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What's Fedora Up To? Ask the Project Leader
Fedora Project Leader Max Spevack offered himself up for this interview because, he said, "I look at stories like [your] posting Ubuntu to Bring About Red Hat's Demise and many of the comments about Red Hat and Fedora seem very rooted in the world of several years ago, when the RHEL/Fedora split took place." This is a chance to clear the air, and get an up-to-date look at what Fedora is up to these days. So ask away; we'll send 10 of the highest-moderated questions to Max and (hopefully) publish his answers later this week.
Did I miss something?
Why is Ubuntu kiling you? oh...sorry....
...still no good?
let me rephrase in a more congenial way...
In terms of eventually losing to Ubuntu, why are you?
Ok: About your opinion regarding Ubuntu, what do you think are the reasons for it causing your eventual demise?
It seems to me that 'Linux should be Linux'. Rather, we're seeing articles about one linux distro killing another. We never see "Windows Professional is killing Windows Home". IMHO, Ubuntu's success should be a boon for all Linux distros.
Unfortunately, package management seems to be the great divide. What are you doing to bring One Package Manager to all Linux?
More
A lot of people I talk to say they don't like Linux due to lack of driver support. Is there anyway you see this problem being eliminated? How do you court vendors to support their hardware on your flavor of Linux?
My work here is dung.
You mention that opinions are rooted in the world of 5 years ago. What do you think has changed in the linux world since then, and how does it affect Fedora development?
Daniel
Carpe Diem
On the Fedora Project website, there are plenty of reasons listed for Fedora to be your operating system of choice. In your eyes, what is the most lacking aspect of Fedora as it exists today?
My work here is dung.
What are you doing this evening? My date stood me up and I'd be a shame to waste a table for two with reservations for this place being the way they are...
Oh arse
Do you view Vista as a threat to your user base? Do you or people on your team ever change your mind about things or let looming Vista influence your decisions?
I'm hoping that Linux distros are not pressured into adding unneeded bells and whistles in a desperate attempt to compete with Vista. Are you invulnerable from this mentality?
My work here is dung.
Linux adoption has been growing, but very slowly. Why do you think that this is the case? What are, in your point of view, the roadblocks to Linux becoming a serious contender for the desktop at home and in the corporate enviroment and how do you plan to address them?
They've actually answered your question in the FAQ: here. Basically it boils down to patents and licensing fees.
Do you see Fedora Core as targeted at a particular type of Linux user (developers, server admins, desktop users, multimedia, etc) or are you trying to be all things to all people? Stated another way, what do you see as FC's main (current and future) strengths and weakneses compared to other distros?
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
Have you tried Ubuntu yourself? Is there, in your opinion, something Ubuntu does better than Fedora?
If Fedora is actually not controlled by Red Hat anymore, and Fedora is user-oriented, why are both the only general-purpose GNU/Linux distributions that disable the NTFS driver from the Linux kernel?
Users do need this option (unlike RedHat's customers, which are organizations as far as I know), and for evidence, Linux-NTFS is one of the projects with the most downloads on sourceforge.
I would like to add that NTFS is part of the mainline kernel. Compiling it as a module will cause it to not take any memory resources other than the few kilobytes on disk that any un-used hardware module is taking, unless of course the user has a mounted NTFS partition.
RedHat's reason for disabling NTFS support was that RedHat is a US-based organization and that they fear patenting problems from MS. No law action was ever taken, and no actual patent was referenced. As far as I know, NTFS is not even patented or patentable. Fedora is not RedHat as you say, so this old reasoning is not exactly valid for Fedora. The IBM/SCO saga also cleared the issue about patents in the mainline kernel.
Unless Fedora will change this simple flag in the kernel config file, I assume it is still controlled (and not only sponsered as some would say) by RedHat.
I have been using Fedora since version 2 (or) since support ran out on RH9. It's been getting better with each version and the number of applications there are packages for have increased dramatically. I am using version FC5 now and using it in a production environment on several servers. I continue to read that RH/Fedora doesn't support the idea of using FC for a production environment. Is this true and if so what exactly is FC's charter? I mean what exactly is the purpose of the FC project? What do you envision your users are going to do with FC? Are you thinking about end user at all? Where do you see FC in 5 years? Thanks Robert W. Oldfield
Hi, I've been using Fedora Directory Server for quite a while, and it is a fantastic product. I read some rumours that it would be Integrated with FC5, but sadly it was not. When can we expect this to be a standard feature/integrated with authentication and other areas in Fedora? Thanks, Brian
While the Linux Standard Base advocates the use of .rpm packages, what steps are you using to help other distributions use .rpm packages? What are your thoughts about setting up "universal" repositories that are accessible from different distribution architectures? (A single repo that can be used by suse, redhat, and debian systems). What are you doing to go towards that goal?
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
That's clearly wrong. I only want to install a PostScript previewer. Doing so should not require a filemanager (which I don't need or want), and certainly not a CD burner. But these are added as dependencies due to the clumsy packaging that seems to be increasingly prevalent in Fedora. Perhaps (and I remain unconvinced) there's some aspect of evince that can make use of nautilus being present. But if so, I haven't seen it. I could well believe that nautilus could make use of evince, but not really the other way around. But assume for the sake of argument that it can use nautilus. That still isn't a reason to have it depend on it. Dependencies should be packages that are required in order for another to run, not packages that will merely enable additional functionality. In this case -- the prime function of evince is to view documents, which isn't significantly enhanced by having a file browser present.
