Fedora Linux

Ravi writes "Fedora — the Linux that is developed as a community effort, is the sand box of Red Hat. They incorporate all the new features after they have been exhaustively tested into its commercial product, namely Red Hat Enterprise Linux . Fedora has a 6 month release schedule and the most recent release is core 6. In all respects Fedora is the same Red Hat Linux but with cutting edge packages. What I really like about Fedora apart from the vibrant community participating in its development is the mark of quality it has from its association with Red Hat." Read the rest of Ravi's review. Fedora Linux author Chris Tyler pages 650 publisher O'Reilly rating 9 reviewer Ravi ISBN 0-596-52682-2 summary An excellent book on setting up and configuring all aspects of Fedora Linux.

Coinciding with the release of the latest version of Fedora, O'Reilly brought out the new book titled Fedora Linux authored by Chris Tyler. The book is divided into 10 chapters spanning over 600 pages with each chapter catering to a particular topic. Like all books of this genre, this book also starts by explaining how to install Fedora on ones machine. But what is different regarding the Fedora installer is that it provides a lot of flexibility, variety and finer control over the install process. Not surprisingly, the author has dedicated two chapters for explaining the various ways in installing Fedora. The first chapter titled "Quick start: Installing Fedora" covers the basic installation from start to finish. Where as the 10th chapter titled "Advanced Installation" covers the advanced features of the installer such as creating logical volumes and Raid during installation, automating the installation process using the kick start file, installing from locations other than a CD/DVD such as NFS and PXE boot as well as a detailed coverage of the Grub boot loader. This chapter also has a short section explaining how to install and use Xen virtual machines.

At a first glance, one might be tempted to bundle this book with the rest of the books available on this subject. But on close scrutiny, I discovered a certain method to the madness. That is each topic that is covered in the book is divided into 4 broad sections. There is a section titled "How do I do that?" which explains the nuts and bolts of accomplishing the given task. The next section titled "How does it work?" gives a good understanding of the theoretical concepts if any behind the topic, the third section titled "What about...?" introduces potential configuration bottlenecks and any additional tasks related to the topic and provides solutions to them. And lastly, there is a section titled "Where can I learn more...?" which provides a bunch of resources on the web and pointers to the respective documentation which will provide further insights about the topic being discussed. It is really refreshing to see this book take such a unique structured approach to explaining the concepts.

The 2nd chapter titled "Using Fedora on your Desktop" apart from covering details about Gnome and KDE Desktops also provides information about additional topics like configuring the XServer, adding new fonts and configuring sound and printing to work with Fedora. There are topics like partitioning a flash drive which makes this particular chapter quite interesting.

The third chapter titled "Using Fedora on your Notebook" explains how to configure Fedora to handle laptop specific features such as power management, mobile networking and configuring touch pad. This chapter also gives a firm introduction to configuring the networking interfaces be it the ethernet or wireless. One thing which holds Fedora in good stead over its peers is the good set of GUI front-ends available to configure each and every aspect of Linux. And configuring networking is no different. But the author does not limit himself to explaining the GUI way of configuring but also explains how to do it the command line way.

No book on Linux is complete without an in depth coverage of the basic commands used for system maintenance. The fourth chapter titled "Basic System Management" is one of the largest chapters in this book where the author explains all the important commands one might be expected to know to keep Fedora Linux in ship shape. Apart from the ubiquitous commands, I also found detailed pointers in enabling secure remote access to Fedora using SSH.

Package management forms the basis for the fifth chapter. Fedora has a great set of tools which aid the user in a variety of ways in installing, removing and upgrading packages. Fedora uses the software management system called RPM Package Manager. But with popular demand, it has also incorporated an apt-get like tool called Yum which automatically resolve dependency issues. I found this chapter to provide an in-depth coverage of all the tools related to package management in Fedora. For example, the author explains how to roll back the installation of a package to a state 10 minutes ago or for that matter to a previous date using the RPM tool. There is also a section which explains how to create ones own RPM packages.

The chapter titled "Storage management" gives a broad explanation of Logical volume management and setting up Raid. Fedora comes with its own LVM administration tool which makes it a snap to set up and manage logical volumes. The author after explaining how to accomplish creating, resizing and deleting logical volumes using this GUI tool, goes on to describe how to do it the command line way too which makes this chapter really useful. All along the chapter, I found useful tips on tasks such as creating backups of the disk and how to go about doing it, stopping a raid and so on.

But the one chapter which I found really comprehensive was the seventh chapter titled "Network Services". Here the author explains how to setup the gamut of network services including but not limited to DHCP server, BIND, CUPS print server, MySQL server, sendmail and more. This chapter spans around 100 pages. There is also a short section providing tips on analyzing the web and ftp logs.

Lets face it. Even though Fedora is a community supported venture backed by Red Hat, it has all the characteristics which propel it to the enterprise level. One of the notable characteristics is the extensive integration of SELinux (Security Enhanced Linux). SELinux controls what a program is and is not allowed to do, enforcing security policy through the kernel. Fedora has very good support for SELinux and has even developed GUI front-ends to make it much more easier to configure. In the 8th chapter, the author explains in detail the steps needed to configure and fine tune selinux on Fedora. This chapter also contain sections which explain the pluggable authentication module as well as other security related features such as configuring a firewall and using access control lists.

The unique structure in which the chapters are layed out makes it more suitable to be used as a reference more than a cover to cover read. The author is eloquent in his narration of the topics and has done a good job of explaining the concepts. I found this book to be an ideal resource for coming up to date with all the system and network administration tasks that can be accomplished in Fedora Linux.

Ravi Kumar maintains a blog where he shares his thoughts related to GNU/Linux, Open Source and Free Software at linuxhelp.blogspot.com. He has also reviewed in a concise way the history of GNU/Linux.

You can purchase Fedora Linux from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

Comment on Fedora in general.

[aquaepulse]

For my CSE432 class, Operating System Internals, we delve into the Linux 2.4 kernel code to show examples of how operating systems are implemented. So I, being a lifelong Windows user, decided to setup a VMware virtual Linux box. Started with Ubuntu, but couldn't get the VMTools installed properly.
Format.
Install Fedora, update the kernel packages, VMTools up and running.
Easy.
I like Fedora and this book look like it could make anyone a more knowledgeable Fedora user.

Re:Comment on Fedora in general.

[CastrTroy]

I never found Ubuntu all the user friendly. I don't have any idea where it gets that reputation from. I've never found Fedora to be that much better. The best distro I've found so far is Mandriva. It's the only distro that consistently (for the last 5 years) that I've been able to install and have everything "Just Work". I have tried other distros because every else is raving about Ubuntu, or Fedora, or Suse, or Gentoo, but I haven't found that any of them work as well as Mandriva has.

Re:Comment on Fedora in general.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you telling me that you can hack the linux kernel but you can't set up VMWare on a Ubuntu box??

Re:Comment on Fedora in general.

[Fry-kun]

I've started using Ubuntu as my first Linux - I loved the kind of support I was able to get at Ubuntu forums (fast responses, nobody being condescending to a n00b like me...) - but for me the dealbreaker was that the packages were not up-to-date for a long time. It's true, the working packages should only be updated after they've been through a lot of testing - but the problem is, not all software works correctly in the old versions.. I'm using Fedora now - grinding my teeth whenever a problem occurs - but using it nonetheless.
Anyway, it would've been perfect if Fedora came with Ubuntu-level support... oh well, I can dream :P

Or maybe it doesn't have to be a dream.. I've seen Fedora-specific questions being answered on Ubuntu forums - maybe there's still hope

Re:Comment on Fedora in general.

[Anonymous Coward]

He didn't say he hacked the kernel, he said he "delved into it". Meaning he looked at the slab allocator code, his brain vapor-locked, then he hurled into his wastebasket and staggered off to take a bong hit.

Re:Comment on Fedora in general.

[Rix]

So in other words, you had little interest in understanding how the system works. You just wanted to point to it and say "Oooo, Linux Pixie Dust(TM)".

Re:Comment on Fedora in general.

[scoot80]

Is that career working out for you? Get back to ditch digging mate, computer break is over.

Re:Comment on Fedora in general.

[that this is not und]

I started with Slackware. And it dragged me through a lot of low level Unix, so that now I can run about any of them as my desktop system that I prefer. I prefer NetBSD.

The Slackware was back in the kernel 1.2.8 era. I guess I really started out with kernel .99something on Yggdrasil Plug-and-play linux, but the brokeness of it's installer never let me get very deep into it. Fun times with a Mitsumi 1x CDROM drive and a 486, though...

Re:Comment on Fedora in general.

[cerelib]

Your professor probably shouldn't be basing the curriculum around a GPL kernel. Something like that could affect your future job possibilities. I am guessing your professor picked the 2.4 kernel because it seems out of date, but that is not really important when it comes to legal matters like the GPL. It seems like concentrating on a more open kernel like a BSD would be a safer bet. Somebody please correct me if I am wrong, but that seems rather careless on the part of your professor.

Re:Comment on Fedora in general.

[doom]

cerelib (903469) wrote:

Your professor probably shouldn't be basing the curriculum around a GPL kernel. Something like that could affect your future job possibilities. I am guessing your professor picked the 2.4 kernel because it seems out of date, but that is not really important when it comes to legal matters like the GPL. It seems like concentrating on a more open kernel like a BSD would be a safer bet. Somebody please correct me if I am wrong, but that seems rather careless on the part of your professor.

Yeah, okay, consider yourself corrected. You're completely wrong in every detail.

Can you explain where you encountered FUD of this magnitude?

(The GPL is not viral, but stupidity is.)

Re:Comment on Fedora in general.

[aquaepulse]

His reason for centering the class around the 2.4 kernel is that there is no textbook, as excellent as the book that we are using for the 2.4 kernel, for the 2.6 kernel.

