Red Hat Begins Testing Core 5

Robert wrote to mention a CBR Online article which reports that Red Hat has begun testing on Fedora Core 5. From the article: "The next version of Raleigh, North Carolina-based Red Hat's enterprise Linux distribution is not scheduled for release until the second half of 2006 but will include stateless Linux and Xen virtualization functionality and improved management capabilities. Fedora Core 5 Release 1 includes updated support for XenSource Inc's open source server virtualization software, as well as new versions of the Gnome and KDE user interfaces, and the final version of the OpenOffice.org application suite."

Comments

5?

[CastrTroy]

Doesn't it seem like they're advancing a little fast through the versions here. It won't be long before Fedora Core is beyond RHES in terms of version numbers. The kernel is only at version 2.6. Why is Fedora using a number scheme like this? do they want to make it seem more mature?

Re:5?

[Taladar]

SuSE and Mandrake use version numbers around ten. If Redhat doesn't want to look old they have to advance faster. Basic marketing bullshit 101.

Re:5?

[nurb432]

Since they are all technically test versions for the 'real' RH product, the quick pace is expected.

Think of these as public betas between official releases.

Re:5?

[observer7]

we live in amazing times. the release cycle says 2 to 3 times a year . fedora is bleeding edge and the advancement in project packages is faster . i still dont think there as fast as they should be . ubuntu is even more up to date as far as gnome. when linux started ,cycles were slow but with the advances in projects ,community and more money ...here they come

Re:5?

[gowen]

Err no.

Everytime there's an new release that is not just bugfixes, they increase the release number by one. Usually, this involves a certain breakage of backwards compatibility. That way, I know that FC4.2 and FC4.1 use compatible packages, and that FC5.0 might not.

I think that falls under the category of "not rocket science".

Re:5?

[uwog]

Fedora doesn't have minor numbers, so there is no FC4.1 or 4.2.

Re:5?

[DrWhizBang]

Everybody knows you can't use version number over 9. Why do you think Apple went to "X" and are holding it there? At the same time, point releases are so 1990 - Look at how Sun abandoned them entirely by dropping the "2" from "2.7". Microsoft, on the other hand, decided that people don't like numbers, so have thrown them out entirely.

Redhat got up to 9, and had to reset the counter with Fedora Core. The next step is to build your version numbers up again (since point releases are passe). Mark my words - once it hits Fedora Core 9, they will rename it to "Fedora NG R1" or something silly like that.

Re:5?

[smoker2]

So why is RHEL 3 ES running the 2.4.21-37.EL kernel, as supplied and updated by RH ?

RHEL 4 was released in January 2005 and has a 2.6 kernel. I've been running FC2 and 3 with a 2.6 kernel for around a year longer than that.
The stated release schedule for Fedora is 6 months, and the stated release schedule for the RHEL series is 18 months.

Yes they are betas, but the pace is quite slow, as RH want to make sure that all the bugs are gone before they incorporate FC design into the RHEL line. Some stuff never makes it.

In my case I never install / upgrade FC until the newsest one is anounced. Then I upgrade to the secondmost recent - i.e. now I'm running FC3, 5 is announced, so its time to make use of the fc4 dvd I've been testing with and yum it up to date.

Re:5?

[LnxAddct]

They are advancing fine, every major release deserves a major number. These aren't minor releases, Core 4 was the first distribution using the new GCC 4.0 at the time, it also has default Xen support and a new yum manager that is much faster than the old one. Also Fedora Extras was establsihed with Core 4 and a bunch of other stuff. There have been similar milestones with the other Cores (such as integrating SELinux). Each core is a significant advancement over the previous core and deserves a major number change, not a minor number. I'm understating the improvements here. They aren't doing this to inflate their version number, it just so happens that enough people are helping out that they can get kick ass releases out pretty fast, not to mention Red Hat pays many engineers to work on it 5 days a week. They have however recently cut back their release schedule from every 6 months, to every 9 months to allow them to spend more time fully developing certain functionalities that can't be coded in a 6 month timeframe. Also for the curious minded, the Fedora community just finished up a fairly long community discussion about its new logo. The way that the winning logo was designed I thought was neat, you can read about it here.
Regards,
Steve

Re:5?

[salimma]

And yet Sun, because they dropped the "2", is now at Solaris 10... and OS X *is* at version 10 (it's Mac OS X 10.4.3, with point release and all to boot). Will make it funny when OS X v11 comes out..

Re:5?

[spuzzzzzzz]

Everybody knows you can't use version number over 9.

You don't use emacs, do you?

Re:5?

[Polly_Morf]

Just felt that i should add that some packages installed by default on fedora isn't even in the Debian stable tree...

Re:5?

[bitrain]

There have been some unofficial releases from the community. It's just core 4 with all updates untill the minor was released.

Re:5?

[thesnarky1]

And what, pray tell, of the XBox 360?

Re:5?

[af_robot]

Everybody knows you can't use version number over 9.

Why not?
For example: Corel Draw 12 Oracle 10g and so on

Re:5?

[ToasterofDOOM]

10 is cataclysmic. SUSE hit 10, then all hell broke loose and it went more open/community based. Not that that's bad, but 10 is a dangerous number to use outright.

Re:5?

[ryanov]

...and Solaris Nevada, the current testing release, is expected at Sun to be called Solaris 11. Sun Studio's compiler suite, which appeared first, is currently at v11.

And remember, 11 is one louder.

Mature?

[frinkacheese]

Fedora is a test and development Linux distro which is why it rockets through version numbers. It's intended to be a platform to test new stuff out on innocent fools who use it in a production environment and then find out that a few months after they install FC5 they should upgrade to FC6.. Just use Slackware :)

Re:Mature?

[saikatguha266]

A common myth regarding Fedora. From http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraMyths

MYTH - Fedora is unstable and unreliable, just a testbed for bleeding-edge software

FACT - This misconception comes from two things:

1. From http://fedora.redhat.com/: "It is also a proving ground for new technology that may eventually make its way into Red Hat products."
   
2. Fedora has rapid releases, a short life-cycle, and a lot of new code.
   

As for the first item, this means that Red Hat uses Fedora as a platform to promote the development of new technology, some of which might end up in Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This does not mean that Fedora is a dumping ground for untested code, it simply means that Fedora is a rapidly progressing platform.

For the second item, this does mean that Fedora is often running in uncharted innovative territory, but not that it is using too-new code. The programs in Fedora are generally stable releases or well-tested pre-release versions. There are guidelines behind the inclusion of pre-release software, and thorough testing is always done prior to Fedora Core releases.

Each version of Fedora Core receives updates from the Fedora development community that includes Red Hat for up to a year. Continuing updates from the Fedora Legacy Project may extend the life of a release to two years or more, depending on the release schedule. Refer to http://fedoralegacy.org/about/faq.php for more details.

We do everything we can to make sure that the final products released to the general public are stable and reliable. Fedora Core has proven that it can be a stable, reliable, and secure platform. Many businesses and organizations rely upon Fedora Core for both day-to-day tasks and, in some cases, critical infrastructure. Additionally, our well-managed packaging and review process adds an extra layer of safety not found in some other distributions. You can count on Fedora Core.

As someone who has used FC in production, I can attest to the its stability.

Re:Mature?

[Anonymous Coward]

We are using Fedora Core 4 in production as well. We have mainly 4 CPU Opteron Dual-Core boxes acting as web servers, database servers, authentication servers, and file servers. We test all updates in a pre-production environment beofore promoting to production.

Core 4 has been rock solid for us with no issues so far. Their warning about usage of new technology is mainly a disclaimer in our experience.

Re:Mature?

[AlexMax2742]

As yet another person who used FC in production, I had a less than satisfactoy experience with it, most notably YUM breaking completely after upgrading from an already unstable FC2 to FC3. I beleive the company I am working for is still using the computer even after I left, but they put more stock in it for being from Red Hat than it's individual merits...they mainly use it as a testing machine in my absense.

Friends of mine had similar experiences with Fedora, and in that time they converted to Slackware and stuck with it. Me? After the headache that was Fedora Core 2, I've been progressing to more and more stable distros on my own personal computer....first Slackware, now Debian, and at the moment I've even been messing around with FreeBSD on a seporate partition in my free time.

I understand you had good experiences with Fedora Core, but understand that not everyone's experiences with all distros have been roses and blue jays.

Re:Mature?

[hey]

Yeah, I used each new Fedora in production. The only problems I had was.. my own code had to be recompiled. Its be a nice ride.

Re:Mature?

[LnxAddct]

It is *very* mature and very stable. That is why many hosting companies use it now as well. It has all the greatest tech before everyone else, but it all integrates really well and is really stable. They are releasing their first test release now, and the final product isn't expected to be released for at least 3 more months. That means they've spent about 6 months developing code for the release, and now they are spending 3 months testing and working out bugs, that is a damn good ratio of development time to bug stomping. Better than any distro I can think of.
Regards,
Steve

Re:Mature?

[ZorinLynx]

Funny, I had the opposite experience.

We have about twenty FC3 workstations where I work. Nearly all of them used to be FC2 workstations which were upgraded to FC3.

I had to update the yum configuration, but yum update worked fine afterwards. There were some exceptions (mailman was installed on one box, and the configuration broke, but it was easily fixed.)

I think the issue is that each of us uses the systems differently, installs different custom software, and has different skills for fixing issues. A relatively minor yum problem for me might be a major one for someone who isn't really experienced with Linux.

Hopefully the FC3 -> FC4 transition will be smooth. We always run the N-1 release because it usually has most of the bugs worked out by the time N is released.

-Z

Re:Mature?

[Jarlsberg]

And as a Fedora Cora 4 user I can attest to this. It's a good OS. Everything is well put together and it's stable as a rock.

Re:Mature?

[Professor_UNIX]

Fedora has rapid releases, a short life-cycle, and a lot of new code.

That alone is reason enough to not use it for a server.

Re:Mature?

[Anonymous Coward]

Couple of questions - What brand/model boxes are you running with four dual cores? are you using x86_64 throughout or some 32 bit, I have heard there are some issues with the 64 bit versions of some of the software? On my V20z's x86_64 feels faster the x86 but I have had a chance to benchmark to prove a difference.

Re:Mature?

[kenevel]

Surely the stability is based around what apps you run on it and the kernel version? Since I was preparing the box for life as a server, I only installed what I needed (cue discussion about what to include, what not to...). So far it's worked fine and the only problems are when I reconfigure (aka screw up) the firewall and my SSH connection dies!

Re:Mature?

[saikatguha266]

> upgrading from an already unstable FC2 to FC3

I admit it is quite easy to break FC and make it unstable (even inadvertantly). In my experience, unstability has been primarily a result of installing software not packaged properly for FC. For instance, DRI nightlies are tarballs and not well built RPMs, Sun's Java RPMs don't use the /etc/alternatives convention, NVIDIA's drivers are not RPMs etc. There is an absolutely a need for properly packaging these softwares (and there are efforts underway -- JPackage for Java, ATRpms for Nvidia etc).

I completely agree with you that FC is not perfect, and has fewer software packages than Debian -- thus tempting FC users to install 3rd party packages that haven't received as much attention or testing. But that is quite different from saying that FC itself is unstable. Ofcourse, it would be much nicer if FC included that software in the core system in the first place. Perhaps someday.

Re:Mature?

[saikatguha266]

> That alone is reason enough to not use it for a server.

Ah, but life-cycle is different from lifetime. Short life-cycle means you get new versions of the OS quickly, new technology etc. You don't have to update, and indeed you shouldn't if you are running a server. You can run the server on the stable ageing FC install for years if you want because the lifetime can be pretty long. RH addresses security issues and critical bugs even after a newer FC is released (for about a year I think), after which point it transfers the maintainance to the FedoraLegacy project which extends the life by a couple more years. Ofcourse if you want more than 3-4 years lifetime for a legacy system, RH will make you fork cash for RHEL; but upgrading every 2-3 years to a new FC ain't bad either.

Re:Mature?

[ahodgson]

It is *very* mature and very stable

It has all the greatest tech before everyone else

These statements are contradictory. Pick one.

Re:Mature?

[LnxAddct]

Many open source projects become more stable as a result of the testing done in Fedora. The fixes are pushed upstream. I should have worded it as it having the latest stable technology and innovations. Fedora was the first distro with SELinux, Xen virtualization, the newest versions of Gnome and KDE (at the time), GCJ (Eclipse and OpenOffice.Org are both natively compiled, i.e. there is no java virtual machine), now they are leading the pack with Stateless Linux and more technologies. These are all stable yet reletively young technologies, the reason they are not in many distros is simply because Red Hat engineers have done most of the grunt work in getting those features integrated (in particular, Red Hat worked very close with the NSA in getting SELinux working uder the kernel). Red Hat maintains GCC, glibc, and many other open source projects that many other distros rely on. Red Hat usually has the tech first cause they are the ones who developed it, it takes the other distros time to catch up. New software does not necessarily mean unstable, nor does old software imply stable (look at the bugs still being found in various jpeg and compression libraries). When you spend 6 months developing and then 3 months making sure what you developed is quality then it is still new software but probably pretty stable too.
Regards,
Steve

Re:Mature?

