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Red Hat Linux Project Merges With Fedora

An anonymous reader writes "Red Hat has announced a merger of its Red Hat Linux Project with Fedora Linux, a group that has specialized in providing high-quality RPM packages for Red Hat. According to Red Hat, 'The Fedora Project is a Red-Hat-sponsored and community-supported open source project. It is also a proving ground for new technology that may eventually make its way into Red Hat products.' From the FAQ: 'Rather than being run through product management as something that has to appear on retail shelves on a certain date, Fedora Core will be released based on schedules, set by a steering committee, that will be open and accessible to the community, as well as influenced by the community.'"

15 of 293 comments (clear)

  1. History of Red Hat/Fedora by jbellis · · Score: 4, Informative
    Oddly (for something one link away from the Fedora main page), it has nothing to do with Fedora. Still, the Red Hat timeline under History is an interesting read, particularly for someone like me who only used relatively modern versions of Red Hat. (Starting with 5.0 in my case.)

    Still wouldn't mind seeing a history of Fedora per se though. Seems like it's a more open, community-oriented Rawhide. Is that accurate?

    1. Re:History of Red Hat/Fedora by MSG · · Score: 4, Informative

      Seems like it's a more open, community-oriented Rawhide. Is that accurate?

      No, it's more like a more open, community-oriented GNU/Linux distribution. Rawhide will continue to exist as an unstable repository of packages that are being tested (as it's always been). Fedora will apparently be replacing the traditional "Red Hat Linux". Red Hat's "products" will include their Enterprise Linux distributions, developer tools, database product, etc.

  2. Re:What about patent-protected multimedia and DMCA by FattMattP · · Score: 5, Informative
    Although not an offical answer, the Fedora web site says
    This merger necessitates the removal of certain problematic packages due to licensing issues.
    So the answer might likely be yes.
    --
    Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
  3. Re:What about patent-protected multimedia and DMCA by rute20740 · · Score: 3, Informative

    From looking at the package list, they are not listed.

  4. Re:Does that mean apt will be included? by Majix · · Score: 4, Informative

    The new up2date already available in rawhide and to be included in the next beta already includes APT and Yum repository support. The yum tool (very apt-get like) will also be included with the base distribution in addition to up2date.

    AFAIK Red Hat will not sell support for the Fedora distribution. If you want support go with the Enterprise products, of which I'm sure we'll see more of in the future.

  5. PGP key management by tarvin · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Red Hat/Fedora merger sounds OK. One thing, though: In the past, it has been very difficult to verify the PGP signatures in Fedora's packages: The packager's public keys were hard - sometimes impossible - to find. I have looked through the fedora.redhat.com web site, hoping to find out how they plan to manage PGP-keys and signatures in the new Fedora distribution, but I couldn't find any information. Does anyone know?

  6. Re:Why the name Fedora? by J.+J.+Ramsey · · Score: 3, Informative

    Because the red hat in the Red Hat logo is a fedora.

  7. Re:Does that mean apt will be included? by warmcat · · Score: 3, Informative

    Apologies for the blatent plug, but you might be interested in up3date, which is free in the GPL, money and survey senses, and lets you autoupdate as a cron job from Redhat FTP mirrors or set up your own local HTTP mirrors for supporting multiple machines.

  8. And what about KDE for Red Hat? by Jungle+guy · · Score: 4, Informative

    It is another community-oriented project that makes high-quality RPMs for people that have Red Hat Linux, but think Red Hat have messed up bad with KDE. Also, they allowed me to upgrade from KDE 3 to 3.1 using Red Hat 8, without breaking my system. Check these guys out at kde-redhat.sourceforge.net.

  9. Does this mean no more "Pink Tie" nonsense? by J.+J.+Ramsey · · Score: 3, Informative

    Copying myself from OSNews . . .

    From http://fedora.redhat.com/about/name.html:

    The rules for using the Fedora trademark will be generally more permissive than the rules for using the Red Hat trademarks. The separate name and trademark are necessary in order to have different rules for using the trademarks. The rules for using the "Fedora" trademark will be available before the first release of Fedora Core.

    I wish Red Hat weren't so non-committal here, but does this mean that instead of CheapBytes selling Pink Tie, LinuxCD selling Blue Jacket, and OSDisc selling Red Tux, every third-party CD Vendor will just call it Fedora?

  10. At least now Red Hat will have decent KDE packages by Roberto · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://kde-redhat.sf.net

  11. Re:"Red Hat Artwork" by iceT · · Score: 3, Informative

    MS has a very consistant standard for UI.

    Bullshit. Microsoft USED to have a very consistant UI. Gradually, they are corrupting individual packages to make them INCONSISTANT.

    Example: Word vs. Excel.

    Open 2 word documents. You get 2 items on the task bar. And each window is totally seperate. Use the upper-right close button to close one window, then then other.

    Now, open 2 EXCEL documents.. Two windows... Two icons on the task bar. Click the upper-right close button on one of the windows... BOTH WINDOWS CLOSE>

    Excel has always had a dependent window model, each spreadsheet was a sub window of the master window (a la program manager in Windows 3.1), but, users complained because each sheet didn't show up in the task bar.. So they completely trashed the dependent window model for Excel, and now window-management between Word and Excel have different behaviors.

    There are other consistancies in double-clicking in windows explorer, and etc..

    --
    -- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
  12. Re:Sorry if this is a dumb question... by Alan+Cox · · Score: 3, Informative

    The goal is to provide as many routes for distribution as we can - both of ISO files and updates for the current version - which in generally will be following the mainstream, so if sendmail 8.foo has a bug and they put out 8.foo+1, expect the path to be an update to foo+1. We can do this with Fedora while with RHEL you have to do careful backports of specific fixes.

    With regard to custom stuff the best model may well be to set up your own local YUM repository o the extra's you maintain - either for yourself or for the world to use. Turning a collection of RPM files into a yum repository is nice and easy.

  13. Re:Please tell us how? by Alan+Cox · · Score: 4, Informative

    You need an update tool like apt. Upgrade the redhat-release package by hand and the tiny number of bits you need to get apt-rpm for the new version installed (its about 10-12 packages). Then just tell apt/yum/.. to update your box and wait.

    You don't get the automatic migration and addition of extra goodies that the installer does but in general it works fine and for anyone with a little knowledge adding a few packages on top by hand is not hard.

    Funnily enough the new rawhide up2date has the option "--upgrade-to-release=[version]"

  14. Re:No more "Red Hat Linux" product. by MSG · · Score: 3, Informative

    I was shocked to see them dropping mature popular window managers (fvwm et al), and classics like xtetris and xevil, as well as UNIX staples like fortune.

    In all cases, it is because these programs conflict with the goal of selling the Redhat distro as a business desktop system, with minimum variations between installations and nothing "non-professional"


    Actually, xtetris and fortune were both dropped for licensing reasons. Tetris is copyrighted, and Red Hat doesn't have the rights to distribute it. Fortune doesn't have copyrights to a large portion of the quotes in the standard databases. These items, along with mp3 software support were dropped as Red Hat (and everyone else) becomes more aware of the property issues that have from time to time been ignored.