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Fedora Project Leader Max Spevack Responds
Max Spevack writes: "Hi everyone. I'm looking forward to answering all of the questions, but
before I start diving into that, I guess it would be useful to give a
little bit of perspective about me and my role within Fedora and Red Hat,
because it will offer some context around the things I have to say."
The Fedora Project, as many of you know, is a partnership between Red Hat and the OSS community. The highest level of decision-making within Fedora is the Fedora Project Board, a group that is empowered to make the decisions about Fedora policy, to set priorities, and to hold the rest of the Fedora sub-projects accountable for what they are doing. The Fedora Board has nine members, five of whom are Red Hat employees, and four of whom are community members. That breakdown is not set in stone -- that's just what we started with. It is my hope that down the road, the majority of the Board will be Fedora's community leaders.
In addition, the Board has a Chairman, and that person is whoever happens to hold the position of "Fedora Project Leader" within Red Hat -- since February of this past year, that's been me.
As much as possible, we try to conduct our business within the confines of the Fedora Advisory Board, which is a larger group (about 50) of the most prominent contributors to Fedora. This is an open mailing list with public archives and open-posting, and its participation is strong both from @redhat.com and community contributors.
For more information -- http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Board
In the spirit of complete transparency, a word about the answers:
All of them were composed directly by me -- it's my voice and writing style that you're reading. But, I didn't answer them all by myself without speaking to anyone else. I discussed some of them with folks on the Fedora Advisory Board mailing list, with various colleagues at Red Hat, and a draft of the responses was shown to Red Hat's corporate communications team (not because they have any editorial control over what I say, but as a sign of respect) and a draft was also shown to Fedora Advisory Board.
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1) Why such a divide?
(Score:5, Insightful)
by dsginter
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?
Max:
I agree with your initial comment -- one of the great powers of OSS is that when you have a strong upstream in place that is always having changes fed back to it, success for one distribution translates to success for all distributions.
When you look at the landscape of all the many Linux distros out there, it isn't surprising that there's some level of competition among them. Most people want to feel like they are the best at what they do, and a certain amount of competition among distros is healthy. It keeps people innovating, it keeps them working hard, etc. Personally, I think it's important not to lose the perspective that in the end, everyone who works on OSS -- regardless of whether they run Fedora, Ubuntu, Slackware, or any other distro -- is ultimately working to promote more or less the same core set of principles (more on this later).
To speak directly about Fedora:
First, we believe very strongly in working with various upstreams. The diff between any package that we ship in Fedora and the upstream version is as small as possible at any given time, and we are constantly submitting our patches and changes upstream for consideration.
To your point about "one package manager to rule them all" -- well, I think it's an admirable goal. Do I think it would be a good thing for Linux to begin to standardize on a single package manager? Yes, I do. Does Red Hat have strong ties to RPM? Of course. But what does that mean for Fedora? Well, Fedora is also tied to RPM (yum is our application-layer package management tool, with RPM providing the lower-level work) -- but that doesn't mean that the Board is not open to considering the idea of change. RPM is the reality of the moment. If there's a better solution that gains a critical mass of Fedora engineers who are interested in experimenting with it, then we will try it out.
You ask specifically what Fedora is doing to bring about "one package manager to all Linux" -- well, I guess there's a couple of directions that Fedora could go:
1) Try to convince anyone not using RPM to do so. I don't like that idea very much -- if RPM is the tool you want to use, feel free. If you've got something that works better for you, that's fine too.
2) Fedora could abandon RPM in favor of another package manager. Like I said -- if Fedora engineers want to start the "Fedora $OTHER_PACKAGE_MANAGER Project" and see how far they can get and how the technology works, that would be a great learning experience. We're set up in a way that a project like that could be possible, without getting in the way of the mainline Fedora releases.
3) Try to create something entirely new, that everyone will love. Call me cynical, but trying to build a consensus before you actually have any code just seems like a waste of time.
I guess the "problem" with package managers is that they are so integral to the rest of a distro that it's a major endeavor to switch them. One reason is that a switch of that kind would break the upgrade chain.
Technical challenges like that lead to a high level of inertia, and therefore require a tremendous added benefit that is gained by making a switch.
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2) Drivers Vs Linux
(Score:5, Interesting)
by eldavojohn
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?
Max:
Linux enjoys a large amount of driver support in general, but proprietary software drivers remain a problem. From the perspective of Fedora, our stance is clear. It has and will always be our goal to create a distribution that is 100% free and open source. We want to show the world what Free software can do, and we want developers and users to know where the limits of the software are, so that we can address them.
Fedora Core 5 and Fedora Core 6 Test 2 have tremendous amounts of driver support, as a result of the work of many people within the community, and also as a result of the millions of dollars that Red Hat has invested into certification, testing, and development over the years, which has played a role in getting things to the point at which they are right now.
The rub, of course, is that having a giant pile of open source drivers is wonderful, but as soon as a single user runs into a single piece of hardware that doesn't work for them under Linux, then all of a sudden Linux "driver support" is terrible. I'm not saying that's what the poster of the question thinks -- I'm just saying that's a general problem of perception that Linux deals with.
One way to deal with this, or course, is to vote with your wallet. When there are drivers and hardware that don't work under Linux because of proprietary limitations, state those limitations honestly and transparently, and let the users decide whether or not to buy them.
From Red Hat's perspective as a company, we do a lot of work with hardware providers -- Dell, HP, Intel, Fujitsu, etc., and that work is often done directly in Fedora. We've worked with Broadcom on network drivers, and with Promise on SATA. We're hoping to bring more and more into the fold, and we're hoping that the open testing and certification system that is being developed (and was announced at the Red Hat Summit) will allow partners and individuals to help us bring even greater driver support to Fedora.
But ultimately for Fedora the goal is Free software. Including support for proprietary drivers in our distribution would violate that tenet, but we believe it is important enough that we don't compromise. All distributions face this challenge, and it is at times a difficult question to answer. But I am proud of the fact that Fedora's choice has been consistently in favor of freedom in software.
By choosing not to ship any proprietary or binary drivers, Fedora does differ from other distributions. Ubuntu is one example, as there is very strong language about their commitment to Free and open source software, right up until the line stating that they include binary-only drivers on their CDs and in their repositories.
http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/philosophy
http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/licensing
=========================
3) What's changed?
(Score:5, Interesting)
by KDan
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?
Max:
Well when I said that I thought opinions were rooted in the past, I was referring more specifically to the fact that I find it personally frustrating that a lot of opinions about Red Hat have not evolved past the anger and frustration surrounding the Red Hat Linux/Fedora split a couple of years ago. But I spend some time on that later on, so here I'll answer your more generic question about what's changed in Linux in the past five years.
I remember walking into the lobby of Red Hat's headquarters two years ago when I showed up for my job interview, and in big letters, the first thing you see is "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." Gandhi wasn't talking about Linux, but I am inspired by that quote every day.
In the last five years, Linux has moved along down that path, most certainly. Market share increases. Mind share increases -- I see open source mentioned in magazine and newspapers when it never was before. Name recognition for Linux and why it is different (and better) is becoming more and more mainstream. Far from being ignored, Linux is getting more and more support, and in turn the fight against it intensifies as well.
In the technical realm, the changes in Linux in the last five years have been extraordinary. I don't think I need to enumerate the differences between a Linux distro in 2000 or 2001 and today, certainly not for this readership.
Another gigantic change over the last five years is the fact that the PC is no longer the king of the electronic device. There was an article in 'The Economist' last week about this, discussing the fact that PDAs have such a huge market penetration now, that many tasks that used to require your desktop or your laptop are moving toward portable computing. Breaking into that part of the computing world is something that is a possibility today that wasn't really a consideration five years ago.
Fedora needs to change. It needs to be less bulky, and more customizable. The actual "core" packages that are required to get a system up and running should be broken out, and applications layered on top as users need them.
In Fedora Core 6, the installer will be able to reach out to any network-accessible repositories and pull in packages from them, which is a step in the right direction, and also is a big step in breaking down the distinction between Core and Extras.
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4) Worst Aspect of Fedora?
(Score:5, Interesting)
by eldavojohn
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?
