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New Community-Run RPM-based Distribution
KainX writes "As an alternative to the Red Hat-controlled Fedora project, the community-led cAos Foundation decided to create a fully community-built, community-controlled, RPM-based distribution whose foundation would be a self-hosting, self-sufficient core with a 3-5 year support lifetime. The first stable, production-worthy core has now been officially released! Download an ISO from a mirror and try it out."
Fedora Core 4 which should be coming out soon.
What does the lifecycle determine? It sounds like the distro is built to be constantly maintained, similar to Gentoo. Or does it mean that in 3-5 years it will be so outdated, that you'll be thrilled to upgrade?
No problem if they're trying to scratch their itch, but seriously, why is this needed? There are plenty of alternatives to redhat and more than enough community-based distributions - debian and most of its derivatives for starters. Why would they choose to go with rpm?
I am trolling
Who will win?
Its stupid. I'm all for diversity, but all we hear about is "XYZ Linux has been released. It is based on ABC, which is in turn based on foobarfish." Its absolute crap. I'm sorry, but It's got to the point where the diversity is leading to a smattering of good developers being on each distribution, rather than have 5 or 6 *really good* distributions, with a load of awesome developers helping it get better.
Sort it out!
Yeah, it's neat and Hacker-cool, but don't make me write a proposal recommending the installation of a distro pronounced "Chaos". Even if I really wanted to use it, I just couldn't.
Does it suck that middle managers make decisions around these things without strong rationale? Yes.
Is that the way things work? Yes.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
They're claiming that they're going to support a 3-5 year support lifecycle. That is unheard of for a community-based distribution! I would love to see these guys do well, and hope they really can stick to their support lifecycle.
I always enjoy hearing about new community-based distributions. It will be a bit strange having an RPM-based distribution out there, but now we have YUM that provides the required functionality that RPM lacks, such as automatic dependency resolution, ala portage or apt.
Why do you think there are so many DEB based distros out there today? Because Debian is free? So is Fedora, isn't it? Maybe it's the packaging is better than RPM.
Why do you think there are so many RPM based distros out there today? Because Fedora is free? So is Debian, isn't it? Maybe it's(sic) the packaging is better than DEB.
Why are all the RPM based distros shipping with their own cobbled version of apt-get?
How is RPM based apt-get cobbled? Please explain.
Why didn't Gentoo use RPM?
Gentoo didn't use DEB, either. Your point?
Slackware still isn't RPM based and they are doing well enough thank you.
Slackware was around long before RPM. Again, your point?
The reason is simple, because that's where the developers are. Look at some of the most active open source APPS and you'll see that they release their product in 2 or 3 forms... RPM, GZ source and maybe a binary. I'm all for a better package manager... but I think that developers have decided that RPM is better... at least easier to distribute their apps in.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
I was responding to the question "Why do you think there are so many RPM based distros out there today?" that didn't exist in the original post.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
I've been FC2 when it got released but I got tired of it so I got RHEL clone, CentOS. I remember back then when CentOS was hosted by the cAos community. By the way cPanel added support for cAos 2 -> cPanel?
Cheers, AresXP
I'd like to see a source based distro that relied on Autopackage for it's application myself... You'd let your libraries, the kernel, userland, X, Gnome/KDE, and low level OS type software be custom compiled ala Gentoo, and then for all your software like Firefox, Gimp, Mplayer, etc you would use Autopackages. It would be quite a challenge to create, but it would be well worth it...Here are a few further thoughts I've had on it.
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
What fundemental flaws are these? Please don't bring up debian. Debian's package manager uses .deb files which are directly equivalent to rpms.
One, stop trolling. Two, somebody needs to mod this troll down.
c id=12547628
Three, read this: http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=149694&
Four, what makes DEB's "just work" is policy, not technology. An RPM-based distribution with as anal a policy as Debian's would "just work" too.
Michael Jennings | HPC Systems Engineer, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab | Author, Eterm (eterm.org)
Please don't continue to support a packaging system that has fundamental flaws to it.
:-)
Please don't post ridiculous unfounded statements about technology you don't comprehend. If you want to discuss RPM from a technical point of view, do so, but don't just make untrue statements with neither evidence nor explanation attached.
Why are all the RPM based distros shipping with their own cobbled version of apt-get? Maybe it's the packaging concept is better than RPM.
We do not use apt. You really should try to know what you're talking about before you post. You'll look a lot less silly.
Why didn't Gentoo use RPM?
For the same reason they didn't use DEB/dpkg: Because they wanted a source-based packaging model similar to FreeBSD's ports system. It has nothing to do with either RPM or DEB except that neither fills that role.
Slackware still isn't RPM based and they are doing well enough thank you.
Clearly your definition of "doing well enough" differs quite a bit from mine.
I'm getting a little tired of all these distros popping up every two weeks claiming to be the latest and greatest since sliced bread.