Fedora is still my distribution of choice, but it's becoming increasingly hard to use for those of us that prefer to run with a minimal system due to the way that the dependencies have been getting out of hand. Are there any plans to fix this, or is any work already underway to do so? I understand that some consideration has been given to providing "soft dependencies" within RPM (like dpkg's suggested dependencies), which would help. Is there a timeframe for this? Is anything else being done?
I quite understand the focus on getting the system to be usable for the average unskilled user. But the impression I'm getting is that it's being done at the expense of letting those of us that know what we're doing do what we want. Does Fedora have a position on the type of users it's aiming for, or is it still trying to be a general purpose OS?
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
After all these years, the huge improvements to Linux in general, why is it still so hard to get an off the shelf PCI wireless card going? Are you guys making any improvements there?
What differentiates Fedora from all the other Linux distros? Who's your target demographic?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
I have a suggestion instead. Red Hat should want Fedora to be a runaway hit like Firefox, not just another linux disto. Firefox is a hit because in addition to having features users want, it is easy to install, simple, and cool. My suggestion is for Red Hat to create a distribution that runs easily on Windows. As in click the button and it runs. Here's how you can do it:
.exe program that loads a windows driver that syncs the disks and replaces the NT kernel with Linux kernel.
1) A pre-built image file on C:\ that will be the linux hard drive.
2) A
3) When run, this kernel boots off the image on NTFS.
I know this can be done with existing technology (or at least the hard parts are already working). The NTFS driver can write to an existing file if the size does not change. Linux kernel can init on an already powered up machine and reset the hardware. I know Red Hat does a lot of kernel work and other developement, so I know you guys capable of doing this very quickly.
This gives the vast majority of users a way to download linux like any other program, run it without rebooting into some scary 'repartition' software, and still get the full benefit and experience of linux. In fact, immediately after downloading they just click the program and say "Yes" to "Shutdown Windows and start Linux?" and 20 seconds later they are in a Fedora core system. If they like it, they can install a normal Fedora directly onto the system. If they don't like it, just delete the image file.
My question is, will you at least consider doing this? Something like this would be huge for linux adoption and therefore Red Hat mindshare.
While Ubuntu has a clear, selfless mission, it seems to me the Fedora project misses this. I'm sure while Fedora was still within Red Hat, its mission was simply commercial. "It must be good so we can make money." That mission no longer applies, and http://fedora.redhat.com/About/ almost sounds like Fedora is just a rejected part of Red Hat, left Free so that they could attempt to profit from community contributions.
Is there an objective in the Fedora Project? One that is clear and may motivate developers to join? Or is it here really just to reduce costs for the Red Hat team?
Fedora has a very strong sense of purity in keeping its distro Free, and I like this (no, I don't mind having to visit Livna for MP3, etc.). Further to the goal of a completely Free system, can we expect to see the Fedora project becoming more vocal about Free drivers, and standing besides our neighbours in the OpenBSD community (amongst others) in pressuring hardware providers for open specifications?
I will admit that I have a chip on my shoulder. I was a happy user of Redhat. I loved it. It was reasonably priced, it gave me a reliable way to maintain my OS and it just worked. I chose RedHat after testing several other commercial versions of Linux. I had a whole shelf full of boxed Linux distros before I finally settled on RedHat. I was a real fan and a strong supporter. I bought your boxed products and paid a subscription fee for support. I was the kind of customer I would love to have.
Shortly after I had paid the one year subscription fee for your support network your company sent me an email that basically said, we don't want your business, and oh bye the way, we are keeping your money and cutting off the service you just paid for. Your idea of compensation was to offer me a discount on the same product at a much higher price. In other words, you robbed me and then tried to extort even more money from me. You are nothing but thieves. Even Microsoft has never actually taken my money and given me nothing in return.
After that experience I was forced to waste time seeking a new distribution and converting all my computers. The time cost to do that was much greater than the dollar value of the service fees you stole from me. If you count my lost time and revenue I am out several thousand dollars because of you. So, you might say I am a little bit biased against your company. I wouldn't actually spit on you if I were to meet you face to face, but I would like to.
OTOH, I found Debian and found that I had been paying RedHat for something I can get for free from Debian. Recently I converted my desktops and laptops to Ubuntu, an even better solution than Debian, and again for free.
So, considering that there are better versions of Linux available from honest organizations, organizations who have never robbed their customers, I have to ask WHY DO YOU MATTER. Aside from suckering stupid big companies into over paying for your software, what service do you provide that is even worth the time to read about?
Stonewolf
I hope, when they die, cartoon characters have to answer for their sins.
On that basis, I'll ask my question: Users are forever complaining about a lack of drivers, but the drivers they are often presented with are a very small subset of the Open Source drivers that exist. Is this a problem Fedora will be addressing, or will it be largely left to such drivers being absorbed into the mainstream kernel?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
What kind of danger do you see in RHEL clones to FC's market? I use RHEL at work and it is by far the best OS I've ever seen. At home I use FC and in spite of your claims it just doesn't measure up. I've started looking into whitebox and CentOS for home use. What are the reasons why I should stay with FC and not switch to a RHEL clone? Also what is being done to make FC more stable, robust, and feature-rich like RHEL?
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