I’ve been banging the drum about the Fedora Board resolving its discussion about the target audience for Fedora’s primary distribution. Ultimately it is a bigger conversation about the strategic direction of the Fedora distribution and what it wants to be in the future–one year, two years, five years from now, etc.
To put this discussion in the right context it seems like a good idea to be clear about what we need the Fedora distribution to be today.
To the surprise of many of my friends I haven’t used Windows at my day job since 2004. There are edge cases where Windows provides a better user experience and more functionality (Exchange/Outlook calendaring and email versus Zimbra), but for the most part I can do my job just fine with the applications provided in Fedora.
These are the applications I depend on every day:
- Gnome desktop
- ssh
- vpnc
- cvs
- vim/gvim
- OpenOffice
- terminator
- irssi
- screen
- TaskJuggler
- Firefox
- Thunderbird
- Rhythmbox
- Twinkle
This is the functionality I expect and depend on from my notebook every day:
- Suspend and resume works every time
- Hibernate and resume works every time
- NetworkManager resumes a wireless network connection after every suspend or hibernate
What about you? What are the core programs and functionality you depend on working in Fedora?
January 13, 2010 at 7:02 am
The things that absolutely have to work for me on my laptop, daily, without fail:
* GNOME Desktop
* Firefox
* VPN access
* SSH
* OpenOffice.org
I can live with anything else failing. If I absolutely need IRC I can run that in other places. If I need access to mail, I can use the Web interface (although it’s less efficient). As such, I’m probably a more typical desktop productivity user.
January 13, 2010 at 6:25 am
* Gnome – soon to be replaced
* ssh
* vim
* terminator
* irssi
* screen
* Firefox
* mutt
* mplayer
* audacity
Daily drivers for me.
Fedora is more about the community and less about the distro. I get great enjoyment from being a part of the community and contributing. The actual software on the other hand; I fight everyday from kicking it to the curb.
Fedora is driven by many developers all driving on their own road. Until they are all on the same road, Fedora will continue to be the ‘Sibyl’ of linux distro’s.
January 13, 2010 at 6:11 am
Here is my apps:
Tools:
gNote – notepad (without plugins)
Leafpad – simple editor, no any dep
Zim – Text editor, Wiki on desktop, python base on new version instead of perl
Pyrenamer – mass renamer util
Parcellite – Clipboard tool
htop – Process viewer
wicd – wifi monitor, connection manager
conky – stat monitor
obmenu – ob menu editor
obmenugen – dynamic menu generator for openbox
gMixer – mixer
GCstar – collection manager (gtk2-perl based)
LXappearance – gtk theme changer
pysdm – automounter, even at boot too – http://pysdm.sourceforge.net/
Archiver
Atool – http://www.nongui.org/atool
Xarchiver?
Media
Whaaw player – for movie, like totem but no gnome dep, maybe as alone in system
Goggles MM – lightweight music manager, ogg, flac, mp3,mp4, asf, mpc – google code (???)
Pragha MM ?? – http://pragha.wikispaces.com/
Mplayer CLI
Picture management:
Geekie – Gqview rewrite, no KDE, no Gnome dep – sf.net – close to 1.0 release, only translation missing!
PyCasa – Picasa album manager
mtpaint
imagemagick
Net:
Meiga – Easy sharing app
Midori – Primary browser
Blogtk – Blog client for blogger
Torium – Light torrent client
Pino – Twitter client
Comm:
Pidgin – IM chat
Skype – VOIP
Conspire – xchat or it’s fork
Office:
Abiword – word processor
Gnumeric – spreadsheet
EpdfView – light pdf viewer
CD-DVD apps:
Recorder – Lightweight CD/DVD burner, Google code
Asunder – Ripper
Web editors:
Kompozer 0.8b1 – Web editor
January 13, 2010 at 4:16 am
here My Core Needs
gnome desktop,
internet browsing,
Internet Radio Listening…
Virtualization…
Ptrhon Developement with Emacs 🙂
i’ll be happy if Nertork Manager could be able to create-dispose Network Bridges 🙂
January 13, 2010 at 1:05 am
Programs:
Gnome desktop
claws mail
Firefox
Kile
digikam
amarok
me-tv
rkward
Krusader
Kaffeine
Functionality:
flawless dual screen (with notebook)
frequent updates
January 13, 2010 at 12:39 am
Beyond the basic Desktop (GNOME) and terminals, I use daily things like:
– full featured web server (Apache, virtual hosts, php) for testing stuff before deploying online;
– internet communications (pidgin for IM, xchat for IRC, Thunderbird for mail);
– graphic editing (GIMP, Inkscape, ImageMagick);
– multimedia playback (Totem with GStreamer plugins, vlc, mplayer);
– when working in terminal I still use mc a lot, old habit hard to get rid of.
While not yet ‘daily’, I started to do a lot ov video editing too, mainly using Kdenlive and mencoder, nut not happy with the choices.
January 12, 2010 at 11:18 pm
rdesktop (to connect to windows if needed)
ssh (connect to client boxes)
vim (code editing as well as regular text edits)
xterm (ligher than VTE based)
screen (xterm does not have tabs, thus screen helps)
firefox (web)
thunderbird (mail)
newsbeuter (rss)
mpd+ncmpc (music)
finch (instant messaging)
mplayer (video playback)
skype (very much popular in EU)
revelation (convenient password keeper)
using xfce dekstop, but rarely relying on it
gmrun (fast application starting)
Note: I do not consider myself to be typical user or target user for Fedora official release. Still I like to have those simple applications as they take up very little space as most are console driven.
January 12, 2010 at 7:31 pm
Ok my turn.
gnome desktop
pidgin
epiphany
vim
netbeans
openjdk
It seems like a short list, i must be missing something. My web browser is really my most one of my most important apps. Because it is home to the rest of all my other apps I use on a daily basis at work; email, calendar, wiki, bug tracker, etc.
January 12, 2010 at 7:35 pm
Oh forgot…
NetworkManager + openvpn support
cvs
ssh
gnote (love my notes!)
January 13, 2010 at 7:14 am
ok I want to add more now 🙂
liferea (for our CVS RSS feed)
gimp
gtk-recordmydesktop (demos of app development progress)
parcellite (because i seem to always wipe my clipboard accidentally before pasting)
xournal (for marking up pdfs)
meld (viewing diffs from SCM)
January 12, 2010 at 6:07 pm
Here are my core needs, on any OS:
. email (evolution)
. web (firefox)
. media player (vlc)
. RSS reader (liferea)
. VoIP (Mainly Skype, even if not FOSS, also Ekiga)
. Instant Messaging (empathy)
. File organization (nautilus)
. File Sharing (deluge)
. Document creation with text, numbers, formulas, pictures (open office)
. Virtual machines (virtualbox)
. Programming (eclipse, netbeans)
. Gaming (any!)
These are more or less ordered by important, from highest to lowest. Now, why have I been using Fedora (almost) exclusively since 2005? Free open source software (FOSS) with new stuff coming periodically and adding value to the community.
I included the applications in parenthesis because the application itself is less relevant: it is the paradigm that brings change to those that matters most, and to me FOSS is all about that.