I'm a cell-phone-battery-in-kind-of guy !!!

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/03/reiser-briefly.html

Probably not:

http://news.slashdot.org/search.pl?tid=&query=rapist&sort=1&op=comments&threshold=-1&sid=

You can't blame those poor people. I think that their fears are totally rational ...

How can you expect something good come of this lab :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOPTriLG5cU

They want to use the computer and then walk away from it because doing anything with a computer is not their idea of a good time.

Exactly ! If they loose a week waiting for an upgrade that resolves a vital bug, then they can close a store. A "national distribution" should be something that is very stable and robust, with not so frequent updates. This is the most important quality it should have. For me and you ... the distro should be good ... and Fedora is Excellent and pleasure to use.

I only know what iptables are because I've done a lot of reading in the two years

If you know what iptables are and what are they good for, then you are not an average Vladimir or Olga, who will use this in his office ... That is a fact.

..the "average" user can't set it up. At the same time, once it is set up, it's virtually maintenance free.

I agree with you on that point. I should only add, that in my personal experience, Fedora is a bit more prone to update bugs then Ubuntu. Fedora will make KDE 4.2 available in Fedora 10, I don't think any other distro will make such upgrade inside a release. They want to test it, before releasing it. I expect some minor problems, but that is why I like it ;) ... I only want to have it soon. The problems won't be big, but for some average Joe it could be deadly and nonresolvable. I think, there are other distros out there, that are more suitable for dull office work than Fedora. But if Olga wants to learn something new ... if she is also open minded and wants to meet Vladimir that knows how to work with Linux, she should go for Fedora ... She will have a lot of good time with both of them ...

What is wrong with you ... did I wrote that I am absolutely right ? I said only, that other people are also complaining ... that doesn't' make me right ...

I have also expressed some serious arguments (facts) and I am still waiting for yours ... maybe you should stay with lurking indeed ...

Sorry, but if you know what iptables are, then you are not being objective while saying: I'm closer to "normal people" ... Maybe this is your problem, that you don't get it, that knowing what iptables are, is not really normal in a statistical way ;)

And I don't agree with you that Fedora is as user friendly for newbies as other distros that are made for "Normal users" that don't know, what iptables are.

http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1122595&cid=26800513

If I would be an average "home and small-business desktop" user, then I certainly wouldn't want to use Fedora as my distro ...
I think I am an experienced Linux user and I have used around 15 distributions till now. RedHat can claim what it wants, but Fedora is very problematic for average users that want to use it in a reliable way.

In Fedora 10, you have got KDE 4 in raw version (without KDE 3.5, but gnome working nice), updates are in the range of 100MB (almost weakly ;), bugs after upgrades are frequent, processor runs frequently on 100%, so I have to kill processes (npviewer.bin and others ...). For example, a month ago my mouse was totally dead after upgrade of Fedora 10. I know how to file a bug in bugzilla and we managed to fix it till next upgrade.

How many office users can live with such bugs ? They need to work, to earn money in their offices. And the mouse sleeps ?? Wait till yum update makes something ... maybe a week or two. Will the average Joe (or Vladimir) be able to start command prompt and type 'yum update' with mouse not working ??? I am not the only one that thinks this way:

http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1122595&cid=26797959

As I said before. I love Fedora, it is my first distro, but I wouldn't recommend it to a friend that is not experienced in Linux to use it for work - in a small office ...

Where did I wrote unstable ? I can't find it in my post ... can you help me please ..
I am using it for my work from the start - from Core 1, but I wouldn't recommend it to a average user ... a lot of people on this thread agree with me ... for example:

http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1122595&cid=26797959

Fedora needs tweaking and I like it that way. When is works(with tweaking), then it works marvellous ... not everyone likes 500MB updates ... and with Fedora 10 I have filed only 2 bugs on bugzilla ;)
One was almost fatal (mouse dead until next update), but I managed not to reinstall Fedora ... and this is a good release ...

Fedora is the basis for Redhat Enterprise Linux and CentOS, both widely-used operating systems. It's a great choice as a starting point, not necessarily an end product.

Why not use CentOS or RedHat then ... that is what I wanted to say with my post. That Fedora is only useful as a testing platform.

Developing a national distribution will cripple their productivity.

I agree with you. In my country the government also tried to sponsor some kind of a national distribution. It was based on RedHat and it was very average, but very localised distribution. It didn't manage to achieve big acceptance. It lasted only for some years, probably so long as the money kept flowing from the government. It is dead since 2005.

R.I.P.: http://www.pingo.org/

To be good, Linux distributions should have a financial model behind it.

find / -name *slashdot*
find / -name *messner_007*

I am using Fedora from the start and I like it very much, but I don't think its philosophy is suitable for a "national" distribution.

Fedora is created for testing, not for everyday usage for normal people (not neerds). I think even using Fedora qualify you as a nerd. OK, it gets even worse if you are using alpha's.

Using Fedora will cripple their productivity and they will start to hate Linux.

If they want to use Linux for serious stuff, like "national distribution", then they should chose another distro.

It is not an easy task ether. I have been running a forum for two or three years (20-30 posts per day), and it has been a lot of work and a lot of problems I wouldn't think of.

What has finally made me quit was a lack of time and problems with spam ... It was getting worse and worse, they find a way to sneak in and they post those 40 penis enlargement adds in it ...

How much does a sub 1k Slashdot UID cost on a free market ?

Maybe I can buy myself a good UID and the girls will go crazy on me.

"And the recommended alternates - Thunderbird & Lightening - don't exactly compare favourably to Exchange + Outlook."

I use Evolution on Fedora 10 and I love it. I am using my email with an IMAP connection, works like breeze and I love it. There are really good guys taking care of the server with my email account on it, I am using it for 15 years now ;)

And no downtime or problems for me in that period !!! And I am using email for professional needs. Off course, they didn't pay a penny for that server and it serves in a fantastic way for so long.

And if something wrong would happen (but it didn't in 15 years I am using it), then I would just call those guys and ask them to go through the logs ...

For the Exchange functionality .... you have plugins for Lotus Notes and Exchange on Evolution ... but there is no real need for that. There are also open source solutions for Exchange out there ... and getting better and better with time ...