We claim nothing of the sort. We fill a specific role: a community-driven, RPM-based distribution that is not controlled by a company with a vested interest in not allowing it to compete with enterprise-class distributions.
I don't even thing the facade of community based means a whole lot these days.
If "community-based" means nothing to you, then by all means, use something else. But there are many for whom it has a significant meaning, and we exist for them.
Michael Jennings | HPC Systems Engineer, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab | Author, Eterm (eterm.org)
Claiming what? Actually the cAos Foundation has been very quitely doing their thing for about 2 years now. There is no hype about it, and the mentality is that we are doing this because this is what we need. If someone else can get value from it, then great! Appearantly you have the wrong idea about the developers of the cAos Foundation. I for one can tell you that we are rather modest, and just trying to share our work with the community.
I don't even thing the facade of community based means a whole lot these days. There's been a few good ones with a fundamental approach that's different, but not a lot.
I am unclear what you mean the "facade" of community. We have multiple developers and contributors in the project. We welcome members of the community to actually maintain packages in the distro. We are completly open in our build methods and CVS tree... Decisions are made via the package maintainers and core developers themselves. I see it as reality, not a facade.
If you evaluate our approach, you might see that we are doing somethings that are in fact different. Like the use of RPM in a community maintained distro, also our build system, community involvement ideologies, and segreation of a core static ABI from the extended OS package maintainers.
Are you saying that RPM is flawed because it doesn't automatically handle dependencies? That is like saying that deb is flawed because it doesn't handle dependencies.
Apples and Oranges comparison.
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
I used to think that because all devs released their binaries as RPM that RPM distros were the way to go too. I've since learned that they don't bother releasing DEBs because somebody's already maintaining a DEB package for them already, and it's in the Debian/Ubuntu/* repository. Devs only release their RPMs because Redhat won't host them.
I don't bother releasing DEB's because I don't have a system to build them on, nor would I want one. The Debian packager for Eterm is quite competent and very responsive, but even if he weren't, I would not package Eterm for Debian myself under any circumstances. Nor would I package for Gentoo, Slackware, Ubuntu, or any other distribution I don't run.
Developers don't usually package DEB's not because they're already packaged, but because third-party DEB's are largely useless.
Michael Jennings | HPC Systems Engineer, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab | Author, Eterm (eterm.org)
but I think that developers have decided that RPM is better... at least easier to distribute their apps in.
I don't think it has a damn thing to do with developers deciding "RPM is better". It has a lot more to do with how popular RPM is. More people run Redhat than Debian, or DEB-based distros, and the people who run Debian (mostly) are more likely to figure out how to add an RPM than Redhat users are to add a DEB.
Millions of Win32 developers around the world aren't developing for Windows because it's better (some are, but most have better perception than that).
Riiight. Go have fun installing a Red Hat RPM on Mandrake or vice-versa. Or just dependency hell Red Hat puts you in with it's own packages. The package system shouldn't allow per-file dependencies, it just causes dependency hell.
Other Debian-based distros are generally fairly anal about staying compatible with Debian. There isn't a lot in any Debian-based distro that you can't use in any other Debian-based distro. If you get a .deb and you're on a Debian-derived system, odds are that .deb will Just Work(tm). You might have to apt-get a few packages, but at least everybody uses the same package names in the .deb world and can't do per-file dependencies, so it's one extra command instead of an afternoon.
Your comment falsely assumes RPM-based distros don't think twice about forking the package standard at the drop of a hat and package maintainers don't think it's a good idea to depend on a random obscure file instead of a package, or if it is a package, the same name for the package as what everyone else calls it.
Help us build a better map!
Apt and yum and yast don't solve fundamental problems with the way developers treat dependencies in RPM or distros forking the package format or package naming and versioning without rhyme or reason.
Help us build a better map!
cAos web site is running on a non free CMS called Rife. Before [or after] you mod me a troll, look at the number of mature free alternatives CMS stystems out there.
Caos is made by the folks who maintain the CentOS rebuild of RHEL. If it was anyone else, I'd have to agree with you, but I think their main concern is having a Red Hat-like distro that's both fresh and supported while being a little less dependent on Red Hat than CentOS is.
You can install apt and synaptic on RPM based distributions, and use them safely so long as the packages are built for that distribution. A lot of Red Hat users go here at some time or another. You can also install RPM's on a DEB based distribution, or use a utility called "alien" to more or less convert most RPM packages into DEB packages.
RPM's are supposedly more flexible than they used to be. I'm sure they're still inferior to DEB's, but it doesn't matter if they work. Probably their biggest reason for choosing RPM is that they already have a ton of experience working with them.
Do you have an automated installation infrastructue like kickstart (or possibly even just a reimplemented kickstart) ?
