Interesting take John i would have to agree with you for the most part. What small differences i have found so far is that Fedora seems to have cutting edge in some areas, but total polish in others. For instance the add/remove software features is far more intuitive to the seasoned windows users than the synaptec package manager. The ability to add a software with a almost windows like install is nice, but it still has the questions and checks that make it linux.

Ubuntu though does install smoother, and more basics than Fedora, and Fedora tends to have more bells and whistles to deal with. I noticed that Ubuntu has everything that you basically need to run a solid home computer already there like openoffice.org, and thunderbird. Both have firefox as the browser. Both openoffice.org, and thunderbird are in the Fedora repository, but need to be installed. The reason i choose to go back to Fedora was that both times i have tried to use Ubuntu it failed to allow me to use some critical feature of my system needs. The first time was my wireless router, after a long search on the net i found that it doesn't support that router. So i went with Fedora which came loaded with wireless router support in piles. This last time it was printer support.

For both Ubuntu, and Fedora i was able to find the print driver online (same one actually at the brother printer site), but in Fedora it took literally 2 minutes to install it, and in Ubuntu it took 4 hours of trial and error with no success in the end, i read dozens of pages of support with ideas of how to install, and each just added lines of code through the system, and nothing worked. In Fedora i took the same two files downloaded and double clicked them and it asked Install? a yes click and one more do you trust this site question and it unpacked, installed and configured the printer. The funny part is that before i installed Ubuntu over my older Fedora install, i had added that same printer, and it had worked great the first time, so it was not lack of knowing what to do that cause the problem in Ubuntu, it was the OS lack of support for loading drivers.

I may try Ubuntu again soon on another box, and then i can take the time to learn to build the system, as I do cherish the idea of a solid stable OS that is ready to run. But i question if Ubuntu wants this system to be polished like a apple type OS then why not add a little more hardware ability to the package? I assume that answer is that this comes as a price. That price being having all the bells and whistles installed can cause many problems, since everyone has a different setup and different hardware needs, so to add all that is dangerous. But then they need to make there install system a little bit more able to grab basic drivers and files and install them a bit better.

Anyway i am now happy to be a linux nut, and look forward to seeing what it can do for me. I do appreciate your input, encouragement and help. I also appreciate some of the other guys that have tossed in a thought or two now and in the past. Little bits go a long way with these type of projects. I only have two more add ons i want to attempt on the Fedora install. One is a windows software program i want to run under wine, and as I said i have read it works flawlessly, and i want to try to install and setup Skype so I can talk with my brother on the other coast. So far from my research, it seems that that works better in Ubuntu. Hhhmmm can you say dual boot?

Last edited by Robh; 09/02/10 02:58 PM.
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