Max:
In my opinion, the most lacking aspect of Fedora as it exists today is the separation between Fedora Core and Fedora Extras.
For those of you who aren't familiar with what that means, I shall explain:
Fedora Core is a set of packages (right now about 2200) that is completely self-satisfying from a dependency perspective, and is the pile of code that we ship, for example on the Fedora Core 5 DVD, or in our bittorrent tracker.
Fedora Extras is another set of packages (more than 3000) that is installable adjacent to Fedora Core, but isn't shipped on the media. Greg DeKoenigsberg worked to kickstart Fedora Extras in early 2005, and since then it has become arguably the most successful part of the Fedora Project. It has thrived under the leadership of Thorsten Leemhuis and the rest of the Fedora Extras Steering Committee. The packages in Fedora Extras are maintained by whoever is capable of stepping up and doing the work, regardless of whether or not they are employed by Red Hat.
The reasons for the separation between Core and Extras have to do with build systems, CVS locations, and artifacts of antiquated Red Hat attitudes toward Fedora, as well as antiquated processes.
I would like all of that to change. I would like for the Core/Extras distinction to go away, and instead be replaced by the idea of a Fedora Universe, which is a giant pile of packages that are blessed by Fedora, and any subset of those packages that produces a functioning OS can be called Fedora.
It's going to happen, but it's not an overnight sort of change. Right now is the time during which we should be planning how we can achieve a goal like that, and it's my hope that as RHEL5 stabilizes and Red Hat engineers have some cycles free up, we'll be able to get some of the work done on the Red Hat side of the fence that is required.
Separate from that, we would love to have more contributors. People who want to work on code (especially code that isn't package maintenance), documentation, infrastructure, and artwork. People who are organizers and who want to be leaders. That's not to suggest that we don't have contributors today who have those qualities and skillsets, but there's more than enough work to go around.
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5) Vista a Problem?
(Score:5, Interesting)
by eldavojohn
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?
Max:
Truthfully, everything I know about Vista I learned in two places -- right here on /. and on the mini-MSFT blog. I don't particularly pay any attention to Vista, and I can't really tell you what is or is not supposed to be in it at this point in time, or when it's going to ship (insert your jokes here). I used to have a XP partition that I'd boot to for gaming -- probably not unlike a good number of /. folks -- but it's been over a year since I blew that away and I haven't looked back.
In terms of getting people to use Linux instead of proprietary operating systems -- I think that battle is best fought in the world of people who are new to computers. People will tend to be loyal to the first thing that *just works* and doesn't cause them pain. Making that first experience for people a Linux one as opposed to a proprietary one -- that's the challenge.
By the way, I'm not suggesting that you can't show long-time proprietary software users the light of open source, but it's a much more gradual process: "Another Internet Explorer exploit, huh? Hey, have you heard of Firefox and Thunderbird? Let me help you set them up, you might like it."
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6) NTFS support in Fedora/RedHat
(Score:5, Interesting)
by Anonymous Coward
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 Red Hat'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.
Red Hat'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 sponsored as some would say) by RedHat.
Max:
Heh, the actual question asked is a reasonable one. I think it's sad that it has to be surrounded with such vitriol. First of all, I am not a lawyer. In fact, the *actual* lawyers require that I tell you all that I am *not* a lawyer, for legal reasons. The AC who posted didn't mention his background, but I'm guessing that he/she is also not a lawyer.
Red Hat retains legal liability for the Fedora Project. The Fedora Project is not a separate legal entity or organization. The Fedora Project receives a tremendous amount of resources (people, money, infrastructure, etc.) from Red Hat.
If you are a proprietary software company looking to exercise some patent litigation against an open source software company, Red Hat might not look like an awful choice.
In the past, Red Hat's counsel has been uncomfortable with enabling NTFS support in the kernel. Recently, the kernel has become protected by the Open Invention Network (http://www.openinventionnetwork.com), which has been mentioned previously regarding Fedora and our inclusion of Mono (http://gregdek.livejournal.com/4008.html).
The question of NTFS in our kernels has been raised on the Fedora Advisory Board recently (within the last month or two). When we have an answer regarding that, the analysis and result will also be published transparently for people to comment on and discuss.
In closing, I would remind all of you that my only legal training involves at one time being able to recite the climactic scene from 'A Few Good Men' in Spanish.
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7) Dependency hell
(Score:5, Interesting)
by Tet
The introduction of yum has vastly improved the user experience when installing software, or updating existing packages. However, it's brought with it a new kind of dependency hell. For example, if I want to install a PostScript previewer:
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?
Max:
To your specific example, ask and ye shall see some improvement.
http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=201967
To your more general question, there's a couple of things that play a part:
Part of the dependency requirements come from the manner in which the packages are written, in which (for example) it's far more common for someone to install a large set of inter-related packages than just a single package. Regardless of that, it's entirely possible (such as in this specific evince example) that some extra work can simplify the dependency requirements. Bugzilla is always the best way to bring issues like that to the attention of the packagers. From there, it's just a matter of code and time.
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8) Goals
(Score:5, Insightful)
by redkazuo
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/ [redhat.com] 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?
Max:
Just to clarify one thing in the question first -- "while Fedora was still within Red Hat" -- I'm not quite sure what that means, but I hope my explanation about the Fedora Project Board at the top of my answers clears up any questions there.
I'm really glad this question was asked, because it gives me a chance to try to bust the NUMBER ONE MYTH about Fedora -- that Fedora is "just a beta for RHEL" or that "Fedora only exists to make Red Hat money" or "Red Hat doesn't care about Fedora, it's just a dumping ground for half-tested code". I hear all of those things from time to time, and *none* of them are true.
Let's back up for a moment -- the Red Hat Linux/Fedora Core split took place in 2003. And while I wasn't at Red Hat during that time, I think it's fair to state that there were some unfortunate choices made internally about how Fedora was positioned, and because those statements were made with a Red Hat voice, it helped to create a very strong perception that Red Hat abandoned the community, and that Fedora wasn't "good" for anything, or was a rejected part of Red Hat. Many mistakes were made by Red Hat with regard to the "birth" of the Fedora Project -- there is absolutely no debating that.
I think there were some people within Red Hat who were afraid that the "admission" that Fedora was production-quality, or that Fedora was anything more than beta-quality, would cause difficulty for the people trying to sell RHEL. Three years later, and that perception is still very strong in certain places -- without fail there are a few comments about that in every Slashdot story that mentions Fedora.
And that's fine. Red Hat had a part in creating that perception, and so Red Hat will have to work particularly hard to undo it. We have been, and we continue to do so.
The real story of Fedora, of course, is entirely opposite from the "beta code only, not production worthy" stance.
Our mission statement is clear, and is one that I think any open-source developer would appreciate.
Fedora is about the rapid progress of Free and Open Source software.
That's it. We strive to produce a quality distribution of free software that is cutting-edge, pushes the envelope of new open source technology, and is also robust enough that it can be relied on for server or desktop use. One of the terms that I really like, and that I think we're doing better and better of making a reality is that of Fedora as an "open development lab". As a user, if your priorities are cutting-edge technology (without the nicks and cuts of a blade) and freedom, Fedora is a great disto to use.
The second half of the story, as it relates to Red Hat's desire to make a profit, is equally simple in my mind. Fedora is upstream of RHEL. Fedora is also upstream of various other derivative distributions.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DerivedDistributions
So when someone says "Fedora is beta for RHEL" they are stating only a very small part of what Fedora is. Fedora is the best of what works today. RHEL is the best of what will work for the next seven years. And the users can decide what is best for their needs.
Saying that Fedora is the beta for RHEL, and that Fedora is *only* a beta for RHEL, is to take a purposefully narrow view on the truth. Fedora's upstream relationship to RHEL is simply one aspect of the Fedora Project, which stands on its own as a distribution.
I feel very strongly about this particular question, and I will state my opinion bluntly:
Anyone (Red Hat or non-Red Hat) who tells you that Fedora isn't suitable for a production server is wrong. If someone tells you that Fedora is "just a beta for RHEL", they too are wrong.
