Categories
Linux Rant

Fedora 8 : At This Pace, Linux On The Desktop Is Going Nowhere Fast

Fedora, in their infinite wisdom, decided it would be a great idea to make it difficult to install proprietary codecs, drivers, and much more due to vague licensing issues that may exist. Let’s talk about what doesn’t work by default in the latest version of Fedora.

WARNING: STRONG LANGUAGE AND OFFENSIVE SEXIST ALLITERATION AHEAD

Fedora helpfully provides a list of “Forbidden Items” that are not included with the distribution, nor are they easily obtained for a Linux neophyte. I’ll list them here:

  • MP3 Support (In any application)
  • nVidia Graphics Driver
  • ATI Graphics Driver
  • NDISwrapper network driver
  • Real Media (and Player)
  • DVD Playback
  • Cryptography
  • Sun’s Java
  • VMware
  • Flash Player
  • Acrobat Reader

If that wasn’t enough, on that same website, the fine chaps at Fedora attempt to insult our intelligence by offering ridiculous alternatives, here’s the best example:

fuck-fedora-up-their-stupid-ass.png

Are they serious? Who in their right mind would suggest using the Ogg Theora codec to watch a DVD?

I think the suggestion is taken out of context. This is what it should actually say:

Fedora Suggests: Use a broomstick dipped in Icy Hot to sodomize yourself.

The new “Codec Buddy” in Fedora 8 (aka Codeina) appears to be a get rich quick scheme hatched by Fluendo, the 3rd party vendor behind the program. Hmm… the name of the company sounds like the word “innuendo” – that’s catch! Their motto should be something like this:

“We snatch your cash when you wanna watch some snatch.”

The total price of all the codecs provided: WMA, WMV, ASF, MPEG2, MPEG4, MP3, AC3… all for low, low price of somewhere around or near $50 US Dollars after exchange fees. Buy the Complete Set of Playback Plugins for the i386 architecture now, and you only pay two easy payments of fuck right the hell off, and feel free to eat some shit pie if you decide to switch to 64-bit, because you’ll need to buy them all over again.

Codeina Screenshots:

codec-installer.pngscreenshot-codeina.pngscreenshot-codec-installer.pngscreenshot-getting-plugins.png

What is the solution? Glad you asked. Thankfully someone who doesn’t have their head firmly lodged up their ass over at Livna.org decided to build a most excellent package repository. This collection of useful software provides things like fglrx, gstreamer-ffmpeg, gstreamer-plugins-bad, gstreamer-plugins-ugly, lame, libdvdcss, madwifi, ndiswrapper, ntfs, and nvidia just to name a few.

Unless you’re intimately familiar with these names of things that “just work” in other Linux distributions, it’s everything that Fedora wants to charge you $50 for, plus dozens more codecs and drivers that makes your system be able to do things with your computer. You can’t do small things like oh…. connect to the internet, browse the web, play DVDs or music, or even play some video games.

Fedora isn’t all bad, by the way.

review-time-640.pngI believe a quick review is in order to restore my karma. Time to get the testbeds ready!

For a Linux enthusiast like myself, I’m not gonna lie, Fedora is an excellent distribution. Installing is a simple affair, configuring all the junk that they leave out is relatively simple (once you find it), and it’s got some really sweet features that are just icing on the cake. The small things are what matters most. If you’re familiar with any Gnome-based distribution, you’ll be right at home on Fedora.

The bonus feature that many reviewers may gloss over is the fact that Redhat Enterprise Linux (RHEL for short) is based on Fedora Core 6. Familiarity with RHEL can be a determining factor in hiring for a job. In fact, I think I’m going to run Fedora 8 until CentOS 5.1 is released and give that a try. CentOS is the free version of RHEL.

Without more from me, let’s see tons of screenshots of the installation:

Two things stand out to begin with. First, dictionary word password warning – not a bad idea. Then, the desktop changes colors based on what time it is.

Neat! Notice the system time in each of those screenshots… morning, noon, evening, night. The colors change in incremental values, but that gives you a pretty good idea of how it works. I love it. Whoever thought of this is worthy of a pat on the back… and certainly worthwhile for people who don’t get out much.

