Annoyances contribution from LJ

Hello All,

I'm a RH Linux Fedora 4 newbie fresh from Windows XP (experience all the 
way back to Windows 3.1 and MSDOS).  Here's a few things this newbie has 
found frustrating with Linux.  If this is helpful for your book, I'll 
send along more from time to time.

1.  I couldn't find the firewall.  So why isn't there a tool tip that 
says Firewall/SE Linux Configuration that pops up when you have clicked 
Desktop, System Settings, and then moved  down so the high lighted 
selection shows System Security.  Right now the tool tip shows Configure 
System Security.  Big Help.  "My name is Larry and oh by the way, people 
call me Larry, and if you wouldn't mind refer to me as Larry". 

2.  I've had a hard time seeing a correspondence between system menu 
selections and what program or programs actually run.   The only ones 
that make any sense are Firebird and Thunderbird.  If you select 
Applications, Internet, Email, you get Evolution.  A fine program but I 
prefer Thunderbird.  Someday I'll know how to change things so that 
selecting Email invokes Thunderbird.  And where are the .exe equivalents 
located??? There must be a thunderbird executable somewhere.

3. I use two analog monitors monitors , one attached to the digital 
output with a dongle and one to the regular vga output of my graphics 
card.  NVidia supplied a nice driver which gave me the capability of 
expanding my desktop to cover both monitors.  However,  I did a yum 
update and didn't realize the significance of upgrading the kernel.  I'm 
now at 2.6 141.1653smp(from 1644) and my carefully crafted dual monitor 
desktop has crashed.  Ok, no problem  so I'll just go through nvidia's 
scrip again as they suggest on their website run  "sh NV*.run".  But 
this says "You appear to be running the X server..."  Couldn't they say 
"You appear to be running the X Server... In a terminal window,  enter 
"su - root" and give your root password.  Then enter init (insert number 
here)  and run the command "sh NV*.run" from the command line prompt.  
By the way the init 3 sequence appears to die at "Starting anacron"  So 
I guess I'll reboot and to to the section where I can configure which 
programs run with each runlevel... now where was that...oh yes... buried 
in the System Settings, Server Settings, Services where it actually 
gives me the hint that "Configure which services will start when the 
system starts". 

Seems to me the joy of Linux is that Linux hasn't abandoned the 
equivalent of windows "*.ini" files.   So eventually everything in Linux 
is knowable as opposed to Windows with its obscure registry file.  This 
I love and this keeps me coming back for more.

Larry