Either the person is insufficiently informed about what Fedora is (and it's our job within Fedora to do that), or the person is purposefully misrepresenting Fedora and neglecting to tell the whole story, in which case it's our job within Fedora to call them out.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Objectives
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9) Directory Server
(Score:5, Interesting)
by IMightB
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?
Max:
Regrettably, answering this question honestly also requires admission that the integration of Fedora Directory Server and the rest of the Fedora Project (particularly Fedora Core/Extras) hasn't happened as quickly as many would have liked. Directory Server is a great piece of software, but the true merging of that into Fedora Core is something that doesn't have a lot of traction at the moment. The Directory Server community isn't necessarily very well integrated with the rest of the Fedora community, and therefore the two communities are in a similar state to that of the two projects -- in theory capable of being very good together, but in practice sort of just existing side by side, but not as closely knit as they could be.
When will that change? As soon as we can get enough people on both sides of that fence able to spend the cycles necessary. I can't give an exact date, because one doesn't exist right now, so I'd rather not just make something up.
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10) Have you tried Ubuntu?
(Score:5, Interesting)
by Anonymous Coward
Have you tried Ubuntu yourself? Is there, in your opinion, something Ubuntu does better than Fedora?
Max:
Those of you hoping for some flamebait, I'm sorry to disappoint.
Yes, I have tried Ubuntu. I have played around with SUSE, though not in any significant way for a year or so. Prior to coming to Red Hat in August of 2004, I had always been a Slackware devotee, and my subscription with them is still active.
So what does Ubuntu do better than Fedora?
Let me start without even mentioning the actual distributions. I think it is clear to anyone who is looking that Ubuntu's website is in much better shape than Fedora's. Ubuntu.com is clean, clear, and easy to navigate for people who are browsing it, and if you dig down a little bit, you can also get to the Ubuntu wiki, which from what I can tell, serves a similar purpose to the fedoraproject.org wiki.
Here's the difference -- fedoraproject.org is *just* a wiki. It's got a tremendous amount of information, and as someone who uses the site frequently, I know how to find what I'm looking for. But it has a bit of a learning curve before it becomes useful.
Fedora's websites are in a state of flux -- fedora.redhat.com is deprecated, but the killing off of that site is taking longer than I would have hoped, as there are a variety of infrastructure issues at play. Our wiki gets the job done, but I'd like to see a more professional looking front-end put on it, with the wiki continuing to function as it does, but just ever-so-slightly in the background. The biggest hurdle to making that happen -- just having enough cycles and enough people to do the job properly.
That aside, I am impressed by Ubuntu's LiveCD, directly installable feature. We have similar work going on within Fedora, but so far it hasn't achieved the same level of "officialness" as the Ubuntu code. So that's an area in which Ubuntu is ahead of Fedora.
I played around recently with Dapper Drake. Like I said, the LiveCD was cool. The desktop -- Gnome is pretty much Gnome, Firefox is Firefox, etc. Personally I'm a huge fan of NetworkManager, which didn't appear to be the default in Dapper, but something like that is just a detail. I'm sure if I were to use Dapper full time and I wanted it, I could probably get it.
This goes back to what I wrote near the beginning about the importance of upstream. If everyone is pushing their latest work back upstream, and the maintainers at the top level have the time and resources that they need to keep everything in order, then most GNU/Linux distros are going to feel pretty similar once they are installed. Which is why I think a lot of the OSS "religious wars" don't make a lot of sense.
=========================
The Fedora Project, as many of you know, is a partnership between Red Hat and the OSS community. The highest level of decision-making within Fedora is the Fedora Project Board, a group that is empowered to make the decisions about Fedora policy, to set priorities, and to hold the rest of the Fedora sub-projects accountable for what they are doing. The Fedora Board has nine members, five of whom are Red Hat employees, and four of whom are community members. That breakdown is not set in stone -- that's just what we started with. It is my hope that down the road, the majority of the Board will be Fedora's community leaders.
In addition, the Board has a Chairman, and that person is whoever happens to hold the position of "Fedora Project Leader" within Red Hat -- since February of this past year, that's been me.
As much as possible, we try to conduct our business within the confines of the Fedora Advisory Board, which is a larger group (about 50) of the most prominent contributors to Fedora. This is an open mailing list with public archives and open-posting, and its participation is strong both from @redhat.com and community contributors.
For more information -- http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Board
In the spirit of complete transparency, a word about the answers:
All of them were composed directly by me -- it's my voice and writing style that you're reading. But, I didn't answer them all by myself without speaking to anyone else. I discussed some of them with folks on the Fedora Advisory Board mailing list, with various colleagues at Red Hat, and a draft of the responses was shown to Red Hat's corporate communications team (not because they have any editorial control over what I say, but as a sign of respect) and a draft was also shown to Fedora Advisory Board.
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1) Why such a divide?
(Score:5, Insightful)
by dsginter
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?
Max:
I agree with your initial comment -- one of the great powers of OSS is that when you have a strong upstream in place that is always having changes fed back to it, success for one distribution translates to success for all distributions.
When you look at the landscape of all the many Linux distros out there, it isn't surprising that there's some level of competition among them. Most people want to feel like they are the best at what they do, and a certain amount of competition among distros is healthy. It keeps people innovating, it keeps them working hard, etc. Personally, I think it's important not to lose the perspective that in the end, everyone who works on OSS -- regardless of whether they run Fedora, Ubuntu, Slackware, or any other distro -- is ultimately working to promote more or less the same core set of principles (more on this later).
To speak directly about Fedora:
First, we believe very strongly in working with various upstreams. The diff between any package that we ship in Fedora and the upstream version is as small as possible at any given time, and we are constantly submitting our patches and changes upstream for consideration.
To your point about "one package manager to rule them all" -- well, I think it's an admirable goal. Do I think it would be a good thing for Linux to begin to standardize on a single package manager? Yes, I do. Does Red Hat have strong ties to RPM? Of course. But what does that mean for Fedora? Well, Fedora is also tied to RPM (yum is our application-layer package management tool, with RPM providing the lower-level work) -- but that doesn't mean that the Board is not open to considering the idea of change. RPM is the reality of the moment. If there's a better solution that gains a critical mass of Fedora engineers who are interested in experimenting with it, then we will try it out.
You ask specifically what Fedora is doing to bring about "one package manager to all Linux" -- well, I guess there's a couple of directions that Fedora could go:
1) Try to convince anyone not using RPM to do so. I don't like that idea very much -- if RPM is the tool you want to use, feel free. If you've got something that works better for you, that's fine too.
2) Fedora could abandon RPM in favor of another package manager. Like I said -- if Fedora engineers want to start the "Fedora $OTHER_PACKAGE_MANAGER Project" and see how far they can get and how the technology works, that would be a great learning experience. We're set up in a way that a project like that could be possible, without getting in the way of the mainline Fedora releases.
3) Try to create something entirely new, that everyone will love. Call me cynical, but trying to build a consensus before you actually have any code just seems like a waste of time.
I guess the "problem" with package managers is that they are so integral to the rest of a distro that it's a major endeavor to switch them. One reason is that a switch of that kind would break the upgrade chain.
Technical challenges like that lead to a high level of inertia, and therefore require a tremendous added benefit that is gained by making a switch.
=========================
2) Drivers Vs Linux
(Score:5, Interesting)
by eldavojohn
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?
Max:
Linux enjoys a large amount of driver support in general, but proprietary software drivers remain a problem. From the perspective of Fedora, our stance is clear. It has and will always be our goal to create a distribution that is 100% free and open source. We want to show the world what Free software can do, and we want developers and users to know where the limits of the software are, so that we can address them.
Fedora Core 5 and Fedora Core 6 Test 2 have tremendous amounts of driver support, as a result of the work of many people within the community, and also as a result of the millions of dollars that Red Hat has invested into certification, testing, and development over the years, which has played a role in getting things to the point at which they are right now.
The rub, of course, is that having a giant pile of open source drivers is wonderful, but as soon as a single user runs into a single piece of hardware that doesn't work for them under Linux, then all of a sudden Linux "driver support" is terrible. I'm not saying that's what the poster of the question thinks -- I'm just saying that's a general problem of perception that Linux deals with.
One way to deal with this, or course, is to vote with your wallet. When there are drivers and hardware that don't work under Linux because of proprietary limitations, state those limitations honestly and transparently, and let the users decide whether or not to buy them.
