re: codecs. So I had this experience the other day, mp4, and totem (Videos) gives me some message about how some codec plugins are missing. dnf search doesn't find them, adding RPM fusion and searching doesn't find them, I do google searches and I run into the Internet Doesn't Work (TM), or more specifically Google Search sucks because it doesn't present relevant results in the first two pages. So I gave up and booted OS X.


re: document formats. I think it's a big pro to point out LibreOffice is included and provides both Office document format support, and *easily* enables the user to get out of that b.s. dependency. Closed document formats really piss me off, much more than closed proprietary codecs. Yay Document Liberation Project!


re: Windows vs Fedora installation. First there are two kinds of Windows installations:
-- official media from Microsoft offers a very straightforward installer that starts out with two options Upgrade and Custom. Neither suggests new installation, so that's confusing but there are only two paths you pick on and get it wrong and you pick the other option next time - not difficult. It's also uncommon, because this method is designed mainly for upgrades, not new installations.
-- OEM recovery partition. In Windows 8 the options are reset (obliterate all data and reinstall the OS), and refresh (keep user data, but revert to a clean unupdated OS and new settings). This is very similar to how mobile devices reset. And similar to the systemd folks' idea of stateless systems. And the direction I think installs and resets on Fedora ought to go in, perhaps with a couple points of additional granularity.


OS X's installer is point and shoot, it offers essentially no options. Apple and Microsoft don't spend squat on their installers. They're both largely unchanged in over a decade. I've never run into a bug with either of them. User confusion is minimized by the fact there are two or zero options. They definitely never ever crash. Anaconda is just a pile of feature sprawl and it's completely normal and understandable something that complicated is going to have x% of presentable bugs and regressions - and it does. Three years after newui, it still dominates blocker bugs. I consider it a misallocation of resources, but lovely that life is, it's not my decision or I'd rip out all of custom partitioning and marry it with blivet-gui. [1]


re: graphics cards. This is terrible on Linux. It's not Fedora's fault. Regressions, dual-GPU suckage, crap power management, on and on. It's just awful, and I don't use Fedora when I'm on the road because of this - the battery life is just unworkable. OS X has completely seamless integrated and discrete graphics switching totally figured out, for years now. Of course, they cheat, controlling drivers and hardware, and sign all the super secret NDAs to have this functionality (because of course the world would end fucking tomorrow if anyone knew the super secret shit).


[1]
My idea installation scenario for Fedora Workstation in another dimension, is live media based on a Btrfs seed device, the user boots the media, and a minimal UI helps them add a drive (partition) and configure some things, including G-I-S starting, and then the system is usable. Behind the scenes, the defined drive is added to the seed device, the seed device is removed, all data on the live media is migrated to the user defined device and then the live media is ejectable. No reboot required. Between ostree, or revised offline updates atomically updating Btrfs snapshots, or Btrfs send/receive, both the double boot of current offline updates as well as even any compulsory reboot can be eliminated.

--
Chris Murphy