Re:Comment on Fedora in general.

[mirky]

Now it the correct kernel will install the first time it would be the greatest.

Re:Comment on Fedora in general.

[tehcyder]

So in other words, you had little interest in understanding how the system works. You just wanted to point to it and say "Oooo, Linux Pixie Dust(TM)".

You misspelled OSX.

Re:Comment on Fedora in general.

[cerelib]

If the class were to study in detail the virtual memory system for the Linux kernel, would that compromise your ability to work on the virtual memory of another commercial operating system like Windows, OS X, VxWorks, or AIX? While most people might say 'no', the companies that own those operating systems might think otherwise. Look at the recent headlines for the SCO vs IBM case. The current controversy is whether or not IBM's Linux developers had copies of AIX source code on their workstations. That is just having a copy, not even indicating studying the code. The problem is, if you have studied the Linux kernel, you could, with or without knowing it, introduce code that is a derivative work from the Linux kernel into a non-GPL operating system. It does not have to be a copy and paste job to be a derivative work. I don't think I am wrong here, but if you could provide a sound argument against what I am saying, that might shed some light on the subject. As far as where I have encountered this type of stance, I work for one of the corporations that produces one of the operating systems listed above(but I do not work on the OS).

Re:Comment on Fedora in general.

[Rix]

If a kernel is open and no one uses it, does it make a sound?

Re:Comment on Fedora in general.

[doom]

cerelib wrote:

If the class were to study in detail the virtual memory system for the Linux kernel, would that compromise your ability to work on the virtual memory of another commercial operating system like Windows, OS X, VxWorks, or AIX?

No.

While most people might say 'no', the companies that own those operating systems might think otherwise.

(A) I've never heard of a case like this, ever. (B) They can think what they like, they'd still be wrong -- if a company refuses to hire you for a reason this stupid, you wouldn't want to work for them for very long any way.

Look at the recent headlines for the SCO vs IBM case. The current controversy is whether or not IBM's Linux developers had copies of AIX source code on their workstations.

It goes the other way. If you have access to proprietary crap, than you're a liability to a free software project, but not the other way around. Do you get it? Everyone has access to the free software, that's the point. As far as legalties go, there is no way you can prove to anyone that you've never peeked at some GPL code.

Re:Comment on Fedora in general.

[Aqualung812]

So, I assume you're typing your messages on a Supercoder 2000, and you just have a LED that is on or off on your desk to read this.

This is the Linux snob crap that keeps F/OSS in the corner. Everyone has a different level of intrest in how things work, and even Fedora requires more understanding of the underlying system than OSX or Windows.

Also, maybe this person doesn't have as much FREE TIME to code his kernel in assembler like you do. Don't worry, I'll get off your damn lawn and take that guy with me.

More widely used than you'd know

[fishdan]

In an informal survey on my IM list, more people are using Fedora than any other distro. Not that that's good or bad, but considering all the hype for Ubuntu recently, I'm happy to see Fedora getting a little love. It's been my workstation of choice since FC2.

Re:More widely used than you'd know

[micromoog]

I'm happy to see Fedora getting a little love. It's been my workstation of choice since FC2.

What a coincidence -- FC2 was the distro that drove me away from Red Hat and all of its relations.

Re:More widely used than you'd know

[Anonymous Coward]

An interesting note, sourceforge.net is still using a tweaked version of FC2 for their project web servers.

I started with RHL4.2 and transistioned to FC when the $60/year RHN subscriptions were no longer offered. At first I was disappointed by the loss of cheap RHN support but I'm actually in better shape now with a local mirror of the base, updates, extras, and livna repositories. I suspect small businesses didn't fair as well if they didn't have the resources to either use RHEL or transition to FC.

FC is not perfect but its a very good distro with some nice features.

Re:More widely used than you'd know

[Pharmboy]

I hate to say "me, too", but "me, too". I started losing faith when RH9 came out so fast after 8, especially considering how happy I was was the whole 7.x line. (and even 6.1) I still have FC1 on a couple of boxes, and unfortunately FC4 on a couple as well. What has kept RH on those boxes is the fact that I simply know RH's quirks/methods better than anything else.

What is ironic is that everyone is bitching about how it took 6 years to go from xp to Vista (which I won't migrate to) but I felt the opposite. I am tired of learning new operating systems just for the sake of learning new operating systems. I don't buy computers to run operating systems, I use operating systems to run PROGRAMS.

Eventually I will have to make the switch to Debian (which seems to be the best for NOT changing the version every freaking 6 to 12 months), but have just been too busy running the actual programs to learn a different Linux version.

Re:More widely used than you'd know

[SatanicPuppy]

8 & 9 definitely sucked. Those were both crappy, mediocre distros, especially considering how excellent the Valhalla (7.3?) distro was...It's still a hugely popular distro for web hosting companies.

I was pretty pleased with Fedora Core 2-4, felt like they were modern, without being bloated and slow like 8 & 9. FC5 was a real dog, though, so I don't know what to say about that. In all, I tend to use Fedora more than any other distro. It's got its issues, but when you use it enough, you just sort of tune them out by default.

Redhat and Fedora have their moments of brilliance, but you really have to watch 'em, they can bite you. Definitely not an automatic upgrade, whenever the new one comes out.

Re:More widely used than you'd know

[Shawn is an Asshole]

Eventually I will have to make the switch to Debian (which seems to be the best for NOT changing the version every freaking 6 to 12 months), but have just been too busy running the actual programs to learn a different Linux version.

Have you tried CentOS? It's based off of RHEL4 and the versions are fairly stable. It will be supported for a while. The program versions are quite old, though. I can't stand the version of Gnome it ships with (2.14 was the first version I found usable). With KDE-Redhat, though, you can get a current version of KDE.

If you do decide to go to Debian, though, give Ubuntu a try. 6.06 will be supported for several years. Another plus is unlike Fedora/RHEL you don't need to piece together many different repositories just to get the programs you need. Just enabling main, universe, and multiverse are enough. I also throw in PLF for libdvdcss2 and w32codecs.

Re:More widely used than you'd know

[Anonymous Coward]

I quit Fedora with FC5 and am back with FC6. Great distro and it works
well except for mplayer video plugins which work like shit. But who cares
as long as everything else work better than on SuSE.

Re:More widely used than you'd know

[rubato]

... I am tired of learning new operating systems just for the sake of learning new operating systems. I don't buy computers to run operating systems, I use operating systems to run PROGRAMS.

This deserves to be modded +5 "Insightful"

Re:More widely used than you'd know

[TheShadowzero]

I was pretty pleased with Fedora Core 2-4, felt like they were modern, without being bloated and slow like 8 & 9. FC5 was a real dog, though,

I agree wholeheartedly. I started using Fedora when FC3 came out and have used every version since, and 4 has to be my favorite. Five was buggy and bloated, and it annoyed me quite a bit (especially because my experience with Fedora community support has always been shitty) when things went wrong. I must say that FC6 is an improvement, however, although it is still to be seen if it will bump FC4 off the spot for favorite distro. I suggest you try FC6 and see if it's any better than your experience with FC5.

Re:More widely used than you'd know

[Kynde]

What is ironic is that everyone is bitching about how it took 6 years to go from xp to Vista (which I won't migrate to) but I felt the opposite.

Geez, and you use Fedora. The one distro that really has set fast release cycles as one of it main agendas...

If you're stuck with redhatish quirks and want stability as in things-not-changing-all-the-god-damn-time, why not go for CentOS or other RHEL forks? Ther's stability for you (in more ways than one).

package manager need tons of work

[Anonymous Coward]

Fedora is a nice distro. The biggest problem I have faced in using it, though, has been yum. But to be fair, it is improving with every version of FC. However, it's very feature deficient when compared to apt -- which is a big big plus for Debian based distros. Also, the various repositories of FC also add to the confusion: which mirrors to use and which mirrors to avoid is not straightfordward (dependency hell) and the combinations of various 'acceptable' repositories can be a confusing issue. The other problem with yum has been its speed: the last time I checked (that was in FC5), it still took ages to do every operation.

Having said all this, I hope yum has imoproved in FC6, yet to try that though.

Re:package manager need tons of work

[Kelson]

One problem yum has had is that it wants to check the network for updates before every operation. This has improved recently, either in Fedora Core 6 or one of the updates to Fedora Core 5. Now if you run more than one yum operation within a period of time -- I think it's an hour, at least by default -- it will use its cached copy instead of calling out to the network.

It still needs to re-read the data, which takes longer than it should, but only has to call out to the network if something is likely to be different, which makes a *huge* difference when you're installing individual packages or querying it with search or info.

Re:package manager need tons of work

[Anonymous Coward]

the various repositories of FC also add to the confusion: which mirrors to use and which mirrors to avoid is not straightfordward (dependency hell) and the combinations of various 'acceptable' repositories can be a confusing issue

If you were using a mirror there would be no issues, its when your using someones custom repository that you can run into dependency issues, i.e. freshrpms. This will never change as it should be obvious that the Fedora project team will never have control over every repository out there. Mirrors on the other hand are not an issue and never have been thats why they are called mirrors.

Re:package manager need tons of work

[slamb]

One problem yum has had is that it wants to check the network for updates before every operation. This has improved recently ... It still needs to re-read the data, which takes longer than it should, but only has to call out to the network if something is likely to be different, which makes a *huge* difference when you're installing individual packages or querying it with search or info.

Reading and re-reading the data should be quicker now, too.

The repository data is stored in a giant XML file which is incredibly slow to parse. Back in the day, it would read this file in every time you ran yum. Last year [1] they added a SQLite cache, so this step could be skipped if the data hadn't changed.

