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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.'"
I think it's interesting that there is what appears to be a "core" part of the Fedora team focused on artwork.
This, alone, is an excellent move by RedHat to compete with Microsoft in a space they clearly lead the market - desktop UI.
As the Fedora site says, "Making things look pretty is the name of the game."
"Adventure? Excitement? A Jedi craves not these things."
But isn't up2date the service they plan on making money with?
1 Earth is warming, 2 It's us, 3 it's royally bad, 4 we need to take action NOW
Red Hat Linux 9 was the last in the line. Instead of being "Red Hat Linux 10" it's going to be "Fedora Linux 1[.0]" when it's released within the next few weeks/months.
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
I have never heard of this project before and I am curious as to the reason for its existence. It would seem that the Red Hat Corporation has the same function as the Red Hat Project/Fedora so, what is the point of the redundant project?
Fedora currently distributes packages like xmms-mp3, mplayer and ogle, which violate US patents, as well as the DMCA. Will those packages now go away?
First, my disclaimer: I am a newbie to *ix. I am confident that I can handle any reasonable system administration task in Windows and/or DOS, as I have dealt with those OSes since 1990. That said, I hope this new merger will improve the OS in terms of stability and user friendliness.
My experience with Linux has been one week of trying to make the GUI work with RH7.2 and my Radeon 8500. I believe that at that time XFree86 was just plain incompatible at that time, though I'd bet some uber dudes made it work. I couldn't, and if there is no GUI, then it is not the kind of OS I want to use at home. Later I tried RH7.3, and X worked, but with no hardware 3D acceleration. Tux Racer was a slide show. Since I will not pay Xi for drivers so I can game at home, and ATI's binaries didn't work well enough for me, I abandoned 7.3. I skipped RH8 entirely because by then I had sold the 8500 and installed a 9700 Pro (love that card!). So now I have RH9 up and running, ATI's catalyst 3.7 drivers working reasonably well, and RTCW:Enemy Territory and UT2003 working great, so I can say that I believe I now have an OS acceptable for my home use.
As for *ix, I know there exists a command line prompt, and the operator can do many things provided he knows what to do there. I am not one of these people. I am the guy who needs a HOW-TO page to use rpm. I want to know how to use bash and the like. I want to know how to make KDE and GNOME do exactly what I want. I want to know how to install drivers correctly and understand the steps. I want to be as proficient in Linux as I am in windows.
That said, I do have a Linux book--The Red Hat Linux Bible (for RH7.2) It is a comprehensive book, with enough information for a beginner to install RH Linux and not much else. I'd say that unless you are already familiar with Linux and similar OSes that 95% of the material in that book is going to be over your head. About the only useful newbie information I found was installing RH. I understand that not everyone is going to use the same procedure, but for me, it was pretty much insert disk 1 and follow the prompts.
Don't get me wrong-- while convering installation is a great idea-- maybe some easy to understand tips on configuring X would be nice. Would you believe that changing the desktop resolution is covered in an obscure paragraph some 300 pages into the book? How about changing the refresh rate? I'll bet I'll have to edit my config file, but perhaps someone made it possible through the GUI. You Linux uber coders did that, didn't you?
How about sound cards? I'd bet that millions of computers sold in the last 4 years are capable of 4- or more channel audio. I don't know how to activate the rear channels. (Disclaimer-- i accidentally got them to work in RH7.3)
Guess what else? I sure would like my logitech 3 button + wheel mouse to work correctly. When connected via PS2, the only selection that works is 2 button wheel mouse. Changing to the USB port, RH discovers it nicely (I was floored to see the mouse discovered when booting!), but I have no idea what the thumb button does nor do I know how to change it.
My guess is that those of you who have read this whole thing are saying RTFM. Well, sure, I'd love to RTFM. Just give me a manual I can understand! Man pages are not good reading for the beginner, and unless you have a laptop, hard to take with you when you need a break from getting the fvcking screen resolution fixed.
Ah, well... just venting. I'll probably have to take a class at the community college, as none of my friends use Linux. Me, I am bored with windows, and want to be ready for the time when it is not worth the effort to get an unliscensed wopy of windows to work. I'll see if I can find a copy of RH9 Unleashed... thanks for the review!
"The goal of The Fedora Project is to work with the Linux community to build a complete, general purpose operating system exclusively from open source software."
Yet another example of Mandrake innovation influencing and improving the industry.
I fully support Red Hat's push to be more open and community based. However, if you are interested in a more mature implementation of such ideas, please visit mandrakeclub.com.
