The Ubuntu Chronicles: The Saga of Amber and Ubuntu (this part includes Fedora)
Part 16
Day 2 with Fedora; 3rd week with Ubuntu
*INTRO TO IRC COMMUNITY*
Here’s a sample of whahttp://t I encounter in the #fedora channel.
The only reason I bring it up is because when I said something similar in an #Ubuntu Channel not only was I pointed to the wiki page, but someone said, “hello nice to have you here” Then asked, “How new of a user I was” Then I was given some time to read the page and asked, “do you understand”
I got none of that in the #fedora room. Below is what I encountered. I can tell you that in the #ubuntu channels I can watch and learn in just a few moments I learn something, or I can ask a question and not get insulted.
User 5: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Flash
User 1: Thanks… —
> User 2 g
User 2: add 3 to the line
User 2: I suspect it asks you to hit tab or something.. hit tab, then add 3 to the end
User 1: i’ll keep banging on yum at odd intervals. 🙂
User 3: on the live media/
User 1: pretty sure it’s just isolinux?
User 2: just get the normal install media
(*note* I changed the IRC nicks to user X. The nicks aren’t what was important but the over all spirit and feel of the channel/community was. Before I get beat up I know the Fedora community as a whole is not like that, but this was my introduction.)
I tried to take out most if the noise but no one came back and asked me did it work etc. I know this kinda stuff happens regardless of the channel, but this was my 1st impression of the fedora channel community. I’m a little gun shy about going back in.
*ADOBE FLASH*
This what I had to do to get Adobe working…With Ubuntu I just clicked a button…and it installed and worked I don’t understand this. Had to ask pgraner to help. I asked people in the fedora room and they just sent me to the wiki even after I said I was a new user. hmmm you can see from the comments above it just wasn’t a comfortable place to be at least for me.
For x86_64 Adobe Flash 64-bit alpha At the time of this release, Adobe also has an alpha version of a 64-bit plugin. When that product is more mature, these instructions will cover its use more fully. In the meantime, the short version is to download the tarball and extract libflashplayer.so to either just your user’s ~/.mozilla/plugins/ or to the system-wide /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/ and /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins dirs (for other browsers to find) After installing the repository configuration, run the following command to install the Flash plugin and ensure sound is enabled: su -c ‘yum install flash-plugin nspluginwrapper.x86_64 \ nspluginwrapper.i386 alsa-plugins-pulseaudio.i386 \ libcurl.i386′ You may see a message indicating that nspluginwrapper.x86_64 is already installed. This is not a problem. Checking the plugin After the installation, exit all copies of Firefox and start it again to enable the plugin. Then type the following text in the Firefox address bar: about:plugins A section similar to the following should appear: Image:Flash-check-2.png This information tells you that the Adobe Flash plugin has been successfully installed.
It took over 40 minutes to get it working just so I could check to make sure I had the right video link, and it would work in my Blog.
(heavy sighing here, this was not a *simple* process)
There were so many things, I have never had to type my password in so many times, it was driving me crazy. I had to either reboot or log out of something and start again I just quit keeping count. I thought Fedora was going to be easy for “average” user – NOT! You still have to know the Techie stuff.
When trying to find out if The Fedora Project was going after the desktop community I found their core values – Freedom-Friends-Features and First, only in the core value labeled “First” did it mention desktop users. I liked the values, but it is not easy for the average user to use and maintain so far.
To be fair I thought I would also list Ubuntu’s Philosophy as well.
When Starting with Ubuntu I was light years ahead of where I am on day two. To be honest I’m a little intimidated to try and install other things without help. (pgraner is really getting tired of me saying help! Which is something I did not have to do with Ubuntu. Sorry folks but this Average user needed a lot of help and I tried to do this alone, but it’s *hard*.)
I’m not sure to be honest if this is the right Linux flavor for me (Fedora).
Kinda like Coke or Pepsi. I can drink them both but for me Coke is just a more satisfying. (If Pepsi is your think that’s cool too) I think that is the way it feels with this. I can use it, but I need more help. That is the big Key factor, what can I do alone and do I need to ask for Techie help.
In just a day and a half, I have had to have more help than I did in two weeks with Ubuntu. I think if you are a technical person or you have a techie at your disposal then Fedora is for you. However, if you want to go it alone then Ubuntu works!
I’m sighing as I write this. I wanted to say Fedora was just as easy and “average user mom” could do this on her own but I’m sorry I can’t. I struggled way to much last night with just installing one thing.
I will try it again some more today, but if it gets any more frustrating then I will be undoing 4 the little screws and my other hard drive is going back in.
Hope this helps….More tomorrow….
