Fedora 7 "Moonshine": Freedom vs. Ease-of-Use

Fedora 7, a.k.a. "Moonshine," released on May 31, is an odd duck. On the one hand, it's hugely popular. If you need to be convinced of that, take a look at the number of people viewing the officially-sanctioned FedoraForum.org at any given time - as I write this, it's almost 7,000 people. Visit your local Barnes Noble Booksellers (that's a big bookstore chain in the U.S.) and you'll see quite a few books about Fedora on the shelves. (This, by itself, is a big plus for Linux newbies — Fedora may be the best-documented distro available).

On the other hand, these days, there seems to be an emphasis on being user-friendly (think "Ubuntu"). But Fedora's creators have consciously limited what it can do out of the box. For example:

Because Fedora includes only software with "free/libre" licenses, the user will not find such popular software such as the Adobe Flash plugin, support for proprietary streaming audio and video drivers, or Microsoft Web fonts in the Fedora repositories.
Because Fedora includes only software they deem to be free of patent encumbrances, the user will not find MP3 support or support for watching commercial DVDs in the Fedora repositories. Fedora doesn't even include support for read-only access to NTFS partitions.