Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Fedora Holds Summit To Map Its Future

Posted by kdawson on from the hats-in-the-air dept.

lisah writes "Last month members of the Fedora community met for a three-day summit (wiki here) designed to chart a course for future version releases as well as to plan other Fedora projects. Team members say they want to leverage the enthusiasm of a community that has demonstrated a willingness to develop Fedora Extras (add-on features to the Core package) and support Fedora Legacy (past releases). Red Hat's community development manager, Greg DeKoenigsberg, said, 'Community contributors have proven conclusively over the past 18 months that they can build packages every bit as well as Red Hat engineers — better, in some cases.' In addition to creating several proposals that will be introduced the the community for input and feedback, the summit also gave rise to the newly-created position of Fedora Infrastructure Leader." Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.

92 comments

  1. First Post! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Continuing to release a free version is the smartest thing RedHat could do, as it made its foray into the recurring revenue stream provided by enterprise support and maintenance contracts.

    Fedora Linux is actually better than RHEL, because you can patch it easily (RHEL is a pain in the ass to patch), it contains more packages, and its community support (especially academia) is as high as it has ever been.

    1. Re:First Post! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, typing "up2date -u" is really difficult.

    2. Re:First Post! by Sillygates · · Score: 1

      Comon! Lets not argue about hats!

      --
      I fear the Y2038 bug
    3. Re:First Post! by HuguesT · · Score: 1

      It's not difficult, but it's harder than yumex (for example) and doesn't work as well, by far.

    4. Re:First Post! by Sillygates · · Score: 1

      to be fair...apt is a little better (it doesn't take so long or so much cpu to resolve dependancies, and it doesn't break at the first error 404, 403, or 500 it comes across)

      --
      I fear the Y2038 bug
    5. Re:First Post! by stry_cat · · Score: 1
      Fedora Linux is actually better than RHEL, because you can patch it easily (RHEL is a pain in the ass to patch), it contains more packages, and its community support (especially academia) is as high as it has ever been.

      Sorry but I call BS.

      I use Fedora at home and RHEL at work. Fedora continues to be slow and unstable (that's FC5, I haven't upgraded to 6 yet). It's no longer a bad as it was (but it isn't as stable as the old RH9) and I suspect there will be massive improvement in the next version as well. RHEL is quite stable and is IMHO the best you can find. Patching the two seems basically the same although it is a little easier on RHEL. Fedora you type "yum update" while on RHEL you just type "up2date" and that's 3 key strokes less.

      OTHO I do agree that having a free version is the best idea RH could have. It is good publicity for RH. They also get to alpha and beta test stuff in Fedora with a large community before including it in the RHEL. I hope it continues to work for them. I really do appreciate all the free work being done on Fedora, which is why I continue to use it. Plus I don't have to learn about .deb files and apt if I were to swtich to another distro.

  2. Fedora is important by slapys · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Fedora was the first Linux operating system I ever used. This applies to the majority of my Linux-using friends as well. Perhaps this is because people already know the name of Red Hat, and discover Fedora as a result. In any case, the quality of Fedora is significant because it determines the first impression of Linux on many people. Even though I have switched distributions, it it possible that I may have stopped using Linux if I had come to the conclusion that Fedora was of too poor quality to use on a daily basis.

    1. Re:Fedora is important by qortra · · Score: 3, Informative

      This applies to the majority of my Linux-using friends as well. Perhaps this is because people already know the name of Red Hat

      I think this was definitely the norm about 3 years ago when it was created. Certainly, before that, Red Hat had incredible name recognition, and as it result, most new Linux users tended to get Red Hat (sometimes even get retail copies at the time).

      However, I would claim that Ubuntu has now usurped Red Hat's (and Fedora's) position as the most recognized distribution among Linux newbies. Certainly Distro Watch agrees with me. Not that DW is conclusive evidence, but it tends to be a good indicator.

      I do agree with you though; Fedora is important, even if it is not quite as popular as Ubuntu among newbies.

