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Red Hat Linux Project Merges With Fedora

Posted by simoniker on from the indiana-jones-delighted dept.

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.'"

12 of 293 comments (clear)

  1. "Red Hat Artwork" by soren42 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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."
    1. Re:"Red Hat Artwork" by cgranade · · Score: 3, Interesting

      True. Look at OSX and XP (Aqua v. Luna) if you for even one second doubt that prettiness is important. Why else would Apple and Microsoft each spend millions of dollars reinventing their visual styles?

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      #define DRM chmod 000

    2. Re:"Red Hat Artwork" by cgranade · · Score: 4, Interesting

      This does rely on a consistant desktop, tho. Much as I hate Windows, MS has a very consistant standard for UI. Right-clicking brings up context menus (which I love), single-clicking selects, double-clicking activates, C+c copies, C+x cuts, C+v pastes, C+n is New, a disk indicates save, a folder indicates open, etc. In fact, MS's devkits (VB, VC++, etc) include standard icon sets so that developers can fit in to the Windows styling easier.

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      #define DRM chmod 000

  2. Does that mean apt will be included? by Kynde · · Score: 3, Interesting

    But isn't up2date the service they plan on making money with?

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    1 Earth is warming, 2 It's us, 3 it's royally bad, 4 we need to take action NOW
  3. No more "Red Hat Linux" product. by Mr_Icon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

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    If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
    1. Re:No more "Red Hat Linux" product. by zerocool^ · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I beg to differ with you on this one... I think redhat will still be the commercial one for at least the next release.

      Which, by the way, no one knows if it will be called Trendy "Red Hat X" or if they will stick with Plain "Red Hat 10".

      Having said that, good lord, quality control will be a godsend in redhat RPM's. If for no other reason than to make sure that THE SOFTWARE IN ONE RELEASE IS ACTUALLY COMPATABLE WITH THE OTHER SOFTWARE IN THE SAME RELEASE. I pray for the day that redhat actually tests their software, to make sure they don't do something completely retarted like redhat 8 again. For example: Bundling apache 2.0.x with mod_perl that works with apache 1.3.x, but NOT with 2.0.x.

      Thank you, fedora, for adding quality control. Redhat may only care that it looks pretty, and I know that they want us to spend $4000 on RH-enterprise, but it's important to have standards, and releaseing software *after* testing and *after* checking to make sure that it works at all is pretty important.

      ~Will //gentoo fan

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      sig?
  4. Never heard of it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?

  5. What about patent-protected multimedia and DMCA? by JoeBuck · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

  6. hmm . . . Sounds like Mandrake, to me by Idou · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "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.

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    Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
  7. Re:Debian by SwansonMarpalum · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

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    "Give away the stone, let the oceans take and transmutate this cold and faded anchor." - Maynard James Keenan
  8. Sorry if this is a dumb question... by ngunton · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    Anyone have any insight on that issue, which is the biggest one by far at present for me regarding RedHat?

    TIA /Neil

  9. Re:Releases by Alan+Cox · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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