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Sees that Fedora is essentially the [trademark/brand-recognition free] replacement for the average geek, but without a cheap and easy RHN way to stay up2date anymore.

The Red Hat Update Agent (up2date) now supports installing packages from apt and yum repositories as well as local directories. This includes dependency solving and obsoletes handling. Additional repositories can be configured in the/etc/sysconfig/rhn/sources file.

Very cool to know. Important, as well, since I've never ever purchased Red Hat Enterprise Linux in my life. Sure hope there's a "student edition" so I can make sure I know my stuff when exam time comes :)

I was a bit URI-challenged for a few seconds due to the space in the URI, the link is actually:

http://www.redhat.com/training/rhce/rhce_faq.html# rhel3_rhce (Clickable is good!)

You can always check out the schedule.
I was going to download it last month, then saw the Core 1 release was scheduled for early November, so waited.

Hidden in the release notes:

- The input of non-ASCII characters from the system console is not possible; only graphical applications support the input of these characters.

If I understand this correctly it means a jump back of several years with the inability to write accented letters in the console.

In other words: useless crap in which you cannot even write 3 words in a row (except in English of course)

Can that be true?

What I'm going to miss is Red Hat QA, which to me was the real value-add of Red Hat and which is not part of what you get with your free Fedora download. (Check out the last two lines in the comparison chart with the Enterprise Linux version.)

Due to Red Hat's QA, I always had a high degree of confidence that what I would get from up2date wouldn't break my RH system. Call me paranoid, but I don't have the same degree of confidence that the "developer community" will have the resources (time, machines and testing methodology) to maintain the same level of quality, especially given that the code base in Fedora will be apparently much larger than RHEL. I will be delighted if I'm wrong, but I'm expecting a gradual decline in quality.

Increasing the amount of support you get for $179 if you buy RHEL is okay so far as it goes, but that doesn't change the fact that the increase will price the QA-tested product out of many Linux users' home-computing budget (including mine).

I don't really blame Red Hat, because I think this move does make business sense for them. But I'm really disappointed that the retail Linux market never materialized to the point where they could keep shipping a high-quality, tested Linux desktop for ~$50-$70 and make money doing it.

redhat pulled a netscape. redhat left people high and dry. redhat people is scum. redhat is too dumb to end up on the GSA price list. hahaha now, redhat jackbooting thugs who pretend to have something free and then beach customers, get to work rhel 3.0 has more bugs that a roach motel in thailand

http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux /core/1/i386/os/images/boot.iso

Q: Will Fedora Core be sold in retail?

A: Fedora Core will not be sold through the retail channel as a shrinkwrapped box. The rapid development pace we expect for Fedora Core doesn't suit retail distribution -- it is a lot of work to get a box product in and out of the channel, and retail isn't set up to efficiently handle software that is updated as often as every six months. Also, the creation of packaging and other materials that are necessary for retail significantly slows down the time to market, which means that users can't get the freshest bits when they are still truly fresh. Further information on the retail product line will be forthcoming this fall.

Your ignorance is showing. Fedora Core specifically does *not* include hundreds of duplicated packages.

Check out this thread on fedora-devel-list, someone complains about *only* having two desktop environments by default, redhat and community developers point out that this stuff should and will go into fedora extras.

Just face facts, for today's computers, 3 CDs is nothing. If you don't need all the desktop apps, i.e for my webserver which runs fedora, don't install them.

Now perhaps we can talk about debian with its multiple webserver, multiple mail servers (fedora core does have two, postfix & sendmail). etc.

Amazing, something that actually made me de-lurk on Slashdot...

Here is my letter to this guy:

From: Kevin B. McCarty <kmccarty@nospam.Princeton.EDU>
To: howard@princeton.edu
Subject: Your article in Syllabus (perspective from a Princeton graduate student)

Sir:

I am a graduate student in the Princeton University Physics Department. I came across your article regarding open source software on Syllabus Magazine's web site, in which you do a grave disservice to Princeton University's reputation of technical excellence. Allow me to elaborate.

You say, with a tad of sarcasm:

"These folks [open source software developers] are some of the same great people who are supposed to be working for you anyway, plus a smattering of teenagers too young to work at Redmond, hackers, virus creators, and a menagerie of others with whom you will feel great pride in entrusting your IT infrastructure."