    2. Re:Fedora is important by RAMMS+EIN · · Score: 1

      ``Even though I have switched distributions, it it possible that I may have stopped using Linux if I had come to the conclusion that Fedora was of too poor quality to use on a daily basis.''

      Many people did this in the bad old Red Hat days, and I think it's still common today. I try to make people understand that there isn't one Linux; rather, there are many distributions, and each should be considered a separate OS. At least, I don't think you can reasonably consider LOAF and Mandriva the same OS...

      --
      Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
    3. Re:Fedora is important by mmmiiikkkeee · · Score: 0

      i know personal accounts are pretty meaning less.. but here it goes anyways::> i recently switched to linux on my desktop and the first disro i used was kno??ix(i don't remember how to spell it)i picked it first because i could run it with-out having to install any thing. when i put a real distro on my computer i went with fedora core... since i had read it was the "bleading edge" of red hat and had a big company backing it, i figured that if red hat can be sold and used and this is just whats coming next that it would work good/or better too. Big surprise!! it booted so slowly(i guess my fault partly too since there was some trouble with my wifi card on boot... it would spend 5 min trying to connect before going to boot the rest of the system; but even with out the card it seemed too boot slow). i tolerated that and likely would never have switched; but then almost randomly my gnome session got really messed up; the whole system would just freeze; have to unplug and restart. still same problem.. i switched to using kde from gnome. it worked a little bit.. but still froze. i stopped using that computer.. not sure if the problem was software.. or hardware(corrupted hard drive failing).. i later used ubuntu on another computer and it went much smoother.. so i put it on that computer and had no serious problems. Fedora i don't think is for noobs. i want every thing working to start, and later when i want to play with it be able to do that too. but i think that if one is going to go to the effort to use a gnu/linux distro they will find one that suits them. and every one else will just ask, and there friend will tell them to use some noob friendly distro. so no worries it did not stop me.

    4. Re:Fedora is important by mandelbr0t · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      Even though I have switched distributions, it it possible that I may have stopped using Linux if I had come to the conclusion that Fedora was of too poor quality to use on a daily basis.

      It's not?

      Seriously though, I've never like Red Hat Linux. RPM doesn't work very well, and there were countless bugs in Red Hat versions of packages that didn't appear in the original source. Not to mention the configuration scripts that didn't work, or had problems. Don't forget the graphical auto-updater that hung and/or crashed on more than 5 packages at a time. I've never needed Enterprise support for any of my servers, so I can't speak to that. However, it's the only possible offering Red Hat could have that would be of any value.

      The Fedora project was a disaster, IMO. They used it as a platform to find critical bugs in the code they wanted to use for the RHEL product. The quote I find most memorable about Red Hat (though not specific to Fedora, that's my own experience) was "Red Hat likes to live on the bleeding edge, and leave the bleeding to you". As a result of such experience, I turned away from the Red Hat distros.

      Red Hat is important in only one way, from what I can see: they make Linux a commercial venture. Other than SCO, I don't think anybody has done a worse job from that perspective, either. Ximian, eventually bought by Novell, at least contributed to the development of Evolution and other GNOME software. Corel got into the Office for Linux market at a time when the biggest complaint about Linux was that there were no good applications available. IBM has contributed to the idea of commercial Linux more than anyone I can think of, both in terms of GPL-ed contributions to the codebase, and as a vendor promoting Linux-based solutions. Red Hat has been a purely profit-based venture, sacrificing the quality of the free distribution to make a few extra bucks.

      So, yes, the concept of Fedora is important: free binary packages that the community can install relatively painlessly, with source available for those who want to debug and contribute themselves. There's also a place for the community to discuss the product and difficulties they're having with it. Of course, that's what Debian, Slackware, Ubuntu, SuSE, Gentoo and many others also do. The Red Hat implementation, however, leaves a lot to be desired.

      mandelbr0t

      --
      "Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
    5. Re:Fedora is important by juancnuno · · Score: 1

      I will always have a soft spot for Fedora because of this. First Linux distro I was able to use as my primary OS. First one where everything just worked.

