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http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200611021 75508403
"Novell has effectively traded Long-Term Liberty for Short-Term Safety."
- me 2006/11/02

The Primary Goal of the Fedora Project:
Rapid Progress of Free & Open Source Software.

Red Hat engineering invests millions every year in FOSS development. These developers contribute in a great many ways to stimulate growth in the FOSS ecosystem and the community itself. Red Hat makes this investment for three key reasons:

• It makes business sense: A healthy relationship with community builds quality products faster, and with lower expense. It is indeed possible to make money and not compromise on values.
• Perhaps the technology leaders who made many of these key FOSS improvements are best able to support business customers.
• Many of the people at Red Hat believe in the ethical values of FOSS and the benefit that it brings to society.

As long as I work on the Fedora Project, Fedora will never compromise on the essential liberties of FOSS nor will it betray the community. But the price of liberty is not free, nor is it comfortable. And unfortunately, some "leaders" of our community are willing to compromise liberty for short-term convenience. I am disgusted by people like this, and by Novell's betrayal of the community today.

Red Hat supports causes that matter like providing the original seed money for Creative Commons. Or being a key partner in the anti-software patent movement during the miraculous last-minute turnaround at the European Parliament last year. I am proud to be part of an organization that demonstrates such moral and ethical commitment.

But ultimately, Red Hat cannot change the world alone. That is why the Fedora Project exists. We want to enable the community to work together to improve FOSS at a rapid pace, in partnership with the large and consistent contributions from our engineers. We strongly believe that this is the most effective way for the entire FOSS movement to advance. Yes, we made some big mistakes in our community relationship earlier, but we are learning, and continue to improve at an ever accelerating pace.

For these reasons that I urge the FOSS community to support the Fedora Project through volunteer contributions of time and effort. Or if you lack time to contribute, please consider monetary donations toward any of the shared causes that we are fighting for.

Contribute to Fedora
The Fedora Project needs your contributions in many ways. If you know how to make RPM packages, you can become a maintainer in Fedora Extras where you can contribute your favorite FOSS software into the central repository for all to benefit. We have many opportunities for even non-developers to get involved. We need help with things like Documentation, Artwork, or promoting Fedora in the Ambassadors team. Even simply using Fedora, responsibly reporting bugs in Bugzilla, and helping each other helps the entire community.

Donations
The Fedora Project does not need your money[1], but I hope that you would consider donating to one of the major charities that fight for your liber

Seems to me it lies at your side

Seems to me it lies at your side

As far as the nVidia drivers go, you should know about Max Kanat-Alexander's http://www.fedorafaq.org/ site. He's supplied a yum.conf file that will, among other things, hook you up with http://rpm.livna.org/, which supplies prebuilt nVidia and ATi kernel drivers. In most cases, livna will have the nVidia driver rpm out there within a day or so of the Fedora kernel update being available. They also supply other things like codecs that you mention. You can also look to http://www.fedoraforum.org/ as a place to look for help. Note that there are some other sites that also supply prebuilt video drivers and codecs for yum; while I'm not in a position to soundly recommend one over another (livna has "just worked" for me), I have seen warnings that you should only enable one such site, as conflicts can arise if both release the video driver simultaneously.

I would also suggest trying XFCE (yum install xfce, IIRC; it's available in extras, and after it's installed you can choose it from the "Session" dropdown on the Fedora login page), and then go to their site at http://www.xfce.org/ and following instructions to build Thunar, their new file manager. Much lighter and more responsive than Nautilus, and it does have decent context-menu support.

Be glad that, as of FC5, yum cleans up its old kernels after new installs, leaving you with current and previous. I had a run of 7 or 8 of the things sitting around when I was on FC4.

Good luck to you!

I like google groups better than the google linux search, but I don't think either are the best sites. IMHO any site that purports to have all answers to all linux questions isn't going to do very well with any semi-complex question. They just can't have the know-how.

IRC channels are good, but it is kind of like IM - if the devs aren't on you're out of luck.

