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Fedora Core 4 Available
Limburgher writes "As of a few minutes ago, the torrents listed at duke went live. Nothing on the main site yet, however. The more people get on the torrents, the faster they will be. You all know the drill." Update: 06/13 19:07 GMT by T : Also in Red Hat-related news, halfbyte_hosting writes "CentOS 4.1 is now on the mirrors and ready for download."
While I can understand the desire to feel a little more control than being a 'test subject', some of that just comes with the territory of Linux/OSS in my mind. While I don't claim to speak for everyone, how often do you use OSS that isn't in some form of testing stage. For me and most of the developers I know, by the time a new stable version comes out, the new beta has about 4 new features, a better GUI, forum threads on fixing beta bugs, or any combination. I like having almost every option at my disposal. Besides, who doesn't like the hearing about someone using a 'new' program and telling them, "Oh I've been working with that since the alpha!"
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com
You conveniently forget that installing Windows does just that, install Windows.
No apps, no security updates, a lot of drivers missing, etc.
Now compare that with the install of a modern Linux distro. See the difference?
You have GOT to be kidding me.
.. install Fedora. Generally hardware detection is much better and my hardware is detected and configured properly (granted this could be due to the fact it is newer, but alias, Microsoft doesn't offer updated ISOs of WinXP for me to download.. so I think its fair .. latest release to latest release). Oh yah, it comes with the apps I need to use ... so perhaps the quick step of updating *ALL* the software on my system to make sure its the latest versions (versus just Windows via Windows update and manually downloading for the rest..) I am pretty much done after installing Fedora.
10 times easier than windows XP?
Sure.. why not? After you install Windows you get umm.. Windows. After a Windows install (even from an SP2 disk) I generally have to go search around for device drivers and install them, do the Windows update, install software (Office suite, good instant messenger, graphics program, good CD burner app, etc..) and during hte process, hunt down a handful of real long alphanumeric strings that I get to enter to apparently show that I am worthy.
Now Fedora lets see
I think the distros for quite a while have beat Windows for going from 0 to productive. I can do a full Linux install in well under an hour -- I'm lucky to get Windows installed in an hour before thinking about installing the apps that Linux comes with.
I think Windows XP installer asks for a grand total for 3 inputs. Computer Name, User Name, and Time Zone.
Try installing again and let me know how many prompts it takes until you get a useful system where you can get work done.
... And they didn't even write the software! They just wrote a couple of shell scripts to configure shit for you, and released someone else's work...
Please tell that to all of the kernel developers they pay, or gnome, openoffice, GNU GCC and Classpath developers. Don't forget the Apache developers, cygwin, X.org, and the many other developers who Red Hat pays their salaries, costing millions each year, to develop free software. Red Hat is by far the single largest contributor of code to OSS, this is one of the main reasons why their distribution tends to integrate seamlessly together. Also note that Red Hat sells support, try buying that from Microsoft and see how cheap it is, it'll cost you $200 a phone call or you can get some package deal for something like $1200 a year. Red Hat is the lowest price point in the server market, even compared to Novell. This is why Microsoft tries to argue facts based on TCO, they can't compete with Red Hat's low pricing and they know it. You can't just compare initial product costs because no serious corporation buys software without support unless of course their IT department is willing to lose their jobs when shit hits the fan. Red Hat's support has also won many awards because of its quality and has always been a pleasure to deal with. Get your facts straight and stop trolling. Michael Dell just invested $100 million into Red Hat, Michael Dell is a smart businessman and wouldn't just throw money around like that. He sees Red Hat going places. If Red Hat sinks like you want it to, you'll see a huge decrease in open source productivity. They literally pay for some of the brightest engineers to work on this software (most notably Alan Cox)
Regards,
Steve