The package manager is useful, but generally I prefer a command line.

screenshot-package-manager.png

Firefox dies a slow death and requires manual installation of Adobe Flash Player:

screenshot-plugin-finder-service-failed.png

A built-in firewall and SELinux policies are pretty smart to keep around if you’re operating in a DMZ or with hacker-magnet ports open to the world.

screenshot-firewall-configuration.pngscreenshot-firewall-configuration-startup.png

Other than previously discussed above, Fedora is a very solid distribution. Once it’s up and running, it’s great. It’s stable, feels faster and snappier than Ubuntu (especially in Firefox), and has nifty little things like PulseAudio installed by default which is pretty snazzy. Another thing – if you’re looking for pre-built proprietary software packages, RPM is pretty much the standard for companies to provide.
screenshot-pulseaudio-volume-control.pngscreenshot-pulseaudio-volume-control-1.pngscreenshot-pulseaudio-volume-control-2.png

PulseAudio is a very welcome inclusion, but I’m not quite sure how Fedora expects people to be listening to multiple audio streams at the same time without any audio codecs – nevertheless, a very nice addition.

Updated Gnome 2.2 features like leaving a message for someone when a PC is locked are pretty groovy as well…

locked-leave-a-msg.pngleave-a-msg-type-in.pngmsg-recd.png

In the end, Fedora is great for a geek like me, but quite possibly the least favorable choice for someone who isn’t very familiar with Linux.

If you’re ever up Fedora creek without a codec, make sure you bookmark this page.

I feel so much better now.

Categories
Linux

Five Reasons Why Using Firefox On Windows Will Help You (Or Your Company) Migrate To Linux

Firefox has been my browser of choice for several years, and prior to that, I first came in contact with the technology that runs behind the browser, called the Gecko Renderer in early 1998. The thing that impressed me the most back then was how much FASTER the Gecko engine rendered pages as compared to Internet Explorer on a dial-up connection.

Here’s a short list of reasons why Firefox will help you if you ever decide to try out or switch to Linux (or Mac OSX for that matter).

  1. Firefox runs on Windows and all popular operating systems.
    Whether you prefer Windows, Mac, Linux, whatever, your favorite flavor of O/S, Firefox runs on it.
  2. The interface is the largely the same on Linux and Windows.
    The default interface and theme for Firefox is exactly the same no matter what O/S you are using.
    For me, the biggest change was where the Preferences item was displayed. Using the Menu Editor plugin for Firefox allows you to move around menu items, or hide them completely. I have found this HUGELY helpful for my own migration to Linux, as Preferences is located in the “Edit” menu at the top of the screen, as opposed to the Windows version of Firefox that actually has the Preferences menu located until “Tools.” Just install the plugin and move it easily.
  3. If you feel comfortable browsing the web, that’s a big step towards being familiar with the computer as a whole.
    Many time, when I have a problem or something I want to do in Linux and I don’t know how, I google for it. Using a browser like Firefox that has a standard interface among all operating systems, lets me feel comfortable while I’m searching on a topic that I am unfamiliar with.
  4. Add-ons that you enjoy in Windows are also available for Linux.
    One of the biggest reasons I like Firefox is because of the practical unlimited amount of Add-ons written for it.
    Do you want the weather in your taskbar? Done. Do you want a music player controller embedded in the browser so you don’t have to alt-tab to skip a song? Done! If you can dream it up, it’s probably already there.
    They function exactly the same way in Windows and in Linux, because they’re built on a framework that integrates with Firefox.
    Some of my favorites include: StumbleUpon, Adblock Plus, IE Tab (when using Windows), and DownloadStatusbar, Menu Editor and Stop-or-Reload Button
  5. Firefox is accepted as the most popular browser for users on any distribution of Linux.
    Firefox is bundled by default on the following distributions: Ubuntu (and it’s derevitives), Fedora, openSUSE, Mandriva, PCLinuxOS, SimplyMEPIS, CentOS, etc. Most Linux Distributions also make it easy to get and install Firefox if it is not installed by default.

If you don’t think these reasons are enough, humor me and try it out. I bet you’ll love the tabbed browsing and lack of advertisements when using Adblock Plus, which gets rid of nearly all ads out there. It’s terrific and no more annoying talking ads!

Categories
Rant

Now I see why people like Ubuntu.

Well I tried ArchLinux for all of the amount of time it took to install the distribution.

It’s not fantastic.  Seems like the community-developed package directory is by FAR more superior to Portage, and silly things like adding repository URLs to apt-get or yum.

I gave Fedora 7 a try and… I’m writing this to you right now in their wonderful Gnome environment.  I have the same problem I did with it about a year ago, which is no mp3/etc support out of the box, nor an easy solution like Ubuntu has with a waiver of responsibility.

I also attempted to get the nVidia binary driver working in Fedora just now with a very easy guide… that failed miserably.

I think from now on I’m just going to work towards having a dual-boot setup.  Windows for when I need to get things done (or blow people up), and Ubuntu when I feel like a challenge and learning something new.