I think it really depends on the distro. For Ubuntu, there is Ubuntu forums for SuSE there are SuSE forums. The same goes for Gentoo, Mepis, Debian, Redhat, Fedora or any other distro out there. The larger projects also have their own forums.

Getting as specific a location as you can will help (e.g. the google group on Debian is better than the one on Linux users for Debian problems). That is why IRC is great when you have a reasonably well-researched and specific question. Before you ask a dev (who may be working on fixing the problem, or may have already fixed it, or may be plagued by the same question over and over again) please read how to ask a question properly. That way you are maximizing the chance that you get the right answer, people won't get mad at you, and you won't be wasting anyone else's time.

well they wouldn't want to allow P2P downloading because Vista likes to actively stop people from using these things. If you thought that you told your computer what to do you are dead wrong. On the forum I use most one member encountered a fairly interesting problem, being that Vista was checking what he was downloading and when something seemed like it might not be legal they had his interent connection stopped... lovely.

You can read the e-mail he got from them at the thread here; http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=117 936&page=1&pp=15

Funny, I re-installed XP only 6 months ago and had to spend hours just getting the OS up and running with updates and drivers and such. Then another several hours putting on applications such as Visual Studio, OpenOffice, Firefox, etc, and I'm not including games. Just over the weekend I installed Fedora Core 5 and after an install that took less time than Windows I spent about 1 hour running the updates and had myself a usable workstation, with Anjuta, OpenOffice, Firefox (with plugins), etc. And no, this isn't new hardware. All my hardware was purchased before Windows XP was released, so the age of the OSs shouldn't be a problem when it comes to drivers.

But maybe you were counting customizing the look and feel. Because most distros don't come with Nerzhul as the destop wallpaper I had to do that, whereas for windows it's just the blank blue for me. So yeah, you have to spend a little time customizing Linux, but at least you can do it, whereas for Windows you get what they decide looks nice to the eyes.

In case anyone is wondering, Nerzhul goes on Linux because I can make everything blend in better with a dark wallpaper, whereas the simple blue on Windows blends in better with the blue-ish theme in XP.

...which is running Fedora Core 5 (I've also still got windows on here because my girlfriend wouldn't let me get rid ouf it). You should be aware that Fedora is really bleeding edge - there have been a few problems. When I first installed it there were about 4 new kernels in 3 weeks, the final one couldn't start X and I wonder if they even tested it. After the 2107 nightmare (and me having to re-install due to my over zelous reaction, d'oh!) they seem to have settled down a little with the updates - it's been a few weeks and I'm still happily running the newest one. The Core 5 is still very new though, I think about 1 month, I've been told after about 2 then it will settle down and everything will be cool. For me I'd get on for the ride early; just keep your tin hat on and ride the last few waves.

Also, there is a really good community (I might just plug http://www.fedoraforum.org/...)

as for my laptop it's a toshiba satellite pro - fairly new but i don't know the number. I'm using the centrino chipset and although I've heard people get the wireless working it seemed like it might be a hastle so I've left it because I don't really use wireless anyway. Fedora doesn't support proprietry stuff though which means that you'll have to get MP3 support yourself (ogg works out the box!)... I might have convinced you not to go for it; it is really good though.

How about Fedora Core 5:
1. Linux with SELinux enabled
2. Firefox 1.5 and Konqueror with Opera as an option
3. How about making it look the way you want?
4. With Mono, you have Beagle
5. yum for command line, yumex or pup for GUI
6. Gstreamer, xine, mplayer: all installable through yum(ex)/pup
7. Non root accounts plus lockdown
8. All sorts of backup scripts
9. Wiki, CVS, etc.
10. Anaconda or a live CD

I recently used ndiswrapper to get a Winbook mini-pci wireless card working on my Dell laptop. It wasn't all that difficult, really - just required a little patience. I wrote up some instructions for setting it up for the OSU wireless network, but put a bunch of references at the bottom, including this one on the fedora forums that should give you a pretty good idea of how to get it setup on your network.