Relatively recently, they added a separate yum-metadata-parser written in C that dramatically reduces the time the parse step takes. Take these changes together and what used to take 45.5 seconds every time you ran yum now takes 7.5 seconds only if the data have changed. [2]

It sounds like they've done as much as they can without changing the transferred data to be an indexed binary format (with the associated forward/backward compatibility complexity).

(I'm not running Fedora Core 6, so I'm not sure if this change made it in.)

[1] - Looks like yum 2.3.1 introduced the cache, around March 2005.

[2] - See this message introducing it around May 2006 sometime after yum 2.6.1.

Re:package manager need tons of work

[kasperd]

However, it's very feature deficient when compared to apt

One of the things that have kept me from moving from Fedora to an apt based distribution is the fact, that there are tasks I know how to acomplish with rpm, but don't know how to do with apt. Maybe you can help me one step closer to switching, by explaining how I do the following taskks with apt.

• Find out which package a particular file came from
• Get a list of the files which came from a particular package installed on my system
• Given a .deb file get a list of files it will install on my system
• Get a list of all installed packages with names matching an expression
• Get a list of selected properties of a set of packages in a format I can define on the command line
• Verify the signature on a .deb file
• Verify if some files on my system are those originally installed by a package or if they have been modified.
• Extract the files from a .deb package without installing it

Re:package manager need tons of work

[Kynde]

(I'm not running Fedora Core 6, so I'm not sure if this change made it in.)

It did.
It's 3.0.1 now in fc6.
And you're absolutely right, things have seriously become faster with yum.

Re:package manager need tons of work

[mute47]

I'm no genius around apt & dpkg but I can try:

1. apt-file search (or dpgk -s to search only installed packages)
2. apt-file list
3. dpkg -L
4. dpkg -l | grep (for installed packages) or apt-cache search (uninstalled ones too)
5. Not quite sure what you mean...
6. .deb's can be signed but that feature is not in significant use now, the repos are on the other hand signed...
http://boudicca.tux.org/mhonarc/ma-linux/2000/2000 -Aug/msg01270.html
Use is apt-get -K install
7. Not sure.
8. dpkg --unpack

I don't care about the security of wireless mice (mainly because I do not use them :).

Re:package manager need tons of work

[bruciemoose]

Synaptic in Ubuntu does most of those. Though, I'm guessing by your extreme demands that you aren't a GUI fan.

Re:package manager need tons of work

[kasperd]

Thank you, I'm going to bookmark your post and try it out on my next opportunity. The fifth thing I asked for was something similar to "rpm --queryformat", which is very convenient in scripts.

Better than the alternative

[Numbah One]

"Fedora -- the Linux that is developed as a community effort, is the sand box of Red Hat.

I guess that's better than being the litter box of Red Hat.

Re:Better than the alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? My cat can't tell the difference.

Can we mark an article +2, Troll?

[abaddononion]

Cue the inevitable "my distro is better/what's wrong with just using Vista" battle!

Summary of Future Posts

[jmyers]

This post has been sealed in an envelope and kept in a hermetically sealed mayonnaise jar on the front porch of Funk & Wagnalls since noon today.

1. Fedora Sucks and locks up my system
2. Yum sucks
3. Fedora is great and Ubuntu is hype
4. Yum is great
5. Real men use slackware
6. YAWN....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Re:Summary of Future Posts

[Anonymous Coward]

Also "I don't need a 650 pages manual to learn to use Windows/Mac"

Re:Missing a Chapter

[Anonymous Crowhead]

Yeah, it sucked when RedHat decided they needed to concentrate on making money or they were going to go out of business.

Misleading Summary

[mpapet]

They incorporate all the new features after they have been exhaustively tested into its commercial product, namely Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Really? I thought it was the other way around? It was when I last tested it.

In all respects Fedora is the same Red Hat Linux but with cutting edge packages.
No, it's not!
1. No support. (This matters to some. Not me though)
2. Buggier. Look at the distros created with the Enterprise source code. That's a production ready OS. FC is not.
3. (b)leading edge everything where applicable. Comparable to Debian unstable IMHO.
4. Red Hat's Management/Sales probably don't like "free as good as paid version" statement either.

There are a few great distro's out there and FC is probably one of them, but not for production equipment. Every version I have recently tested I've ended up with randomly broken systems after applying patches. I never knew when or what to watch out for.

Debian stable and copycat Red Hat Enterprise distro's make it into production just fine. The path from Debian Testing versions to Stable is quite good as always.

Re:Misleading Summary

[Some_Llama]

I tried to install FC6 on an old opteron box here at my work, the installer locked up everytime, FC5 installed without a hitch.. even did the media check in case the iso was corrupt..

Re:Misleading Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

In all respects Fedora is the same Red Hat Linux but with cutting edge packages.
No, it's not!
1. No support. (This matters to some. Not me though)
2. Buggier. Look at the distros created with the Enterprise source code. That's a production ready OS. FC is not.
3. (b)leading edge everything where applicable. Comparable to Debian unstable IMHO.
4. Red Hat's Management/Sales probably don't like "free as good as paid version" statement either.

This is an important point. Many people who use FC find it to be very stable and capable, the result is that they decide it is a production worthy distro and this is a mistake.

It is quite possible to successfully deploy FC in a production environment and it may even go off without a hitch, but there are risks.
1. There is support, but its community support. There are irc channels, mailing lists, forums, etc. But its not likely you are going to find contract support services for FC.
2. It is not uncommon for an update to break a working system. I've ran into issue with NFS, selinux policies, and kernel issues on Via C3 processors. You had better know what your doing when an update breaks your system.

So while it is possible to use FC in a production environment, and many do, you need to be prepared with contingency plans if/when something breaks.

Re:Misleading Summary

[Kelson]

They incorporate all the new features after they have been exhaustively tested into its commercial product, namely Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Really? I thought it was the other way around? It was when I last tested it.

The sentence is poorly structured, hard to parse, and has a few grammatical errors (they/its), but is not backwards. It could use a couple of commas:

"They incorporate all the new features, after they have been exhaustively tested, into their commercial product..."

Re:Misleading Summary

[Nikademus]

1. No support. (This matters to some. Not me though)

Indeed. Better support at ubuntu forums. But, I think the support is better at ubuntu forums than at any RHEL forums.

2. Buggier. Look at the distros created with the Enterprise source code. That's a production ready OS. FC is not.

Indeed, FC is buggier than RHEL. But RHEL is buggier than most other distros too. Not a reference in my mind.. Especially in package management. I don't even count the problems in RPM database I have had.

3. (b)leading edge everything where applicable. Comparable to Debian unstable IMHO.

Not really, it's bleeding edge, but bleedier than debian unstable. Debian unstable is stable compared to FC.

4. Red Hat's Management/Sales probably don't like "free as good as paid version" statement either.

It is not "as good" as paid version. Paid version sucks and FC sucks even more, so FC sucks more than the already sucking "paid version". It seems that you have to pay for support in buggy applications, like Oracle or the likes, and you don't have to pay for stable applications like postgresql.

Now honestly, I have had much more issues with RHEL (which is usually more stable than FC) than with debian unstable. I know I will be modded down for this post and I know I will probably be flamed by RH zealots, but FC sucks and is probably one of the worst distros. In my mind FC stability is even worse than windows, sorry for this. That doesn't mean I would use windows, but I certainly wouldn't use FC either in a production environment (or even on any of my desktops).

Re:Misleading Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

They incorporate all the new features after they have been exhaustively tested into its commercial product, namely Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Should have read;
  They [Fedora] incorporate all the new features after they have been exhaustively tested into its [their] commercial product, namely Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Re:Misleading Summary

[frodo from middle ea]

Using Fedora on a production system, and then complaining about stability is like using Win XP Home on production and complaining about stability/scalability.

Different OSes for different needs. For Desktop use Fedora, for servers use RHEL/CentOS .

Re:Misleading Summary

[SoapDish]

Hey at least the correct form of "its".

Re:Misleading Summary

[SoapDish]

I pressed the submit button too early. I forgot a comma, and I used bad punctuation in conjuction with my quotation marks.

I hate making grammatical errors when talking about grammar!

Re:Misleading Summary

[Kelson]

I hate making grammatical errors when talking about grammar!

Heh. I think it's one of those unwritten rules of the internet that posts about spelling must contain speling mistakes, and posts about grammar must grammar mistakes.

Re:Misleading Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

"For Desktop use Fedora,"
For the desktop you want a buggy system ?

Ubuntu is much better. The software isn't as old as a fucking RHEL/CentOS (that's for the server) but Ubuntu isn't as buggy as Fedora, on a desktop.

Also, XP home kernel/subsystem isn't in any way inferior to XP Pro. You can even, with third party software, tweak the ACL on XP Home. (or you can tweak them without anything with just a reboot into safe mode)
Most of the things XP pro has is just "out of the box" features that you can get on home with tweaks and third party software. And home kernel is as stable as XP Pro (it's the same, stupid.).
Buy XP Pro only if you need a dual processor setup. (xp home supports one dual core)

XP Home is a production capable OS for a Desktop. Ubuntu is a production capable os for the Desktop.
Windows 2003 is a production capable os for the server. CentOS/RHEL is a production capable os for the server.

FEDORA IS FOR NEITHER.

Re:Misleading Summary

[PenGun]

All crap. Just get slak and be done with it. Wait ... I do find XP a useful 32 bit windose enviroment ... to flash my burners.

    PenGun
  Do What Now ??? ... Standards and Practices !

Re:Misleading Summary

[McNihil]

Maybe it ran hot because Cool'n'Quiet was on? I had no troubles installing/using on a 144. My problem is the X2 I exchanged it with, where it will go warm quite fast (low noise environment so the fans need to be "slow".) Most of the time the CPU is at 50C / 122F but getting to 62C it will lock up (this isn't OS specific though.)