From Red Hat's perspective as a company, we do a lot of work with hardware providers -- Dell, HP, Intel, Fujitsu, etc., and that work is often done directly in Fedora. We've worked with Broadcom on network drivers, and with Promise on SATA. We're hoping to bring more and more into the fold, and we're hoping that the open testing and certification system that is being developed (and was announced at the Red Hat Summit) will allow partners and individuals to help us bring even greater driver support to Fedora.
But ultimately for Fedora the goal is Free software. Including support for proprietary drivers in our distribution would violate that tenet, but we believe it is important enough that we don't compromise. All distributions face this challenge, and it is at times a difficult question to answer. But I am proud of the fact that Fedora's choice has been consistently in favor of freedom in software.
By choosing not to ship any proprietary or binary drivers, Fedora does differ from other distributions. Ubuntu is one example, as there is very strong language about their commitment to Free and open source software, right up until the line stating that they include binary-only drivers on their CDs and in their repositories.
http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/philosophy
http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/licensing
=========================
3) What's changed?
(Score:5, Interesting)
by KDan
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?
Max:
Well when I said that I thought opinions were rooted in the past, I was referring more specifically to the fact that I find it personally frustrating that a lot of opinions about Red Hat have not evolved past the anger and frustration surrounding the Red Hat Linux/Fedora split a couple of years ago. But I spend some time on that later on, so here I'll answer your more generic question about what's changed in Linux in the past five years.
I remember walking into the lobby of Red Hat's headquarters two years ago when I showed up for my job interview, and in big letters, the first thing you see is "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." Gandhi wasn't talking about Linux, but I am inspired by that quote every day.
In the last five years, Linux has moved along down that path, most certainly. Market share increases. Mind share increases -- I see open source mentioned in magazine and newspapers when it never was before. Name recognition for Linux and why it is different (and better) is becoming more and more mainstream. Far from being ignored, Linux is getting more and more support, and in turn the fight against it intensifies as well.
In the technical realm, the changes in Linux in the last five years have been extraordinary. I don't think I need to enumerate the differences between a Linux distro in 2000 or 2001 and today, certainly not for this readership.
Another gigantic change over the last five years is the fact that the PC is no longer the king of the electronic device. There was an article in 'The Economist' last week about this, discussing the fact that PDAs have such a huge market penetration now, that many tasks that used to require your desktop or your laptop are moving toward portable computing. Breaking into that part of the computing world is something that is a possibility today that wasn't really a consideration five years ago.
Fedora needs to change. It needs to be less bulky, and more customizable. The actual "core" packages that are required to get a system up and running should be broken out, and applications layered on top as users need them.
In Fedora Core 6, the installer will be able to reach out to any network-accessible repositories and pull in packages from them, which is a step in the right direction, and also is a big step in breaking down the distinction between Core and Extras.
=========================
4) Worst Aspect of Fedora?
(Score:5, Interesting)
by eldavojohn
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?
Max:
In my opinion, the most lacking aspect of Fedora as it exists today is the separation between Fedora Core and Fedora Extras.
For those of you who aren't familiar with what that means, I shall explain:
Fedora Core is a set of packages (right now about 2200) that is completely self-satisfying from a dependency perspective, and is the pile of code that we ship, for example on the Fedora Core 5 DVD, or in our bittorrent tracker.
Fedora Extras is another set of packages (more than 3000) that is installable adjacent to Fedora Core, but isn't shipped on the media. Greg DeKoenigsberg worked to kickstart Fedora Extras in early 2005, and since then it has become arguably the most successful part of the Fedora Project. It has thrived under the leadership of Thorsten Leemhuis and the rest of the Fedora Extras Steering Committee. The packages in Fedora Extras are maintained by whoever is capable of stepping up and doing the work, regardless of whether or not they are employed by Red Hat.
The reasons for the separation between Core and Extras have to do with build systems, CVS locations, and artifacts of antiquated Red Hat attitudes toward Fedora, as well as antiquated processes.
I would like all of that to change. I would like for the Core/Extras distinction to go away, and instead be replaced by the idea of a Fedora Universe, which is a giant pile of packages that are blessed by Fedora, and any subset of those packages that produces a functioning OS can be called Fedora.
It's going to happen, but it's not an overnight sort of change. Right now is the time during which we should be planning how we can achieve a goal like that, and it's my hope that as RHEL5 stabilizes and Red Hat engineers have some cycles free up, we'll be able to get some of the work done on the Red Hat side of the fence that is required.
Separate from that, we would love to have more contributors. People who want to work on code (especially code that isn't package maintenance), documentation, infrastructure, and artwork. People who are organizers and who want to be leaders. That's not to suggest that we don't have contributors today who have those qualities and skillsets, but there's more than enough work to go around.
=========================
5) Vista a Problem?
(Score:5, Interesting)
by eldavojohn
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?
Max:
Truthfully, everything I know about Vista I learned in two places -- right here on /. and on the mini-MSFT blog. I don't particularly pay any attention to Vista, and I can't really tell you what is or is not supposed to be in it at this point in time, or when it's going to ship (insert your jokes here). I used to have a XP partition that I'd boot to for gaming -- probably not unlike a good number of /. folks -- but it's been over a year since I blew that away and I haven't looked back.
In terms of getting people to use Linux instead of proprietary operating systems -- I think that battle is best fought in the world of people who are new to computers. People will tend to be loyal to the first thing that *just works* and doesn't cause them pain. Making that first experience for people a Linux one as opposed to a proprietary one -- that's the challenge.
By the way, I'm not suggesting that you can't show long-time proprietary software users the light of open source, but it's a much more gradual process: "Another Internet Explorer exploit, huh? Hey, have you heard of Firefox and Thunderbird? Let me help you set them up, you might like it."
=========================
6) NTFS support in Fedora/RedHat
(Score:5, Interesting)
by Anonymous Coward
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 Red Hat'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.
Red Hat'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 sponsored as some would say) by RedHat.
Max:
Heh, the actual question asked is a reasonable one. I think it's sad that it has to be surrounded with such vitriol. First of all, I am not a lawyer. In fact, the *actual* lawyers require that I tell you all that I am *not* a lawyer, for legal reasons. The AC who posted didn't mention his background, but I'm guessing that he/she is also not a lawyer.
Red Hat retains legal liability for the Fedora Project. The Fedora Project is not a separate legal entity or organization. The Fedora Project receives a tremendous amount of resources (people, money, infrastructure, etc.) from Red Hat.
If you are a proprietary software company looking to exercise some patent litigation against an open source software company, Red Hat might not look like an awful choice.
In the past, Red Hat's counsel has been uncomfortable with enabling NTFS support in the kernel. Recently, the kernel has become protected by the Open Invention Network (http://www.openinventionnetwork.com), which has been mentioned previously regarding Fedora and our inclusion of Mono (http://gregdek.livejournal.com/4008.html).
The question of NTFS in our kernels has been raised on the Fedora Advisory Board recently (within the last month or two). When we have an answer regarding that, the analysis and result will also be published transparently for people to comment on and discuss.
In closing, I would remind all of you that my only legal training involves at one time being able to recite the climactic scene from 'A Few Good Men' in Spanish.
=========================
7) Dependency hell
(Score:5, Interesting)
by Tet
The introduction of yum has vastly improved the user experience when installing software, or updating existing packages. However, it's brought with it a new kind of dependency hell. For example, if I want to install a PostScript previewer:
% yum install evince
[...]
Installing:
evince x86_64 0.5.1-3 core 773 k
Installing for dependencies:
nautilus x86_64 2.14.1-1.fc5.1 updates-released 3.9 M
nautilus-cd-burner x86_64 2.14.2-1 updates-released 414 k
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?
Max:
To your specific example, ask and ye shall see some improvement.
http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=201967
To your more general question, there's a couple of things that play a part:
Part of the dependency requirements come from the manner in which the packages are written, in which (for example) it's far more common for someone to install a large set of inter-related packages than just a single package. Regardless of that, it's entirely possible (such as in this specific evince example) that some extra work can simplify the dependency requirements. Bugzilla is always the best way to bring issues like that to the attention of the packagers. From there, it's just a matter of code and time.