[GigsVT]

There was about a year though, in which the entire Red Hat world was in limbo. That flushed out a lot of users, like myself.

It's easy to forget, but fedoralegacy didn't come about until Red Hat 7 through 9 were EOL, as in, unsupported by no one other than progeny's pay service.

Thankfully fedoralegacy finally took off, started supporting 7.3, 8, 9 and legacy fedora releases, and the world was OK again.

But people like me that had to make tough decisions about the future direction of my server room... well I started moving some servers to Debian, and the rest to White Box. Now we run a mix of CentOS and Debian.

And to think, before Red Hat pulled all this shit, we paid them $1000+ a year for RHN for our RH 7,8,9 boxes. Now they get nothing from us, and we are migrating mainly to Debian.

A little clarification?

[Stevyn]

Does anyone know what "final version of the OpenOffice.org application suite" means? Are they simply referring to whatever the current version of openoffice is at the time?

Re:A little clarification?

[plover]

Thanks, I was just going to ask this. I'm hoping it was just poorly worded, because OOo has a ton of projects in the development pipeline.

Re:A little clarification?

[R.Mo_Robert]

I'm assuming they just mean the final version of OpenOffice.org 2.0, which had been in testing for quite some time.

Re:A little clarification?

[LnxAddct]

The Fedora devs are pretty involved with OpenOffice. When Core 4 was released it was shipped with OpenOffice.Org 1.979 or something like that. Obviously Core4 has since been update to 2.0, but they are either referring to 2.0 or maybe 2.1x which is still in development but will be more stable by release time (and Fedora will be undergoing a ton of testing and stability checks over the next 3 months now that the test releases are out). Fedora was the first distribution to have OpenOffice.org use a native interface, they tend to have the coolest stuff first, mainly because the Fedora developers code large portions of the code themselves (in contrast to many other distributions which simply package up other people's programs and call it a distro without really contributing any code back).
Regards,
Steve

Re:A little clarification?

[rm69990]

Openoffice.org 2.0 was released a month ago. http://www.openoffice.org/press/2.0/press_release. html

They should be farther along

[BennyB2k4]

They are actually behind their goals for releases. I've read elsewhere that it should be every 6 months.

"Produce robust releases approximately 2-3 times per year, using a time-based release model: A time for a feature freeze is set in advance, and an expected schedule for test releases is produced before the feature freeze date. (Important feature schedules will be taken into account when setting the schedule for Fedora Core releases.)"

http://fedora.redhat.com/about/objectives.html

Re:They should be farther along

[Anonymous Coward]

The most irritating thing about FC5 is the long wait... they've decided to leave ~9 months for it. The problem is that there are parts of GTK that have, over the last few months, *FINALLY* been optimized by someone who knows what they are doing -- and they are now dramatically faster (this is quite apart from the other massive optimization efforts for speed and memory going on in GNOME right now). All Fedora users are going to have to wait until the second half of 2006 before we see these improvements... and believe me when I tell you that GNOME/GTK desperately needs them.

It doesn't look like they will be backported, so it's GTK2.8 and the next version of GNOME... which means FC5... which means 9 months wait for something that's very badly needed.

Re:They should be farther along

[LnxAddct]

They've slowed their release schedule to 9 months to give them more time developing certain capabilities.
Regards,
Steve

Re:They should be farther along

[Anonymous Coward]

So why would you have to wait 9 months? Couldn't you just download the testing release and use it now?

Re:They should be farther along

[Muerte2]

They recently changed the 6 month release cycle to a 9 month release cycle. I can't say I really blame them. Trying to put together an entire OS every six months is a pretty daunting task. The longer release cycle also means releases will stay "current" longer. Yum updates keep all your packages up to date anyway, so I think it's a win-win for everyone involved.

I commend RedHat for being able to get an OS out the door in six months (or close to it) the first four time. That just boggles my mind.

Re:They should be farther along

[Dammital]

"... parts of GTK that have, over the last few months, *FINALLY* been optimized by someone who knows what they are doing..."

You're talking about Federico's profiling effort against the GTK file chooser? Yep, he's doing some good stuff.

Re:They should be farther along

[Anonymous Coward]

Partly, but also pango.

Re:They should be farther along

[justsomebody]

The problem is that there are parts of GTK that have, over the last few months, *FINALLY* been optimized by someone who knows what they are doing

??? Now, where did you hear that stupidity?

Reasons for delay are:
- Trusted X (SELinux based X11)
- Xen integration
- Free Java replacement
- Live CD
- RHDS integration
- Actualy trimming setup to 1 or 2 CD-s
- Boot speedup
- New sound server
- Library deprecation

Here is Wiki about it for you to get your facts straight
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FC5Future

This are all too big plans for them to keep at 6month release. That is why this was changed to 9 months not GTK. GTK being speed up is just one of additional features that coincides with FC5 timing, not the reason.

Re:They should be farther along

[utnow]

He's not saying that the GTK optimisation was the problem that caused the delay... he's saying that the GTK speedup is needed NOW instead of 9 months from now and that's a problem BECAUSE of the delay.

Re:They should be farther along

[sp0rk173]

Er...i think what's more apparent is YOUR stupidity. He wasn't saying the optimizations in GTK and Gnome is what was slowing Fedora's release cycle down. He way saying that BECAUSE of things slowing the release cycle down (like those you listed) Fedora users will have to wait until the next release to get all the nice things that are now going into GTK and Gnome. Unless they want to install "unstable" stuff.

Re:They should be farther along

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer to use stable versions, not wildly unstable testing releases -- I leave that sort of thing to the Debians and Gentoos of the world.

Re:They should be farther along

[darkjedi521]

I don't know. OpenBSD has managed to do it for the last 8 years.

Re:They should be farther along

[Anonymous Coward]

unfortunatly it is not universally true.. gtk2.8 was measured to consume more ram (bad on cpu's with little cache), and it is based on cairo which has float based api (which is bad on all but latest desktop CPU's).

Re:Off to Debian

[tolan-b]

Fedora uses yum as the backend for up2date for its updates, no accounts required.

skimpy

[Quixote]

This is hardly an "article". The submission above is 80% of the article itself, and short on details.

But more importantly: can someone expound a little on what "stateless Linux" is?

Re:skimpy

[un1xl0ser]

Stateless Linux (from http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/stateless/)

The Stateless Linux project is an OS-wide initiative to ensure that Fedora computers can be set up as replaceable appliances, with no important local state.

For example, a system administrator can set up a network of hundreds of desktop client machines as clones of a master system, and be sure that all of them are kept synchronised whenever he or she updates the master system. We provide several technologies for doing this.

The scope of the project is the entire OS, since we are trying to improve configuration throughout all packages. However, there are some packages which are specific to Stateless Linux:

        * readonly-root
        * stateless-common
        * stateless-client
        * stateless-server

Re:skimpy

[joib]

One can get largely the same results with cfengine or something like that. Well, except for the diskless support, which I guess can be useful.

Re:skimpy

[magarity]

can someone expound a little on what "stateless Linux" is?
 
It's a rogue Linux out in international waters.

*cough* Ubuntu

[matt me]

We all know OS version numbers don't mean anything. But to clarify;

Red Hat Linux had version numbers in line with SUSE, it's principal rival.

Now Fedora Core 5 will match Ubuntu (possibly the most suspicous versioning given it started on 4.10 ). But really, given they've had 1 through 4, 5 is the logical continuation.

Re:*cough* Ubuntu

[Anarke_Incarnate]

how is that suspicious? They started in 2004 in October. 4.10 is basedon y/mm. The release schedule is 6 months. They then came out with 5.04. Doesn't this make sense?

Re:*cough* Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

how is that suspicious?

He's saying it's suspicious they just picked a big number to begin with rather than just '1'. Why? What was wrong with calling their first release 1?

Re:*cough* Ubuntu

[cbreaker]

It's the main reason Microsoft went with years instead of versions, but they didn't seem to have a problem starting Windows NT at version 3. And, I think they knew it was going to take an extra long time to get the next Windows out the door, thus they didn't call it Windows 2002, they called it Windows XP.

Windows NT 3.0 = Windows NT 1.0
Windows NT 3.5 = Windows NT 1.5
Windows NT 4.0 = Windows NT 2.0
Windows 2000 = Windows NT 3.0
Windows Server 2003 = Windows NT 3.5

Oh well, sorry for rambling on.

Re:*cough* Ubuntu

[flosofl]

I understand where you're coming from here, but I think that this was actually more consistant than it appears.

IIRC, It was Windows version 3 (after Windows 1.0 and 2.0). The NT referred to New Technology (meaning non-DOS based kernel). So the naming did kinda make sense. You could get Windows 3 as layer above DOS or you could Windows 3 with NT kernel. Plus the kernel version starts at 3 for NT. Windows 2000 reports as NT kernel 5.0 and XP reports as 5.1.

Re:*cough* Ubuntu

[cbreaker]

Yea, actually, you're not recalling correctly.

They wanted to start with version 3 because they already had Windows 3.0 on the market and they didn't want people to think this was older, or inferior. However, Windows NT 3 is the first version of Windows NT. It's not just "Windows 3 on NT Kernel" because it was not compatible with a large number of Windows 3.0/3.1 apps and almost no DOS apps. Windows 3.0 was a 100% 16-bit OS, and Windows NT 3 was a completely different and new 32-bit OS. Sure, it looked the same, but it wasn't.

So with Windows NT 3.0 being the first version of Windows NT, Windows NT 4.0 could be considered version 2. Windows 2000 is version 5 for Microsoft, but for us, it's actually only the third major release of Windows NT. Windows XP is almost identical to 2000 besides some UI changes, and only got a .1 revision change - Windows 2003 is almost the same as Windows 2000 and even microsoft only gave it another .1 to make 5.2 - for us, 3.2.

In the end I guess it doesn't really matter what the version numbers are, but it is fairly annoying when you see even larger magazines say things like "Windows 2003 is Microsoft's sixth major release of Windows NT."

Re:*cough* Ubuntu

[00_NOP]

Your both wrong. Windows 3.1 was the Windows version on sale at the time (and had been since April 1992).
The first version of Windows NT was badged at NT 3.1 presumably for marketing reasons - so the suits would see the two as interchangeable.

Re:*cough* Ubuntu

[robertwall]

The fact that they're basing their releases on yy/mm, and that Ubuntu wasn't around in 2001?

Re:*cough* Ubuntu

[ryanov]

Not 3.11?

better wireless hopefully... and install...

[taxman_10m]

My experience trying to setup wireless with Fedora Core 4 was brutal. Nothing I needed was in the initial install. With no net connection in linux I had to keep booting into my windows partition to search for any help at all on how to set things up and then download what I needed. And then go back into linux to toil and then fail. And then repeat the process. Eventually I got my card at least detected, but when I activated it the whole machine hung. So I gave up on Red Hat.

Ubuntu detected my wireless card. But has no WPA support.

It seems that Suse will also detect things, but also has no WPA support. They also have no Live CD. Why they can make a Live DVD but not a Live CD is beyond me. Just shave off some crap. All I want to know is if your distro will support my machine or not.

Linux on the Desktop? Not if the user has a wireless card.

The last time I installed Fedora Core 4 off a boot CD I was amazed that to do an ftp install I still had to punch in manually what mirror I wanted to do the install from. Computer games have been grabbing "master server lists" for some time now. Can't something similar be worked into the FTP install?

Re:better wireless hopefully... and install...

[spazimodo]

Ubuntu has WPA support - search in Synaptic for WPA_supplicant. (You may need to enable Universe/Multiverse)

This post brought to you on a Dell D600 running Ubuntu Breezy Badger using WPA.

Re:better wireless hopefully... and install...

[chrisgeleven]

Amen to that. Linux wireless is beyond pathetic.

A few weeks ago I tried out Linux, downloading a couple of distros (Ubuntu and SUSE) that were recommended to me.

I was plesantly surprised that these distros detected the hardware on my Toshiba laptop as well as it did.

Except for the wireless card (a Linkyss WPC54G), since I wasn't about to run a cat5 cable across the apartment for an laptop.

So I rebooted into Windows, saved to a flash drive all the instructions and files I supposedly needed to get wireless working, and rebooted back into Linux.

I managed after 3 hours to get Linux to detect the wireless card and get ndis_wrapper to work.

Then came the work to get WPA working. I downloaded the wpa_supplement. No luck getting it to connect to the wireless router for 3 more hours. I wasn't about to use the broken WEP encryption either.

Then there is the fact that is beyond pathetic how you choose to connect to wireless networks. From what I could gather, I had to type a bunch of commands in order to connect to a single network. How the hell am I supposed to do this for the many wireless networks I connect to at clients?

