Oh goodness Fedora Core is not for the faint of heart, I love it as a power workstation but its not my first choice for a desktop.
However, when I loaded Fedora Core 6, the automated update thing showed hundreds of updates, but when I try and apply them, they fail dependency checks. This is with a bare install of the distribution before I even started screwing around with it.
I am running gnome on it which has some nice utilities to configure things, but they seem to keep changing them significantly from they way they utilities worked in the past, and things as simple as using the volume control utility to enable the microphone aren't persistent between reboots.
I've never had to screw around with anything to enable the microphone in the past, and most of my experience with Linux is on boxes that I rsh into anyway, so sound card configuration is something I haven't had to screw with in the past, but it is something that should be simple and work on a desktop system, and the default shouldn't be to have the microphone input disabled.
The thing I liked Linux for the most on a home PC was MythTV, which once I eventually got it working, I really liked. That was several years ago, and I no longer have that PC.
It also seems that the older I get, the less I want to screw around with computers at home. I do it enough at work. When I use a computer at home I want it to be a tool that simply works. I used to tinker with my system to try and get it to play games better. Now I just turn on my new Nintendo Wii and enjoy the simple pleasures of a simple, fun system that I don't have to fight with all the time.
OK, I've seen this comment several times and am slightly confused. Why do you believe this?
I use FC6 as my main desktop. To install, I just stuck in the DVD, chose the packages I want, and let it install. It finds my sound, network, etc.
Keep in mind that I am coming from FC and Red hat before that. I've never really tried other distros other than to quickly load them into a VM to see what they're like. Am I missing something? FC does everything I want in a desktop.
Maybe I'm geekier than I realized, and I just don't find this difficult, while others do. Let me know.
Thanks!