I am interested, then, in how you feel about the Princeton University web servers at www.princeton.edu running Apache, the most well-known open source web server. Apparently [1], Apache has more than 2/3 of the web server market share on the Internet, so someone must trust these people. Of course, the fact that source code is available for open source projects may have something to do with this trust. By the way, how many open source viruses have you seen? (Microsoft Word macros don't count.)

[1] http://www.netcraft.com/

You say:

"We may have to give up project planning, quality control, coding standards, accountability, version control, and support, but it's FREE and we get the ability to modify the source code ourselves, something that is extremely dangerous to do, was discredited decades ago, and few people do anyway."

Really? Who discredited the ability to modify source code? Did I miss a Congressional report or something? I apologize for calling you dead wrong, but in fact the Linux kernel [2], one of the most successful open source projects in existence, has been continually updated and improved since its first release in 1991, all by people with an interest in changing source code. These "dangerous" modifications have strangely made Linux and its BSD Unix cousins more stable than any release of Windows. The open source software development process is self-regulating: stable, good software survives, while low-quality efforts are ignored and drop from the face of the Internet. It is too bad that mediocre commercial software does not do the same, since it is too well-supported by people who will not consider using anything they are not required to pay for.

[2] http://www.kernel.org/

You say:

"We either pay commercial software developers, pay to build it ourselves, or pay the even higher price to manage and maintain FREE open source software."

I don't suppose you are aware of the existence of companies who provide support for open source software. Believe it or not, it is possible to buy a support contract from most major Linux distributors, e.g., [3]. It is even possible to ask (politely) for FREE support on open source message boards, such as [4], where you will usually get far more helpful responses than the standard Microsoft "Have you tried rebooting? Reinstalling?".

[3] http://www.redhat.com/apps/commerce/
[4] http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/

You say:

"Another way to get free software is to have students develop our critical systems," and "You can also get free software developed by having your users develop it for you."

These are ridiculous straw man arguments. No sane system administrator would tell his/her students or users to develop their own softwa

Can you really call this dropping?
It claims to be a "...community-supported open source project...a proving ground for new technology that may eventually make its way into Red Hat products."
Seems that the support has changed, but Red Hat was always just one support source among many, anyway.
I'm surprised they don't market Cygwin more. Granted, they want you to buy GNU Pro, but a Cygwin for Dummies style book would likely be a way to spread the word.

RedHat didn't sell us out. The Fedora Project is The Right Thing.

Glad to see that there is at least one other person here who understands what the Fedora Project is and what it represents -- the start of a process of handing over of development to the community :-)

It will be a cold day in hell before I ever use Red Hat again, for enterprise or anything else. They have betrayed their base and mendaciously and cynically undermined Linux to justify this shame faced betrayal.

I have a different perspective, I think the opening up of the development of the Red Hat disto via the Fedora Project is a good thing.

The exchange value of a Fedora CD set (or any other Linux distro) is basically the cost of producing and shipping them, there is some money to be made there but not much.

I think this is why Red Hat are concentrating on selling services to businesses.

Fedora is called Fedora in part because of the merger with the Fedora Linux Project, a group who were producing 3rd party RPMs for machines running Red Hat and also to enable the free as in free beer distribution to be reproduced en mass by anyone without having the hassle of removing the Red Hat logo before burning the ISOs.

However Red Hat could do what Mozilla does, sell cheap Mozilla CDs or what OpenOffice.org does, link to people selling OpenOffice.org CDs. After all Red Hat still sells hats, stickers, t-shirts and posters!

I have been lurking and sometimes reading mail on the new Fedora lists and lots of cool stuff has been happening, PPC ports, offers to help on internationalisation, the inclusion of more packages, support for other updaters like apt and yum and even a legacy project to support old Red Hat versions is being started.

What is essentially happening here is that the free software mode of production is asserting its nature and getting more into the driving seat -- free software works best when it is developed in an open and free manner.

It will be a cold day in hell before I ever use Red Hat again, for enterprise or anything else. They have betrayed their base and mendaciously and cynically undermined Linux to justify this shame faced betrayal.

I have a different perspective, I think the opening up of the development of the Red Hat disto via the Fedora Project is a good thing.

