) by subscriber charris) (Post reply)

Thanks for the warning,

I have now removed kernel version 2054 before it can drive me nuts -- I can just imagine the hours of frustration if I had rebooted yesterday. A few more days of waiting isn't going to hurt. I have had generally few frustrations with Fedora outside of multimedia, persistent sound problems in FC3, and SELinux messing up the file systems for use with some other distros. Does anybody know if there is a way to turn off SELinux *and* clean up the filesystems?

Edited by solarian
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You can turn off SELinux at the installation or afterwards. In FC5, SELinux will not be activated by default. And for a Desktop-machine, SELinux ain't really necessary.

 

And SELinux has been much improved for the new release.

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Maybe you won't like some other things about Fedora, say that one:

http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=14009

Let's assume that one is nothing more than a mistake, but...

 

At my Arch Linux things are "a tiny bit" easier...

pacman -S nvidia flashplugin j2re win32codecs

...will bring all the above non-GPL stuff and install it in a snap, taking care of all dependencies.

More than that:

aurbuild -b vmware-workstation

will bring, build+install (always dependencies included) a commercial application, in a manner tailor made for the OS (but no, it won't give you a free licence as well... sorry for that). If you are short of money, what about

"aurbuild -b vmware-player" for a free version of it...

I could go on and on, but you get the point...

 

With your arch things are easier? Running closed source progams is real hot, you should be proud of how cool it is.

 

Yes, I'm on the mailing list and I'm in the thread that was started, it was a mistake. :) However, I almost like it, cause I'm a tad bit OSS twisted....

 

However, many people seem to focus on what Fedora WONT ship, and not the WHY.

 

i386 version of firefox for x86_64 user, nope, they wont "hand" one out, is it easy to get, sure.is

nvidia/ati "closed" source drivers, nope, is it easy to get, sure.

mp3 support, nope, is it easy to get, sure

dvd support for questionable codec, nope is it easy to get, sure.

 

The thing many people seem to forget, with out a company like Red Hat, your OSS software you enjoy so much would be CRAP.

 

/me gets on his flame suit and jumps on his soap box.

 

Many people in the Linux community, really have no CLUE what OSS means and who has been fighting to make it all possible and to give you the crap you so love to run while telling m$ and apple to stick it. You really have NO idea who is doing the work and why the work is being done.

 

This has IRRITATED me beyond belief over the years, every freaking realease, people BITCH about mp3/dvd/closed this, closed that. Seriously, get over it, fedora/rh as long as we know it will NEVER release stuff like this because of what it stands for. If your so damn hot, you know it is easy and painless to install the crap you bitch about and if you don't want to use a 3rd party repo, than the folks who bitch the most act like they know what they are doing, if you know that much, you know the same stuff you complain about, takes less than 5 minutes on SLOW processors to build, so work it out, deal?

 

You have any clue how blind you are? If company's like RH(FC) don't say screw you macromedia/mp3/ati/nvidia/ nobody will make FREE OSS software. Same thing with transgaming(cedega) "BIg game company will not take the time to develope/port when the know someone else already has a chessy solution" either will Macromedia/Nvidia/Ati and blah blah blah.

 

Seriously, you can wank on RH all you want, but good luck with your Linux desktop, your kernel, your gcc, your glibc, your blah blah and blah, I hate to say one company has had a big influence on the things you enjoy so much, but it has and I think they deserve a lot of RESPECT of not being like the "others".

 

Whats funnier than that, is Arjan Van De Ven's response........and several other developers, seriously, you take OSNEWS/ /. as reall worth while news? Its all about response from the readers that have no clue why they are responding.

 

/me pulls the suit off and ready for the whipping.

 

 

 

And they wonder why I shouldn't be part of the marketing team........ :unsure:

 

 

:lol2:

:lol2:

:lol2:

 

 

anyway, I've pissed off and ofended most people here from ever using fedora, but hey to be honest, it was a tad bit fun... :)

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Well, I will stick to fedora, cybr, so you did not succeed. :P

 

I agree, many people complain about this and that multimedia-stuff not working out of the box, but I don't care. Adding support for those things is easy, even for noobs and... we only care about mp3 and such stuff because we are accustomned to mp3 from windows and ipods. I never use mp3 but ogg. Same purpose, same results, no licensing problems and true OSS.

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Well, I will stick to fedora, cybr, so you did not succeed. :P

 

I agree, many people complain about this and that multimedia-stuff not working out of the box, but I don't care. Adding support for those things is easy, even for noobs and... we only care about mp3 and such stuff because we are accustomned to mp3 from windows and ipods. I never use mp3 but ogg. Same purpose, same results, no licensing problems and true OSS.

Nope I want mp3's because that is what my media players play.... because my car CD reads MP3, my portable players etc. etc. etc.

 

I want DVD playback because I bought DVD's... it doesn't seem unreasonable to want to play them.

 

Some distro's don't just not include them they go out of therte way to stop you using them.

This is why I will never ever touch Suse again, even though I piad for the Pro version... it sucks more than any other distro I have ever tried... I cant desribe how much it makes me puke to see Suse not going broke....

 

The edited that fscking distro to stop Xine wiorking with libdvdcss.....

End of story I will never use Suse and anyone asks me what I think it is now my opinion they should go broke.

I would liike to see Novell taken down and I would like to see its employees on the streets starving so I can turn round and give them the box Suse came in and tell em to eat that....

