Just wanted to share a quick review on my attempt to replace Windows on my desktop at home.
Below are the things I do with the computer and how well they translated to Fedora:
1) Email. I had some problems getting Evolution 1.4 to talk nicely with my RH 9 email server via imaps and smtp-auth over tls. I'm still working through that, but I got email working by allowing relay from the desktop box. My wife is getting used to the interface, but it's no big deal for her, so that's a plus.
2) Digital Camera. My wife has two digital cameras: - Kodak DX 3500. gtkam worked just fine, saw the camera and I could see all of the pics. The software's not as easy to use as the windows software that came with the camera, but I think I can get Kim to use it.
- Olympus C-750 UltraZoom. I couldn't get gtkam to initialize the camera, no matter what camera I selected. The autoselect kept finding it as a C-2040Z, which would have been fine if it could have initialized the camera. I suppose I'd have to use one of those card readers, but I don't know if any of them read Olympus xD cards. This one's a deal-killer for my wife. I'll have to dual boot if I can't get this one working.
3) Office suite. We've been using Open Office at home for about a year now on Windows, so the switch to Fedora was a no-brainer.
4) Games. My wife loves tux racer. :) She wishes we could get frogger, but tux racer is okay with her. I haven't tried installing Neverwinter Nights on Fedora yet, but I hear that it works just fine, so games shouldn't be a problem.
5) Video. I couldn't even get my video off of my Canon Optura 20 camcorder and onto the computer with dvgrab. I've left a message on the dvgrab message board and haven't heard back these last few days. I found a couple of messages in archives that hint that ieee1394 isn't working properly yet in linux, so that may be why I had the problems. I could control the camera, but just not capture the video over the firewire port. Go figure. I may try again when I get the new motherboard installed. I don't think it's the board, though, since this works flawlessly in Win2K.
I found a couple of video editing applications that look like they might be pretty cool, though I don't know if they'll replace DVDLab. However, since I can't even get my video, there's no way to tell. This one's a deal-killer for me, as that's one of the major reasons I've upgraded my PC, so that I could do home video.
Bottom line: Fedora is almost there for my personal needs. Great look, good experience, but not all of the apps I need are working yet. For now, I may have to look at purchasing XP to take advantage of the SATA ports on the new motherboard.
Hope this helps somebody out there.
Ben
On Tue, 4 May 2004 18:21:33 -0500 (CDT), Benjamin J. Weiss wrote
Just wanted to share a quick review on my attempt to replace Windows on my desktop at home.
Below are the things I do with the computer and how well they translated to Fedora:
- Email. I had some problems getting Evolution 1.4 to talk nicely
with my RH 9 email server via imaps and smtp-auth over tls. I'm still working through that, but I got email working by allowing relay from the desktop box. My wife is getting used to the interface, but it's no big deal for her, so that's a plus.
- Digital Camera. My wife has two digital cameras:
- Kodak DX 3500. gtkam worked just fine, saw the camera and I
could see all of the pics. The software's not as easy to use as the windows software that came with the camera, but I think I can get Kim to use it.
- Olympus C-750 UltraZoom. I couldn't get gtkam to initialize the
camera, no matter what camera I selected. The autoselect kept finding it as a C-2040Z, which would have been fine if it could have initialized the camera. I suppose I'd have to use one of those card readers, but I don't know if any of them read Olympus xD cards. This one's a deal-killer for my wife. I'll have to dual boot if I can't get this one working.
Updating to a newer version of gtkam should help with that.
- Office suite. We've been using Open Office at home for about a
year now on Windows, so the switch to Fedora was a no-brainer.
- Games. My wife loves tux racer. :) She wishes we could get
frogger, but tux racer is okay with her. I haven't tried installing Neverwinter Nights on Fedora yet, but I hear that it works just fine, so games shouldn't be a problem.
Yeap, NWN does run quite nicely on FC1. BUT, you will need 3D hardware acceleration for it to work properly.
- Video. I couldn't even get my video off of my Canon Optura 20
camcorder and onto the computer with dvgrab. I've left a message on the dvgrab message board and haven't heard back these last few days. I found a couple of messages in archives that hint that ieee1394 isn't working properly yet in linux, so that may be why I had the problems. I could control the camera, but just not capture the video over the firewire port. Go figure. I may try again when I get the new motherboard installed. I don't think it's the board, though, since this works flawlessly in Win2K.
