Comments on The Perfect Desktop - Fedora 7

I would just like to thank you for an absolutely wonderful Fedora 7 tutorial! I'm fairly new to Fedora and your How-To worked perfectly! No question that this tutorial would save repeated questions on many of the forums. You've given us a great "copy and paste" as well as pictorial offering to get all the usual audio, video and general applications up and running in minutes! Thanks again! zenarcher

Great tutorial.

Unfortunately , a few days after you do it you will be in dependency hell.

Updates will be found, that will fail on some dependencies.

 Things like VLC and codecs for mplayer, etc.

This is a very nice tutorial, but I don't think it really nails the idea behind being a "Windows replacement".  Replacing Windows isn't just about having a set of software which covers a feature set that's available in Windows.  In short what I'm trying to say is that for this to be a successful Windows replacement, the usability is a big issue, especially for non-technical people, and you need to demonstrate how easy it is to do the things that you'd normally do on a Windows machine. Command-lines scare most of the Windows population, so you have to do a good job of selling it for them to consider it an option.

I'd recommend perhaps explaining how to install a window manager with an XP-like theme (for familiarity), showing how to use some of the basic features of the applications that you've installed, etc. I'd also recommend explaining why you've installed 3 or 4 applications which apparently do the same thing (eg. MPlayer, Rhythmbox, gtkPod, XMMS, VLC Media Player, Xine all appear to be very similar.. why do you need all of them?).

My suggestion is to address these kinds of points and make it a lot more obvious to current Windows users that this installation could easily be a replacement for their current set up before making claims that it's a "perfect replacement".

Cheers. 

"I'd also recommend explaining why you've installed 3 or 4 applications which apparently do the same thing (eg. MPlayer, Rhythmbox, gtkPod, XMMS, VLC Media Player, Xine all appear to be very similar.. why do you need all of them?)."

This is just for demonstration purposes. Of course, you can install all the software, but you can also pick only the software that you need. The tutorial just shows how to install all software, but it's up to you which software you install.

"...before making claims that it's a "perfect replacement"."

The "perfect" refers to the installation, i.e., that you shouldn't get any installation errors or something like that if you follow the tutorial close enough. "Perfect" does not refer to the functionality of the system or to how it compares to a Windows system.

As someone new to Fedora_7, I'm grateful for all the hard work you put into this tutorial. As a n00b, I learned a lot. I'd been getting too comfortable with PCLinuxOS, but Fedora_7 lured me with its easy setup, and the fact that it recognized a new printer and monitor that Vista would not (manufacturers told me to wait until SP1).

From the Windows perspective, the three most daunting things of Linux are (1) installing new programs (RPM, whahh?), (2) file management (where's my D:\ drive?), and (3) how do I undo a mistake, such as a failed install or launch? not the command line. In fact, except for a few installations, such as Microsoft's TrueType fonts, I didn't even use the command line in Fedora_7. Now with the commands in this tutorial, I can SAFELY install some uber-cool software I'd never even think to try in Windows.

Again, thanks. This is a great start for anyone.

Excellent tutorial... I never had figured out how to get all the internet streaming stuff (video, radio, etc) to work properly in linux until now...

 But... two things that I think need to be included.  If you are using Nvidia video cards, you need install their drivers to think things (like google earth) to work correctly.  Here is a place to get RPMs for them:  http://atrpms.net/dist/f7/nvidia-graphics/

You'll need nvidia-graphicsXXX-kmdl, nvidia-graphics, and nvidia-graphicsXXX-libs for it to work properly.

Additionally, if you are running a 64 bit distro, you'll need nspluginwrapper to get the flash plugin to work properly.  Here is a good tutorial:  http://www.linuxheadquarters.com/howto/64-bit/flash64.shtml

 Thanks again!!