Re:Misleading Summary

[McNihil]

"...but FC sucks and is probably one of the worst distros. In my mind FC stability is even worse than windows, sorry for this..."

I have FC2, FC3, CentOS4.3, FC5 and FC6 in production environment and yeah granted I am not running Oracle or BEA products so i can't say how stable those are BUT I am running "everything" else in server way one can and it is stable (load is on a healthy 0.25 on a couple of pretty hefty SMP machines) multiple MySQL versions and the works so I really have a hard time understanding your rant.

Don't get me wrong, I have tried the other dists all the way back to Ygdrasil, and from many aspects non Red Hat distributions have left me with a bad taste (yes including SuSe back in the day... even before Novell took over...) Mandriva or Mandrake as it was called back in the day wasn't much better either. So Ubuntu or Gentoo from a server point of view is at least from MHO a no go BUT I would NEVER say that they suck... they do not fit my wishes and expectations of what they need to do for ME.

Your rant however willfully tries to show a split in linux user base as we are some segmented distro nerds, classic divide and conquer. Only someone with a Microsoftish agenda can be behind this kind of posting.

Re:Misleading Summary

[Xoth]

I use all types of OS's and get bit in the ass occasionally by updates et al. Part of the biz friends. All this nonsense about what distro is better and I use it for the desktop or production is a joke. Use what you like. Who cares. BUT if you work in an RHEL production environment you should use fedora in some capacity at least to test whats coming down the road for RHEL.

What I am really tired of is fedora getting this rep as being so cutting edge that you should steer clear of it. That spin has gotten to be too much. Just another distro, nothing more. geez.

Re:Misleading Summary

[golgotha007]

...FC sucks even more

What the hell are you going on about? You keep telling us that Fedora sucks over and over without a single reason? You sound more like an idiot than someone who should be listened to.

I don't think any linux distro "sucks". I have been using Redhat since version 5.2. Now, I use Fedora Core(3-6) in 3 different data centers on three different continents. One Fedora group runs the 3rd largest gaming website. Another Fedora group runs our data center that powers the entire backend of an ISP leader in a city of 6 million. I have had zero stability/security issues (not a single crash).

People often recommend to me this distro or that version of xBSD for "stability reasons". I find these recommendations idiotic and in fact it just tells me that the person recommending is a junior level or below sysadmin. If you are a good sysadmin, then stability and security has less to do with the distro and more to do with what kernel and what packages you are using.

Re:Misleading Summary

[Fred_A]

Here's a reason FC "sucks" for me. It's not technical, purely ideological if you will :

My problem with RedHat is that their attitude is purely along the lines of :
"Here, build a distribution for us and beta test it. We'll clean it up and sell it at an outrageous price later. And don't even think of asking for support. You may call yourselves a 'community' if it makes you feel better about it."

I know it's the common business model of pretty much every distribution packager/seller out there but RedHat is being so openly coldly calculating about it than I know I just couldn't play along with them. It just feels too wrong.

Re:Misleading Summary

[tuffy]

I don't agree with the notion that Red Hat is taking advantage of Fedora users like unpaid beta testers. The software that gets tested and fixed in Fedora has patches submitted upstream and those improvements wind up in every other distro - including CentOS for those that don't like paying Red Hat. It's fair enough to avoid Fedora if one wants something less bleeding edge, but being more bleeding edge benefits all Linux users in the end.

Re:Misleading Summary

[Fred_A]

It seems to me that Mandriva for example manages to get the "bleeding-edginess" without the disturbing (to me) community exploitation. I'm all for bleeding edge in some contexts (like some home machines, or some test machines...), that's not the point.

Maybe it's just me having an odd view of things. :-/

Who writes this sh1t?

[Sir_Ace]

You've got to be delusional to say the word quality with anything associated with ReHat! All the code is tainted, nothing is built from direct sources, and nothing is current. What a joke. A bad one at that..... Soemthing like saying how Microsoft makes the most secure, bug free, up-to-date OS in the world...

I suggest you eat that dead tree rather than read it, at least you'll get something out of it that's useful. Hopefully toxic shock..

Re:Who writes this sh1t?

[Sir_Ace]

Yes I know I misspelled 1/2 of the words in that post...

Re:Who writes this sh1t?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you, Sir Ace. You have just confirmed the general opinion of the mental capacity of Red Hat and Fedora bashers. Keep up the good work!

Re:Who writes this sh1t?

[sgholt]

Not only you can he not spell, he is very wrong...:)

Re:Who writes this sh1t?

[hondamankev]

You clearly have no idea how much RedHat has contributed to linux over the years.

Fedora's pace is just right for me

[thule]

The pace of Fedora is just right for me. For servers I can still use EL or Centos, but I like to keep up with what's happening out there on my notebook. Fedora provides that environment. Not too slow (Debian) and not too fast (gentoo or Rawhide). If you look at RedHat linux releases previous to Fedora, the pace was about the same. It seems to me that RedHat decided they needed to slow down the cycle without loosing momentum. The way they did this is Fedora.

Re:Fedora's pace is just right for me

[Kelson]

If you look at RedHat linux releases previous to Fedora, the pace was about the same.

Yeah, they used to release 5.0, then 6-9 months later 5.1, then 6-9 months later 5.2, then 6-9 months later 6.0. Now it's 3, then 6-9 months later 4, then 6-9 months later 5, then 6-9 months later 6.

The biggest change in the release schedule is the numbering scheme. They're just incrementing a full number each time instead of doing point releases.

Re:Fedora's pace is just right for me

[Anonymous Coward]

Boy, are you retarded?

Calling Debian's release cycle slow down right stupid. You know very well that's because everyone who doesn't use Debian, never looks past stable. And you know what, stable is stable.

Re:Fedora's pace is just right for me

[thule]

Boy, are you retarded?

Ummm. Not that I know of.

Calling Debian's release cycle slow down right stupid. You know very well that's because everyone who doesn't use Debian, never looks past stable. And you know what, stable is stable.

What is the point of having a stable release if no one uses it? Cutting stable release a bit more often is very useful. It appears that is what more than a few people want. It seems to be the main thing that is fueling the success of Ubuntu at the cost of creating incompatible repositories.

Re:Fedora's pace is just right for me

[McNihil]

Minor versions would have been misleading IMHO

FC2 -> FC3 was SELinux addition

FC3 -> FC4 was major gcc change

FC4 -> FC5 was Xen incorporation

FC5 -> FC6 was major gcc and glib change

But this is obviously from my memory and 99% of changes (GUI ones) have been left out.

Re:Fedora's pace is just right for me

[sydneyfong]

I have servers running stable, and even old-stable (woody).

Tell me what features your cutting edge system would give me on those production machines, and we'll talk.

And by the way, the singled out one or two packages which are not in stable can be probably found at backports.org

A two year old distro is actually not that old by present day measures. WinXP was made in 2001, and nobody seems to be saying that it's too old (even SP2 is more than two years old).

Perhaps I'm getting old, but I fail to see the reason to get the latest and greatest unless it has a feature that I desperately want. A few years ago it used to be that packages 6 months ago were lacking so many features that it wasn't even usable, but these days things have arguably stabilized and you probably will be hard pressed to find any differences between a package six months ago and a bleeding edge package today.

easy

[Anonymous Coward]

its easy - im a nix* noob but fedora taught me yum...works enough for this simple game server provider

Sales Push?

[Dimes]

Without(seriously) trying to be a Tr*ll, this really felt like a sales pitch.

I am not talking about Fanboy Fawning either, but more like "out of a brouchure".

Really, its not a review, but a list of talking points....no critical review, no Pro/Con.....strictly Pro/Pro.

Why is this a book review?

dimes

Re:Sales Push?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it that a positive book review about Fedora is considered a "sales pitch"? I've seen reviews of Ubuntu on here that are even more "positive", yet no one complains. The bias on slashdot against Fedora/Red Hat is just amazing. It seems like slashdot has become an Ubuntu fanboy forum, where all other distros are trashed. And yes, I happen to use Fedora and (gasp!) I even like it.

Re:Sales Push?

[IO ERROR]

Maybe the book really is that good....... or maybe not.

Red Hat != the world

[DragonWriter]

Fedora -- the Linux that is developed as a community effort

That rather overstates the case, don't you think?

/vertisement... Stop it.

[The_Wilschon]

Ravi Kumar maintains a blog where he shares his thoughts related to GNU/Linux, Open Source and Free Software at linuxhelp.blogspot.com. He has also reviewed in a concise way the history of GNU/Linux.

Dear editors,
We don't want any more slashvertisements. If there is stupid crap like this in a summary or book review, or whatever, especially if it has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the submission, remove it! You are editors. You edit. That is your job. Do it. Or face the wrath...

With love,
The Undersigned

Re:You didn't "setup" a VMware virtual Linux box.

[Anonymous Coward]

You "set up" the box. Maybe you should stop taking CS classes and enroll in remedial English classes instead.

Perhaps it was a typo (missed the spacebar). Nevertheless, the omission of a space hardly warrants a grammer flame. My rule of thumb is this: If the mistake makes the message difficult to understand, then you might want to bring it to the other person's attention (if you are feeling like an anal jerk on a given day). If the only reason the mistake is bothering you is because you have a 2x4 piece of wood rammed up your ass, then maybe you should invest your time in going to the convenience store to get some laxative.

Re:You didn't "setup" a VMware virtual Linux box.

[Anonymous Coward]

You "set up" the box.

Gratuitous use of quotation marks is also a grammatical error.

Take your blinkers off...

[lgftsa]

> Fedora -- the Linux that is developed as a community effort

s/the/a/

I prefer Debian and here's why...