In the end, I determined linux wireless is a joke. I understand needing to install a driver (that was actually the easy part). But how about an easy way to connect to wireless networks AND to connect using WPA?

That can't be too difficult.

Re:better wireless hopefully... and install...

[ettlz]

I think you're being a little unfair. You can't simply install FC4 and expect everything to just go like Windows does, because the latter operating system often has vendor support — so Linux does damn well to get as far as it does! Sure, some post-install work is required, but once it's set up it works like a charm. I have WPA EAP/TLS working quite happily with my IPW2200. OK, I had to download and build the drivers and wpa_supplicant, but is that much less hassle than the rigmarole of sorting it all out in Windows? Once NetworkManager is completed, with full WPA support, things will be much smoother. Until then, be patient — or get hacking.

Re:better wireless hopefully... and install...

[Jumpy]

I'm finding no problems with my wireless macintosh G3 ibook running fedora core 4. (ppc version) But I understand it does suck when you have a piece of hardware that the installer and kudzu can't handle. Had that happen other times with certian desktop systems I've tried to put Red Hat on. And fedora didn't find the ibook's modem. But since I don't use the modem it wasn't a show stopper for me. Maybe by fedora 5 or 6 I'll be able to use the mac modem if I care to.

Re:better wireless hopefully... and install...

[Anonymous Coward]

"How the hell am I supposed to do this for the many wireless networks I connect to at clients?"

It's OK, the clients will have discovered that basically no-one can get WPA working right, and they'll allow you to use plain wireless, which works just fine. I've never been anywhere that had WPA without someone saying "Oh, you probably won't be able to get it to work" and either offering an alternative wireless network or a cat5 cable.

I have NetworkManager, currently in an up2date FC 4 system it works pretty well for any (non-WPA) kind of Wireless, I'm sure it will support WPA, on some hardware, when the wind blows correctly, at some point in the future, but I don't care for the same reason I don't care whether it supports ISDN (it does do dialup, and presumably ADSL). I can see a GUI list of wireless networks, pick one, and it will remember that as a "friendly" network and try to connect to it again without prompting in the future.

In my experience, if you've got NetworkManager on a laptop with working 802.11 drivers for Linux then you're no worse off at a new location than the average Windows or Mac user. Admittedly I haven't been to the US for many years, so perhaps there it's all WPA and everyone has the latest cards & drivers... but my guess is not.

Re:better wireless hopefully... and install...

[xtracto]

Why dont you try Mandriva 2006?

I tried to install FC-4 on my laptop USB HD without success, first tried booting from CD, but FC would not recognize the USB disk.

Then installed using VMWare (which only made FC see my USB disk as a normal HD) using a persistent native disk config. After that tried to boot from the USB disk and it was almost done until I got a FC kernel panic because it didnt find the USB disk (WTF i had just booted from there lol).

Anyway, I got Mandriva 2006 and installed flawlesly from the DVD into the USB2 disk. And it even recognized all my ati based chipset hardware (sound, 3d ati card, etc).

Re:better wireless hopefully... and install...

[pyros]

Once NetworkManager is completed, with full WPA support, things will be much smoother.

Does NetworkManager still do caching DNS (either builtin or using nscd)? Last time I tried using NetworkManager DNS was too slow. I like the interface it provides for configuring wireless, but I just couldn't handle the slow DNS.

Re:better wireless hopefully... and install...

[Dan_Bercell]

Who is gonna take advise from a Dell user?

Re:better wireless hopefully... and install...

[FireFury03]

Linux on the Desktop? Not if the user has a wireless card.

The problem with the wireless hardware is that:
1. Most of the manufacturers haven't released any specs so the driver writing has needed lots of reverse engineering.
2. Much of the hardware has gone through rapid development cycles, meaning that by the time the drivers are available you probably can't get the hardware anymore.
3. Linked with (2), many of the manufacturers sell their updated revisions under the same name, model number and even FCCID in some cases, even though the new revision is *completely* incompatable with the old revision, so you may end up researching which hardware will work only to find that when you buy that hardware is is an incompatable revision.
4. Most cards require uploadable firmware which the manufacturers won't release under good licences so can't be shipped with most linux distributions as standard so you have to download it yourself.

The Prism54 drivers are a good example of (2) and (3) - the drivers were of good quality but by the time they made it into the stock kernel Intersil had stopped making the supported chipset and had replaced it with a completely incompatable SoftMAC based chipset. A number of the manufacturers, such as SMC, released the cards using the SoftMAC chipset under the same name and model number as the old ones and it was nigh on impossible to know which version you were going to end up with because even the retailers didn't know there were 2 incompatable versions of the same card.

I understand that the new Prism54 drivers now support the SoftMAC chipsets so maybe I'll fetch the incompatable SMC card I ended up with off the shelf. Interestingly, the Prism54 website says they're working on an open GPL firmware and I hope they succeed in producing it as that means we can at last have some hardware *completely* supported by a vanilla kernel. Having GPLed firmware also opens up some possibilities for new uses for the hardware since interested parties can hack the firmware to do strange new things (enhanced Mesh networking, etc?)

Speaking from experience of setting up supported Prism54 802.11g cards under both Fedora 3 and 4, it's simply a case of grabbing the firmware and sticking it in the right place and then it Just Works - you can't get a lot easier than that unless the distributor breaks the firmware licence and bundles the firmware illegally.

The last time I installed Fedora Core 4 off a boot CD I was amazed that to do an ftp install I still had to punch in manually what mirror I wanted to do the install from. Computer games have been grabbing "master server lists" for some time now. Can't something similar be worked into the FTP install?

Maybe you don't want to install off one of the official mirrors?

Re:better wireless hopefully... and install...

[j-cloth]

1. Most of the manufacturers haven't released any specs so the driver writing has needed lots of reverse engineering.
Speaking of which, has anyone burned down Broadcom yet (the miserable fucks)? ndiswrappers are a sweet thing, but I'd much prefer a native driver.

Re:better wireless hopefully... and install...

[ettlz]

Speaking of which, has anyone burned down Broadcom yet (the miserable fucks)? ndiswrappers are a sweet thing, but I'd much prefer a native driver.

Yes, "miserable fucks" is a good description (although I doubt burning them down is a good solution...). There's an (heroic, in my opinion) effort to create drivers by reverse-engineering those used in Linux/MIPS-based routers via a cleanroom design.

Re:better wireless hopefully... and install...

[Jisakiel]

Suse, since 9.3 (the first release downloadable in DVD), has WPA working out of the box in my laptop... Intel ipw2200 driver, by the way, which is proprietary.

Re:better wireless hopefully... and install...

[FireFury03]

There's an (heroic, in my opinion) effort to create drivers by reverse-engineering those used in Linux/MIPS-based routers via a cleanroom design.

If there are Linux drivers used on commercial routers, aren't they required to GPL them? (since they would be part of the kernel)

Re:better wireless hopefully... and install...

[ettlz]

If there are Linux drivers used on commercial routers, aren't they required to GPL them?

That's sticky ground. Does writing a module, compiling it and distributing the object code constitute a "derivative work" of the Kernel? If so, then they are required to GPL it.

Re:better wireless hopefully... and install...

[FireFury03]

That's sticky ground. Does writing a module, compiling it and distributing the object code constitute a "derivative work" of the Kernel? If so, then they are required to GPL it.

I think the opinion most people have is that it's very shakey ground and the only reason nVidia aren't pressured into releasing their drivers is because they happen to be pretty good at supporting the Linux world with their closed drivers.

I don't think anyone would have problems into pressuring a router manufacturer to release their code though.

Re:better wireless hopefully... and install...

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm, I dunno about the LiveCD thing, but I run OpenSuSE 10.0 on my HP nx6110 and the Intel Pro 2200 works out of the box, even with WPA. It may be your WiFi card; this works for me.
However, you're right, Using WiFi on a Linux desktop is still beyond average capabilities. Sad but true

Timely?

[Moggie68]

At first glance I thought to myself "wow, for once software is being tested sufficiently long and not just during the last two crunch weeks"... But what is a long testing period for an entire distribution? And what do /.ters think the right testing period is?

Re:Timely?

[LnxAddct]

Well Fedora is already pretty stable, but figure they've been developing code for this release now for 6 months. They are spending 3 months on testing and stability requirements. That is a damn good ratio for any piece of software and is plenty of time to do regression checks too.
Regards,
Steve

Congrats Fedora Core Team!

[shane2uunet]

Why do a lot of the postings to articles boil down to

"that is crap use this"

Don't these people realize that no solutions fits every situation? It blows the mind.

Anyway, I love Fedora Core. I use it on my desktop at work, Running FC 4 right now. Stable as can be, gives me the tools I need. See, I'm a system administrator. I have about 7 RHEL systems under my administration that I personally over see. Fedora Core allows me to see what will soon be included in RHEL and get familiar with it.

Why Redhat? If you have to ask, you don't know linux or open source. They contribute millions of dollars to opensource and to linux development. Sure they're making a buck off support and I'm glad to pay it, in return I get a rock solid OS that is guarenteed to be there in 7 years. Oh, and Redhat seems to be doing pretty good finacially too, as seen on Slashdot here recently.
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/15/ 1732235&tid=110&tid=187&tid=106

I just don't understand why they are upbraided for that. They're just trying to make a living at linux, same as me. I mean, if you don't want to pay, RH has even allowed (by the GPL) others to make almost identical OS (CentOS), only thing missing is the shadowman.

I can't wait for FC5 to go live, I'll be upgrading.

Re:Congrats Fedora Core Team!

[zerocool^]

*Sigh*

The reason that I and many others don't like redhat is becaus they're not "making a buck", they're making millions and millions of dollars while screwing small business.

I worked at a place that used RedHat almost exclusively on our servers (and some of these were customer's servers, some were ours). We used 7.1-7.3, 8.0, and 9. We liked them all. Heck, I still really like 7.3.

But, all of a sudden, out of the blue, RedHat announced "no more free linux from us". Then, they released RHEL, and it was a couple of months before they announced Fedora Core was coming out. RHEL pricing is completely insane. It's VASTLY more expensive than freaking WINDOWS. $180 for a workstation version, with NO SUPPORT and ONE YEAR of software updates?? Jesus. WinXP costs $180, but it comes with support, and at least 5 years of updates, 10 for security fixes. Plus, Microsoft doesn't ask you to repurchase every year to get more support. Want RHEL Server? Minimum you're going to pay is $300+, and that's again, without phone support, whithout installation support, and only a year of software updates. People talk about them making money on support... I don't see any support coming from them excepting when you pay out the nose.

RHEL is the reason that there's a grain of truth to those studies about TCO of linux.

And people point to Fedora... Well, fedora is only supported for 6 months at a time, and then you go through a violent upgrade cycle if you want to stay current. Plus, I'm not going to do their beta testing for them. Screw that. Test your own damn product; you sure are making enough money.

There's also issues about the effort put into it. For one: I keep hearing people say that redhat contributes "Millions" to the open source community. Where? And is it significant compared to the return they get on it? Are they only doing it because it benifits them? I know they pay the salaries of several people who are "RedHat employees", but really just kernel hack, but Millions? Really? For two: They DIDN'T EVEN WRITE THEIR DAMN SOFTWARE. As bad as Windows is (and it is), at least Microsoft wrote it. Redhat took the same shit that everyone else has in their distros, packaged it, and added a few configuration utilities and a logo.

Maybe it's just that all of a sudden, when I worked in Webhosting, the razor-thin margins that were there on servers dissappeared when we realized that we were going to have to pass along $600+/yr to our clients in order to give them the support they needed, or leave them in the lurch with an unsupported redhat 9.0 that had only been out for 8 months... but, really... screw redhat.

"If you have to ask, you don't know Linux or Open Source". Right. I know redhat. And no thanks.

~w

Re:Congrats Fedora Core Team!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually each version of Fedora is supported for one year not six months as you mentioned. FC3 is still supported until FC5 comes out which will be a little over one year since FC3 was released.

Also you don't seem to know much about open source because if you did you would know that Red Hat writes and contributes more code than all companies that contribute to open source combined. Try grepping the source for the kernel, glibc, gcc, binutils, gnome, etc.

Re:Congrats Fedora Core Team!

[killjoe]

"But, all of a sudden, out of the blue, RedHat announced "no more free linux from us". Then, they released RHEL, and it was a couple of months before they announced Fedora Core was coming out. RHEL pricing is completely insane."

All they said was that they wer eno longer interested in trying to support mom and pop with redhat. There is nothing wrong with that. They didn't take anything away from you, you still have fedora core.

If you want EL without paying for it there is centos and others too.

Red Hat is in the support business. When you pay for RHEL you are paying for support and in order for them to deliver credible support they have to have a known good quantity to support. RHEL is simply a support package against a known good snapshot of Fedora Core.

By the way if you think that when you buy windows XP MS will answer all your questions for five years you are in for a big surprise.