The exchange value of a Fedora CD set (or any other Linux distro) is basically the cost of producing and shipping them, there is some money to be made there but not much.

I think this is why Red Hat are concentrating on selling services to businesses.

Fedora is called Fedora in part because of the merger with the Fedora Linux Project, a group who were producing 3rd party RPMs for machines running Red Hat and also to enable the free as in free beer distribution to be reproduced en mass by anyone without having the hassle of removing the Red Hat logo before burning the ISOs.

However Red Hat could do what Mozilla does, sell cheap Mozilla CDs or what OpenOffice.org does, link to people selling OpenOffice.org CDs. After all Red Hat still sells hats, stickers, t-shirts and posters!

I have been lurking and sometimes reading mail on the new Fedora lists and lots of cool stuff has been happening, PPC ports, offers to help on internationalisation, the inclusion of more packages, support for other updaters like apt and yum and even a legacy project to support old Red Hat versions is being started.

What is essentially happening here is that the free software mode of production is asserting its nature and getting more into the driving seat -- free software works best when it is developed in an open and free manner.

It will be a cold day in hell before I ever use Red Hat again, for enterprise or anything else. They have betrayed their base and mendaciously and cynically undermined Linux to justify this shame faced betrayal.

I have a different perspective, I think the opening up of the development of the Red Hat disto via the Fedora Project is a good thing.

The exchange value of a Fedora CD set (or any other Linux distro) is basically the cost of producing and shipping them, there is some money to be made there but not much.

I think this is why Red Hat are concentrating on selling services to businesses.

Fedora is called Fedora in part because of the merger with the Fedora Linux Project, a group who were producing 3rd party RPMs for machines running Red Hat and also to enable the free as in free beer distribution to be reproduced en mass by anyone without having the hassle of removing the Red Hat logo before burning the ISOs.

However Red Hat could do what Mozilla does, sell cheap Mozilla CDs or what OpenOffice.org does, link to people selling OpenOffice.org CDs. After all Red Hat still sells hats, stickers, t-shirts and posters!

I have been lurking and sometimes reading mail on the new Fedora lists and lots of cool stuff has been happening, PPC ports, offers to help on internationalisation, the inclusion of more packages, support for other updaters like apt and yum and even a legacy project to support old Red Hat versions is being started.

What is essentially happening here is that the free software mode of production is asserting its nature and getting more into the driving seat -- free software works best when it is developed in an open and free manner.

Am I the only RedHat fan who not only thinks this is a good idea, but is relieved that they're finally doing it?

The business model for Aunt Tillie desktop Linux just isn't there for 3 reasons:

1. Linux isn't easy and smooth enough for people who don't love the idea of Linux.
2. Linux doesn't have all the readily accessible functionality that normal people expect.
3. People who grok Linux are more inclined to obtain it for free than not.

I envision the first two points becoming invalid within a couple of years, but the last one isn't likely to change. Since the vast majority of desktop Linux users are also free riding (nothing wrong with that, it's what I do), making money off of the Linux desktop is just a dangerous game to be playing.

RedHat didn't sell us out. The Fedora Project is The Right Thing. If you don't know what that is, follow that link and don't return until you grok in fullness.

The average consumer doesn't like Windows, but they like it more than anything else because of what it can do. Linux is technically superior, of this I am sure, but until we can get the average consumer to like it more than Windows, we're not gonna sell it to them. RedHat's move to maintain profitability by pushing Enterprise Linux, coupled with the open development of the Fedora Project, is only going to accelerate this process by combining the best aspects of a profitable corporation and a loosely knit coalition of hackers.

Remember, we are striving for world domination here...

It makes business sense for Redhat to stop actively peddling a distribution geared towards home users, because it costs money to do that, and they're letting people download it for free. They do seem to still want to have something to do with the home market, however, and so they've got Fedora, although I personally don't think it will last or become much of a force within the community. I see other distros (community-assembled, perhaps) filling the whole that Redhat is making. So I guess it's sort of a noteable event, but probably in the end nothing more than a footnote.