[Anonymous Coward]

As Bruce Perens said it a while ago:

Fedora project is obviously intended to look like Debian. But unlike Debian, Fedora is an extremely unequal partnership. "Fedora" is where the community developers are supposed to build Red Hat's product, while the certifications and vendor endorsements are held back for the high-priced "Red Hat Enterprise Linux" brand. This is especially obvious in recent certification announcements: the Common Criteria certification will go to "Red Hat Enterprise Linux", not "Fedora". And of course the entire steering board of the Fedora project are Red Hat employees. Red Hat recently announced a second draft of the leadership structure for Fedora, in which they have eliminated voting, expressing the need to keep control in the hands of Red Hat's management.

But the most ludicrous aspect of the Fedora project is that with Fedora, Red Hat seeks to achieve what Debian did long ago. Because they can't (and shouldn't) control Debian, they decided to re-invent the wheel. It would take them years to achieve a fraction of what Debian already has.

If you need a stable, easy-to-administer, well-established, production OS, I would suggest Debian.

Re:I prefer Debian and here's why...

[Slashdot Fool]

Having recently had the misfortune to have to administer a Red Hat Enterprise* Linux box, I can't agree too strongly. It's a joke of a distribution compared to Debian and charging for it only adds insult to injury. If I ever want a wide selection of non-standard outdated packages to test application compatibility or something I'll know just where to look, though.

*as in "Herald of Free Enterprise"

Hack a PS3 running on Fedora and win it!

[Anonymous Coward]

You can win that Playstaion 3 Lunix (Fedora Core) if you can pwn it!

Re:Missing a Chapter

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps someday the rank and file contributors to Linux will decide to concentrate on making money too and the free ride will be over for companies like RedHat.

Re:You didn't "setup" a VMware virtual Linux box.

[Massif]

Someone "set us up" the box. Main screen turn on.

Solid but takes some tweaking.

[MikeFM]

Fedora and Debian are fine if you understand their development process enough to hang back from the bleeding edge a little and not to use unstable or testing packages. I've ran both on servers under heavy load, for years, and have never had a crash or a major security issue. The Enterprise editions are mostly useful if you want support.

My biggest complaint is that they often compile software with to many dependicies, that aren't needed, required. This gets to be a pain when you have to compile half of your software yourself in order to keep things running with low overhead and little wasted space. Just because a program can use an optional feature doesn't mean it needs to be enabled by default. Also you tend to get a lot of cruft installed by default, even if you do a minimal install, that you don't need. I'm forced to keep track of these things and make sure they're removed myself - not very user friendly.

Re:Solid but takes some tweaking.

[Ed Avis]

I used to use Red Hat and I've stayed with Fedora out of inertia. It seems like a perfectly reasonable if somewhat boring distribution. Red Hat's enterprise stuff is even more boring. That is usually a good thing.

Right now, however, I'm trying to work out how to replace the hard disk in my PC and transfer files from the old disk to the new one. It used to be you could just 'mount' but Fedora uses LVM by default, which has about forty different commands and manual pages. There's no handy tool to say 'just find all the partitions on this disk and mount them for me read-only'. In a way I miss using Slackware when everything was so simple you could fix it yourself, and tinker around without fear of making irreversible screwups.

Re:Solid but takes some tweaking.

[Rix]

That's inevitable for a non-source based distro. You either have to maintain dozens of variations for each packages, or compile them with everything. Most choose the latter, as it's simpler, and works better for most people.

Re:Solid but takes some tweaking.

[MikeFM]

I've suffered that problem and it does seem an issue with LVM especially if you're like me and take the drives out and put them, unmarked, in a box for a couple months before trying to figure out how to put them back together. In the end my general solution is to just use proper RAID configurations as it's easier than rebuilding a complex filesystem.

Re:Solid but takes some tweaking.

[MikeFM]

It'd seem logical to always provide a minimal version of each package and to use an add-on package to add the kitchen sink. To some extent it may be a problem because of badly written programs that don't have an easy way to add and remove features without a recompile. Amarok comes to mind since installing it in Fedora also forces installing things such as MySQL that the default options don't even make use of.

Re:Solid but takes some tweaking.

[Rix]

Even with that, your doubling the number of packages you have to build, test, maintain and support.

You aren't a coder, are you? There's absolutely nothing wrong with compile-time configuration. If you don't want MySQL support built into your Amarok, don't build it in. If someone else builds your system for you, tell them you don't want MySQL support. If they don't care what you want, pay someone else to do it, or suck it up and do it yourself.

Re:Solid but takes some tweaking.

[MikeFM]

A distro exists to provide packages that are pre-tested and done right. Fedora is one of the most important distros and they don't feel like doing it right because it's more work?

I am a coder. There is nothing wrong with compile-time configuration except that it results in bloated, unflexible, crappy messes. Yes, lets just go ahead and hard compile every module we might need into the kernel because heck that's easier. Or why not compile in every possibly Apache module? Who cares if that wastes resources and is more prone to problems because it's easier to do it that way. Something as loosly coupled as a database engine has no need to be compiled in. It doesn't make sense to do it that way. Being able to compile optional components in is good as it lets you streamline your system. Being forced to do so is bad because then you end up with a lot of cruft compiled in. Packaged software that forces you to install a whole database solution that you aren't going to use is just stupid. What if you had to install MS SQL Server just so you could install iTunes? That's how stupid it is.

I just don't see a point in building everything myself or having a distro that throws in random garbage because they are to lazy to do it right. The whole reason for using a distro is to have things done right without having to do it all myself. Having the creators of my distro just do a shitty job because it's easier makes me wonder if I should change to a different distro.

Review

[retsil]

I have to agree that the review is very poor and misleading. I like the book, I like Fedora and I think that it is underrated. But, this review leads the reader to think Fedora is something which it is clearly not. Could someone re-write a decent review?

Re:You didn't "setup" a VMware virtual Linux box.

[Anonymous Coward]

Folks, we have a new leader in the competition for the coveted Most Pompous Post of 2006.

Fedora for Enterprise?

[postmortem]

What a joke. FC6 on day of release had already 20MB of software updates. Day later - 100MB. So called great updater has to download whole RPM package for a minor update.

I can't imagine anybody in large corporations wants to spend all their time and bandwidth propagating bleeding-edge software updates.

Re:Fedora for Enterprise?

[caseih]

RHEL respins the ISOs every so often to incorporate the latest errata into their install disks. Fedora does not do this for obvious reasons. But it does make doing the initial install a bit of a pain, especially 4 months down the road.

As for downloading an entire package for a minor update, that's what debian does too. I think I prefer this anyway. Binary patching is too messy. Something else you might not realize is that, unlike on windows, most linux programs come in a single binary with a few auxillary files (like locale info, docs, etc). And the single binary or library file usually takes up most of the space anyway. So this is a much cleaner and less-error prone way to do it.

I set up a caching web proxy server usually that can help speed up the updates to multiple machines (I do this at home even). Sometimes I'll use repo-janitor to build mirror repositories (works good for install-fests at the local LUG) for my machines. Also it's possible to burn a DVD of all the errata and have yum work with that (I believe; it certainly works with apt), which is sometimes useful.

You're right, though. I would rather use RHEL or CentOS for a server.

Re:Fedora for Enterprise?

[cnorrisjr]

lies!

everyone know's that linux doesn't have security holes and bugs!

ha.

amazing.
after spending days downloading that trash, i get to download even more updates.

Re:Fedora for Enterprise?

[Yobgod Ababua]

It sounds like you might be interested in the re-spins generated by the Fedora Unity Project: http://fedoraunity.org/re-spins.

Very useful, and I wish them success.

Re:Fedora for Enterprise?

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends on the "enterprise", but I have found FC to be a great workstation OS for technical users. The vast majority of stuff is available from Extras and just works, so I haven't found myself having to grab and build typical software for image manipulation, figure drawing, publishing, etc. Once you start having to install 3rd party software between the OS and you, the ease of maintenance sort of goes out the window... now you need to track security and bug fixes, and dependencies to underlying libraries yourself...

However, I agree the pace is a little frantic. It would be nice if they had more of a middle ground like an expanded Extras that went with RHEL, for people who want the larger set of packages but do not need to follow the latest releases of everything. Maybe they will get there eventually.

On the bandwidth note, I have found it much easier to run a local (private) mirror of the base, extras, and updates respositories with a nightly cron job to rsync from a mirror for my entire network. All local installs just talk to the local mirror on the LAN, which makes updates a snap and also makes queries and installs of optional software much more responsive and efficient.

Re:Fedora for Enterprise?

[caseih]

Awesome. I am interested in this. Thanks for the link!

Re:sex wIth a gnaa

[ettlz]

Oi, noob, you forgot the Goatse link. It's trolls like you that give the GNAA a bad name.

Re:Missing a Chapter

[slamb]

Wake me up when the book has a chapter entitled "How Red Hat Software broke its covenant with the linux community" talking about how the supported stable free version of the software disappeared, to be replaced by a beta test program for RHEL.

There never was such a convenant, and RedHat releases all the source packages as required by the GPL. This means you can download a RHEL-based stable, free distribution recompiled by a third party in the form of CentOS. My company tends to buy RHEL where we want paid support or where we have to buy an operating system with hardware (Dell offers Windows or RHEL at the same price). We use CentOS elsewhere. It's the same software, and it's free and legal.

Many of us, myself included, were formerly RedHat users but we learned that they don't give a fuck about us when they shifted from free RedHat to Fedora, and haven't looked back since.

For a company that doesn't give a fuck about open source, they sure hire a lot of people to develop it. I can't find it now, but somewhere there's a webpage with a list of all the open source projects RedHat has developed, maintains, and contributes to. It's amazing how much they've given back to the community, and how many idiots like you there are who are deliberately blind to it.

Can someone please mod the parent down as a troll? And someone else please post a link to the page I can't find?

Re:Missing a Chapter

[Tet]

the free ride will be over for companies like RedHat.