=========================
8) Goals
(Score:5, Insightful)
by redkazuo
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/ [redhat.com] 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?
Max:
Just to clarify one thing in the question first -- "while Fedora was still within Red Hat" -- I'm not quite sure what that means, but I hope my explanation about the Fedora Project Board at the top of my answers clears up any questions there.
I'm really glad this question was asked, because it gives me a chance to try to bust the NUMBER ONE MYTH about Fedora -- that Fedora is "just a beta for RHEL" or that "Fedora only exists to make Red Hat money" or "Red Hat doesn't care about Fedora, it's just a dumping ground for half-tested code". I hear all of those things from time to time, and *none* of them are true.
Let's back up for a moment -- the Red Hat Linux/Fedora Core split took place in 2003. And while I wasn't at Red Hat during that time, I think it's fair to state that there were some unfortunate choices made internally about how Fedora was positioned, and because those statements were made with a Red Hat voice, it helped to create a very strong perception that Red Hat abandoned the community, and that Fedora wasn't "good" for anything, or was a rejected part of Red Hat. Many mistakes were made by Red Hat with regard to the "birth" of the Fedora Project -- there is absolutely no debating that.
I think there were some people within Red Hat who were afraid that the "admission" that Fedora was production-quality, or that Fedora was anything more than beta-quality, would cause difficulty for the people trying to sell RHEL. Three years later, and that perception is still very strong in certain places -- without fail there are a few comments about that in every Slashdot story that mentions Fedora.
And that's fine. Red Hat had a part in creating that perception, and so Red Hat will have to work particularly hard to undo it. We have been, and we continue to do so.
The real story of Fedora, of course, is entirely opposite from the "beta code only, not production worthy" stance.
Our mission statement is clear, and is one that I think any open-source developer would appreciate.
Fedora is about the rapid progress of Free and Open Source software.
That's it. We strive to produce a quality distribution of free software that is cutting-edge, pushes the envelope of new open source technology, and is also robust enough that it can be relied on for server or desktop use. One of the terms that I really like, and that I think we're doing better and better of making a reality is that of Fedora as an "open development lab". As a user, if your priorities are cutting-edge technology (without the nicks and cuts of a blade) and freedom, Fedora is a great disto to use.
The second half of the story, as it relates to Red Hat's desire to make a profit, is equally simple in my mind. Fedora is upstream of RHEL. Fedora is also upstream of various other derivative distributions.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DerivedDistributions
So when someone says "Fedora is beta for RHEL" they are stating only a very small part of what Fedora is. Fedora is the best of what works today. RHEL is the best of what will work for the next seven years. And the users can decide what is best for their needs.
Saying that Fedora is the beta for RHEL, and that Fedora is *only* a beta for RHEL, is to take a purposefully narrow view on the truth. Fedora's upstream relationship to RHEL is simply one aspect of the Fedora Project, which stands on its own as a distribution.
I feel very strongly about this particular question, and I will state my opinion bluntly:
Anyone (Red Hat or non-Red Hat) who tells you that Fedora isn't suitable for a production server is wrong. If someone tells you that Fedora is "just a beta for RHEL", they too are wrong.
Either the person is insufficiently informed about what Fedora is (and it's our job within Fedora to do that), or the person is purposefully misrepresenting Fedora and neglecting to tell the whole story, in which case it's our job within Fedora to call them out.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Objectives
=========================
9) Directory Server
(Score:5, Interesting)
by IMightB
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?
Max:
Regrettably, answering this question honestly also requires admission that the integration of Fedora Directory Server and the rest of the Fedora Project (particularly Fedora Core/Extras) hasn't happened as quickly as many would have liked. Directory Server is a great piece of software, but the true merging of that into Fedora Core is something that doesn't have a lot of traction at the moment. The Directory Server community isn't necessarily very well integrated with the rest of the Fedora community, and therefore the two communities are in a similar state to that of the two projects -- in theory capable of being very good together, but in practice sort of just existing side by side, but not as closely knit as they could be.
When will that change? As soon as we can get enough people on both sides of that fence able to spend the cycles necessary. I can't give an exact date, because one doesn't exist right now, so I'd rather not just make something up.
=========================
10) Have you tried Ubuntu?
(Score:5, Interesting)
by Anonymous Coward
Have you tried Ubuntu yourself? Is there, in your opinion, something Ubuntu does better than Fedora?
Max:
Those of you hoping for some flamebait, I'm sorry to disappoint.
Yes, I have tried Ubuntu. I have played around with SUSE, though not in any significant way for a year or so. Prior to coming to Red Hat in August of 2004, I had always been a Slackware devotee, and my subscription with them is still active.
So what does Ubuntu do better than Fedora?
Let me start without even mentioning the actual distributions. I think it is clear to anyone who is looking that Ubuntu's website is in much better shape than Fedora's. Ubuntu.com is clean, clear, and easy to navigate for people who are browsing it, and if you dig down a little bit, you can also get to the Ubuntu wiki, which from what I can tell, serves a similar purpose to the fedoraproject.org wiki.
Here's the difference -- fedoraproject.org is *just* a wiki. It's got a tremendous amount of information, and as someone who uses the site frequently, I know how to find what I'm looking for. But it has a bit of a learning curve before it becomes useful.
Fedora's websites are in a state of flux -- fedora.redhat.com is deprecated, but the killing off of that site is taking longer than I would have hoped, as there are a variety of infrastructure issues at play. Our wiki gets the job done, but I'd like to see a more professional looking front-end put on it, with the wiki continuing to function as it does, but just ever-so-slightly in the background. The biggest hurdle to making that happen -- just having enough cycles and enough people to do the job properly.
That aside, I am impressed by Ubuntu's LiveCD, directly installable feature. We have similar work going on within Fedora, but so far it hasn't achieved the same level of "officialness" as the Ubuntu code. So that's an area in which Ubuntu is ahead of Fedora.
I played around recently with Dapper Drake. Like I said, the LiveCD was cool. The desktop -- Gnome is pretty much Gnome, Firefox is Firefox, etc. Personally I'm a huge fan of NetworkManager, which didn't appear to be the default in Dapper, but something like that is just a detail. I'm sure if I were to use Dapper full time and I wanted it, I could probably get it.
This goes back to what I wrote near the beginning about the importance of upstream. If everyone is pushing their latest work back upstream, and the maintainers at the top level have the time and resources that they need to keep everything in order, then most GNU/Linux distros are going to feel pretty similar once they are installed. Which is why I think a lot of the OSS "religious wars" don't make a lot of sense.
=========================
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
Well, good interview.
I'm glad he talked about Ubuntu and answered **The question**
Those of you hoping for some flamebait, I'm sorry to disappoint.
:-(
Karma whore
I'm accustomed to people throwing that line around all the time, usually acting like they just happened to be reading some Gandhi and stumbled across this line they thought might be of interest, usually misspelling the man's name, and usually invoking it in the sense of "People laugh at me so Lunix is gonna win!"
But what kind of company does that?!? Do they wear "Question Authority" pins, also?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I thought I very good interview overall. Very little fanboi-ism (liked the links to Ubunto though - nice touch :) and some interesting perspective. Found the answer to the following particularly good:
Though he didn't mention it, another point would be that you dont hear Windows Pro vs Windows Home often because they both come from the same company: if Home gets sold instead of Pro Microsoft still wins.
Now, the same _could_ be said of the different flavors of Linux, but, aside from the issues of pride that he mentioned, some Linux vendors are trying to make money (surprise). Therefore, a company adopting RHEL for example is not really a win for Ubuntu - they are still seperate organizations, no matter how intertwined the upstream is.
I've tried Ubuntu (acutally Kubuntu) and I'm going to give it a test drive again today just for fun. But I keep comming back to Fedora. I've been using RedHat, then Fedora, for years at work and at home. Maybe it's just that I'm used to it, but I really do prefer this distribution. The RPM dependency problems of the past seem to have disappeared with the new package tool, "yum" (which automatically resolves and installs dependencies) and I have yet to see a distribution with such excellent anti-aliased font support. Fonts in Fedora look much better to me than fonts on my coworker's Windows machine, but not quite as good as OSX. Finally, I've really come to appreciate the open source-only policy of Fedora (& RedHat), both philosophically and practically.