Re:Congrats Fedora Core Team!

[dtfinch]

Our servers run the free RHEL clone CentOS. I haven't really had a moment where I wished I could call tech support, because so far everything's been rather straightforward and problem free, and I'm not doing anything especially tricky. The main differences from the real RHEL are the branding and that they suggest using yum instead of up2date.

I really wouldn't mind sending money in Red Hat's direction, except that I'd never be able to justify it nowadays. They charge too much for something I already get for free, and do not accept small donations AFAIK.

Re:Congrats Fedora Core Team!

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft support is hardly cheap. It makes RHEL appear like a bargain! Windowsupdate support may be free but it is also a craps shoot. Between phone calls and emails per incident, they have a 25% success rate from my experience.

Re:Congrats Fedora Core Team!

[GigsVT]

Are you dense? The parent post correctly pointed out, you get *no* support from Red Hat unless you pay upward of $500 per server, per year.

Red Hat fucked small to medium businesses. I'm glad their gamble worked out for them financially, but that doesn't mean us small-to-medium businesspeople aren't pissed.

Re:Congrats Fedora Core Team!

[FooBarWidget]

They HAVE to be expensive or bosses won't take them seriously. In the eyes of non-technical managers, expensive = good.

Re:Congrats Fedora Core Team!

[bani]

how exactly did redhat "fuck" small to medium businesses?

also, rhel is $349. not $500+. and for what you pay, you get miles better support SLA than microsoft.

Re:Congrats Fedora Core Team!

[GigsVT]

For $349 you get 1 month of installation support, and 1 year of web installation support.

Once you are up and running, you are on your own.

And you have to pay $349 again in 1 year, or you have violated the EULA and must remove all copies of RHEL from your server.

Re:Congrats Fedora Core Team!

[bani]

Once you are up and running, you are on your own.

from the redhat web pages (which you might actually bother reading sometime before making claims which are easily refuted):

basic edition:

Web support: 1 year Installation & Basic configuration
Phone support: 30 days Installation and Basic configuration

Scope of coverage: 30 days telephone / 1-year web Installation and Basic configuration

And you have to pay $349 again in 1 year, or you have violated the EULA and must remove all copies of RHEL from your server.

bullshit.

when your support subscription expires, you have to remove RHN, not RHEL.

nice attempt at FUD though. are you employed by microsoft?

Re:Congrats Fedora Core Team!

[GigsVT]

They've silently changed the EULA it seems. My information is old. The new one is much better. There was much controversy over the old EULA.

There used to be one big EULA for RHEL, and it did state that you must not have any RHEL servers installed without RHN. It didn't give you the option to run unsupported copies, period. If you bought one copy, you were bound by the EULA automatically since it came with services. If you wanted to install RHEL on another computer, the only way you could do it without violating the EULA was to buy another seat from them.

Here's some text from the old EULA:

"If Customer wishes to increase the number of Installed Servers, then
Customer will purchase from Red Hat additional Services for each
additional Installed Server."

"During the term of this Agreement and for one (1) year thereafter,
Customer expressly grants to Red Hat the right to audit Customer's
facilities and records from time to time in order to verify
Customer's compliance with the terms and conditions of this Agreement"

Link
Another Link
Yet another

You can see there was plenty of talk about this questionable EULA, I'm not making it up.

I'm glad to see they have a much better set of EULAs in place now. They are still pretty pricey for what you get.

Re:Congrats Fedora Core Team!

[zerocool^]

I really wouldn't mind sending money in Red Hat's direction, except that I'd never be able to justify it nowadays. They charge too much for something I already get for free, and do not accept small donations AFAIK.

That's EXACTLY how I feel. We used to buy the commercial versions of the RedHat CDs - at about $30-$50 per box, with a dead-tree install guide. I thought that was more than fair - no license issues, no time limits, and we're still supporting them. I would have even given them money as a donation.

Now, it's the same product, but it's thousands of dollars over the product life cycle.

~W

Re:Congrats Fedora Core Team!

[GigsVT]

Hey I found a copy of the old EULA, it's still up, just buried:

Old EULA

Here's some more text from it regarding running unsupported RHEL installations:

The amount of the payment deficiency will be determined by multiplying the number of underreported Installed Systems or Services by the annual fee for such item. If Customer is found to have underreported the number of Installed Systems or amount of Services by more than five percent (5%),

So you can't have "underreported installed systems" by running them without services, under this old EULA.

Re:Congrats Fedora Core Team!

[zerocool^]

And like Gigs said in a previous post, I'm happy for their PHB and shareholders that their financial windfall has been so great. Doesn't mean I'm happy about the small business aspect.

Re:Congrats Fedora Core Team!

[bani]

sounds like you want a $49 OS which gives you full 24/7 technical support from top to bottom -- from installation to configuration to software development. do let us know when you find one.

Re:Congrats Fedora Core Team!

[zerocool^]

No, no, no!

I'd like a $49 OS that gives me 5 years of security updates. THAT's my point. For $50, I don't expect support. For $300+ I do expect support. I also expect not to be dropped like a bad habit after a year of updates.

I don't want both cheap AND amazing support. One or the other would be ok. But RHEL is neither.

~W

Re:Congrats Fedora Core Team!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Boo hoo, somebody is trying to make money with Open Source, and it's not $My_Favorite_Distro. Wah, wah."

Is that pretty much what you're saying?

Re:Congrats Fedora Core Team!

[Anonymous Coward]

upbraided? Learn to spell, dumbass. It's not RH that allowed CentOS, it's the GPL. What a fucktard.

Re:Congrats Fedora Core Team!

[TheOrquithVagrant]

Others have already responded to your deluge of misinformed bullshit, but I still feel the need to point out the following:

Redhat _did_ write a significant percentage of the software making up their distribution. For quite a few years now, RedHat have been the chief contributor to several extremely core pieces of what makes up a working linux distro, gcc, glibc and the kernel being most noteworthy. A large number of the advances in these components have been developed by RedHat employees and hence funded by RedHat's money.

In short:
A lot of the software that _other distros_ are providing for free was developed with RedHat's time and money. So whatever distribution you run, you should WANT RedHat to make lots of money, since they put that money into advancing core linux features that YOUR distro will eventually get to benefit from, for free.
And finally, as many have already pointed out, RedHat is NOT charging for the software in their enterprise distros, they're charging for support, and for the brand. If you're going to compare pricing with MS, don't compare the pricing with an MS software license, compare it with actually buying a support contract with a similar coverage and SLA.
All that said, I have heard SuSE's equivalent support contracts are cheaper, and that a lot of people have had better experiences with SuSE's paid support for SLES than with RedHat's. And those people have valid criticisms to level against RedHat, unlike your misinformed and highly unfair rant.

Re:Congrats Fedora Core Team!

[ryanov]

I recently ran into a lot of trouble with RHEL. I have an application to migrate from a machine running Solaris 8 to a machine that was running RHEL3. I figured that was plenty current. Come to find that RHEL3 only includes MySQL v3. What? I dragged my feet upgrading to MySQL 4.0, and finally did so probably about a year ago... I looked just now and see that MySQL 4.0 was dubbed production in March of '03. RHEL3 was released in October of that year. They couldn't find the time in that 6 months to get MySQL 4.0 in there? I tried using more recent RPM's -- they have more recent dependencies as well. Why not use RPM's from MySQL? Then you have to compile stuff like PHP and the rest for yourself, if what you had in mind is a LAMP system. There is really no need for all of these RPM's to be so ridiculously picky about version numbers... but since they are, you're really going to be wasting a lot of time if the base distro doesn't come with something even relatively recent.

Sure, I could compile all this stuff myself... but isn't manageability supposed to be part of the benefit of packages? If I do install any of the LAMP components from source, any future RPM's will claim that I don't have the proper deps installed and I will have to either install the old useless versions anyway and just not use them, or force the new RPM's in, meaning that I have a kludged package tree.

I understand this is done in the interest of stability, but as someone who works for a university working on production systems, I don't have that much of an opportunity to upgrade -- we're understaffed and often do not have redundant equipment, so major upgrades require downtime. As such, I'm often behind the upgrade curve and am running software that is nearing the end of its life cycle. It's really surprising to me to find that my OS is another year behind me. I would expect this from HP or even from Debian... but Debian has had no release in a long time, and they support both 4.0 and 4.1 of MySQL.

Re:Congrats Fedora Core Team!

[GigsVT]

No, not really. I'd say RHEL is in the definitely in the running for my favorite distro. Like I said, possibly in another thread, we still have lots of CentOS servers.

I even own Red Hat stock. Given it's like $1500 of it, but still.

It looks like they have changed their EULAs to be less obnoxious, which helps. It's still a lot of money for not much other than the brand name, especially at the lower tiers.

I'm not down with the Ubuntu terms...

[taxman_10m]

When you say Universe/Multiverse that means what exactly? Something on the install CDs but not on the Live CDs? Or something that is downloaded?

I can't download when I don't have my wireless working. Why isn't WPA_supplicant included by default at the beginning? It's a 50k file! Couldn't cram it onto the CD?

Re:I'm not down with the Ubuntu terms...

[jcupitt65]

Yes, something you download.

In Synaptic, click Settings / Repositories, click Add, tick the Universe box, click OK. Now search for WPA again and you should see the package. Except if you don't have a working network connection :-(

You'll also notice more packages available: my Synaptic has 17,000+ of them, heh.

Re:I'm not down with the Ubuntu terms...

[Dan_Bercell]

Its not support if its from the Universe/Multiverse, thus not in the default install. You are countering your own complaint.

You ask why one distro can do a Live DVD but not a Live CD, then you ask why they cant have a feature YOU want by default... Well they have to make cuts to make a distro small enough for a CD.

Personally I like Ubuntu because most of the crap isnt on the OS CDs. I still dont understand why other distros require so many CDs for the installation (ie, RedHat.. at least the old versions required like 2-3 CDs.. thats insane.)

Re:I'm not down with the Ubuntu terms...

[bruthasj]

*yawn*, tired argument. If you enable third party repositories for Fedora, you get the same. It's not in by default because Fedora/Redhat actually follow Free Software principles. Whilst Ubuntu/Debian are whining about whether to include FDL docs in free or non-free, they include non-free firmware in default repositories.

Move along, nothing to be seen here.

More info

[sopuli]

here you can find some more info on what is likely to go into FC5.

FC5 due end of Feb, not 2nd half of 2006

[saikatguha266]

The article and the summary have a typo: "The next version of Raleigh, North Carolina-based Red Hat's enterprise Linux distribution is not scheduled for release until the second half of 2006" (emphasis mine)

According to the FC release schedule http://fedora.redhat.com/participate/schedule/:

27 February 2006: Fedora Core 5 Release open, announced

The original article likely meant second month instead.

Re:FC5 due end of Feb, not 2nd half of 2006

[Anonymous Coward]

Red Hat's enterprise Linux distribution is not scheduled for release until the second half of 2006

They're talking about RHEL5, not FC5.

Any chance of an English translation of this??

[Tim Ward]

I know this site is for technically literate people, but really!!

"improved management capabilities" I can cope with, but "stateless Linux and Xen virtualization functionality" and "open source server virtualization software" are worthy of the worst type of social science academic paper or local government policy document!

Re:Any chance of an English translation of this??

[metalhed77]

why not just look it up on say, google?

here I'll even link you, www.google.com.

If you're technically literate enough to read slashdot you should know that google is your friend. I promise you that the first documents for search terms 'xen virtualization' and 'stateless linux' are very useful.

Re:Any chance of an English translation of this??

[MSG]

Calm down, dude. Stateless Linux and Xen are the actual names of projects included in Fedora Core. They are not buzzwords or marketspeak. "Open source server virtualization software" was slightly redundant, but it is also a plain English description of Xen, which is exactly what you're asking for.

Re:Any chance of an English translation of this??

[gowen]

I was browsing a baseball site the other day and they kept using terms like "suicide squeeze" and "relief pitcher". Bastards.

Clue : If you're reading a tech news site with a leaning to Linux, it'll probably help to have some idea of the latest major developments in technology, as they relate to Linux. If you don't know what Xen is, or what a virtual server is, it's not as if it's hard to find out

Re:Any chance of an English translation of this??

[Tim Ward]

Clue : If you're reading a tech news site with a leaning to Linux, it'll probably help to have some idea of the latest major developments in technology, as they relate to Linux.

Oh, well, if the site is only intended to preach to the converted then that's fair enough of course. I was somehow under the mistaken impression that, as someone who is paid to work on Windows more often than I am paid to work on Linux, the site could be useful for me to keep up to date with "the latest major developments in technology", rather than a pre-existing knowledge of "the latest major developments in technology" being essential before attempting to understand the site.

Never mind, we can all make mistakes.

Re:Any chance of an English translation of this??