I know I shouldn't feed the troll, but to claim Red Hat are getting a free ride is just plain ridiculous. I'd like to be pointed to a single organisation, commercial or otherwise, that has done more for the free software community than Red Hat. And yes, I'd probably say they even eclipse the FSF in that respect now.

Re:You didn't "setup" a VMware virtual Linux box.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Set up us."

If you're going to make lame-ass attempts at humor, get them right, moron.

Re:Missing a Chapter

[Per Bothner]

I'm curious what "covenant" you imagine Red Hat broke.

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Re:/vertisement... Stop it.

[SoapDish]

Ravi was kind enough to provide a book review for slashdot. It is only common curtesy to give him a little attention.

Also, without that little explanation on who Ravi is, I would have no idea. The fact that he writes about linux (even though it's a blog), and has written other reviews makes the entire review a little more credible.

Re:Missing a Chapter

[drinkypoo]

It's the "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" bit. Except in this case it's "I'll act like Microsoft, and you'll eat it up because we sell Linux!"

The answer is simple - OpenSSH

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple answer: OpenSSH, even RedHat hasn't helped fund or even donate anything, not even $1.00 - yet they use it and rely heavily on it and make butt loads of money. Some help for the FOSS communit(y|ies) as a whole from RedHat, pfft, funding or donating to OpenSSH (even OpenBSD for that matter) would only make sense in helping everyone, including themselves...! Has RedHat developed anything as widely used and ported as OpenSSH? I don't think so. Have they even cared to give anything back? I don't think so.

Re:The answer is simple - OpenSSH

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with OpenSSH?
Other than the occasional bugs that pop up and someone fixes it.

Re:The answer is simple - OpenSSH

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with Fedora Core 1? Why not use that version still and just keep patching it? Why not use the very first version of OpenSSH + patches? Why not use a commercial, proprietary, non-open source, non-free ssh implementation?

Why not just use telnet and to hell with the ongoing development of OpenSSH and upcoming innovative ideas... ;-)

Let's face it, RedHat is just like MS to take and make money, not to give back unless it's for publicity to make even more money - that's why they have Fedora Core, let the laborers work for them for free... and the rest if obvious...

http://openssh.com/users.html

Just my $0.02

Re:The answer is simple - OpenSSH

[Zantetsuken]

I beg to differ - SSH and OpenSSH are network protocols, useful yes, but Fedora and RHEL are entire operating systems. While its true that a good part of the work is done by other parties such as primary kernel development, GNOME and KDE, etc, etc - but then again that's true of pretty much all Linux distro's, so I would consider it something of a moot point. While I'll admit I haven't been into Linux for very long, and I'm a mere end-desktop user - nowhere near having my own distro or even helping with one - but what I see Red Hat and the Fedora team doing is this:

Red Hat made a solid enterprise class distro, and then made it open to public development - thus giving them free R&D. While some people might see it as that and *only* that, I would have to think they are purposely limiting their view on the matter - it's not just Red Hat getting free R&D for the next version of RHEL - it's the public community getting a free enterprise class Linux distro, along with the chance to use what can effectively be considered a training tool for using RHEL in a corporate environment. This means that if some huge bank uses RHEL for whatever, you can for the most part train for the basics on Fedora, which IMHO sure as hell beats having to go pay for a RHEL license for the year of courses you take in college for server admin. This being so, I would say the entry cost (that you spend to learn) for that bank position is much lower, thus being open to more people - and also possibly people that are more technically competent, maybe some of the people that can now apply for the position are Gentoo or Debian guru's...

//End rant on distro's and business model...

Re:The answer is simple - OpenSSH

[Anonymous Coward]

Red Hat is very active in the development of gcc. OpenBSD uses gcc.

OpenBSD has grown out of their one man project. It is time for OpenBSD to become a propper organization. Giving money to OpenBSD is the same as privatly giving money to Theo. Theo have done a lot of good things, but I do not like to give money to a person.

I do not give money to Linus, RMS, Alan Cox or any other important developer either. But I do give money to organizations and companies.

I do buy the OpenBSD CDs, but that is it for now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnus_Solutions - Cygnus is a major contributor to gcc. Cygnus has been a part of Red Hat for many years now.

Interesting?

[Anonymous Coward]

How can be such unfunded rant be labeled as "interesting"? He didn't offer anything, not even his own experiences to back up his clams. How can Ubuntu forums better? 99% of their users don't even know what a Kernel is.

This is a textbook example of flamebait and whoever modded this up should be ashamed.

my observations with core 6

[Doppler00]

Okay, I recently installed Fedora Core 6 on a new computer for my class, here are my observations as an infrequent Linux user:

-Frequently crashes on I/O errors (I assume a bad driver, not working well with dual core?).
-Inconsistency between control panels (too many tools do the same thing, scattered around the system).
-File sharing is a _little_ easier to setup, but I still had issues with it. Why can't a right click a folder, set permissions, and share?
-Fonts are still INCREDIBLY UGLY and illegible even after almost 10 years of Redhat.
-Still can't play .MOV files (i.e. movie trailers)
-Can't play divx out of the box
-Flash wasn't installed with Firefox.

Yeah, there are probably ways I could fix the last three, but come on, these should be standard. Are any other flavors of Linux ready for the consumer desktop? I mostly just use it for research, because it's a good platform for that. I can't stand it though for just a desktop OS. I've done slackware before, even scarier to me. Any other distro suggestions?

Re:my observations with core 6

[essdodson]

The last three at least are by design. Fedora does not ship packages which are restricted by patents or aren't entirely open source. Sorry.

Re:my observations with core 6

[Xoth]

Windows XP?

Re:my observations with core 6

[armanox]

-Inconsistency between control panels (too many tools do the same thing, scattered around the system).

Part of that has to do with the fact that Red Hat wrote their own control panels, for user ease; while including the default ones, for desktop consitancy

-Still can't play .MOV files (i.e. movie trailers)
-Can't play divx out of the box
-Flash wasn't installed with Firefox.

Yeah, there are probably ways I could fix the last three, but come on, these should be standard. Are any other flavors of Linux ready for the consumer desktop? I mostly just use it for research, because it's a good platform for that. I can't stand it though for just a desktop OS. I've done slackware before, even scarier to me. Any other distro suggestions?

The GPL makes it so that Linux distro's cannot be distributed with the codecs, and other non-OSS (flash, acroread, etc) - so FC cannot come with them. But, neither does a base WinXP install - you still have to download Quicktime, DivX, Flash, Acrobat Reader, etc; therefore from a base install FC is as much of a consumer desktop as Windows XP - more infact because of the extra bundles such as NFS, SAMBA, OpenOffice, GIMP, etc. People don't see that part though - most pre-installed XP boxes already have the extras added in, as would a Linux desktop purchase should as well (Or a good buddy installing it should do it too - I know I do for my converts). And why can't you stand FC? Letting us know can help us to steer you to a different distro.

Re:my observations with core 6

[evilRhino]

I don't think any distro plays DIVX out of the box, Windows included.

Re:my observations with core 6

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't understand what you're complaining about. MOV, Flash, and divx are encumbered, non-free codecs/plugins.
It's not installed by default, cause it would not be "free as in libre".

Simple fix, install them youself. If you want this out of the box, you need to fork over some $$

Re:my observations with core 6

[tehcyder]

Still can't play .MOV files (i.e. movie trailers)

I'd consider that a feature rather than a bug.

Re:Missing a Chapter

[Per Bothner]

It's the "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" bit.

And Red Hat has violated this how? Considering how many millions of dollars they have spent on developers, Q&A, and computer resources for Gcc, Gnome, the Linux kernel, NetworkManager, etc etc etc - and of course Fedora Core.

I apologize for not being familiar with your contributions to Gnu/Linux/Free Software. I'm assuming they're noteworthy; otherwise you wouldn't have written what you wrote.

Fedora's version of KDE lacks polish, attention

[billybob2]

The modified version of KDE that ships in Fedora 6 is really buggy and unpolished. There's been talk for two years about placing KDE in Fedora Extras so that it will be better supported by the dedicated KDE community, but Redhat seems to keep refusing the help and treating KDE apps as second-class citizens.

Some of the Fedora 6 changes (like taking away MP3 playing capability from KDE music players) are justified on a legal basis, but other changes (like using a 4-year old window decoration and widget styles) are at best the result of ineptitude or at worst a deliberate attempt to make KDE look bad and outdated.

Re:Fedora's version of KDE lacks polish, attention

[wierzpio]

Ummm... KDE is actually available from Fedora Extras repo, isn't it? If you're not satisfied with that, there's Sourceforge project packaging same for FC.

Re:Fedora's version of KDE lacks polish, attention

[pivo]

I haven't found KDE to be buggy, but I really do dislike the second class citizen nature of KDE in Fedora.

Re:Fedora's version of KDE lacks polish, attention

[Ganniterix]

MP3 playing has been out of RedHat productions since version 8 or 9 I think. It's the case for both gnome and KDE. Actually it has nothing to do with both. Can be easily obtained by installing a gstreamer plugin. Just like it is the case for Ubuntu. I use amarok in KDE or Gnome on Fedora with no problem at all. I still seem to be able to listen to my MP3 collection. :) I really don't think that KDE is any more broken in Fedora than it is in any other distro out there. Maybe that was the case some years back ... What I like most of Fedora is that if follows the RHEL standards, it is a wonderful tool to get used to the "enterprise" version of linux.

Gentoo?

[Tarlus]

Who told you that Gentoo is user friendly?

Re:Gentoo?

[Killall -9 Bash]

I don't think that's a troll. Its a valid question. Gentoo is notorious for being hard to install.... so much so that some people (myself included) consider a stage1-to-gui to be a rite of passage. I personally love Gentoo, but i've never been able to install the AMD64 version sucsessfully, and i refuse to install i686 on an Athlon64 X2 system. Someday....