Red Hat for the desktop is not going away. It is becoming Fedora. I have been using that since it came out and it is pretty nice. I think the Red Hat CEO made this comment because they are getting out of the desktop market for a while. It seems a little like a stab in the back. Of course the CEO was quick to mention how great Linux is as a server and that there still is the Red Hat Enterprise line. I do agree with the CEO that for the average user, MS Window is easier to use, especially with device support. Linux on the desktop is a good match for a "windows-power-user" though. I have been using Linux on the desktop for the past 5 year exclusively and really do prefer it over MS Windows.

Other than the lack of official pay-for tech support (which my guess is most home users didn't use), this is a good thing. Not only do we get RedHat's people working on packages, but we get the experience and time of the Fedora people, too. This will mean more packages, better packages, and more releases more often.

In exchange, RedHat will get some better packages for their enterprise distros, which will give them a stronger foothold in the enterprice market, which is a good thing for Linux fanatics everywhere.

The quality of the non-enterprise redhat release will not get worse, and we will presumably still see updates for the "old" redhat branches get pushed through Fedora, so those of us using 7.3, 8 or 9 in production environments will still get our openssh, bind, sendmail, whatever patches when we need them.

Let me see if I get this straight. The company from which I paid $40 to buy a box set of Red Hat Linux 9 is now saying their product is "not ready for the desktop"?

This is the same Linux with the swell GUI, Bluecurve; which, to quote the press release offers a "[c]onveniently organized, user-friendly desktop with numerous graphical enhancements and icons."

How about refunding me my $40 for no other reason that shame on you! -- hmmm?

Red Hat is not dropping desktop support. Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS is clearly aimed for the (corporate) desktop. What Red Hat is dropping is selling products to home users, as RHEL, the only product that Red Hat will be selling from now on, clearly isn't really targetted at those.

Possibly some developers will bring Fedora to Sparc.
I don't know of any concrete efforts yet, but it certainly seems possible (see the relevant entry on the FAQ page), given interested individuals with the proper knowledge.

Possibly some developers will bring Fedora to Sparc.
I don't know of any concrete efforts yet, but it certainly seems possible (see the relevant entry on the FAQ page), given interested individuals with the proper knowledge.

I shouldn't reply to my own posts, but Red Hat seemingly isn't "giving away" the Fedora trademark. They're just more permissive with it than with the "Red Hat" one, which they most likely couldn't afford to lose.

I shouldn't reply to my own posts, but Red Hat seemingly isn't "giving away" the Fedora trademark. They're just more permissive with it than with the "Red Hat" one, which they most likely couldn't afford to lose.

I don't call Fedora an abandonment.

See also:
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Support Options and Pricing
Product Comparison Chart

The only non-x86 (ia32 and ia64) supported systems are IBM z, i, p, and S/390 systems. And then, only at the highest ("Advanced Server") version. What once could be obtained for $49.95 at Best Buy (the boxed redhat set) is now $179 -- without any technical support; it's $299 if you want any support.

See also:
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Support Options and Pricing
Product Comparison Chart

The only non-x86 (ia32 and ia64) supported systems are IBM z, i, p, and S/390 systems. And then, only at the highest ("Advanced Server") version. What once could be obtained for $49.95 at Best Buy (the boxed redhat set) is now $179 -- without any technical support; it's $299 if you want any support.

Second, go check out Fedora.

Third, where you used to say 'up2date', start saying 'apt-get' or 'yum'.

Once you start using apt-get (or yum) for Red Hat *cough* I mean Fedora like you used to use up2date, you'll be grinning so hard, your face will cramp. :)

Chant the mantra baby, chant the mantra. "apt-get is good, apt-get is great, apt-get is good, apt-get is great...".

I'm beginning to think RedHat would have gotten much less negative reactions if they'd called it "RedHat Fedora" or something, instead of just "Fedora".

IANAL, however I think they have done this to enable anyone to copy and sell Fedora CDs :-)

See here for more info: Fedora Trademark Guidelines.

Yes, and if you read sites like Slashdot, you'll notice that RedHat is also providing the backbone for the Fedora Project which is essentially unsupported Red Hat. Hey, they will even provide ISOs and the bandwidth whereby they can be downloaded. Evil bastards.

They are not killing off their major project line, they are making it more free and thus ensuring it's long term sustaniability :-)

OK so you can't buy a Fedora 1 CD from RedHat, but now anyone can start a buisness selling Fedora CDs!

