Hey all, long time no see 
On the Fedora front I was busy doing marketing stuff for the Fedora 11 release. Overall, it went pretty well, it was a great release day and we had quite a lot of good press. Part of this job is also to follow user comments on all the websites we publish news to, on my side this means all the major French speaking IT websites. Doing this, I could see a few tendencies:
- People don’t have a clue which Fedora spin to download (KDE, Gnome, x86, x86-64 …), the actual download page REALLY confuses a lot of people. Too much choice seems to kill the choice.
- In the same vein, I’ve seen a lot of comments regarding the Live CD’s…comments like “Why does Fedora start to propose LiveCD’s as the primary installation source instead of the normal installation DVD?”.
Rant: I don’t have much to say on this front, but I don’t think it helps Fedora to multiply the installation medias in an exponential way (Note: specialized spins are something else). Personally I don’t like LiveCD’s because they are slow and have very few “cool” software on them due to space requirements, this defeats the “showcase for new users” argument. Anyway. the download page is broken IMO. Why do we provide a “Desktop Edition” and a “KDE Desktop Edition”? Shouldn’t we have a single “Desktop Edition” link pointing to a choice between Gnome and KDE? Or clearly put “Gnome Desktop Edition” and “KDE Desktop Edition” on the front page? Is KDE a second class citizen? How do you expect a new user to do the right choice?
Couldn’t we have some kind of “choice list” instead? A bit like Ubuntu/OpenSuse do:
We could help people chose the right installation media this way, by providing defaults and clearly explain the options. Wouldn’t it be clearer than having KDE and PowerPC links on the right side of http://fedoraproject.org/get-fedora ?
If you have anything to say about the way we marketed Fedora 11, please give feedback to the marketing group! You can leave a comment here, I’ll forward it. This really helps us.
I would have to disagree with the ‘rant’.
While it might be confusing to expose all possible installation media on the download page upfront for all visitors it in no way makes it a bad idea (to have like in your example a LiveCD).
If the common believe is it confuses the user separate the page – main page -> standard installation media (probably DVD) and a link to “full list of installation media” – problem solved.
On the other hand reducing the installation media will harm many users (me including) because:
* I have never, ever in my life had a DVD burner – thus installing from DVD is not possible
* I am environmental concious and will not burn 7 CDs just to get a new OS installed
* I don’t even have an optical drive on my thinkpad
* I don’t like the idea of downloading 5 GBs of packages and then install 1 GB of them
* last but not least Fedora is not exactly the rock solid distribution and while I am really happy with it 6 releases already it became second nature of me to first download the LiveCD, transfer it to a USB drive with big overlay and homedir and use it for at least a week, installing more packages, installing updates and so on, just to make sure something from the arsenal I use every day is not fundamentally broken (as for example the kernel which after 2.6.27.5-117.fc10.i686 gives me 90% CPU usage all the time and hangs the thinkpad on SATA access after 30 min of work, bad luck I guess) – thus removing the liveCDs would be a big mistake (from my point of view) and for sure will reduce my willingness to install newer releases just to find out that my bluetooth or my webcam or whatever is not working any more.
There is this tiny difference between users who would like to experiment with the newest technology and user who would like to experiment safely with the newest technology.
Thank you
PS. If wondering how I managed before Fedora had the liveCD: I used the network install (kernel + initrd on the older system and boot them, then use http mirror from the official list) and installed on an ancient laptop, just to be sure my work laptop will not become useless. While installing on a different hardware does not imply it will work on the newer it at least leaves me with a working computer. Still it is not very pleasing – I like the LiveCD better:)
Your points in favor of the LiveCD are completely valid, I don’t dispute the fact that they should exist, my main concern is the confusion they bring.
“If the common believe is it confuses the user separate the page – main page -> standard installation media (probably DVD) and a link to “full list of installation media” – problem solved.”
Yes, that’s a perfectly viable solution. The “show me the full list” actually already exists, but there are no precise descriptions of the ISO files you download. That’s why I was proposing a choice list…
* Chose if you want a Live Media or an Installation Media
* Chose 32 or 64 bit
* In case of a Live Media, chose your custom spin (Gnome, KDE…)
I think that the comparison to Ubuntu downloading is pretty fair, although I don’t think that the Fedora download page causes much confusion. Peter has a great point about why a LiveCD is useful – I generally do the same thing he does, except that I don’t bother with a USB drive since 95% of the software I use in a week is on the LiveCD. I just pop it in to see if my hardware works.
The thing that I think is keeping Fedora behind Ubuntu in terms of popularity is not the download page. It’s the distribution goals. Ubuntu wants to be “Linux for Everyone;” Fedora wants to be “Bleeding Edge FOSS.” So, for example, when I booted the F11 CD on Thursday morning, my wireless card didn’t work (and neither did my trackpad). After installing, I made the wireless card work with stuff from RPMFusion – why isn’t this bundled into Fedora again? Because it’s not fully open – but the trackpad still didn’t work.
So I decided (after using Fedora since FC4) to try this Ubuntu thing yesterday. Easy install, wireless works out of the box, trackpad works out of the box, great community wiki online to get all the little things that didn’t work in Fedora at all working with minimal effort in Ubuntu. Will I miss full-disk encryption and SELinux? Absolutely. Enough to deal with the usability headaches of Fedora? Nope. If someone figures out how to get the function keys and trackpad on an aluminum MacBook working in Fedora 11 I’ll switch back. Not before then.