Re:Gentoo?

[CastrTroy]

I don't think anybody said it was really easy. But you listen to the Gentoo fan boys talk about how emerge makes everything so easy. I tried it, couldn't even get it installed. Then I found out your supposed to do a Live CD to do the install, not the universal "Install" CD, and that the Quick install Guide isn't really all that quick. Maybe it would be a nice distro if I ever got it to work right.

Re:Gentoo?

[Fred_A]

The main trick to installing Gentoo is to religiously follow every line of the installation guide. If you derive from it, you should be able to explain why (i.e. be an advanced enough user to know what you are doing, which typically doesn't require to be a wizard, but not a newbie either). Oh and the installation CDs didn't come with vi. I wasted quite some time figuring out that the editor was a thing called nano (which I had never heard of at the time).

I used it for a few years because it was the only functional fully 64 bit distro out there at the time and found it to be fairly easy to use if you read the documentation (which is quite good). Its drawback is that you actually have to read the doc (even if you've already installed a dozen other distributions) or it won't work very well.

After that, it's all a matter of taste of course. It's neither better nor worse than the others, it has advantages and drawbacks. And of course basically it installs the same stuff as everybody else. If you have some spare time it's interesting to try as a fairly different approach to a common problem though.

Re:Gentoo?

[Tarlus]

Thanks. I wasn't trying to be funny or a troll with that post, but Gentoo really is (as others here already agree) not the most user-friendly OS (especially to install) when compared to Fedora Core, Ubuntu (easiest install I ever saw) or Suse. Afterall, Gentoo isn't trying to appeal to the Average Joe Linux newbie.

Pick a random, popular package.

[Ayanami Rei]

And open up the AUTHORS or CHANGES file. Grep for "@redhat.com".

I think they still care.

Re: low overhead.

[Ayanami Rei]

I would argue that point since most packages where the options configured actually mattered for performance reasons tend to have workarounds. Take apache for instance. While the httpd package comes configured with mod_php and mod_perl, by commenting out those modules in the configuration file those interpreters aren't loaded and so apache takes up less memory. Or take Samba -- they have factored out a single large package (which is how it exists upstream) into half a dozen smaller packages divided up between management tools, clients, the server and documentation.
It can cause an installation to be large (relative to say, DSL) to support a few key services, but is 1-2GB really that much space in an era of 160GB RAID-1 mirrored system disks? I try to spend time minimalizing the installation only to increase the speed of full system updates and backups, and not much else.

If you want to install linux on an embedded platform or reuse very old equipment; modern distros are probably no longer suited for this task.

Also, what is in the minimal install that shouldn't be there? Most of that stuff is to support the default configured kernel from userspace.

Re:Missing a Chapter

[drinkypoo]

I don't get choked up when someone supports Free Software in the pursuit of making money. Sorry.

I apologize for not being familiar with your contributions to Gnu/Linux/Free Software. I'm assuming they're noteworthy; otherwise you wouldn't have written what you wrote.

When I said they didn't care about "us" I meant the users of RedHat, but I guess everyone assumed I was speaking for the entire Open Source and Free Software community. I should have expected that out of the idiots on this thing.

Am I not allowed to have an opinion if I didn't write emacs?

Re:Missing a Chapter

[drinkypoo]

Can someone please mod the parent down as a troll? And someone else please post a link to the page I can't find?

In the interest of full disclosure, you should mention that you have Foe'd me when you ask someone to mod me down. I have a couple of serial downvoters modding various comments incorrectly already and now you ask people to do more of it? This is not a troll. This is my genuine opinion.

Actually, if you don't even know what a troll is, perhaps you shouldn't ask people to mod things with that modifier. Trolling is when you say something you don't believe to elicit a desired response. If my GP comment deserves any negative moderation, it is Flamebait. However, many unpopular views are often modded Flamebait. The slashbot party line is generally supportive of the Fedora project, although in times past it has gone the other way, like when Fedora was destroying people's CDRW hardware. Ah, how quickly we forget. I guess this is why over the years we have forgiven Sony its many trespasses, and why probably 99% of the people all incensed over their misplay will be buying a PS3 ere long. I can only assume the same element of human nature is responsible for simultaneously bitching about our government yet continually voting for the incumbents.

Oh, and this is the list you were looking for. I googled for "redhat open source projects" and then clicked about four times to get there. You couldn't find your asshole with both hands and a depth gauge. No wonder you foe'd me, I must have had endless reasons to cuss you out for stupidity in the past.

Ive use debian for years, and wonderd why

[walterbyrd]

anybody would use redhat.

IMO: debian still has the best package management in the business. Also, you don't have to download and install a ton of cruft that you don't want. And you only install debian once - then just incrementally upgrade.

To each, his own, I guess.

Buy a new book every 6 months

[caseih]

That's great! Now not only do I get to upgrade my OS every 6 months but I can also buy another book too! After all, the FC4 book is now obsolete (and in seriousness, in some ways this is true). O'Reilly's got quite a thing going here!

Seriously, their Fedora books are pretty good.

Re:Missing a Chapter

[Per Bothner]

When I said they didn't care about "us" I meant the users of RedHat
I'm a user of Red Hat. I transitioned happily to Fedora, like lots of others.

Am I not allowed to have an opinion if I didn't write emacs?
Of course. It's fine to complain. It's fine to be a free-loader.
Doing both, however, is rather tacky. Thinking Red Hat owes you anything is rather immature.

Fedora Books and Linux Books

[clear_thought_05]

I am curious. Does a "newbie" actually buy a book on a linux distribution? I would assume that plenty of online guides are much easier, cheaper and are (arguably) a better choice.

For example:
http://gagme.com/greg/linux/fc6-tips.php
http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-fc6.h tml
http://stanton-finley.net/fedora_core_5_installati on_notes.html

If I'm pessimistic about the "free" part about Linux, would I spend $30 on a book? Additionally, so much changes in a given 6 month period for something like Fedora. Is is really beneficial to recommend a book to someone when any given chapter could be totally outdated for the next release?

Re:Fedora Books and Linux Books

[armanox]

When I first started with Linux (back around 01) I purchased The Unix System Administrator's Bible, Seconded Edition that came with Slackware 6.1, as well as Linux for Dummieswhich came with Red Hat 6.1. I'll also add that at the time I did not have internet at home, so learning from online guides would have been utterly unthinkable. Just my two cents.

Confusion

[TheoMurpse]

Fedora the Linux that is developed as a community effort

Well what the hell do you call the other five billion Linuxes (Linuces?) out there? Aren't they community-developed as well? Debian, Slackware, Gentoo, DSL, FeatherLinux, etc. I mean, Fedora is sponsored by Red Hat, so if Fedora is a "community effort," then surely Knoppix, Mandriva, and other corporate-associated Linuces are "community-developed" as well!

Re:Confusion

[TheoMurpse]

I don't mean to insinuate that Knoppix is corporate-owned. I misspake ;)

Re: low overhead.

[MikeFM]

Things that aren't needed are just one more thing to break or cause a security problem. It's best to not put them in.

Besides I run my own servers off 4GB flash drives (read only) because it makes them faster and more stable so it does make a difference. Even my hosted servers often only come with 40GB of hdd space and space does become an issue so saving a couple gigs of space does matter to me. For your average bumpkin that just uses their computer to play Minesweeper sure it doesn't matter but to serious users that push their resources to the limit it can make a difference. I have terabytes of file storage but I'm still constantly out of space so why waste any.

With much better distro options out there..

[ylikone]

why bother with Fedora? I mean really! Ubuntu, debian, gentoo, archlinux are all so much better... heck, I'd even take mandriva over fedora.

Re:With much better distro options out there..

[McNihil]

Mandriva? Really... I doubt that very much. But hey whatever makes your boat float. Would be interesting for the rest of the readers to know WHY all the others are so much better or worse don't you think?

Re:With much better distro options out there..

[Eto_Demerzel79]

I am not an IT major but I've used Debian ever since slink. I've introduced one of my friends who is an IT major to Debian and he was absolutely terrified of (1) non-graphical install menus and (2) typing commands in a console. It does not matter if the long-term benefits of apt over yum, customizability (this is just my opinion, please don't treat it as flame bait), etc are spelled out in big, bold letters - if the installation of the distro is not newbie friendly and if the learning curve is steeper than the Windows installer, some fraction of people will always be turned away and forced to find an alternative. I gave him a copy of Knoppix (which he now uses to fix unbootable computers) and I introduced him to FC (which provides a GUI tool for everything - including updates) and he's happy. His favorite feature is the AIGLX desktop, which he compares to Vista. Go figure - to each his own, as it should be. One day (maybe) he will find more useful features that he likes but for now I'm just glad he's at least exploring alternatives to Windows because he intends on one day being a network admin.

Re:With much better distro options out there..

[hduff]

I gave up on Fedora as well. Besides being a pain to "flesh out", it became a pain to write a book on a just-don't-get-it publisher's schedule and I stopped. For me, Mandriva has been a much easier distro to work with. This book sounds like the one I wanted to morph the Fedora Unleashed title to, but that's just me.

Re:With much better distro options out there..

[FunWithKnives]

Why in the hell is your friend majoring in Computer Technology and planning to become a Network Admin if he is "terrified" of command lines and text-based installs? He's either going to have to get used to them really quickly, or find another field to go into. You may want to sit him down and have a talk :P

Re:With much better distro options out there..

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, someone on /. thinks that some Linux distros are better than another distro? What is the world coming to?!?

Re:With much better distro options out there..

[ylikone]

Maybe just the simple fact that companies like Redhat and Novell have no problem selling out to Microsoft at any moment... they get a sweet enough deal. I don't want to touch distro's like this which are tainted.