My only problem with Fedora is also one of the reasons I like it so much for workstation use: distributions are released often, and old distributions are deprecated just as quickly. That makes it inappropriate for production server installations. This isn't the worst thing in the world, though, but it would be nice to use the same distribution on both development and production machines. I can live with this situation though, and IT demands commercial support anyway, so that seems to preclude Fedora too.
Ever since it started I have doubted the reasons for Redhat's creation of fedora.
As an Ubuntu fanatic I thought we had found the "one true distro".
But your plain talking honesty means I will give Fedora another try. In particular your answer to question 2 makes me question why I support Ubuntu over Debian or fedora.
Thanks Max.
Why should Linux standardize on one package manager? Should Linux standardize on Emacs rather than Vi? Should Linux standardize on OpenOffice Calc rather than Gnumeric? Should Linux standardize on Opera rather than Firefox? Should Linux standardize on KDE rather than Gnome? Of course not. Linux's great strength is its diversity. I like Portage, you like RPM. I take Gentoo, you take SUSE. We're both happy. Maybe something akin to freedesktop would be nice for package managers--have a standard way of doing certain operations. But he seems to be suggesting it would be a good idea to have distros dump their package managers and adopt a single common one. Not only would this happen on the same day that all Vim users switch to Emacs, but it would also be just as pointless.
Penny - plain text accounting
Why should operating systems standarize on one networking protocol ? Should we standarize on TCP/IP rather than NetBIOS? Should we standarize on PDF rather than HTML? Of course not.
I've asked for open source hardware drivers from the major vendors (mostly for wireless acrds), with almost no success, so I've found an alternative. The Free Software Foundation keeps a list of hardware with free/open source drivers here. After reading the list, I got a Zonet ZEW-1500 Wireless G card from Amazon (no longer there, try eBay). Ubuntu found it instantly, as did Knoppix (wireless support from a bootable CD! Woo Hoo!). Had no problem getting WPA working with it in Linux, as it was supported in firmware. I recommend you still badger the Big Vendors about releasing free drivers and/or specs, but you can drastically reduce the amount of tinkering you have to do to get your wireless card to work under Linux by getting one that already has free drivers available, and who knows? If enough people support the companies that have free drivers, the Big Vendors might just open their drivers up to remain competitive. But I'm not holding my breath.
"Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
This was nice to read. I was in the Red Hat camp for a long time, and am even an RHCE, but I've been fairly devoted to Ubuntu for the past year and a half. The main thing I like is that it comes from a single CD, and the rest is kept in repositories. And that it works so well out of the box. It's good to hear that Fedora is thinking of killing Extras as a separate project and moving to a repository-based system.
Though I'm a bit dismayed by the talk of Fedora Directory Server. A good directory service for managing user accounts (including Samba accounts) is probably one of the biggest wish-list items for sysadmins. I hope they raise its profile in Fedora. It would be a major advantage over Ubuntu on the server side of things.
He's rather adamant about Fedora not being a beta for RH. Personally I was never under the impression that it was a beta of anything (aside from the fact that I found the second release to be rather unstable). RH did a fairly good job of splitting it off by explaining the differences betwen their two main audiences: (a) people who pay and (b) people who want the latest packages.
If by rooted you mean security-compromised, then the best thing to do would be to apply the flaming torches and such to the partitions before reinstalling FC5 from scratch.
"Anyone (Red Hat or non-Red Hat) who tells you that Fedora isn't suitable for a production server is wrong."
I have been saying for years that Fedora is not suitable for production use. I've followed this interview and the previous questions thread carefully and checked into the Fedora site.
I stand by the initial statement: Fedora is not for production use.
Why? The same reasons Gentoo is not suitable or any other distro that breaks things on a regular basis. Production doesn't mean "on all the time" or "Up and running more often than not". Perhaps the definition of production is where Max and I disagree. My definition of production includes things like 24/7, mission critical, must not break. Given the cutting edge nature of Fedora, indeed its very mission statement, it simply does not fit. Workstation use? Sure. Departmental Server? Yeah, along as not too many dollars are lost when it breaks. $10,000/hour-of-downtime system? NO.
Now, I do want to give props for two things.
1) Acknowledging the Redhat/Fedora birthing was handled really really badly. Enough said on that, perhaps I can move on now.
2) Fedora as a project is coming along, I get the sense that some of the kinks are being worked out and it's something I might consider installing and using Real Soon Now. Congratulations on the progress.
Anything is possible given time and money.
* The Fedora Project, as many of you know, is a partnership between Red Hat and the OSS community.
* Red Hat retains legal liability for the Fedora Project. The Fedora Project is not a separate legal entity or organization.
Can it really be a partnership when one partner retains full legal control?
IMO, this is the number one reason Ubuntu leads Fedora. Ubuntu is funded and guided by people who only want to make money from services. Thus making Ubuntu as good as possible is in-line with their financial goals. RedHat makes money selling an OS that competes with Fedora. Making Fedora good is in opposition to their financial goals.
* Fedora is the best of what works today. RHEL is the best of what will work for the next seven years.
Ubuntu's Dapper Drake will be supported for five years. Obviously, Ubuntu does not see the same conflict between cutting edge and stability as RedHat.
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
A: Question authority! ...
B: Says who?!
Don't organizations who iconize slogans like this mainly just want to distill a sense of future into their identity? Frankly, I doubt many really internalize the sense of commitment to an ideal. Still, all else being equal I'd rather work for an organization with an underdeveloped version of that attitude, as opposed to one operating under a "how can you preserve or expand market share for our stockholders today?" imperative.
Pi Ran Out
I don't know about FC5 but I just updated a FC1 developer workstation to FDC4 yesterday without a hitch. Is the FDC1 pure FDC1 or does it have a lot of compiled / other packages? You might try FDC1 -> FDC4 ->FDC5, or something along those lines.
So I used to run Fedora Core testing, and I remember my frustration was not with actually Core and Extras being integrated (Core and Extras always worked like gang busters to me), but something else. I wanted to run software made to run on Fedora, packaged by others (i.e. livna.org), but there was a huge separation between Fedora's development process and livna's that made it impossible to run livna packages on the FC testing distribution.
So my follow-up question: Is this still an issue? If so, are there steps being made to simplify parallel development for external package developers?
I guess what I'm really trying to say is this: it is my opinion that while Fedora shouldn't necessarily provide the packages that violate its principles in terms of free software, etc., Fedora should assist the developers who do provide those packages to integrate their software as smoothly as Extras integrates with Core.
I feel the ease-of-installation is one of the main things we can do to switch people from Windows to Linux. In past versions of Fedora Core/ Red Hat, new installations have seamless. However, the Fedora Core V release seems to have been very poorly tested in this regard. My users ran into one problem after another. I would be interested in hearing comments for future Fedora Core versions on this issue.
Great interview. Good questions. Good thoughtful answers. Interviews is one of the things Slashdot does really well and this is an example of it at it's best. Well done team!
:-)
Disclaimer- I'm a happy little Fedora user
--Murray Barton
As per title his answers were very thoughtful and balanced, but the questions...
1) Why don't we all just get along?
2) What are you (specific distribution) doing about drivers for the rest of us?
3) How have you improved?
4) What is your biggest flaw?
5) Does Vista scare you?
6) I am not a lawyer and neither are you, so please discuss the legal basis for not including NTFS?
7) I found a bug in a specific package's dependencies, can you fix it please?
8) What are the goals of Fedora?
9) When will Fedora Directory Server be integrated?
10) Have you tried Ubuntu?
These questions are such soft-ball. Half of these are "lame interview" questions. Most of the rest are things the poster could have just looked up in the FAQs (what's the mission statement? come on). Hell we would have gotten as much by asking that +5 funny "my date canceled, what are you doing Friday?" as most of these.
Next time please mod' up some difficult questions.
There is nothing wrong with RPM and RPM-based Linux distros. In fact, many people including myself prefer them. If there be "one package manager to rule them all", it better be able to handle rpm's, dpkg AND any other compression/binary format that may exist (I think Alien succeeds to a certain degree).