I found that Kino works nicely in capturing video from my Canon Camcorder via it's firewire port (IEEE1394). And allows you to do some editing as well.
I found a couple of video editing applications that look like they might be pretty cool, though I don't know if they'll replace DVDLab. However, since I can't even get my video, there's no way to tell. This one's a deal-killer for me, as that's one of the major reasons I've upgraded my PC, so that I could do home video.
Bottom line: Fedora is almost there for my personal needs. Great look, good experience, but not all of the apps I need are working yet. For now, I may have to look at purchasing XP to take advantage of the SATA ports on the new motherboard.
Hope this helps somebody out there.
Ben
Wolf -- Open WebMail Project (http://openwebmail.org)
Benjamin J. Weiss wrote:
- Email. I had some problems getting Evolution 1.4 to talk nicely with
my RH 9 email server via imaps and smtp-auth over tls. I'm still working through that, but I got email working by allowing relay from the desktop box. My wife is getting used to the interface, but it's no big deal for her, so that's a plus.
What is the configuration of the server? If it is using postfix I may be able to help you... What errors do you get?
- Olympus C-750 UltraZoom. I couldn't get gtkam to initialize the
camera, no matter what camera I selected. The autoselect kept finding it as a C-2040Z, which would have been fine if it could have initialized the camera. I suppose I'd have to use one of those card readers, but I don't know if any of them read Olympus xD cards. This one's a deal-killer for my wife. I'll have to dual boot if I can't get this one working.
I looked at the gphoto2 website , and they list this camera as supported.. (http://www.gphoto.org/proj/libgphoto2/support.php) Maybe you could try it instead of gtkam...
- Video. I couldn't even get my video off of my Canon Optura 20
camcorder and onto the computer with dvgrab. I've left a message on the dvgrab message board and haven't heard back these last few days. I found a couple of messages in archives that hint that ieee1394 isn't working properly yet in linux, so that may be why I had the problems. I could control the camera, but just not capture the video over the firewire port. Go figure. I may try again when I get the new motherboard installed. I don't think it's the board, though, since this works flawlessly in Win2K.
I cant speak for myself , as I dont have any Firewire devices , but I've heard that firewire support is problematic only in the 2.6 kernel (in FC2T3 , it was disabled , because trying to use it could hang the computer very badly) , but looks like 2.6.6 has a fix already...
Bottom line: Fedora is almost there for my personal needs. Great look, good experience, but not all of the apps I need are working yet. For now, I may have to look at purchasing XP to take advantage of the SATA ports on the new motherboard.
Well, that's one reason why I still dual-boot (it was tri-boot with FC1 , FC2T3 and windows xp , now it's only FC2T3 and XP).. I'm really a game addict , so I need XP.. But besides that , I can live happily with fedora as my main OS...
-- Pedro Macedo
Benjamin J. Weiss wrote:
Just wanted to share a quick review on my attempt to replace Windows on my desktop at home.
Below are the things I do with the computer and how well they translated to Fedora:
Bottom line: Fedora is almost there for my personal needs. Great look, good experience, but not all of the apps I need are working yet. For now, I may have to look at purchasing XP to take advantage of the SATA ports on the new motherboard.
Hope this helps somebody out there.
Ben
SATA works on my ASUS motherboard. I don't use the on-board RAID, I use md.
Benjamin J. Weiss said:
- Olympus C-750 UltraZoom. I couldn't get gtkam to initialize the
camera, no matter what camera I selected. The autoselect kept finding it as a C-2040Z, which would have been fine if it could have initialized the camera. I suppose I'd have to use one of those card readers, but I don't know if any of them read Olympus xD cards. This one's a deal-killer for my wife. I'll have to dual boot if I can't get this one working.
your camera may not be PTP. plug in your camera and then check out your /etc/fstab (wiat about 4 seconds)... if there's a /mnt/camera option in there now, then you're looking at a USB storage device, not a camera that uses PTP. you may be able to browse it just like a regular file system.
-d
+( duncan brown : duncanbrown@linuxadvocate.net )+ +( linux "just works" : www.linuxadvocate.net )+
-------------------------------------------------- Understatement of the century: "Hello everybody out there using minix - I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones" - Linus Torvalds, August 1991 --------------------------------------------------
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