 

I cannot beleive ANYONE uses Suse... It is SO CRAP its astounding. Its not like it doesn't work by accident, they actually spent time stopping the users doiung what THEY want to do.

 

This trend has to stop... Mandrivel are on the same route and Ubuntu have edited the libpimp stuff you need for musicbrainz lookup in amorok so it doesn't use the libmp3 stuff.

This has to stop!

 

I don't care if you can get it elsewhere ... this sort of thing is the ultimate in being a GPL creep... they take someone elses software and deliberatly break it.

How rude is that! They take someones hard work, break it deliberatly and then stick it in repo's so everyone thinks the problem is the people who worte the code under the GPL....

 

Well its about time the GPL got changed to stop companies like Suse .. if they use GPL stuff then they should not be allowed to limit its functionalilty and then call it the same product.

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Calm down....

 

Some information: There are music/dvd players that can read e.g. ogg files. So "Nope I want mp3's because that is what my media players play.... because my car CD reads MP3, my portable players etc. etc. etc." is imho not the best argument for including MP3 support by default. It is just like telling everyone that every office app should be 100% Microsoft Office .doc compatible, otherwise it's useless. :)

 

If distros ship without "multimedia support" (or what you define as it), then (imho) it is their right to do so. Remember that the GPL allows you to MODIFY things the way you want it. This is what some distros do. Like it or not. Sure, out of the box MP3 support is nice, out of the box DVD support is fine, but this is NOT what qualifies a distro as useable or unuseable, as crap or not-crap. A distro is crappy if many, many applications do not work and don't let you do your job. As long as this is not the case, there is no real reason to complain.

 

And as long as the distros allow you to install and run all these multimedia-things (even if it is by adding 3rd party tools), they have my blessing. It is a completely different matter if a distro deliberately alters its code so MP3/DVD support cannot(!) be included due to incompatibility with other libraries/apps.I have yet to find a distro that really forces you NOT to use MP3s. :unsure:

 

IMHO, you should stop to evaluate EVERYTHING from the end-users perspective. Try to think in a developers way and you will find out that sometimes, due to "stupid legal reasons" you are forced NOT to include some things by default. In this case, many distros try to offer alternatives and this is about all they can do. If the end-user likes this, is a completely different matter. But don't blame distro developers for something they are forced to do due to legal reasons, only because e.g. the developers of amarok did not care about MP3 licenses when they started their coding.

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Ability to play mp3 for me is crucial, I have lots of those and converting them all to .ogg will result in the loss of quality.

I now rip my cd's to ogg, but I have hundreds of cd's and ripped tapes and vinyl on mp3,

but because I need only one yum command to enable it on Fedora I don't see where it's the problem.

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Calm down....

 

Some information: There are music/dvd players that can read e.g. ogg files. So "Nope I want mp3's because that is what my media players play.... because my car CD reads MP3, my portable players etc. etc. etc." is imho not the best argument for including MP3 support by default. It is just like telling everyone that every office app should be 100% Microsoft Office .doc compatible, otherwise it's useless. :)

The problem is my car comes with that CD player. I might buy things to be linux compatible but that doesn't extend to a car. Likewise mp3 players are a common present and its the job of my computer to handle this, not the car/mp3 player to... I mean that's the purpose of the computer.. not the other way round.

 

If distros ship without "multimedia support" (or what you define as it), then (imho) it is their right to do so. Remember that the GPL allows you to MODIFY things the way you want it. This is what some distros do. Like it or not. Sure, out of the box MP3 support is nice, out of the box DVD support is fine, but this is NOT what qualifies a distro as useable or unuseable, as crap or not-crap. A distro is crappy if many, many applications do not work and don't let you do your job. As long as this is not the case, there is no real reason to complain.

 

And as long as the distros allow you to install and run all these multimedia-things (even if it is by adding 3rd party tools), they have my blessing. It is a completely different matter if a distro deliberately alters its code so MP3/DVD support cannot(!) be included due to incompatibility with other libraries/apps.I have yet to find a distro that really forces you NOT to use MP3s. :unsure:

Suse 9.1 certainly did. They hacked Xine so that it was incompatible with libdvdcss... once again what is a distro... its to enable me to use my computer to do what I want, not the other way round. The libs are so messed its a major job to get Xine working as it was intended. It can be done... but its the fact they deliberatly make it hard that is the problem. Suse get a load for free... on the backs of opensource developers and then decide to hack the application and limit what the user can do. If it was lazyness or a mistake that's one thing but actually spending time making it incompatible is another and shows lack of respect for the developrs hard work.

 

IMHO, you should stop to evaluate EVERYTHING from the end-users perspective. Try to think in a developers way and you will find out that sometimes, due to "stupid legal reasons" you are forced NOT to include some things by default. In this case, many distros try to offer alternatives and this is about all they can do. If the end-user likes this, is a completely different matter. But don't blame distro developers for something they are forced to do due to legal reasons, only because e.g. the developers of amarok did not care about MP3 licenses when they started their coding.

 

Yes, I understand and offering alternatives is not the same as deliberatly hacking the code so that alternatives won't work. As it happens I can legally play DVD's under linux because I paid the $5 to linspire... its not for Suse to decide they will limit by default... This brings in mind another bigger company! It should be the end user who decides to use libdvdcss or not... I legally own the MP3 codecs too through a preinstalled XP I deleted... so to me there is a world of difference between putting them outside the distro and actively preventing users from using external sources!

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