[scheme]

Oh, well, if the site is only intended to preach to the converted then that's fair enough of course. I was somehow under the mistaken impression that, as someone who is paid to work on Windows more often than I am paid to work on Linux, the site could be useful for me to keep up to date with "the latest major developments in technology", rather than a pre-existing knowledge of "the latest major developments in technology" being essential before attempting to understand the site.

Virtualization has been talked about for at least 6 months now. Microsoft has been moving towards this with it's virtual server software, sun and ibm have had it for years and been talking it up for a while, and even intel and amd are introducing hardware support for it in their next chip series. Virtualization isn't really the latest major development in technology anymore, especially since IBM has been doing it for at least 20 years now.

But RHEL *is* due second half 2006

[Snorpus]

I think the article is referring to RH Enterprise Linux as being expected in the second half of 2006, not Fedora Core.

FC5 is not RHEL 5

[Anonycat]

"Second half" refers to the release date of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. That's a different product from Fedora Core. That part of the article is saying "there's a feature that will be available in RHEL 5 late next year, but FC5 will let you see it sooner!"

Will OpenOffice be faster?

[bogaboga]

One of the problems highlighted with OpenOffice.org is its faster load time. I wonder whether RedHat will do the needful and preload most of the libraries needed at boot time in order to reduce the beast's load time. My hope is that they have not spoiled KDE with the Bluecurve theme.

Re:Will OpenOffice be faster?

[TheRaven64]

I know Novell have at least one guy working on improving OO.o load times. Sun are still responsible for most of the OO.o development, with Novell a distant second. I don't know if RedHat has anyone working on it at all.

Re:Will OpenOffice be faster?

[MPolo]

You can hide the load time by running /usr/lib/openoffice.org2.0/program/soffice -nodefault -nologo. I have a perlscript running that restarts this after exiting OOo. This cuts the subsequent load time to almost nothing.

Re:Will OpenOffice be faster?

[LnxAddct]

One thing that also really slows down OpenOffice.Org is loading java. Red Hat has developed GCJ (Gnu Compiler for Java) over the past few years (2 years I think) and now natively compiles Eclipse and OpenOffice.Org so that no JVM is needed to be loaded. OpenOffice opens pretty well under Fedora.
Regards,
Steve

I didn't expect it to do everything

[taxman_10m]

I understand I need to grab the driver from the manufacturer. But that should essentially be it. Ndiswrapper should be good to go as well as WPA_supplicant. Why should I have to futz around with these things at all?

Shouldn't getting a network up be somewhat high on the list of things a linux system should do automagically at the very beginning? If you don't have the networking then a user is plain dead in the water so far as grabbing updates to get other things working.

Re:I didn't expect it to do everything

[Anonymous Coward]

I can relate to your frustration in not being able to grab a driver and have things automagically work. That'd be nice, but honestly, you're pretty lucky if that's all you need to do. Imagine discovering support for your network card hasn't even been written yet. In my case, there was a "Linux" driver on the accompanying CD, which didn't work, and wasn't even for the right hardware. Not even close. Neither ASUS (mobo) nor 3COM (NIC) nor ATI (chipset) had anything on their websites that worked.

Sometimes, you need to roll up your sleeves and figure it out, or wait patiently for someone else to do the same. Driver support is generally a kernel issue, not a distro issue, anyway. Once support has been added to the kernel, you'll need to wait for Fedora to release a new version (with a newer kernel) if you want the automagical effect. Or download the new kernel source/patch yourself.

...better users hopefully..that read the FAQs...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that I can't understand your ignorance, but Fedora 4 is a DEVELOPMENT release of their product. If you want to make emprirical observations, realize 4 is only a different number than 3. Fedora 3 was (emprirically) a much more stable release than 4; but it was still a development release, as are all the Fedora Core versions.

I doubt your expectations were because you read what was released vs. your expectations that 4 is 'better' than 3.

Final Version?

[SnarfQuest]

and the final version of the OpenOffice.org application suite.

Did I miss some news? Have they actually stopped development of Open Office?

Re:Final Version?

[m85476585]

They mean 2.0. FC4 includes the beta version of 2.0, which is *finally* out of beta.

that's just a sad excuse and you know it

[taxman_10m]

I disagree strongly with the way "development" is bandied about as if this were some alpha version 0.3. Yes, it is a development version, but it does not infer what you want it to, which is "hey stupid user, can't blame us it don't work." As a development version I would have an even greater expectation of it working since it should include more recent versions of the software needed to get wireless working. But you want me to use the stable whatever last version of Red Hat/Fedora came out. 9.something was it from 1999? Yeh, I'm sure using that will get my wireless working. Stupid me for using a "development" version.

Re:that's just a sad excuse and you know it

[thaig]

Lots of people feel angry about failing to make a free product work but that's the way it is. Your kind of complaints have been made about every part of RedHat and then Fedora. First the installer, then the desktop then the applications . . . . they get fixed and people move on to complain bitterly about something else.

Of course . . they would never put any effort in themselves . . .no . . . someone in the Fedora community must do it for free.

Re:that's just a sad excuse and you know it

[FireFury03]

But you want me to use the stable whatever last version of Red Hat/Fedora came out. 9.something was it from 1999?

The latest official stable RedHat supported distribution (RHEL 4) was released on Feb 15th 2005.
The latest stable Fedora Core release (Fedora Core 4) was released on 13th June 2005.

What point are you trying to make please?

Not in my experience.

[CyricZ]

Perhaps you've had good experiences with Fedora Core. I have not, and that is why I question what that site says.

One client had an existing Debian setup on fairly common PC hardware. They wanted to transition to FC4, after hearing about how great it was. So I attempted to install it on one of their experimental servers. The installer started bitching about corrupt packages. I assumed at first that I had gotten bad images, so I downloaded the images from another mirror onto another computer (in order to use a different CD writer), verified the checksums, and burned them again. So I try again, and off it goes, bitching about corrupt packages once more.

At that point I had to tell my client about the problems with Fedora Core 4. We agreed to give Ubuntu 5.04 a try, and it worked fine. We have since transitioned all their servers to Ubuntu, and they have been working fine for a while now. Hence it was not a problem with the hardware, but apparently a problem with the Fedora images.

At the very least I expected the CD images to contain usable packages. It truly made me doubt the quality of the entire Fedora project when I ran into those troubles. As such, I don't think I'll ever be able to recommend its use to clients, unfortunately. I'm considering giving FC5 a try once it's released, but I'm not sure if it'd be worth it, considering that Ubuntu and Debian have always worked far better for me.

Re:Not in my experience.

[talksinmaths]

One client had an existing Debian setup on fairly common PC hardware. They wanted to transition to FC4, after hearing about how great it was....

...At that point I had to tell my client about the problems with Fedora Core 4.

Damn, it would suck to be your client. If it were my client, I would have advised them that "hearing about how great it was" isn't really a valid basis upon which to make business decisions. Secondly, if I'd known about "problems" with a particular disto, I wouldn't wait until the client started bitching to disclose them.

As with all of these discussions about distos, most of the arguments break down into: "I'm not familiar with the particular idiosyncracies of product X, and therefore product X is flawed. However, I am familiar with the particular idiosyncracies of product Y, and therefore product Y rules.

Re:Not in my experience.

[CyricZ]

Unlike you, I listen to my clients. If they suggest something, and it sounds reasonable (such as using Fedora to replace an existing Debian installation), then I will consider it.

I had been expecting FC4 to work. Of course, when I ran into those problems my reaction was to not use it, just because the quality was so lacking. Had you read my post, you would have seen that we found these problems while testing the viability of Fedora Core. Indeed, Fedora made it nowhere near their production systems.

As for your last comment, this isn't a matter of me being unfamiliar with Fedora. The problem was the corrupted packages on the installation CDs. That's a problem with the distribution itself, not a problem with how it is used. It's flawed because the data was corrupt.

Re:Not in my experience.

[LnxAddct]

I'm not arguing the merits of one distro over another, but the data was probably corrupt from a bad transfer to CD, not because of a lack of quality. There are over a half million servers on the net running Fedora Core, not even taking into account desktop machines, and they all used the same disk images you did. The data wasn't corrupt, your CD was.
Regards,
Steve

Re:Not in my experience.

[talksinmaths]

Unlike you, I listen to my clients. If they suggest something, and it sounds reasonable...then I will consider it.

Again, I feel bad for your clients if you feel that switching distros because someone heard that it was great is 'reasonable'.

Re:Not in my experience.

[saikatguha266]

> At the very least I expected the CD images to contain usable packages.

Suffices to say that if the CD images of a major Linux distro were b0rked, you'd hear a lot more about it; and only a select few would be able to install it. There are many reasons why your particular set of packages may have been corrupt -- maybe the CD reader on the system you were installing on had transient issues, who knows? But if you indeed failed at installing FC, and it was a software issue, I certainly hope you submitted a bug report that would help devs address the issue.

Re:Not in my experience.

[Nermal6693]

Something I've seen in the past (with Ubuntu, actually) is that packages will sometimes appear to be corrupt if the system is using SpeedStep or similar, to dynamically change the speed of the CPU. At least, that appeared to be what was causing my "corrupt package" errors.

Re:Not in my experience.

[mforbes]

What I find interesting is that FC1 through 4 (and, previously, RH 6 through 9) have all installed just fine on my Linux box, but I can't get Mandrake to install at all. It sits & spins for about 30 to 60 minutes before finally admitting it just doesn't have any idea what's going on (and no, I don't have the exact error messages anymore-- it's been about 7 or 8 months since I last tried).

For my money (hah!), I'll stick with FC. At least it installs & works almost out-of-the-box for my purposes.

Re:Not in my experience.

[scotch]

Wow, me an thousands of other people used the install images without seeing corrupt packages but you didn't. Strange. Obviously, the packages are corrupt at the source and it's not some problem with your hardware or between your keyboard and chair.

Re:Not in my experience.

[ryanov]

I have this kind of luck too. I've had trouble with Mandrake, Debian, and RedHat. HOWEVER, I've always had the most trouble with RedHat-based releases. The installer for the RedHat-based distros seems to dislike my machines for whatever reason.

most wireless security FAQ/checklists

[taxman_10m]

go something like this...

1) Change the default SSID on your router.
2) Change the default password on your router.
3) Turn off SSID broadcasting.
4) Enable encryption.

And usually under step 4 in parens is (WEP encryption is insecure and susceptible to hacks/attacks/whatever. WPA is better. Use WPA).

I don't know why WPA is better than WEP. Maybe it isn't. But I'm just doing what the checklist says, because I don't want my connection to be compromised. That is why I want to use WPA rather than WEP.

Re:most wireless security FAQ/checklists

[FireFury03]

3) Turn off SSID broadcasting.

Pointless - no increased security here, move along.

Re:most wireless security FAQ/checklists

[fwr]

WPA is better because it uses a chaning key. The actual encryption is still WEP (WPA1 is AES), but the keys change on a regular basis, so they can't be easily guessed. You don't start out with a known key either, you either use 802.1x authentication or a pre-shared key (PSK). PSK's are designated for "home" networks and are not recommended for enterprise networks.

Re:most wireless security FAQ/checklists

[fwr]

That's WPA2 uses AES. So much for previewing comments...

clones of a master system

[daveed]

"as clones of a master system"
Hundreds of networked Segas! sweet!

Re:Off to Debian

[gatzke]

Has that always been true? I thought FC1 / FC2 used up2date be default. I could be wrong.

I would be happy paying RH a one-time fee per box, assuming we get free security updates.

Re:Off to Debian

[Anonymous Coward]

yum is totally separate from up2date. up2date doesn't seem to be supported well in FC, so yum alone is the recommended rpm updater.

Stateless Linux

[RichiP]

The description and whitepaper on Stateless Linux reminds me of how lab computing used to be back in college (around 1996) where all of our lab computers didn't have harddisks but would boot from an image on a Novell Netware server (via network PROM boot). All the programs and the user's data would reside on the server but the processing power used would be the client workstation's. Seems to me Novell would be one of those companies who'd be interested in this approach and would get on the Fedora Stateless Linux bandwagon. It would be nice if the two companies would actually work on this since the Fedora project is neutral grounds.

I think Stateless Linux is a great idea. In fact, I think Gnome should be extended so that a session can span several computers where the person logs on to. Then we could couple up distributed computing on top of that and make it part of the Stateless Linux-Gnome system.

Exciting times!

Re:Stateless Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Stateless Linux is a great idea. In fact, I think Gnome should be extended so that a session can span several computers where the person logs on to. Then we could couple up distributed computing on top of that and make it part of the Stateless Linux-Gnome system.

Gnome had saved session stuff for a while now... and it all sucks.

What we need more is...

Have you ever used 'screen'? It's a multiplexor for the unix shell. Allows you to open up multiple shell instances on different computers on the same terminal, and then be able to disconnect the shell and still leave everything running on the background. Allows you to move from computer to computer while disconnecting and reconnecting over ssh and such without loosing anything.

It's very handy.