Re:You didn't "setup" a VMware virtual Linux box.

[1u3hr]

Nevertheless, the omission of a space hardly warrants a grammer flame.

More of a spelling flame I'd think. And on that subject, it's "grammar".

Re:Missing a Chapter

[slamb]

Trolling is when you say something you don't believe to elicit a desired response.

Right. Isn't that what you were doing? Or do you really not see the obvious inconsistency between RedHat's extensive open source contributions and the idea that they don't give a fuck about the community? Is there a third choice? I don't see it...

Oh, and this is the list you were looking for.

Close, but that's not the one. I've seen a much more extensive list, with some details about each their involvement in each project, explicitly broken down into the categories I mentioned. I think it was on the Fedora wiki.

In the interest of full disclosure, you should mention that you have Foe'd me when you ask someone to mod me down. ... No wonder you foe'd me, I must have had endless reasons to cuss you out for stupidity in the past.

No, I foed you immediately after asking for you to be modded down. I don't ever recall hearing of you before; your post just pissed me off.

Re:Missing a Chapter

[EllynGeek]

Yes, truly it was awful when the free-as-in-freeloader demographic was cut off. Now there are fewer choices for the freeloaders than ever. Instead of nice free Red Hat .isos, you have Fedora, CentOS, White Box Linux, Pie box Linux, Lineox..... poor dears, how will you survive.

Re:Missing a Chapter

[slamb]

When I said they didn't care about "us" I meant the users of RedHat, but I guess everyone assumed I was speaking for the entire Open Source and Free Software community.

RedHat's past, present, and future contributions (including to core software such as gcc, the Linux kernel, and glibc) benefit everyone who uses Linux, and nearly everyone who uses any open source software at all. That includes you, even if you are a freeloader, and even if you no longer use RedHat Linux or Fedora.

So they are helping you now. Do they give a fuck about you? Okay, maybe not. I certainly don't; you're a jerk. But that's a useless question - you are taking advantage of their work anyway. Maybe even my work, though you probably don't know it.

[The convenant RedHat broke is] the "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" bit. Except in this case it's "I'll act like Microsoft, and you'll eat it up because we sell Linux!"

There is no such convenant...but if there were, they have not broken it. Formally, the statement "False -> True" is true. You have never scratched their back, and they continue to scratch yours. This makes you a hypocrite, and RedHat a great member of the community. Your "they act like Microsoft" lies do not change that.

Am I not allowed to have an opinion if I didn't write emacs?

You can have an opinion, but I'm done listening to it, and it appears the moderators are as well.

Fedora sucks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fedora's installer crashed in the same spot on three different computers (two notebooks and a desktop) in both graphical and text mode, and proved itself completely impossible to install. I decided to try Zen linux subsequently and have had no problems. Fedora needs to get their act together, I mean, EVEN MICROSOFT makes an operating system you can at least [sometimes] install.

Save $5.60 by buying the book at Amazon.com!

[Anonymous Coward]

Barnes and Noble is selling this book for $31.99, but Amazon.com is only selling it for $26.39!
 
Save yourself $5.60 by buying the book here: Fedora Linux. That's a total savings of 17.51%!

Re:Missing a Chapter

[LnxAddct]

This is Red Hat's list: http://www.redhat.com/opensourcenow/leadership/dev elopment.html
This is Red Hat's contributions according to the Fedora Project (gives more detail about Red Hat's role in projects) http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/RedHatContributions
This is just another list of different projects: http://sourceware.org/projects.html

A lot of people underestimate how much Red Hat does. They have significantly more code in the kernel than any other entity, they are also responsible for a very large part of the GCC development, and most of the recent big improvements in GCC can be attributed to Red Hat. They also do a ton of dev for Gnome and have done wonderful things with GCJ. People give them a lot of shit, but a lot of OSS development would slow down drastically if they were taken out of the equation.
Regards,
Steve

You are living my dream.

[Ayanami Rei]

I would love to have my servers boot off fixed media or CDROMs. Alas we do not have the time and things change to rapidly in short bursts for us to settle on such a solution. I can definitely see why a small and concise distribution would be right up your alley.
It occurs to me that a more tractable solution might be to create images from a source box that has a full install; wherein you profile the software and make a tarball of all the files that are actually touched by a target configuration (something that can be done with instrumentation in LSM, created by lists of regexes). In such a setup the RPM command and the RPM databases would not be available since you don't actually use them in production. You'd patch the source box and re-derive your production images from it...
I want to try that now... (evil grin)

Re:You are living my dream.

[MikeFM]

It doesn't really cost that much in time or money to use flash media. The 4GB CF card and the adapter to make it act like a hdd cost under $200 even if you get good quality. For your flash you just want to be sure to get one that is really flash and not a micro-drive and check it's reliability and speed before buying. Then it's just plugging it in like a normal hdd. I made mine the root drive and use a ramdisk for /tmp and and /var and /home are on a normal hdd. Setting your CF drive to have no atime tracking and be read-only is about the only special consideration and some flash adapters let you set it read only with a physical switch so the software version is just an extra safe guard (or good for systems you want to update on a regular basis).

I have a makefile I use to remove packages I don't want but I have to update it for every new distro which is sort of a pain. It'd be nicer if they'd just make their distros not install software that isn't needed at last for a minimal install. To me that is what a minimal install means. I probably should do something to make using the flash drive easier to setup. My biggest issue with that is that I have to configure the ramdisk and format it each time the computer boots which I do using some changes to rc.sysinit. Unfortunately this script isn't really stable as they change it now and then which makes me redo my changes. Putting my changes in rc.local or a similar file doesn't work well because I need my changes to take place between certain existing steps in the process. A minor annoyance. I guess eventually I'll probably end up breaking rc.sysinit down into several sub-scripts for easier management.

Stripping out RPM would be a good way to save extra space for the boxes I keep hardware read only. Most I do just in software and update about once a week for security reasons mostly.

I'm excited for the new hybrid drives to come out. I had been considering using a ram drive to get extra speed out of the filesystem for certain things such as file caching - probably just for /var. Instead maybe I'll switch to hybrid drives that should let the disks idle more and keep more data in their own internal caches. I'm not sure if 1GB of cache is really enough though. For servers under heavy load several gigs might be needed although I suppose that servers are prone to using multiple drives and RAID which might work out to the same thing. I'm drooling for 1TB hybrid drives so I can build a good array of them. :) After they reach that stage I'd like to see them start working on building RAID arrays into the form factor of a single drive - make the drives small enough that more than one can fit in the space of a single drive now. Most of the hosting companies I've worked with only have space for one or two drives per server which makes a good RAID set-up difficult. I usually end up having to get multiple servers and use one for backup which isn't as sweet.

Re:Missing a Chapter

[Anonymous Coward]

When I said they didn't care about "us" I meant the users of RedHat, but I guess everyone assumed I was speaking for the entire Open Source and Free Software community. I should have expected that out of the idiots on this thing.

That's probably to be expected when you first say "RedHat broke its convenant with the linux community". People might have understood what you meant if you had said "RedHat broke the convenant I imagined between them and me for them to be my slave in exchange for nothing".

kplayer

[Anonymous Coward]

On FC6 I have found kplayer to work the best of all the various multimedia players.

I do not know why this is, just what I have found. Works better than the straight mplayer. Perhaps the KDE tweakers have their stuff together better-I don't know.

Re:You didn't "setup" a VMware virtual Linux box.

[Anonymous Coward]

This seems to be a new trend, running a verb and an adverb together to form a legal noun that is then recast improperly back to use as a verb.

Um, that'll be a verb and a preposition.

Perhaps the original poster will let us know if it was a typo, or if he is an illiterate slob. I'm voting for "illiterate slob".

Perhaps you'll let us know if yours was a typo, or if you are an illiterate slob. I'm reserving my vote.

My solution - UBUNTU

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been using Fedora from the start and I hate the problems that eat up my time.

Yum and repos - very bad.
Updates are really huge and frequent.
I still manage to "destroy" (with normal usage) the RC till the start of another one, so a install of new RC comes handy (necessary ?)
Many bugs.
When I install a new RC, I have a lot of work to add what I want (work=time). And I have to do that with every RC and the list isn't getting nowhere.

Solution:
I tried Ubuntu. It was the first distro for me, that really worked. I love apt and the gui tools for apt. I love the repo philosophy of ubuntu. The hardware support for me was excelent. It supported my SD card reader out of the box ;)) I could not belive my eyes.

Multimedia support - excelent. Eclipse, java, PHP, MYsql, everything just works. Community - excelent ...

Do I need to say more ?

TEST POST

[Anonymous Coward]

Testing, testing, 1,2,3...

Can you see this post?

Re:/vertisement... Stop it.

[tehcyder]

You are editors. You edit. That is your job. Do it.

I think it was Oscar Wilde who first used the phrase "the triumph of hope over experience."

Debian equivalences for rpm commands

[doom]

Here's one "Rosetta Stone" (that talks up "wajig", which I'm not familiar with, though it looks pretty good):

rpm, apt-get, wajig

There's a more complete table of apt vs. rpm commands in Krafft's "The Debian System" (No Starch Press).

By the way, Kfrafft, like most Debian folks, would tell you that the other distributions have caught up as far as package management software goes, but still lack Debian's meticulous adherence to Policy.

Smart is a much better choice in my opinion.

[Mr0bvious]

The Smart package manager http://labix.org/smart is a much better choice in my opinion. It is a lot faster than yum, much more use friendly than yum. I have used yum and apt for many years but now that I use Smart I will never look back, unless something drastically changes with yum and apt.

Do your self a favour and take a look at it, you'll be supprised at how nice it is.

Re:Missing a Chapter

[Anonymous Coward]

As a disinterested observer reading this thread, I've come to the unfortunate conclusion that you're a tool.