4:32 p.m.
I'm not sure if this is the right place to provide feedback on the
LiveCD for the Test versions of Fedora 7... If this is not, then please
point me in the right direction.
I recently tried the latest LiveCD on a factory build HP Pavillion
machine (I'm not sure about the model, sorry), and found a few problems.
Fortunately enough I had no problems booting up the LiveCD, however here
are my observations:
* Proper keyboard map is not loaded when changing the language for the
session. Maybe this is the most offending "problem" of the ones I found.
I tested the LiveCD in English and Spanish (Mexico). When I switched to
Spanish, I expected the keymap to be changed to that of Spanish Latin
American, instead the default keymap was kept (US English). This is
easily solvable by changing the map with the keyboard applet in GNOME.
* Even though apparently everything seems to be working right for the
graphics hardware on this machine, trying to enable Desktop Effects
resulted in X restarting. The chip in question is an S3 Pro Savage DDR
whose DRI drivers do have support for 32-bpp rendering. I did not go
much further into checking whether or not AIGLX was enabled or not,
etc... Not that this feature is a must, and certainly not on such
hardware, but it would have been nice to test its performance with this
hardware.
* I know all about the reasons behind leaving OOo out of the LiveCD
spins, but AbiWord simply is not enough for .doc documents (while
Gnumeric is more than capable of opening a plethora of .xls files).
AbiWord crashed several times trying to open a rather simple .doc
document, when I get the chance I'll file the proper bug report.
* Compared to other Live media distributions out there, Fedora feels a
bit more "sluggish"... By this I mean that it apparently takes more time
reading data off the CD/DVD media than other distributions like Knoppix.
Not that this is a problem as such, but rather it takes a bit longer to
boot and start the session... On the other hand, Fedora LiveCDs have
about the best hardware detection and setup I've seen yet in a LiveCD.
I'll file bug reports for the Desktop Effects and keyboard map issues in
bugzilla as soon as I can (if not others have already filed them), all
in all this test release is a very solid one, and it was rather nice to
see it in action. All the good news follow:
* I was able to instantly browse the Windows network I have setup at
home and it did so without any problems (as expected as there are two
other Fedora linux boxes on this network, the master file server [FC5]
and my personal workstation [FC6], so not only was the Windows network
visible and "browseable", but also some *nix services [like sftp])
* For this computer in particular the performance in the desktop
interactivity is far superior to its native OS (WinXP Home). Browsing
the large collection of family photographs on the file server was a
snap, and the rendering speed and pan speed of the images when viewed at
full size (2048/1536) was pretty fast. By comparison, using the Windows'
image viewer panning the images when viewed in full size is painfully
slow, plus no double filtering for zooms ;)
* Configuring the network was a snap! The machine is set for DHCP, so it
was automagically setup, however when to manually configure it, it was
also very easy to do, especially since now the network applet is there
by defaul, which means that opening and changing the connection's
properties is very, very simple to do and easy. My father was rather
impressed.
* Removable media support, as always is superb. Tested the multi card
reader on the machine only for consistency and completeness... Not
problems in this area either, and it is rather nice to see the devices
still there in the computer:/// view, even when the partitions have been
unmounted, just like its been standard in GNOME since a few releases ago.
* Printing is now REALLY simple. Actually it has been ever since FC6
(which allowed you to change some printing options like paper, printing
quality etc, right from the print menu on most applications, rather than
having to define several printers for the same hardware for different
quality settings). A bit OT, but is it possible to get commercial ppd
files to be used with CUPS and Gutenprint?
* Firefox2 addition was a pleasant surprise... Though would it be
possible to make the spell checker work with aspell as well?, so that it
would also scan for errors in spelling for other languages, especially
useful for HDD installations. In the current state it only works if you
type in English, which means that any other language other than English
will be red highlighted (kind of annoying, and I know, I know, it can be
disabled... Consider this an RFE, though I'm afraid this depends on
Mozilla rather than Fedora).