Spend some time looking at the Fedora web site...

No, it's not. To purchase RHEL WS basic, you must agree to the RHEL WS Basic (x86) Subscription agreement, which states, among other things, that "Customer expressly grants to Red Hat the right to audit Customer's facilities and records from time to time."

I would bet that Novell/Suse arent going to piss off all the developers like Red Hat has done.

Have you read any of the Fedora Email Lists? -- RedHat are not pissing-off developers, they are opening up the development process to developers and this is resulting is loads of cool stuff happening.

I'm somewhat shocked by the amount of FUD on /. about RedHat at the moment...

The Fedora 1 CDs will be out in a few days, it'll probably be the biggest bittorrent download ever and perhaps people will start to realise that what RedHat is doing is a good thing -- they are embracing and working with the community more than ever :-)

i don't know if this has been reported on /. yet. basically what its saying is that RH is dropping RH Linux in favour of Entperise and a "developer" version called Fedora.

funnily enough, i was thinking "oh, interesting. that leaves someone to pickup and seriously evolve the desktop platform if they decided not to concentrate on the server environment". then i refreshed slashdot and saw this SUSE news!

personally i think this is terrific. novell have excellent experience in the enterprise market from NetWare and their directory services. hopefully they can start to penetrate the desktop.

it sounds to me as if RH will find its place in the "appliance" market for such things as storage, web applications and security (system infrastructure) and SUSE/Novell will be well positioned for user-based infrastructure such as directory services, groupware and the desktop.

I'm not sure Red Hat has abondoned their desktop line at all. If they had, BlueCurve would be a sure waste of money, would it? The RH desktop is alive and kicking with RHEL WS, albeit perhaps not aimed at the home user anymore.

You can re-install that copy of RHES or RHAS on as many servers as you like
You either have not bought RHAS or you have not read the License Agreement
Or, more likely, are misleading the readers to make RedHat appear nicer than they are - I have seen this happen on Slashdot way too often to think it's a coincidence.

If you guys are so up in your panties about this move, go elsewhere for support. You can get updates elsewhere. I've successfully been maintaining servers in the 30 or 40 just using apt-get and kickstart -- for free.

Get started here:

Freshrpms.net
DAG RPMS
ATrpms
newrpms
KDE For Redhat/Fedora
JPackage
CCRMA (Karma)
Gstreamer
Kernel 2.6.0-test

And if you want up2date style GUI, get synaptic from ATrpms.

I was going to mod you down but decided to reply instead. I really would like to take issue with
Redhat has chosen to abandon its tens of thousands of box sales per year for a dozen "enterprise" contracts. Redhat was making way more selling cardboard boxes at Best Buy and Walmart, minus the cost of their bandwidth for free downloads, than they have ever made from 'enterprise linux.'

Please, back this up! I went over to the Investor Relations section of the Redhat site and had a look at the 2003 FY report. Please take a look at it for yourself. IANAA, however they seem to be doing much better in the Enterprise arena than in the Retail arena. N.B. As per their conventions I'm going to quote numbers in thousands.
They declare revenue as derived from either Subscription or Services. For FY 2003;
Enterprise Subscriptions + Services = 68,960(30,438 + 38,522 respectively)
Retail Subscriptions (No Services) = 14,833
Now split the cost of subscriptions 2/1 between Enterprise & Retail (Total: 8,625) and then take cost of servies into account. N.B. Subscription costs split is best guess assuming the subscriptions costs are distributed in proportion to revenue.
Costs are:
Enterprise: 24,288
Retail: 2,846
Net position is:
Enterprise: 44,672
Retail: 11,987
Then take a look at the trends over the three financial years and the money is in enterprise not retail, especially looking to the future. Redhat is a business and has to look to the market.
However, others have raised the issue of the effect that the Redhat move will have on perception in the marketplace. That remains to be seen but I would think that Redhat has a sufficiently strong image in the Enterprise market to cut loose the free offering from the core business. Continuing to work on Fedora should sustain sufficient goodwill, where the money is.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Support Options and Pricing

Red Hat's Enterprise Linux family of operating systems is available on a per-system, annual subscription basis. The subscriptions are offered in three editions: Basic, Standard, and Premium -- each with varying support levels and delivery options -- so you can choose the subscription combination that best meets the needs of your business.