X Windows is a networking protocol. The X Clients are just programs like Firefox, or Nautilus, or Abiword, or any game that runs ontop of your X server, which is simply the program that controls your inputs and monitors and displays the outputs of your X Clients on your local machine.

X Clients can be anywere (once the networking is enabled.. there are certain security considurations with X, which is why networking outside your local computer is disabled by default) on your network.. They can be on your local machine, remote machine, on the internet anywere.. It doesn't matter.

Think of it like your X server is your X Browser and the X clients are like frames or websites on that you interact with. They can be anywere.

What we need is a standard way for X windows to have a thing like 'screen' were you can save your current output and move it to any computer that can handle X windows.

Sun already has this for their excellent X terminals that they sell.

Not only that we need a way to move programs from one X Server to another. You can run multiple X servers on your machine, I do that all the time. I also run X servers on my laptop and other computers that I have aviable.. I should be able to move the a X client from machine to machine, from output device to output device without stopping or restarting any programs.

If you combine that with network-based home directories, some sort of networked sound system, and network authentication and directory system, then you should be able to use any system transparently. It will be roaming desktop.. but on steroids. Not only you could use and have your home enviroment on every single computer in the system.. but also be able to use any program on any computer on this system.

Combine that with clustering capabilities, such as distributed file systems and the ability to migrate not only proccesses from computer to computer, but using Xen moving entire running operating systems from computer to computer.. then we would have a true Network-based operating system.

The entire computer network of a corporation, school, or other orginization will be able to share proccessor, memory, and disk resources transparently. Any part of the system, any computer, would be a plug-n-play system.

You buy a Dell. You format Windows off of it, you plug said Dell into network. Thats it. Thats all it would take to install Linux on it and make it work with the rest of your networked computers.

This is what stateless linux is working for. Stateless linux is the first major step in this direction.

Re:Stateless Linux

[Coryoth]

What we need is a standard way for X windows to have a thing like 'screen' were you can save your current output and move it to any computer that can handle X windows.

You mean like xmove? Basically xmove starts up a pseudoserver which clients can connect to. At startup clients connecting to the pseudoserver display on the default XServer, but can be moved to any other display on the network.

I agree that a cleaned up easy to use xmove system would be a nice idea though.

Jedidiah.

but it's a basic networking component

[taxman_10m]

Doesn't it make sense it should be included?

"Sorry, the default install only supports UDP. To get TCP/IP working you need to download TCPIP_suplicant."

WTF?

Re:but it's a basic networking component

[Dan_Bercell]

No it doesnt because its NOT STABLE! Look it up, if you have to change the settings / servers for 'GET' then its not stable or supported (probably not supported for stability reasons) by UBuntu.

Re:but it's a basic networking component

[sp0rk173]

wireless is not a requirement for all users to get online like TCP/IP is. Stop bitching, that's a piss poor analogy.

Re:Off to Debian

[hey]

Does that mean the up2date front-end is going to retired in favour of the yum command? Why have two commands that just use the same back-end!

so the better alternative is to

[taxman_10m]

Give the user a complete non-working system?

At the point where the STABLE system does not detect the networking correctly or cannot configure the user should right then and there be able to grab the UNSTABLE stuff which in all likelihood will get their networking to work, albeit unstably.

Re:so the better alternative is to

[Dan_Bercell]

Not detect the networking correctly?, WTF you talking about? I am talking about WPA, what are you talking about? WPA is an 'optional' security setting for wireless, MANY cards on Windows XP dont work with WPA.

SO your argument is that if Ubuntu cannot stabilize any feature it shouldnt ship? Our it shouldnt ship if it doesnt support everything you require?

I know now why Linux freaks think us Windows lovers are idiots

Re:Off to Debian

[Erwos]

up2date is being retired in favor of the yum front-end "pup".

-Erwos

Fedora FTP Installs - Think about this?

[RotateLeftByte]

There is a very good reason for having to tell the installer where you want to download the files from. In an organisation with several systems, you would be better of copying the RPMS directories from the CD/DVD's to a FTP/NFS/HTTP server on your own network. Point the installer at that resource and you can install the whole lot a great deal faster than over the internet.

Here is what I do.
1) install say FC4 on a server box. Select EVERYTHING.
2) then setup a cron job to do a daily "yum update". Add some logic in the script to detect if there has been a kernel update and reboot if required.
3) Copy the CD/DVD stuff into an FTP/NFS/HTTP accessible place. I prefer NFS as I can then use the X version of anaconda.
4) Setup another cron job to run on a daily basis to package the rpms downloaded to the master system into your very own yum repository.

Then on the other systems, point the installer at the master server and bingo, it all loads quickly. Once your system is booted, point yum at your own repository and update. No traffic over the internet etc etc and its much faster.
This is "REAL WORLD LINUX SYSADMIN". As Fedora is a test bed for RHEL than the majority of users who run FEDORA will appreciate this sort of approach.
The one great thing about Linux is that there is a Linux Distro that will fit the way you want to work. Be it SUSE, Deviant (sorry Debian), Gentoo or DSL.
Finally, 99.99999% of people who do a FTP install of Fedora couldn't care less about the way dumb ass things like computer games work with network master server lists. Again, this is REAL WORLD LINUX Sysadmin. "Welcome To The Machine!"

I'm not a programmer

[taxman_10m]

I downloaded what I needed to download. Futzed with config files for a lot longer than I should have. My goal was actually to get it working and write it up because the current documentation is so poor. But it's so poor that I can't get it working and can't document how to get it working.

And read up a few threads. This totally validates my point. What is it STABLE and usable? Or unstable and unusable? People are trying to have it both ways.

A common myth regarding Fedora. From http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraMyths [fedoraproject.org]

MYTH - Fedora is unstable and unreliable, just a testbed for bleeding-edge software

FACT - This misconception comes from two things:

From http://fedora.redhat.com/ [redhat.com]: "It is also a proving ground for new technology that may eventually make its way into Red Hat products."

Fedora has rapid releases, a short life-cycle, and a lot of new code.

Re:I'm not a programmer

[An Onerous Coward]

"Stable" and "unstable" aren't an either-or proposition. They're a continuum. So if something falls fairly close to the middle of the continuum, of course that thing will take it from both sides. You're trying to cling to a false dichotomy. Call it "stable enough for non-critical production work", and be at peace.

I'm not a windows lover

[taxman_10m]

I keep trying to install linux because I've used it in the past and like it. At this point it's like battered wife syndrome.

You think wireless security is optional and call me an idiot?

I think getting networking working is fundamental. And if that means giving the user the option of using an unstable piece of software then that is what must be done.

Re:I'm not a windows lover

[rainman_bc]

Dude, why not just walk over to the wireless router, plug your notebook in for a few seconds, apt-get (or urpmi, or emerge, or yum or whatever) the wpa package you need, and you're done.

Re:I'm not a windows lover

[Dan_Bercell]

Well if you want an OS that will keep up-to-date with new Networking technologies (among other technologies) Linux is the last thing you want to be using....well second last next to FreeBSD. Try a MAC or Windows box, they do and will continue to keep up with technologies.

If your not willing to go the extra yard, then Linux is not for you, wireless will just be the first hurdle...

And wireless security is optional, stick a MAC address filtering, hide the SSID, use a WEP key, and a firewall. This will stop the majortiy of people even noticing your Wireless network. It takes a person with the knowledge and will to hack your network, with all the open wireless networks out there, why would they even bother with you?. If your in a business situation, then its not up to you do deal with the notebook or network, so not your problem.

If you cant deal with this, then plug your notebook into your router and download the WPA update...

Re:Off to Debian

[LnxAddct]

On Fedora, both yum and up2date are completely free. Up2date is for a GUI, yum is for command line, yum is alot like apt for debian. Up2date sits in your icon task tray and flashes when updates are available, you double click it, click install, and away it goes. No accounts, no money required.
Regards,
Steve

Ditto.

[btarval]

I concure with the statements about its stability, in production systems no less.

In fact, I prefer it over the RH Enterprise stuff, simply because it has been reliable, and it also has the latest set of features, which has saved my butt in being able to get things done. This has happened over and over again. The Fedora folks deserve Kudos for their efforts.

I would also say that the FC releases aren't flawless. But there are always issues with every O.S. release, be it FC, other Linux distros, Windows, OS X, or BSD. The key thing is being able to recognize which OS meets your needs for the work you need done.

For much of my work, FC has been able to meet my requirements betther than the other Distros or O.S.'s, and it's been extremely reliable. As always, YMMV.

forget games, OpenBSD does this I think

[taxman_10m]

I'm not saying to include it in place of manually entering whatever you need, but alongside it.

I don't even think you understood what I said. What are you talking about copying all sorts of junk to a server?

You get a Boot ISO. You boot from it. You choose FTP install. As it exists now you type in some server that you copied down the info for from the mirror list that you grabbed from the web page with mirrors on it.

What I would like to see is simply a list of the mirror sites during the install that I can select from. I believe the OpenBSD FTP install does this, but it's been a while since I touched that.

The game thing was just an analogy, probably a poor one. It's the first thing that came to mind.

Architecture Migration

[huwnet]

1)Is it possible to upgrade from FC4 to FC5 test 1 (I cant seem to find the upgrade options)? 2)Is it possible to upgrade the i386 version to the x64 version? Thanks

Re:Architecture Migration

[Anonymous Coward]

From here it says no.

Fresh Installs Only. Upgrades are not supported (or even implemented). If you want to test Upgrade capability, please wait until FC5test2.

Re:Architecture Migration

[Compholio]

1)Is it possible to upgrade from FC4 to FC5 test 1 (I cant seem to find the upgrade options)?

You need to change which repository tree you're downloading from, I can't remember exactly the config file (my FC machine is in the shop) but it's something like /etc/sysconfig/rhn/sources.

2)Is it possible to upgrade the i386 version to the x64 version?

Not to my knowledge, you could attempt to change to the x86_64 repo tree and you might get away with it (the i386 packages are actually the same in both trees) but unless you specifically asked it to install x86_64 packages it would probably be confused because it would be "missing" a lot of important packages and if you tried to install the x86_64 version it would believe it had a duplicate. If you were to attempt this I would suggest starting with the packages libc, gcc, rpm, kernel, up2date, kde|gnome, and e2fsprogs - you will need enough x86_64 packages updated to boot the system or your upgrade attempt might hose you.

Re:Architecture Migration

[Anonymous Coward]

I installed FC5 yesterday... there is no upgrade option in Test 1.

Re:Too Little, Too Late

[Anonymous Coward]

This has got to be one of the funniest posts I've seen recently.

So let me get this straight:
You want to leave Fedora for Gentoo because the package manager is slow, as if there could be any package manager slower than portage (yes, I know that there are tools like esearch that make it bearable)

But complaining about the lack of graphical config tools in Fedora and stating in the same post that you are going to change to gentoo because of this just cracked me up. You are aware that gentoo doesn't have any config tools whatsoever, apart from the few tools coming with Gnome and KDE?

Seriously, you made my day. ;-D

Redhat Experiences

[harryoyster]

I am a member of a team that runs several thousand Redhat Enterprise Linux servers ranging from 2.1 through to 4. All the way from single process systems right upto 8+ processors. Now Redhat enterprise suits corporate environments because its a platform that is maintained for ages. However I have had it totally with redhats quality control massive dependancy chains and the over all way that Redhat is. I so often feel that it wants to be the microsoft of open source. I cant really say much good about redhat in general. I do appreciate many of the people that redhat hire and the input they have had to open source in general. But Redhat as a company is running behind the game, Their customer support system sucks. They dont have a good RSS feed system to announce issues to people. they are very closed minded when it comes to customer service. Compared to our Novel (SuSe) experience redhat is so appauling.

What is XENSOURCE Virtualization ?

[flyingace]

Does anyone have it running on your desktop ?

Re:What is XENSOURCE Virtualization ?

[argoff]

XenSource is the company, Xen is a modified linux kernel pair that allows multiple opperating systems to run on the same physical hardware. It is different that other virtualisation because it uses a kernel hack rather than complete emulation of the foriegn host to create this environemnt. Because of that, it has a very small overhead - typically under 4%.

They have Xen kernels in the package list for FC4, and I used them without much difficulty. I thought it was rather nice, I set the virtual machines to auto start upon bootup of the parent kernel. Another nice feature is that virtual machines can be transfered "on the fly" while still running, between different physical hardware on the same subnet.

Don't be lame, spell it out

[Anonymous Coward]

You got the link wrong, it should be: http://fuckinggoogleit.com/

More signal, less noise tards.

Re:Too Little, Too Late

[Anonymous Coward]

I started my Linux Forays with Fedora Core 2. Since then it has given me not a small portion of grief. Yum in paticular is a huge letdown. It is SLOW.

Yum switched to using a different python library for XML parsing, and is using SQLite for storage in FC4. It is much faster and takes much less memory than in previous releases.