Linux users need more options and more freedom, not less. Freedom of choice is what helped GNU/Linux (I'm using the name as an all-encompassing unbrella term here) grow and fill many niches. Centos and other RPM-based distros of that ilk for businesses, Gentoo Portage for the tweakers and hobbiests (yes, I'm generalizing, but bear with me), Debian and DPKG for the purists, Slackware and tar+gzip for the old farts, Fedora Core and Ubuntu for the masses... and I could go on. Diversity is our strength, it shouldn't be percieved as a weakness.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
I've often considered ripping apart all existing package managers and produce something sane, stable, robust and fast. My big concern is that as nobody else has achieved such a goal, I am unsure what my odds are of success. On the other hand, the systems that are out there are all but unusable.
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)
Then you're probably waaayyy out on the bleeding edge and don't know it. Either that, or you're doing something like;
/really/ bad plan. How do I know? Because that's exactly what I used to do. :) You end up creating situations where your libraries match just the new app. Everything else gets broken that way.
/etc/portage/package/keywords; e.g. ~x86 or ~amd64.
emerge --Deep --update --verbose (-Duv) packagename
every time you do an app install. Bad plan. Really,
Another possibility is that you've chosen packages that require a lot of installs of the unstable branches. These would be marked as tilde architecture in
Another one is getting too aggressive in your compilation options. I've seen that create havoc that looked like dependency problems.
In any case, I'd strongly recommend searching forums.gentoo.org and bugs.gentoo.org. Just about every possible problem that you might come across has already been hit by someone else, and very frequently there's already an answer waiting for you.
Try forums first. Most Gentoo users are a pretty helpful bunch, and there are a lot of regulars who are good at narrowing down problems in a hurry.
BTW, , I recommend just doing the following for general system maintenance:
emerge --verbose (-v) packagename
Once a week, month, or whatever trips your trigger, do the following;
emerge --sync
emerge --fetch --update --verbose (-fuv) world
emerge -uv system
revdep-rebuild (checks, then rebuilds your toolchain, then your core system. Some people recommend doing it twice to guarantee that your entire core system is rebuilt with a clean toolchain. IME it's not critical most of the time.)
fix whatever problems might show up, then
emerge -uv world
revdep-rebuild
That'll keep your system clean.
NetworkManager is installed in a stock Fedora Core installation but isn't enabled by default as well (as far as I can tell). There seem to be a conflict/redundancy between Fedora's original network scripts and NetworkManager. Hopefully this will get resolved soon.
Unfortunately, this wasn't moderated high enough. I would still like to know what Fedora Core has planned for improving the desktop experience, both in functionality as well as optimization.
Oh, monthly? I do an emerge --sync;emerge --update world daily. The sheer number of packages installed make it unwise to go for much longer than that, or it would take too long for the update to complete.
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)
As an IT consultant specializing in Linux solutions, I would actually think that Fedora Core would be a more prudent choice to make. In practice, both RedHat and Ubuntu (the funding company) have taken a hands-off approach to how the projects have been managed thus far. However, as an IT consultant, I would feel much better knowing that RedHat does retain veto powers in case some decision goes off kilter. I'd hate for the distro I've been pushing to clients to suddenly change towards a non-business-friendly direction (which is certainly possible if just left to the community). This, however, is unlikely to happen because the community balances itself out, but on the off-chance that it does, there's something in place in Fedora to check it.
Freedom is fine unless anarchy starts to assert itself.
Wow. And I thought I had it bad with three desktops, all with all the KDE bells and whistles, plus other addons. lol
I think both opinions on "production quality" are right. I think it's just a question of degree.
There are two ways of looking at something as "production quality". There's the initial release, and there are the updates. I think Fedora Core is doing a great job of making sure their product is good and stable upon release so that it's "production quality".
Updates are a different thing. Some people would argue on what is a production quality-rated update. Most would say that security and essentials are the only upgrades needed. It's a given that the more diverse the systems are out there on which software is installed, the likelier it is that a change would break (or fix) something.
Fedora Core seems to have a LOT of updates in the course of its lifetime. I'm not even sure how each update is rated (is it a security fix? a version update?). I remember a time when you could look at RedHat linux Updates and know precisely what they were for and their severity.
I agree the current system is still a bit of a kludge for production environments, specially those that require 24/7 uptimes. Hopefully something can be done about this.
Oh, and the USE statement enables every option relating to a package I've installed (whether or not I'll ever use that connection), plus every option that might be useful to be, plus every option that I have no idea what it does but sounds cool.
The result is a computer that takes easily half an hour plus to finish booting, uses a good three quarters of RAM with everything shovelled in by init, routinely suffers memory leaks that will become catastrophic over a few days or so, and regularly requires me to unmerge stuff because some dependency in some obscure package changed to break the gigantic web of terror I have inflicted on my machine.
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)
>As a user, if your priorities are cutting-edge technology (without the nicks and cuts of a blade) and freedom, Fedora is a great disto to use.
i stributions ?
I agree with this statement by Max Spevack. I'm a long time Debian GNU/Linux user. Recently i switched to Ubuntu because the desktop software of stable was to old and testing/unstable is a moving target and i want a system which i can trust that if it runs today it will run tomorrow too. So Ubuntu was the logical step, almost Debian stable with up-to-date Desktop software.
But i'm not really happy how Ubuntu handles non-Free Software, like Max said: "Ubuntu is one example, as there is very strong language about their commitment to Free and open source software, right up until the line stating that they include binary-only drivers on their CDs and in their repositories."
I think Fedora could be the right choice if i wouldn't be used that much to the Debian way of doing things (deb, dpkg, update-alternatives,...).
And that's leeds me to the question: Fedora seems to be a respectable Free Software GNU/Linux distribution. Wouldn't it be the almost perfect distribution which could be "approved/recommand by FSF"? Has Fedora already thought about such a step or even asked the FSF to get listed at http://www.gnu.org/links/links.html#FreeGNULinuxD
Support Free Software! Join FSFE's Fellowship: http://fellowship.fsfe.org
Rather than first, trying to replace rpm/deb with some common package type, I think first, a unified repository format that works for everyone should be created. Then you can use deb's or rpm's, but the way packages are tracked would be the same. This would allow you to use either package file on the same system (assuming directory structures are standardized).
Then, come up with some conventions to use to make deb's and rpms portable.
A tool that checks for portability (and possibly converts as well) would be useful here.
You could create a universal package format, but, if the rpms and debs are package portable, there is little difference (other than getting rid of extra libraries/binaries required to support and check all the package formats.)
blah blah blah
I think this is an important point about open source in general, and it reaches much further than just drivers. It applies to the entire collection of applications in a distribution.
This is one of the key things that I think Open Source Software and licensing has going for it. On the surface, it allows someone to take the code and use it elsewhere, but the fundamental nature of the licenses also means that support for existing software can be transferred much more easily. This makes it a lot simpler to have a decent and reliable package management system in open source OS distributions. Essentially, it makes it possible for a single entity to support an entire system, and have the freedom to update any part of it. Even though it sometimes means minor forking of code to fit with a particular distro, it's already been shown, for a long time, that this can be done in a maintainable way. Distros can successfully tinker with code for their own distro while still keeping it in sync with upstream releases.
People often complain about linux app installation not being as simple as download, click, run, but I can't imagine how it'd be possible to have anything like yum or apt-get, let alone a stable underlying package management system like rpm or dpkg, in a Windows environment with closed source licenses. Windows has a built-in package manager, but it's very basic compared with others. Personally I've always had problems trusting that installers are doing what I hope it's doing... keeping in mind that most application installers tend to come from third parties who might or might not know what they're doing. When the installation package comes via a central provider who's certified it for use with their system, it's much more trustworthy.
It's simply not possible for Microsoft, or any other organisation, to collect together thousands of third party Windows applications and provide them in a stable, integrated repository that's supported by a single provider. The closed source licenses of software vendors typically prevent this, and they also typically prevent anyone from tinkering with source code and/or re-releasing the product, if source code is even available at all.