For me and the company I work for, this means switching to something other than Fedora.

For me and the company I work for, this means switching to something other than Fedora.

• get os installed
  
  
• rpm or make
  
  
• play with system
  
  

• ohh what N bit of hardware do I have
  
  
• fdisk, what OS Disk type do I have?
  
  
• whats a sector?
  
  
• etc ...
  
  

• get os installed
  
  
• rpm or make
  
  
• play with system
  
  

• ohh what N bit of hardware do I have
  
  
• fdisk, what OS Disk type do I have?
  
  
• whats a sector?
  
  
• etc ...
  
  

Why?

Same reason I've been bitching about for months on slashdot (if you've read my comments, about 1 in 10 is bitching about being in the webhosting biz, and all of your customers wanting redhat, and having to tell them that it's not free anymore).

The name redhat is now worth money to them.

They want people to do exactly what is happening. They want people to call up and say "i want that thar red hat linux" because it's synonymous with linux, the same way office is synonymous with "microsoft office" at the managemen level, and at the average customer level.

So, now we say that we can get them redhat, but it's cheaper to run windows2003 web edition. By a good margin. Oh, and we now have to tell people running redhat 8.0 (which came out in, what, feb?) that the next time that they have a security problem with their 10 month old linux distro, they're SOL, because it's past it's end of line date.

I'm seriously pissed off at redhat. Enterprise my ass. For the same price as windows server 2003 web edition, you can get redhat enterprise, but *without support*. What the blue fuck are you paying for then? It's only the name.

Now, I know a lot of people are going to say "but but but but but". Arguement #1.) Management types want to pay a lot of money for an OS that runs on their big hard ware. Answer: I don't give a fuck. I want it for free, or next to free. I don't want support. I want it for $49.99, or $99.99, not goddamn $1249.99. Arguement #2.) It's GPL'd, so buy one copy and just put it on all your customer's computers. Answer: HAHA! Redhat is fucking you the same way Microsoft wants to fuck you - YOU'RE NOT BUYING SOFTWARE, YOU'RE BUYING A SUBSCRIPTION. More at http://www.redhat.com/licenses/rhel_us_3.html! You can't install it on more than one computer!
Arguement #3.) The source is free, download and compile it yourself. Answer: HAHA, you first, doogie howser. They give out the source, but I bet you can't just compile it all together! I bet you have to mess with and tweak and change --config-with-blah=18934 a billion times, and you'd still not be half way there.

Bottom line: RedHat has gotten popular enough that they're tired of being a good corporation, and, while they think they're spreading the good name of linux, what they're really doing is fucking the small business who relies on the name "redhat" for profit.

Cause, hey, folks. When Linux is more expensive than windows, who will buy it? Say what you will about stability and security, and I agree, but given the choice between redhat advanced server premium for $18,000 and a solution from the other side of the fense for $6000, who's manager is going to pick linux, especially when they heard it was supposed to be free?

HERE'S THE ANSWER, REDHAT: RELEASE YOUR PRODUCTS FOR FREE, AND OFFER SUPPORT FOR THEM OPTIONALLY. Do what you've been doing for years. Oh, but too late.

Crash and burn.

Here are a list of differences to clear things up.

Oops, my bad... looking in the Red Hat Migration FAQ https://rhn.redhat.com/help/rhlmigrationfaq/ I see my questions are answered:

1. Subscription channels will stay up for a while after April 2004 but will have no new content
2. Beginning 11/03/03 (today) subscriptions will NOT be autorenewed; credit card won't be charged again
3. As far as I can tell Fedora will have nothing to with RHN, but I might be wrong as this is very confusing

Well, it looked like a marketing document trying to bait-and-switch you to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but there actually was some useful information toward the end.

They really don't want to leave anyone high and dry. They have made sure that there is a product for everyone. However, while the Professional Workstation looks very nice, I'm always a sucker for !NEW! & !FREE! software. I think I'll always be drawn to Fedora.

http://fedora.redhat.com/download/

That's just flat-out wrong. Just look here and notice that Michael Johnson, who speaks on behalf of Red Hat, announcing "The next major change will almost certainly be maintaining packages in public CVS". So how exactly is the communicty having access taken away?