Without KDE, I'm sure myself, my friends, and my company would be using Windows.

Gnome doesn't do enough for the end user. Too many settings required mucking around in either the registry-like editor, or just plain command line things.

I remember trying to use Gnome is SuSE 9.0, and not being able to figure out how to specify which app to use for which mime type. Someone politely informed me that this was the procedure to set default apps for various mime-types.

Yeah, that's noob friendly. Apparently, wasn't 'fixed' in 2.10, either. Is it fixed now?

Either way, lack of simple things like that, plus KDE's KIOslaves (which are beautiful, come on, who doesn't love fish:// or klik://), plus a far superior file browser (I've seen the gnome when I'm forced to load up a GTK app, which is rare).

How do I open from a network location in gnome? Can it be done? (In the file browser?)

Why don't I 'contribute' to the gnome project to make these things better? Simple: KDE already does them correctly for me.

Do I mind that other people are happy with gnome, or prefer gnome? No. But all you gnome-heads should stop stomping on other people's Desktop Environments. Seriously; Gnome doesn't work for some of us.

If the next OpenSuSE (which is my current distribution) has inferior KDE support, I'll be thrilled to move to a thriving Kubuntu.

There's nothing wrong with Gnome, for those who use it. But for some of us, gnome just doesn't cut it. Gnome may be different, Gnome may be more 'unix'. But some of us who actually use Linux as our sole operating system rely on KDE, and couldn't imagine switching to gnome.

[Can Linux x86_64 run 32 bit apps?]

Supposedly yes, but you have to have both 32 and 64 bit libs installed and I hvaen't tried it. This is true for Solaris too IIRC. I would imagine WinXP 64 does something similar.

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=191 79

Well, Tim Miller has a plan to do so. People are excited. It's even been covered on Slashdot, after he was interviewed by Kerneltrap.

My question is---what are the obstacles in the way of an open source-friendly video card that were not in the way of an open source-friendly capture card? Why do we have one and not the other, when clearly more people have video cards than TV tuners? (Probably even not counting onboard video.)

--grendel drago

Very true. And the reason for this is so many people have Windows. Almost 90% of PCs on W3C have some variant of Windows. Baring in mind that this will be particularly techie community, it doesn't bode well.

The fact of the matter is, for most manufacturers, it just isn't cost effective to make their devices compatible with Linux, then test against various distros with various kernel configurations on various hardwares just to tap into under 4% of the market. Firefox has almost 1 in 10 people on the web, and some businesses still think its not viable to support it.

It's going to take some dedicated geeks to introduce Linux to the general public. Without market share, no-one's going to bother.

Linspire and (though it pains me to say this) Xandros are two viable distros that are either ready or nearly ready for the main-stream market. Hell, even SUSE is pretty useable for Linux n00bs.

As for lack of support, there are plenty of forums full of friendly people willing to help, or providing in depth documentation.

Give a man Linux, and he'll use it, get stuck and return to Windows. Teach him to use Linux, and how to find help, and we've improved our market share.

In future, when using Fedora, check http://fedoraforum.org/

I've put up some instructions for Fedora Core 2 users on how to get the Fedora Core 3 RPMs (currently 1.0.2/1.7.6 versions - I'll adjust the versions for 1.0.3/1.7.7 when the RPMs turn up) to work on FC2. This puts a "Firefox Web Browser" option in your Internet FC2 menu and you can then "Add to Panel..." to get the Firefox icon on your panel as well (this is NOT difficult - right click on panel background, select "Add to Panel...", double-click on the first "Application Launcher.." option, open up the Internet sub-options (click on triangle) and then double-click on Firefox). Note that FC3 users can simply just use "yum update" to pick up recent versions and these integrate correctly with the users' FC3 desktop (though you may have to add a panel icon like above if you haven't already).