Not to drift too far away from the initial subject, do you suggest that people using Fedora are “technical” enough to know what to download, so we shouldn’t think about usability? (ok, I understand what you mean) :p
I was just looking at forums and user comments the day F11 came out, and I could see quite a lot of confusion about which media to use, this post is just about that.
I’ve been using Redhat since 4.0, and Fedora since it came into existence. The biggest problem I see with marketing the release is that the project is bipolar. You ask for suggestions, then tell people to bug off because it’s not the Fedora way. You ask end-users for bug reports then ignore them and close them at end of life for the release. I’m quite used to this at this point, but it does alienate new people.
You want suggestions?
You need a bug reporting tool that provides both community support and developer support in one place. End users can’t effectively use bugzilla or irc or mailing lists.
If you want to provide a desktop environment, you need to distribute less than fully open software, while you are working to provide fully open alternatives. If it’s a legal problem, create a consortium with other Linux distributors to deal with the legal issues – they are not end-user problems. Not being able to play a legally purchased movie is an end-user problem. Not being able to use a WiFi card is an end-user problem. Ubuntu understands this distinction.
Use browser-based auto-detection to preselect a suggested download instead of offering a choice. Every web browser distribution site does this. Just like those sites, put a button under the recommendation that gives you the full selection. Dowload should be a one-button affair.
These are all symptoms of the bipolar nature of Fedora. You say one thing, then sabotage yourselves by not committing. Rather than say you are not offering a desktop, you offer a crippled desktop. Rather than saying you are a developer release, you attract end-users and try to have them deal with bugzilla / irc / mailing lists.
I ranted about this myself for many years. I like Fedora; it meets my needs. I’m not an end user though.
I have to agree on 95% of your points, particularly the bugreport/irc/mailinglist stuff. I also think that a lot of people are aware of this problem, which is a huge issue considering the pioneer role of Fedora in the FOSS world. Moving fast and squashing all bugs are usually quite at the opposite.
Not being able to install Flash, codecs and display driver without having to know RPM Fusion s a real show stopper for any new user. Ubuntu does it “right” from the end-user perspective in the sense that the proprietary repositories aren’t enabled by default, but if you need it they are pre-configured. I honestly don’t know which legal implications (not counting the philosophical ones) for Fedora to do the same. Not to do this was pretty much a choice from the beginning, and without it I’m not sure we would see such a rapid development of things like the Nouveau driver.
But as said before, Ubuntu wants to be the Linux on every PC in the OEM market (and more power to them if they succeed). Fedora wants to push the technology in Open Source.
“…without it I’m not sure we would see such a rapid development of things like the Nouveau driver.”
That’s the point though; Fedora is driving development. It’s a developer release; embrace that. Don’t try to make it something it is not prepared to be. Otherwise it ends up being a compromise and a disappointment marketed to the wrong audience.
Sure, I hear you. Note that i don’t think we absolutely tried to market it as “The Linux for everyone”. But this shouldn’t stop us to provide a nicer power-user experience on the website :p
Let’s face it, lots of Fedora users come from a first experience with other distributions, I see a constant flow of ex-Ubuntu users on the forums who want the bleeding edge software wise. These people usually have some background and understand how to add a repository.
The reason the Live Media for x86 is presented as the primary choice:
- The user can try Fedora out without having to erase anything on their hard drive
- CD burners are far more common than DVD burners
- x86 works on x86_64 just fine so if you have no idea what you have, it will Just Work
- Many people do not have the bandwidth to download ~2GB in a reasonable amount of time. I know it’s hard to believe but it’s true.
- Any software the user wants to try out that isn’t in the default install is *easily* added post-installation.
Oh and about the gnome vs KDE choice – Fedora is a GNOME-based distribution. New users probably do not know or care about the difference between GNOME and KDE. There are far more GNOME maintainers in Fedora than KDE, so they get GNOME. And they doubtless will not care about that.
The more choices you present to the new user, the way more confusing the page is. A *lot* of thought went into the current Get Fedora page, and it was extremely difficult because everyone wanted to add “just one more choice” “just one more option”. The problem is, if everyone added the “just one more choice” that they proposed to me for the page, the page would look like this again:
http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora-all
Nobody wants that by default.
I don’t doubt that there was a lot of thinking going in the current page, the old one clearly sucks. I’m just reporting that people are still confused from what I see.
I disagree with the first part of the rant, about the too many choices being bad, and in fact I’d much prefer get-fedora-all as the default compared to the current get-fedora. x86_64 needs to be featured more prominently as it’s the only way forward and most machines are 64-bit these days. And KDE should not be relegated to an extra link on the side.
And this brings us to your second rant. I agree wholeheartedly with the fact that “Desktop” standing for “GNOME Desktop” is misleading and biased and that the choice between KDE and GNOME needs to be on the front download page.
“I disagree with the first part of the rant, about the too many choices being bad, ”
Hey! What do I know, I’m just an interaction designer.
“I disagree with the first part of the rant, about the too many choices being bad, and in fact I’d much prefer get-fedora-all as the default compared to the current get-fedora.”
Pssst! That *was* our get Fedora page a couple of releases ago, and pretty much everyone hated it which is why so much effort went into what we have today. Don’t believe me, check the fedora-websites-list archives…
> That *was* our get Fedora page a couple of releases ago
I know. The current one is a regression.