Fedora packages are quite simply broken. I'm not even talking about the whole DVD/mp3 issue. Most apps requiring GTK2 won't install as Fedora has labeled it as gtk+.

Fedora Core packages work well with other Fedora Core packages, and packages from Fedora Extras. I've never had problems with package names in Fedora. Are you using some goofy third-party repository, or packages for another RPM-based distro? That doesn't work. If you try to use a Fedora package on Mandriva or SuSE, it's the same problem.

The complete lack of GUI admin tools was also a serious letdown.

Specifics? There are many GUI config tools in Fedora, quite a few added since FC2.

It seems you have formed many opinions from an old versin of Fedora, and never checked newer releases to see if the specific problems you had were solved.

FC3 - FC4 - FC5

[otisg]

I think the big question is how to get to that nice FC5 from the existing FC3 or FC4. Is there a clean/supported/documented upgrade path? Just get the ISO, burn it, boot from it, and FCN+1 will be smart enough to do that _upgrade_?

Re:FC3 - FC4 - FC5

[DeBeuk]

I think the big question is how to get to that nice FC5 from the existing FC3 or FC4. Is there a clean/supported/documented upgrade path? Just get the ISO, burn it, boot from it, and FCN+1 will be smart enough to do that _upgrade_?

Get the new yum and fedora-release rpms, then do a yum upgrade.
You might want to check if packages have been marked obsolete and remove them.

Re:FC3 - FC4 - FC5

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep in mind though that upgrades are NOT supported with Test releases and are discouraged.
FC4 -> FC5. Sure, no problem.
FC4 -> FC5 Test n (and then -> FC5 Final) is a no-no. You wanna run test releases, then be prepared to do fresh installs.

Re:FC3 - FC4 - FC5

[otisg]

How about FC3 -> FC4|FC5?

Re:FC3 - FC4 - FC5

[DeBeuk]

You probably could, but personally, I wouldn't bother. Just reinstall, unless the downtime makes that out of the question.

Re:Too Little, Too Late

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you complaining about how they label their packages? Nothing can be more irrelevant. Ever heard about the concept called "namespace"? You're proving you're an idiot.

FC5 Details?

[aaronmarks]

Is there anywhere that has details about the new features available in Fedora Core 5? I'm definitely happy with Ubuntu right and will just stick with it, but it's always fun to read about Fedora. I think that Fedora definitely pushes the Linux community along and in the end definitely ends up benefitting from eachother deveolopement. AFter using Ubuntu though and coming from a Fedora install, I don't understand much why someone would deal with FC instead of Ubuntu.

--
Aaron Marks

Re:FC5 Details?

[the_chair]

Indeed - what is our(we, the mob) motivation, exactly, for adopting this stylish yet retro cranial accessory as our technological paradigm? I mean, red fedora's are cool...but what could set them apart from freaking africa-speak?

Re:FC5 Details?

[Anonymous Coward]

Screw your redundant kumbayah distro.

I have tried the live CDs, but unless they get a name in a human language and drop the whole holding hands across continents bullshit it's not touching my HDDs. The holier than thou aspect seems to be the only "advantage" over other distros, and I'm afraid I'm interested in more technical issues when I pick a Linux distro.

In contrast to Ubuntu, the Gates Foundation wastes ginormous amounts of actual money and other aid on the African continent, so why not just run Windows if you actually care about something as irrelevant as the wellbeing of negroes? Huh?

You should have read my post.

[CyricZ]

That's what I thought, too.

So, had you read my post, you would have seen I downloaded them again. I did that on a completely different computer than I used for the first set of downloads and CD burns. The second set of downloads were from a different mirror, and hard drive they were stored to the second time around was different, and the CD writer used to burn them was different. I even went out of my way to select a different brand of CDs, thinking that might be the problem. The downloaded images checksummed too, it should be noted.

Also, I used my original system to download and burn the Ubuntu disc which I have since used. And it worked perfectly fine. No corrupt packages!

The truth of the matter is that, like it or not, the Fedora images contained corrupt packages. And when it comes down to it, that's very unprofessional. Such a distribution is just not suitable for serious work.

Re:You should have read my post.

[uwog]

I don't believe this crap. Name the packages so we can verify your claims (disclaimer: i'm a FC Extras maintainer)

Re:You should have read my post.

[jsight]

Indeed, parent poster doesn't know what he is talking about.

Fedora isn't perfect, but they don't ship CDs with corrupted packages.

Re:You should have read my post.

[Anonymous Coward]

CyricZ is a very well known /. troll, so of course he won't back up his claim.

I'm not the only one!

[CyricZ]

I'm not the only one who has run into problems with corrupt Fedora Core packages on the installation CDs:

http://groups.google.com/group/linux.redhat/browse _frm/thread/6f2c0e2a969d5929/
http://groups.google.com/group/linux.redhat.instal l/browse_frm/thread/b359bb48f7c60017/
http://groups.google.com/group/linux.redhat/browse _frm/thread/c53d572d41d7a1bd/

Note that people have run into similar problems with numerous different releases of FC. There are serious quality problems with Fedora, like it or not.

I thought it might be that particular CD writer, too, so I used a different system to burn the second set of CDs. I even used a different brand of CD-Rs, just to be safe. Considering that I have used those same burners for burning numerous other distributions to disk, always without problem, I would tend to blame Fedora for the problems.

I considered filing a bug report, but then I decided not to. If they're going to put out a distribution with corrupt RPMs, I'm not going to waste my time with them at all, be it as a user or helping them fix bugs. I used Ubuntu instead, and did not have any problems.

Re:I'm not the only one!

[amorsen]

There is a simple way to tell whether the disks are burned correctly. It is to simply run the autotest that you have to go out of your way to turn off. Why did you turn that off?

FC3 users need not worry

[suitepotato]

At the rate things get done by the RH people, and by packagers, FC3 should have decent package availibility until FC6. Many sites still have FC1 packages on their servers.

That said, it does give more of a reason to think about an upgrade to FC4, but given the disasters I've heard compared to FC3, I probably will leave FC3 on my boxes for now.

Every other one...

[mcrbids]

Looks like (for me) that my use of Fedora Core is falling into the same pattern that I always had with the earlier RedHat releases - every other one.

I started on RH 5.1. Briefly hit 6.2 on the way to 7.x. Still have a number of servers running 7.x.

Never touched 8.x, and was moving into 9 when RedHat EOL'd their "RedHat Linux" product.

Now, I'm using CentOS for most of my (smaller) servers, and Fedora for personal use. I used Fedora Core 1, never touched Core 2, now happy on Core 3. Haven't touched 4, but am considering 5.

Why upgrade on each one, unless there's some OMFG Do0d feature you just gotta have...

Re:Every other one...

[scotch]

FC4 has been better than FC3 in my experience, fwiw.

You are Misinformed

[Laven]

http://fedora.redhat.com/participate/schedule/
FC5 final release is currently scheduled for late February. It may be delayed a week or two in order to get GNOME 2.12 into the release.

Thanks,
Warren Togami
wtogami@redhat.com

Re:You are Misinformed

[salimma]

FC5 final release is currently scheduled for late February. It may be delayed a week or two in order to get GNOME 2.12 into the release.

s/2.12/2.14. Just in case people thought Fedora is woefully behind the curve :)

Xen Poised to Take the World By Storm

[eno2001]

Just as a side not to those of you who are unaware, Xen is probably the coolest thing to ever happen to computing evar. It is a paravirutalization system. How many times have you fired up VMWare or VirtualPC and wished you didn't have to run as heavy of a Host OS? Well.. Xen is your answer. Xen is a special kernel all unto it's own that boots directly on x86 and presents a new virtual architecture to the guest OS. This new virtual architecture (think PPC vs. x86 vs. amd64) is called 'xen'. And when your OS is compiled to operate on top of the Xen kernel, you get EXACTLY what was mentioned above: a system that boots a very minimal "OS" that plays host to your VMs. Not only that but at speeds that are near native! So Redhat is making the right move by incorporating this into Fedora (and eventually their commercial offerings). Now, the only other thing that needs to be done is make Xen work for grandma. Then you'll never have to ever worry about fixing people's PCs ever again...

Re:Xen Poised to Take the World By Storm

[Shawn is an Asshole]

Then you'll never have to ever worry about fixing people's PCs ever again...

I don't like fixing people's computers, but I do like getting their money. Heh, $70 for running Spybot, Ad-Aware, ClamAV, and Hijack This?

Re:Xen Poised to Take the World By Storm

[eno2001]

I do all that stuff for free to "take the money out of the hands" of the people at the big boxes who would overcharge them for what amounts to nothing.

100% FUD

[bani]

strange, I work at an ISP and we've had used exclusively redhat, from RH5 all the way to FC4 without problems.

For one: I keep hearing people say that redhat contributes "Millions" to the open source community. Where?

http://sources.redhat.com/ecos/ http://sources.redhat.com/redboot/ http://sourceware.org/jffs2/ http://cygwin.com/ http://people.redhat.com/mingo/exec-shield/ http://sourceware.org/insight/ http://sourceware.org/cluster/ http://sourceware.org/systemtap/

and don't forget ext3 is largely bankrolled by redhat.

there's lots more. just because you're unaware of it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

And is it significant compared to the return they get on it?

why don't you ask them?

Are they only doing it because it benifits them?

why don't you ask them?

I know they pay the salaries of several people who are "RedHat employees", but really just kernel hack, but Millions?

yes. sure, redhat employs kernel devs like alan, ingo and arjen. redhat also pays to employ gcc and gdb developers. and others.

Really?

yep.

For two: They DIDN'T EVEN WRITE THEIR DAMN SOFTWARE.

really? who wrote rpm then? should you not then lambast mandrake and suse for using rpm, because they didn't write it?

sure there are legitimate gripes about fedora. that's no reason to make stuff up.

Re:100% FUD

[zerocool^]

RPM is relatively insignificant compared to Apache, the Kernel, mysql, sendmail, ldap, gcc, and most of the packages that make up the core of redhat.

And of those packages they've appearantly contributed, I've only ever heard of cygwin, which they took over from the previous maintainers.

Re:100% FUD

[bani]

well gee, none of the other distros "wrote" or "contributed" apache, the kernel, mysql, sendmail, ldap or gcc either.

so I guess debian, gentoo, and all the other distros are just as much "at fault" or "to blame" as redhat?

or are you saying debian and gentoo or any other distro has individually contributed more money and software to open source than redhat?

redhat has employed many opensource developers for about 10 years now. it's not hard to see how that could ring up into $millions$.

like i said, just because you're unaware of something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Re:100% FUD

[Peter La Casse]

RPM is relatively insignificant compared to Apache, the Kernel, mysql, sendmail, ldap, gcc, and most of the packages that make up the core of redhat.

That's a very shortsighted view. The package management system, whichever one is chosen, is an enormously important piece of software that touches every package of the distribution. It's certainly not "relatively insignificant compared to most of the packages that make up the core of redhat". RPM is one of the significant programs that make up the core of Red Hat's distributions.

Re:100% FUD

[zerocool^]

Yeah, Here's the thing, genius. I like debian. I like gentoo. Why? They don't charge HUNDREDS OF FREAKING DOLLARS for the same stuff that's in redhat!

My point wasn't to point out things that redhat didn't write... it was to make the point that they were selling (for LOTS of money) stuff that they didn't write and that all the other distros give away for free.

Re:100% FUD

[zerocool^]

Ok, but in that light, shouldn't emerge, apt-get, the BSD ports, whatever that thing is Ubuntu uses, and pretty much every other package manager get the same accolades?

I don't know how long you've used redhat for, but the one major complaint I've had with them has been RPM. I mean, when it was a problem for me, no one else had fixed it either, but I remember spending hours on rpmfind.net looking for dependencies of depencies of programs for rpm installs on redhat. Thankfully, yum fixes most of this.

But again my point remains... Yes, RPM is a significant project, but no more so than apt-get or probably considerably less so than portage, and to claim it's a good reason to charge your clients thousands of dollars over the life cycle of the product is just... fleecing the very users who you depend on.

~W

Re:100% FUD

[Peter La Casse]

Ok, but in that light, shouldn't emerge, apt-get, the BSD ports, whatever that thing is Ubuntu uses, and pretty much every other package manager get the same accolades?

Absolutely, and they do. (FYI, Ubuntu also uses apt.)

But again my point remains... Yes, RPM is a significant project, but .... to claim it's a good reason to charge your clients thousands of dollars over the life cycle of the product is just... fleecing the very users who you depend on.

I don't think anybody's claimed that. Red Hat charges for support, and for the brand name.

Re:100% FUD

[talksinmaths]

the point that they were selling (for LOTS of money) stuff that they didn't write and that all the other distros give away for free

I realize the you think this is philosophically wrong. However to a large extent, this is money that is going to be spent irrespective of whether some other distro will give it away for free or not. Would you rather it go to MS or another commercial software vendor? I realize that small businesses might feel sighted by their change of market focus, but you're always free to use CentOS or any other distro. To their credit, Redhat reinvests (some likely significant portion of) this money back into the OSS community. I think the OSS community would be well served if there were more Linux companies like Redhat. For instance it would be great if Novell would open source eDirectory like RH did with Directory Server.

