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.'"

Comments

"Red Hat Artwork"

[soren42]

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."

Re:"Red Hat Artwork"

[Lord Kholdan]

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."

Unfortunately what needs improvement is the GUIs of the programs, not the desktop itself. Even the best desktop is no use if 2/3 of programs have awful GUI or are commandline only.

Re:"Red Hat Artwork"

[cgranade]

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.

Re:"Red Hat Artwork"

[ShinmaWa]

This problem, however, is beyond the control of Red Hat or any other distro.

Yeah, its a shame, too. If only there was a license that would allow people to see the source then modify/redistribute it as they see fit.....

Re:"Red Hat Artwork"

[Overly Critical Guy]

Really? When I right-click on something, nothing happens (Pre-1995 Windows).

Jesus, that was over eight years ago.

Single-clicking opens something (Post-IE4 Windows).

No, it doesn't. Only if you turn that option on.

Keyboard shortcuts vary with the application and are subject to the whim of the application developer; CTRL-N is a new email in Outlook, but a new database in Lotus Notes.

90% of applications follow standard shortcut procedure, but there are always the exceptions, which aren't the fault of Windows consistency.

MS's devkits include standard icon sets
Icons are also subject to the whims of the developer. In the 90s, I could always tell when a new version of Visual Basic had been released, because Windows shareware would have new and inexplicable icons.

Um...huh? What does the changing of some default dev icon have to do with the interface consistency? Most apps use their own custom icons.

Microsoft's user interface is not consistent over time. It is not consistent between applications, except those from the same vendor (and even then it's questionable). What seems like consistency and logic in the UI is really a huge installed base and a decade of acclimatization.

Completely false. Windows is considered a bastion of homogenized consistency (good or bad), especially compared to the hell that is the Linux desktop attempt.

No more "Red Hat Linux" product.

[Mr_Icon]

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.

History of Red Hat/Fedora

[jbellis]

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?

Re:History of Red Hat/Fedora

[MSG]

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.

What about patent-protected multimedia and DMCA?

[JoeBuck]

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?

Debian

[jdavidb]

Sounds like RedHat is trying to achieve some of the advantages of Debian. I'll welcome this, although I won't switch any machines over right away.

It'll be nice to get new software packages and rpms. I think apt-rpm has illustrated the need and the market for this. RedHat also has several great advantages over Debian, notably the installation process and more up to date software, so this could really revitalize them.

With projects like Linux From Scratch and Gentoo, distribution-building has gone fomr being an arcane art of wizards to something the community can do, and I'm glad RedHat wants to partner with the community in doing this.

Re:Debian

[SwansonMarpalum]

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.

Re:What about patent-protected multimedia and DMCA

[FattMattP]

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.

Let me be the first to say...

[Anonymous Coward]

..."hats off" to these guys.

Next objects of merger:

[burgburgburg]

Derby, Bowler, Porkpie and Kangol.

Re:Does that mean apt will be included?

[Majix]

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.

PGP key management

[tarvin]

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?

Re:Will this improve Red Hat usability + friendlie

[Resaurtus]

One of the main problems you are having is that you are buying hardware that wasn't supported at the time. When buying hardware you want to run Linux on, check to see that it supports it. If you don't, you will have problems and the vendor (correctly in this case) sees that that lack of Linux support makes no difference to it's sales.

I know this doesn't sound ideal, but you're really in the same boat with any other OS, even Windows. (Some hardware works only with NT/2000 or 9x, not both, plus old hardware often loses support.) Buying hardware without checking driver status leads to pain.

I don't think Fedora can make this better, only the hardware vendors can.

As for documentation, try checking out the RedHat manuals. That and a good introduction to the Unix command line and vi/emacs should cover you.

And what about KDE for Red Hat?

[Jungle guy]

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.

Re:Releases

[Alan Cox]

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

Re:Please tell us how?

[Alan Cox]

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]"