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Fedora Core 6 Preview
An anonymous reader writes "Earlier this week Jesse Keating announced the availability of Fedora Core 6 Test 1. New items in FC6T1 include Intel Macintosh support (well, mostly), update notification applet, GNOME 2.15, KDE 3.5.3, and the Fedora Core 6 Extras development repository is already available. With FC6T1's availability, Phoronix has published their own preview of this release. The article is focused on an editorial about changes to come for Fedora Core 6, as well as images from Fedora Core 6 Test 1. The next Fedora Core 6 testing release (Test 2) is due out in July, while the final release is due out this September."
The ridiculous hoop you have to jump through is to simply type:
rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-5.rpm
Why do I have to type something at the command line to get basic multimedia support? Can't they just make a button during the install that you can press to get 'illegal' software. The button could read:
'I want to play mp3 files and I don't care if it's illegal. I take full responsibility for my actions.'
or:
'Software patents don't apply in my country, give me an mp3 player already!'
Why do they make you use the command line? It doesn't make sense.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Throwing my mod points away to respond to this :
I run FC5 at home and Ubuntu, Debian and Mandrake at work. Read this series of reviews of the latest Ubuntu release (6.06), they are not all positive. A significant number say Drake was rushed and not on par with the previous release.
I have tried many distros out there, everyone has their favourite, and in particular Ubuntu is quite good, but there is no clear winner. Most people I read tend to base their impression of Linux on the latest distro they've tried. Usually this shows some improvement over the one they had tried earlier and (incorrectlly) conclude this is due to the distribution being "just better".
In fact the whole of Linux is progressing at a rapid pace. Both Fedora and Ubuntu have quick and frequent release schedules, a large professional and dedicated team, and as a result they are quite solid, but the same is true of many distros out there. I've come to realize that by and large innovations by one distribution quickly permeate all. See the good work of Debian with apt, that of Ubuntu with their automounter and RH's work with sponsoring Gnome and SELinux.
Ubuntu and FC have different, incompatible aims. Ubuntu is not a testing ground for RHEL, they show little interest with SELinux for instance, whereas this is of strategic importance for FC. However strangely perhaps they cover much of the same ground as far as the end-user is concerned.
Saying that one particular distro among the big ones does something "much better" than any other is misinformed. Because of the nature of FOSS, none holds any permanent advantage over the others, as long as they all continue their development efforts.