Funny how Mandrake started out as a knock-off of Red Hat and now Red Hat appears to sometimes follow Mandrake's lead.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Having recently swapped over to Gentoo from Red Hat there are three advantages to it that are fundamentally against the Red Hat machine: 1) Strong, FLAT LEVEL community. People in Gentoo help each other and there is no official Gentoo support facility. Likewise as Gentoo isn't trying to make money off of support contracts they actively work with the community forums and support them. I think this was the big thing that made me switch. 2) Streamlined "distribution". Gentoo is a meta-distribution engineered for helping you build your own distribution package from the ground up, letting you control what will be supported by the binaries you generate yourself. RedHat has a monolithic attempt to support everything out of the box. 3) Portage vs. Up2Date. Both can serve similar purposes (though portage will do more than up2date as most anyone who's used gentoo can tell you) in that portage lets you keep software up to date as up2date also does. Portage is a free service that is integrated into the heart of Gentoo. Up2date you have to pay for more than one machine (and have to 'pay' with demographic information every 60 days). If you're confident with Linux it can really be a nobrainer.
"Give away the stone, let the oceans take and transmutate this cold and faded anchor." - Maynard James Keenan
Will this mean that security updates will still be available for RedHat 7.3 after it is End of Life'd at the end of this year? If not then I will still be switching to Debian when that happens.
/Neil
Anyone have any insight on that issue, which is the biggest one by far at present for me regarding RedHat?
TIA
I completely agree with everything you just said. I started back with DOS, moved through every version of Windows, and am sought out by friends and family to take care of computer problems. I make no claim to be a "computer expert" as they label me, but I can do just about anything I need to do, and have no trouble figuring out anything that pops up. I bought the Red Hat Linux Bible (9.0), and installed it. I found myself completely lost. Sure, the book got it set up, but I have no idea how to do anything - from navigating directories to updating drivers. I abandoned it after a week, and until I can find some sort of useful guide, I can't see myself investing more time in dead ends. I really wanted to get into Linux and ditch Microsoft permanently, but I was heartily let down by useability.
Once I know what I'm doing, I'll switch my family and friends, but it doesn't look like that will happen any time soon.
GL
I highly recommend looking at SuSE, I think it addresses nicely the issues you're having, particularly in the last 2 releases (8.1 and 8.2). SuSE 8.1 was what finally let me ditch Windows for good, with no regrets.
Yast (Yet Another Setup Tool) provides easy GUI administration of almost everything (the one notable exception is the innitial setup of Samba, but once you have it going it has it's own web-based GUI). X configuration especially has been greatly simplified. I doubt it will solve your mouse problem, though (see below).
Important: spend the money to actually buy the Pro boxed version, as the printed manuals it comes with are easily the most useful Linux books in my collection (which numbers in the low 'teens). Suse doesn't offer ISOs to download, but you can install directly from their ftp site. It's pretty simple to do, and they provide boot images (4 floppies or a 16MB iso) to kick it off. Typically it takes a month or so after the release of the box for the new version to show up on ftp. Again, for a newbie, I highly recommend putting up the cash for the Suse Pro box.
Guess what else? I sure would like my logitech 3 button + wheel mouse to work correctly. When connected via PS2, the only selection that works is 2 button wheel mouse. Changing to the USB port, RH discovers it nicely (I was floored to see the mouse discovered when booting!), but I have no idea what the thumb button does nor do I know how to change it.
I think you are perhaps a bit confused about what you actually have. On most wheel mice the wheel also is clickable. That makes the wheel your 3rd button (aka middle button), which in Linux is typically "copy/paste". You should be able to highlight text anywhere and click on some other location with the wheel/middle button to copy/paste the highlighted text to the new location. This much should be no problem for any Linux distro (although sometimes you have to add a line to XF86Config to get the wheel working).
What you actually have, I believe, is a 4-button + wheel mouse*. I'm in a similar situation with a 5-button + wheel MS Intellimouse. I haven't been able to figure out how to bind these, and I have looked. The bad news is they do occasionally do something, though I'm rarely sure exactly what. I think most of the time they just replicate the functionality of one of the other buttons. There are rumors that the buttons can be bound to specific tasks, but I haven't been able to find any real info, and I strongly suspect that it would have to be set up individually for each app you wanted to use it in.
* XF86 treats wheel-up and wheel-down as buttons, typically buttons 4 and 5, so it would actually consider your mouse to be 6-button. XF86Config needs to have ZAxisMapping bound to buttons 4 and 5 in order for the wheel to work (this would be found in the "mouse" section, which is usually towards the bottom). I doubt this info will specifically help you solve the problem, but it should at least help you properly pose the question on IRC or USENET (I recommend USENET, as I've found it to be friendlier, but only if you don't post rants like the one I'm responding to).
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Red Hat Enterprise Linux - long support, aimed at maximum stability (jn the sense of predictability especially), with various pricing options from the low end to 24x7 support (its not just a $2000 a year deal!). Aimed mostly at business.
Fedora Project - 2 or 3 releases a year, and as many easy ways of getting it and its updates we can think of - including hopefully stuff like BitTorrent. I'm even kicking around an idea for some wireless "FedoraPoints". After all many people who have wireless but can't share their internet connection due to ISP rules will probably have local Fedora mirrors for their own use too.
Time for drive by upgrading