Re:100% FUD

[zerocool^]

You're right, of course. And I'm sorry I went off in that last post.

But, you gotta understand my perspective. I was deep into the small-business webhosting business when the redhat swing went down. There was no way out. At that time, there were "other" linux distros, but other mainly consisted of Mandrake (which was falling off the map, despite bein based on RH), Debian (which most people considered a fringe distro), and slackware (outdated and hard to administer, at least when time-to-learn is a factor). Red Hat was it in the linux world. People distributed binaries in RPM format. Hardware proclaimed RedHat support, not linux support. It was RedHat or it wasn't professional.

And then they pulled the rug out. I mean... we were in the middle of a sign-up boom, we were adding a new server every week practically. We had to find something.

A paralell I thought of after I posted a lot of these comments... It's a similar situation to Apache today. Apache is by far the most popular webserver on posix OS's these days. Imagine if all of a sudden, it cost $300/yr for apache (hypothetical, bear with me). Yes there are other http servers, but none of them have the maturity, support, or general ubiquitiousness of apache. There would be a mad scramble for the leftovers to bring themselves up to maturity, and at the same time, applications that previously depended on and hooked into apache would be facing a partial API rewrite and debug to work with other products. Eventually, two or three other successors would emerge as the contenders, and maybe someone would take an old version of Apache and start re-developing it, but it would fragment the http world and cause mass confusion.

That's what happened in the small business world. It was several months (or a year) until Fedora was usable, and even though it's relatively stable, it's not suitable for a production environment due to support issues. FC isn't perfect, either; there have been problems with compatability between applications in the same distro. And it was years before CentOS came out. We needed something immediately, and we simply could not afford RHEL. We eventually switched to Debian, which was (is) kind of the warm-fuzzy of the linux world. You know it's going to work, because it's been tested for so long, but as a result, it's usually a little behind the times. Debian went through a lot of growing-up in the months after RHEL happened.

Anyway, it shook us pretty hard. We felt like the rug had been pulled out from under us, and that we simply were a market segment who just didn't matter, because we didn't have deep pockets.

Again, sorry everyone for the explosion, but I think this post really explains where my feelings for RH come from.

~Will

Re:100% FUD

[zerocool^]

Red Hat charges for support, and for the brand name

See the other post I have in this series of threads regarding what it felt like in the small business world when RH pulled regular-redhat in favor of RHEL and Fedora.

One of my points is that RH has done a good PR job of convincing people that they're charging for support, when you don't get support unless you pay lots of money. The aforementioned $180 for workstation doesn't cover anything but like web forum support for installation.

But, that's not the thing. I think you hit it with the brand name thing. If anything, I don't like paying for a brand name. But even more so, I don't like being squeezed out of the segment of the population that can afford to pay for the brand name. It's all well and good that expensive OS's mean that the CTO's and PHB's feel good about the expense. I understand how that works - traditional suits don't think that anything that's inexpensive is worth a damn in an enterprise environment. But, I didn't need to be convinced that RH was a good product... I had been using it for years. And all of a sudden, because we weren't a multi-million dollar corporation, we were squeezed out.

~W

Re:100% FUD

[bani]

you can get as much support for RH as you do for debian. you just have to know where to look (true for both debian and RH, so RH is not the exception). in terms of support (the drum you keep banging) there isn't much to distinguish debian from RH, since free RH support does exist in the same manners that free debian support exists.

we (ISP) have survived just fine since RH5 and we never paid a dime for RHN.

Re:100% FUD

[bani]

My point wasn't to point out things that redhat didn't write... it was to make the point that they were selling (for LOTS of money) stuff that they didn't write and that all the other distros give away for free.

I guess this means you hate Apple too?

Re:100% FUD

[Peter La Casse]

One of my points is that RH has done a good PR job of convincing people that they're charging for support, when you don't get support unless you pay lots of money.

How is that not "charging for support"? (I get it that you don't like the low-tier option, "charging for not much support".)

I think you hit it with the brand name thing. If anything, I don't like paying for a brand name.

So, why are you still using Red Hat? You don't want to pay for the level of support you're getting, you don't like paying for a brand name and you don't like it that they don't care about small fry like you. So use one of the many RH-like distributions, if you like the distribution itself so much, or find a company that will sell support for an amount that you're willing to pay and use whatever distribution they suggest.

Re:100% FUD

[zerocool^]

Oh, I quit using RedHat a long time ago, but I had to support it after I gave up on it.

"Charging for support" to me doesn't mean "Charging you whether you get support or not, just charging a LOT more for support". I mean, if they're charging for support, they shouldn't charge for the version with no support (i.e. the $180 Workstation).

Re:100% FUD

[Peter La Casse]

As others have shown, they do give support with the basic workstation charge. Just not very much.

driver support for toshiba laptops

[farker haiku]

Oh, maybe in this release they'll include driver support for the toshiba satellite m40 series.

I tried to switch to linux. I backed out when no versions of linux supported either of my network adapters automagically. No, I'm not interested in figuring out how to recompile the kernel with the stuff I need. Strangely, there were no walkthroughs available on teh web that I could find for what I needed (mostly there were a lot of people complaining about the same problem I had).

A quick question about upgrading

[Bushido Hacks]

Is it necessary for me to back up everything, wipe my hard drive, and install the newer version?
It would be more productive if I can just Upgrade my Fedora distribution like I do with all the other software on my computer without having to find all the extra stuff that I need, reset all the setting the way I like, etc.

Re:A quick question about upgrading

[shadowdata]

As others have pointed out above , you just have to update your yum repo ... back up first though... and save your settings .. expecially X server settings.

High hopes...

[Hosiah]

I recently tried Fedora Core Four - this is on the family PC (we're a 3-comp household) to replace the Red Hat 9 everybody loved. But I don't know if it was the architecture (the family PC got stuck with the Intel Celeron - and Fedora site recommends 386 for it) or I just didn't get it tuned right, but it was Suh-low. Sorry, I don't mean to come off as FUD. Red Hat 9 still on the machine performs like blazes - unfortunately, becoming more and more out of date, difficult to get new software on it, and no yum. Fedora pleased me every other way, at least for the family PC (it's the internet-connected one. Generally, if it supports a web browser and a choice of desktops, it's happy. The other two run Mandriva (for the kids) and Slackware (for hacker dad)). So, is Fedora Five going to move up to 686 (which is the Red Hat I have, and I think that might be the problem)? If not, I think I'll try one of the smaller Fedora-based distros. Mom and daughter insist on their KDE and I don't think they're ready for Slackware...

Fedora - a linux n00b's perspective

[wintermute000]

It really puzzles me why the linux community persists in flaming each other when we should all be pulling in the same direction: KILL BILL ;) Only recently have I tried out linux, more specifically, Fedora Core 4. And tell ya what: I'm BLOWN AWAY. It rocks the haus. My only gripe is the resource hog that is Gnome and from what I read its being massively optimised in v2.12. I've learnt more about how my PC works from several weekends of installing and tweaking FC4, Samba, FTP, VNC, etc. than years of checking boxes in Windoze. OK my Windows box is still faster, better tweaked and easier to use COZ I"VE BEEN USING WINDOZE FOR A DECADE but at the end, there's almost NOTHING that I want to do that I can't do in linux (except for games, 3D graphics and wireless as many have noted), even if it may involve a bit of googling and forum hunting. I reckon I'm around 1 year from complete migration (ie windows purely for games and proprietary apps I need that don't exist in linux). So I'm darned keen to check out FC5. I haven't tried any other distros except for knoppix, but seriously, who really cares, if ya wanna apt-get Debian or whatever its all good!!!!! Fedora is stable, its easy to learn if you have half a brain and a grain of effort.... at the same time I'm sure there's lots of other linux distros that are just as good or do some things better etc.... but that's no reason to knock an excellent OS. If the shoe fits, WEAR IT

Is WPA Non-Free?

[johnnyproton]

I am also very interested in WPA and don't know why it isn't included in Fedora by default or even in the extras repository.

Is there a political reason behind this? Most Linux users are very concerned about security and I don't know why this security feature wouldn't be pushed hard and supported.

And it's worse with retail Windows...

[rklrkl]

My experience trying to setup *wired* networking and sound with retail Windows XP Professional was brutal. Nothing I needed was in the initial install. With no net connection in Windows XP Professional I had to keep booting into my Linux partition to search for any help at all on how to set things up and then download what I needed. And then go back into Windows to toil and then fail. And then repeat the process. Eventually I got my network card and sound working, but when I activated them, the whole machine got slower over time. So I gave up on Windows XP Professional.

FYI, the machine was an Acer T140 (Athlon 64 3200+) with a (rebadged) Nvidia NForce 4 motherboard inside. Yes, you read that right - the *very popular* Nforce 4's onboard networking and sound are *not* supported by retail Windows XP Professional out-of-the-box (even with Service Pack 2). You can close that gaping jaw now (yes, Acer shipped a pre-loaded XP Home with the drivers in, but no CD of drivers if you wanted to fully re-install Windows). And, yes, Linux worked with everything in the T140 without me needing to do anything extra.

Solaris 7 was because 2 =~ 5

[Stephen Samuel]

Solaris 2.5.2 was also sunos 5.2. By the time they got to 5.7, they realized that they could drop both the '2' and the (equivalent) '5' which was now smaller, and simply call it solaris 7.

Re:Off to Debian

[tolan-b]

No, on Fedora up2date uses yum as its back-end.

Hence when I go to update in up2date (which I usually don't persnally), in the channel information I get:

"yum channel fedora-core-3 from http://mirror.web-ster.com/fedora/core/3/i386/os/"

Re:Off to Debian

[petermgreen]

Knoppix-> Debian installs for me. Forget RH.

lots of newbies try this but knoppix offers no security update service of its own and its based on debian testing and unstable and not very easy to update from those sources either (possible sure, but certainly not easy). Yes i belive getting some hardware working with debian was hard in the woody days but frankly nowadays your better off with a pure sarge or etch install than a knoppix hdinstall.

That's the kind of attitude that leads to problems

[CyricZ]

It's that sort of an attitude which leads to the problems that I encountered with Fedora Core. You consider my claims "crap", even though I ran into corrupt packages when trying to install Fedora. A real problem arose, yet you do not want to accept it.

I wish I had written down the names of the packages that were corrupt. However, I was so livid at the time that I didn't bother to, and instead used Ubuntu (which worked perfectly, I may add). The Ubuntu developers, maintainers and user community is far nicer and more helpful, I may add. They don't have the ego problem that is prevalent in the Fedora community.

Redhat is more expensive on a per month basis

[mattbee]

If we're talking per-month prices, RHEL is more expensive than Windows Server 2003. As a small ISP we're able to buy Server 2003 monthly licenses with no up-front commitment at around the £8 / month mark. A customer asked for RHEL instead of our usual CentOS so we enquired on their behalf: we were amazed by the response. They wanted about £12 / month and a commitment to sell 100+ licenses per year. No thanks guys! They obviously feel they don't need to compete here, but I was very surprised.

the best things in life are free

[wilec]

I agree, there is way too much postured yap about what OS folks use, much less which specific distro, it's not a religion, of which there is also way to much...shut up Matt don't get yourself started. I rather enjoy upgrading or loading a new OS and mostly enjoy setting it up, as long as most stuff works pretty well on a basic level.Sure there are some annoyances but most current Linux do pretty well in this regard.

I have been using Linux on and off for about 10 years (since Caldera 1.0). During this time I ran OS/2 as my primary use OS. I have also ran various versions of Windows as required to keep current with my employers needs. I still do much the same, except that I now use Linux more and more for my personal use. I have moved my wife to Linux, which saves me the pain of reinstalling Windows every few months. I have not chosen to update OS/2 since IBM decided to extract blood via an expensive subscription service. The other so called upgrade path for OS/2, ecOS is also expensive and seems to be quite controversial on Usenet. Since my job no longer requires it I refuse to involve myself in the masochistic endeavor of paying hundreds to upgrade my rarely used copy of NT4 to XP.

On the other hand every few months I can hop onto eBay, and try a new flavor of Linux for chump change. The latest round involved checking out about 20 distros at a cost of less than one sixth the cost of upgrading OS/2 or Windows. I settled on Fedora Core4 for myself, and Mandrivia 10.2 for my wife, and passed several'live' distro CD's around for friends to try. I will definately spend five bucks or so to try Fedora Core 5 and for that fact 6 as soon as it hits eBay! I guess my grandmother was right "the best things in life are free", or at least cheap.

Matthew

MOD PARENT TROLL

[Anonymous Coward]

Unable to back up these stupid claims or to back down.