At best, Microsoft can provide some level of stability with Microsoft provided applications (Office, IE, some specific dev tools, etc), but after that the user is on their own, and has to get support from elsewhere. To top it off, Microsoft's own closed source policies for Windows means that third party supporters don't have full control to keep their apps stable, either. (eg. Any Windows bugs that affect an application can only be fixed at the whim of Microsoft, fixes might break other apps that a user needs, and so on.) As soon as a user wants to use something that Microsoft doesn't provide, or wants to do something in a way other than the one and only Microsoft way, it's necessary to go to a third party, and then it risks becoming a support nightmare.
I use open source software for all sorts of reasons, but I think most of them trace back to this basic thing that the licenses of individual bits of software allow for my entire system to be much more stable. I use two binary blob drivers on my laptop (nvidia and broadcom) because I have to to get it to work how I want it to, but the next laptop I buy will definitely be scrutinised much more for its hardware -- both drivers have just been such a hassle to maintain in a way that keeps the system stable.
If the packages are signed and checked you will at least KNOW when cracked mirrors become a problem!
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
I've been a Fedora user since RH8, and still am. This Q&A and the discussion hasn't touched on some areas of Fedora's place in the world that seem important to me.
Firstly, in comparison with Ubuntu, Max Spevak mentions that Ubuntu's web presence is better organized. IMHO, this is a reflection of the fact that Ubuntu has a much better-organized community. Community is the primary difference between Fedora and Ubuntu, and it's not a superficial difference.
Second, I don't see much discussion of Max Spevak's role or discussion of Fedora leadership in general. From a mere user's point of view, Fedora has lacked for a guiding hand. Developers who (deservedly) "own" their fiefdoms get to make decisions, but you need someone at a higher level to help keep an even keel and referee the bigger picture. A decent example of this is here, where the Fedora Advisory Board ultimately made the decision to prevent some needless chaos for nvidia driver users that would have been caused by an X.org update. Holding the update for the upcoming FC6 release was a stroke of wisdom IMO, but even if you disagree, it's still an example of project-level leadership.
Additional leadership might help resolve situations like this. There has been much dysfunctional hostility between the "official" Fedora repo folks and the unofficial ones. This is the opposite of community building.
Another place where a guiding hand is useful is maintaining consistency on the desktop. Early versions of Fedora had a consistent look. Now my panel icons are drifting away from any unifying theme. For example, wireshark, firefox, and the Fedora menu all have icons that don't fit visually with any installed theme.
One place Fedora suffers for its lack of community is that usability (that is, the perspective of end-users) is not a key focus for developers. (Network manager would be a *shining* exception, you folks rock.) End-users are ghettoized in forums and lists that developers rarely go near. There is no usability champion. It doesn't "feel" like a priorty in Fedora. (But again, props to the FAB for the X.org update decision.)
An example of where Ubuntu "gets it" when it comes to real-world usability would be the way that package updates are handled. Notification is automatic, and users are already in sudoers or something, so they only need their own password to authorize the updates. (Imperfect yes, but it "Just works" for the most common use-case of a desktop system, and is pre-configured out of the box. Even Aunt Tilly can handle it.)
I haven't switched to Ubuntu myself yet, but I have started installing it for the friends/family for whom I am the go-to-geek, because for them usability trumps all.
I'll be interested to see if Ubuntu can follow through over time, and if Fedora can put down community roots.
max,
since debian has already fostered a vast collaborative community of developers and contributors, why reinvent the wheel with the fedora project? it seems to me that if the gnu/linux community spirit were agregated into one focal point, progress would be attained much more rapidly. right now, every application developer has to create at least 3 packages (if not more) to support most of their users (tgz, rpm, and deb). and each distribution spends a significant portion of their efforts on redundantly repackaging upstream applications. also, proprietary applications tend not to be written for gnu/linux because it is too much effort (because all distributions are slightly incompatible with all others).
so my question is: why doesn't redhat utilize and contribute to the collaboration that already exists? why not utilize debian as the redhat community core with some rebranding, extra redhat utils, and minor repackaging? why not free up your engineers to do real work, rather than redundant repackaging? why not unify the community?
What a lovely church you have here, perfect FOR ME TO POPE ON!!! No wait... POOP ON!
i've tried most of the major and a few minor linux distros(RH, suse, deb, slack, ubuntu, knoppix, YDL, dsl, elive) over the years, but have always come back to RH/FC as the benchmark for a standard professional install. suse comes the closest to RH in terms of a professional install, and i'm over due to check it out again. frankly the most important issues to me are the initial installation and kernel tweaks, and app installs. RPM and YUM are decent package managers, although i thing sun's pkg is still better than either. installation of apps has to be easy, especially when you need to talk someone thru it.
then i tried openbsd at a friend's insistance, and it really changed my perspective...
openbsd - friendly install, no, but it is pretty easy to toss in the boot cd, point it to a ftp/http server, and install. i was even able to net install using a linksys wmp54g card for openbsd3.9. FC5 required some BS ndiswrapper crap, which just seems down right weird to me. recompiling the kernel is way easier on bsd. and the whole ports system for app installation is pretty cool(gentoo is looking pretty cool as a linux distro because of portage). and frankly, for what i use a linux/bsd box for(server, not workstation), i feel that openbsd is way more stable and lean than any of the linux distros.
the whole linux distro argument is really getting tiresome. pick a distro cause it works for you, cause it fits the need. it's not a gang. it's not a religion.
three can keep a secret, if two are dead - benjamin franklin
No one can be told how Fedora is. You have to try it for yourself.
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
Interesting vagueness about the package management issue. Very noncommittal. Odd when you consider how important this issue is. In many ways the distro IS the package management system, as confirmed by his comments re how hard to change. Notice there was no mention of Conary, which is also odd as it is is created by ex Red Hat employees and is very powerful. When you also take into account his other comments re how the distros are very much alike when they are installed, it would seem that rather than have a distro switch to another package manager, you might just as well change to a distro that already uses it. The comment re the similarity of distros once they are installed also clearly supports my contention that there are too many distros and not enough justification for them when they are so much alike. The only characteristic they all share is that none of them work properly. This proliferation of distros is definately the biggest weakness of Linux. Regarding the issue of the Live-CD and the graphical install of Ubuntu, which he regarded as cool - why not simply use it rather than re invent a Fedora wheel? Isnt that the reason for the GPL? Why does every distro have to come up with its own wheel? Is it more of the NIH syndrome?
"I would like all of that to change. I would like for the Core/Extras distinction to go away, and instead be replaced by the idea of a Fedora Universe, which is a giant pile of packages that are blessed by Fedora, and any subset of those packages that produces a functioning OS can be called Fedora. "
This sounds an awful lot like how Debian has worked for years.
"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.
Debian's Recommends: field handles this nicely and has done so for years.
Once again Fedora is playing package-catch-up to Debian. In another year or so they'll reach parity with Debian circa 2001, by my estimation.
So here's the question: Why use RPM? Even if you use RPM, why stick with yum? DPKG is as good or better and the apt system is years ahead. Must we really wait while Fedora/Red Hat incrementally unsuck yum and RPM when there is an excellent solution tested, proven and working today?
I want my Cowboyneal
They look blurry because they're antialiased to hell.
If you want fonts on your Lunix box to look like that, simply turn off hinting.
Someday perhaps NetworkManager will be more than a pretty widget. I'll be a big cheerleader if that day ever comes.
Yes, I've built it from source, yes, I've tried it on multiple systems (intel, broadcom, prism chips) under multiple distros (ubuntu, fedora, redhat) but I've never, ever seen it capable of doing corporate-grade WPA *and* home-user grade WEP *and* normal unencrypted traffic all on the same box.
When I took *two* laptops with non-functional wireless to the Fedora guys at linuxworld, they told me to file a Bugzilla. Since the last twenty Bugzillas I've opened have never been resolved, I switched to Ubuntu and ditched NetworkManager entirely (I use wpa_supplicant, iwlist scan, and iwconfig from the command line and it works fine thank you).
I wish I had the time to help with NetworkManager development, but I don't. I don't have time to spend on filing Bugzillas that will be ignored for the next decade, either.
This'll probably be modded flamebait, but it's not. Just a raw statement of the facts. I wish the Fedora and NetworkManager projects all the success in the world.