It can get pretty hard installing Debian debs on Ubuntu. You get vague errors like "X depends on Y which will not be installed". If it has all the right versions of all the packages it needs, then why not? And why did I have to study the apt source to find out? I've installed RPM's on on a DEB based system with less trouble. The main reason packages don't work across distributions often has little to do with the package format. Often their dependencies demand higher version numbers than are really needed, or they make distribution specific assumptions.
With both DEB and RPM based distros, I've often found it easier to just install things from the source, if the package management utilities are going to bitch about problems that don't really matter and disobey me even when I tell them to force. As technically superior as DEB's may be to RPM's, they both suck ass in an imperfect world with imperfect packages.
I don't believe RPM has fundamental flaws (compared to DEB). The examples you provided are mostly anecdotal and don't explain exactly why RPM is flawed.
Debian is more popular compared to Fedora probably more because Fedora is new, while Debian has been around for 10+ years.
If the .deb packaging was inferior why is this the selection of linspire/lindows, unbuntu? They seem rather successful distros right now.
Why is RPM picking up a packaging model from .deb? Isn't copying the highest form of flattery?
Gentoo didn't use DEB. My point isn't a pro-debian packaging system but that the newer distros of the last several years have all been non-RPM based systems.
Dependency Hell?
I spent almost a year running SuSE. Trying to get RPM's to install, even from their own website was pretty fucking frustrating. Talking to other friends who have used deb and rpm they agree on the observations.
It's just not as good. Try it yourself. Here's something I've done a few times over the years, see if you can do that same thing. Take a debian distribution and upgrade it from Stable to Unstable (the whole thing) and then downgrade it back to Stable (the whole thing). Mine still works just fine. Can you take an RPM distribution and upgrade/downgrade it over several years of software versions, including the kernel and libs, and back again.
Does it still work? Can you do this without running into any dependency resolutions that lock up the process?
That's a strange comment to make concerning the age of Fedora. RedHat is pretty old...
If the .deb packaging was inferior why is this the selection of linspire/lindows, unbuntu? They seem rather successful distros right now.
.deb? Isn't copying the highest form of flattery?
If RPM is inferior, why is it the selection of Fedora and SuSE/Novell? They seem rather successful distros right now.
Why is RPM picking up a packaging model from
They did no such thing. Depsolvers like apt and yum are completely SEPARATE from package managers like rpm and dpkg.
the newer distros of the last several years have all been non-RPM based systems.
Not on this planet. You really should get your facts straight. Count the number of new distributions that have popped up over the last 5-7 years. Then count those that use RPM. The number is significantly above 50%.
Michael Jennings | HPC Systems Engineer, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab | Author, Eterm (eterm.org)
Riiight. Go have fun installing a Red Hat RPM on Mandrake or vice-versa.
I have, quite often. Your lack of packaging experience is showing here.
The problem with installing Mandrake RPM's on a RedHat system is twofold: One, they use different versions of glibc, gcc, binutils, etc. So even if you *could* install those RPM's, they would not run. You'd get runtime failures from the dynamic loader. Two, distributions don't always name their packages (and thus, their dependencies) the same. But this is a matter of POLICY, not packaging, and the exact same thing can happen between two dpkg-based distributions.
Or just dependency hell Red Hat puts you in with it's own packages.
Not true at all. CentOS uses yum as its depsolver and has no problem managing RedHat's dependencies. Just because you fail to comprehend a system doesn't mean that system is flawed.
The package system shouldn't allow per-file dependencies, it just causes dependency hell.
Again, you are mistaken. When properly managed, file-level dependencies work quite well. Just look at the FreeBSD ports system.
Other Debian-based distros are generally fairly anal about staying compatible with Debian.
That is their choice. That does not change the fact that dpkg is vulnerable to the same things. Do not confuse "hasn't happened yet" with "can't happen."
Your comment falsely assumes RPM-based distros don't think twice about forking the package standard at the drop of a hat
What package standard?
and package maintainers don't think it's a good idea to depend on a random obscure file instead of a package, or if it is a package, the same name for the package as what everyone else calls it.
This has nothing to do with the packaging format. This is simply a red herring.
Michael Jennings | HPC Systems Engineer, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab | Author, Eterm (eterm.org)
Autopackage packages are incredibly badly designed. It's a bunch of shell script hackery, and there's no way to extract it other than to run all the scripts.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I've recently looked at Vector Linux SoHo edition based on Slackware. It is good but it just has a modified install with a selection of busniness apps that Slackwere does not include. Would it not be better to offer an 'addin package manager' that just installs and correctly configures the 'missing apps' that was left out?
I would just love a 'upgrade addon' that properly installs and configures the LAMP enviroment, say; or any number of different types of applicatins (gnuCash, OpenOffice.org with the proper Java runtime). Slackware could then be cut back even more of its default install and get back to one CD and let the end user select 'the rest of the confiuration package' that would truely make for a unique configuration.
zenray