This has been on the front page of http://www.fedoraforum.org/FedoraForum.org[FedoraF orum.org] for a while now. Kinda late news, as I've been using it for a while now.

This incident is just another example which demonstrates the importance that KDE, Mozilla & Mozilla Firefox's open source culture places on security. Hasn't anyone at Mozilla and KDE ever heard about regression testing?

This incident is just another example which demonstrates the importance (or more accurately, the lack thereof) that Linux's open source culture places on security. Hasn't anyone at Linux ever heard about regression testing?

Open source has consistantly (sic) demonstrated that, regardless of what their press releases say, security is NOT one of their priorities. People need to start waking up and realizing this before they entrust their critical infrastructure to open source products.

See how stupid your comment is? No? Didn't think so.

I ran into a parted bug before I even got that far. This comment seems to be about the same problem, but my troubles were on FC3, where FC2 worked fine.

... that ATI's drivers won't even install on a modern and widely used distro, such as Fedora Core 2 - no matter if you follow ATI's instructions.

You'll have to find a community support forum or two, download patches, and apply them. Then, if you have an SMP machine, you'll also have to create a symlink in your kernel source directory. If you've got an x86-64 machine, you're apparently SOL.
(And if you've got another CPU or OS, you're also SOL, due to the closed source, but that's another topic. OK, one recent ATI release actually wouldn't load on Athlons, but that's not what I'm talking about.)

If it only were a matter of RTFM, no big deal.

Then there's the horrid performance (far worse than ATI's Win Catalyst's already "less than ideal" OpenGL performance), the apps/games that are unusable due to artifacting, the unsupported features (no FSAA on DX9-class hardware in 2004??), the misidentified gfx boards, ...

I don't think that the reviewer should have knocked FC2 for the fundamental design flaws of GNOME 2.6. They are/will be there in any distro that uses GNOME 2.6.

The reviewer mentioned the new file requester. That is retarded. Let me copy-and-paste a post I made on this topic over at FedoraForum.org:


Some googling (certainly not the included GNOME "documentation") let me know that hitting Ctrl-L while in a file requester will pop up a text entry gadget, with tab completion.

Ain't that obvious and user friendly? I can feel my productivity soar through the roof!

NOT THAT IT F-ING WORKS OR ANYTHING!

1. Today, I'd sure like to edit .bash_profile.

2. Start gedit.

3. Choose to open a file.

4. As per the tradition of usability downward spiralling, I can't see any files beginning with a period. Being a GNOME user, I'm considered too stupid to be allowed to see things like that. There's no (apparent or documented) way to change this. Ooooh, a purdy little house icon!

5. Oh yeah, the intuitive Ctrl-L. I get a text entry gadget, type ".ba", I get a drop-down list of pattern matches and choose ".bash_profile". Great, this feature (choosing a file) should of course be in the main file requester.

6. I click on "Open".

7. Of course nothing opens when I click "Open". That would probably go smack in the face of the GNOME2 Human Interface Guidelines. The text entry box disappears, and my "Home" directory is reloaded in the main requester list.

8. Maybe .bash_profile is selected now, even though you can't see it? I hit "Open" in the main requester.

9. Nothing happens.

10. I click "Cancel", curse the f-ing idiocy that seems to rule GNOME development today, and decide to take a look at how far KDE has come these days. Ooooh, a purdy little house icon!

(Seriously, I'm getting tired of this. GNOME is getting slicker and faster all the time, but these steps forwards are always followed by twice the number of steps backwards.)

Fedora Core 2 Discussion, I've found that site to be very helpful.

Fedora is great and pretty easy to install. I tried Mandrake 10 CE first but didn't have much luck with it. Fedoraforum.org

If you want some help with Fedora, join the community at fedoraforum.org

fedoraforum.org has a wealth of info in the FAQs and Forums.

For the newest issues, jump on IRC: irc.freenode.net #fedora

Fedora Forum is also a good resource, which the "unofficial" fedora.artoo.net FAQ/Forum recently merged into.