    6. Re:Fedora is important by scotch · · Score: 1
      Not that DW is conclusive evidence, but it tends to be a good indicator.

      Do you have any evidence that it tends to be a good indicator?

      --
      XML causes global warming.
    7. Re:Fedora is important by itsdave · · Score: 1


      please do explain how it is that RPM does not work very well. I hear this all the time but have yet to see the evidence.

    8. Re:Fedora is important by psykocrime · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Red Hat is important in only one way, from what I can see: they make Linux a commercial venture. Other than SCO, I don't think anybody has done a worse job from that perspective, either. Ximian, eventually bought by Novell, at least contributed to the development of Evolution and other GNOME software. Corel got into the Office for Linux market at a time when the biggest complaint about Linux was that there were no good applications available. IBM has contributed to the idea of commercial Linux more than anyone I can think of, both in terms of GPL-ed contributions to the codebase, and as a vendor promoting Linux-based solutions. Red Hat has been a purely profit-based venture, sacrificing the quality of the free distribution to make a few extra bucks.

      Right, because Red Hat has never contributed anything to the community:

      http://sources.redhat.com/projects.html

      http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/RedHatContributions

      Fedora isn't perfect, and RH did make - IMO - do a poor job of transitioning from the "old" RHL series to Fedora, but to suggest that they don't
      contribute anything to Linux and OSS is just ridiculous.

      --
      // TODO: Insert Cool Sig
    9. Re:Fedora is important by mandelbr0t · · Score: 2, Informative

      I've installed many bad RPMs (admittedly, mostly prior to RPM v4, but I jumped ship to Debian-based distros around that time) that have destroyed the entire configuration to the point where no dependencies resolve correctly any more. All of the responses I've heard about this sort of behaviour are something to the effect of "use the source RPM then", or whatever. The point being, things need to be painless. Sure, I could debug the RPM database (occasionally I had success in sorting out what went wrong), but it's a nightmare to try and use RPM to install proprietary software. You almost always have to force the installation using --no-deps --force, because RPM binaries are usually targeted at a specific distro/version. I remember mysql had big problems too, and Red Hat wouldn't upgrade from 3.23 for an unreasonably long time. Oracle had problems, again with dependencies. The list goes on and on. I also started using Red Hat around version 4. I've got plenty of bad experience with them, believe me. I've also got some measure of experience with every one of the alternative distros I mentioned, and have good and bad things to say about all of them.

      Debian takes a somewhat draconic approach to package management, simply refusing any further package installation until you resolve the dependencies. I've never seen distro-specific .debs, just one. There weren't many of them until Ubuntu got big, but you can find anything (including proprietary, non-GPL software) packaged in Multiverse. I've installed software from all sorts of different sources, and I've never had to debug the installation from the command line, which is the entire point of the exercise, isn't it? I don't mind the inflexible nature of this package management. After all, it is the authoritative packing list for your OS. I kinda want it to be accurate, for auditing purposes.

      Maybe you just need some more Fedora experience.

      mandelbr0t

      --
      "Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
    10. Re:Fedora is important by kUdtiHaEX · · Score: 1

      First Linux OS on my computer was RedHat 6.x. I was impressed with it because it was something diffrent. And when RH switched to 'commercial roads' i was very dissapointed with Fedora, especially Core 1 and 2. It was very buggy so i have switched to other distributions because of too poor quality. Fedora Core 6 is great system, just like SUSE or uBuntu. I just hope that Fedora team will continue with development.

    11. Re:Fedora is important by cferthorney · · Score: 1

      Surely the number of hits on the Fedora site is an indication - its too high to be a refresh script ;-)

    12. Re:Fedora is important by asuffield · · Score: 1
      In any case, the quality of Fedora is significant because it determines the first impression of Linux on many people. Even though I have switched distributions, it it possible that I may have stopped using Linux if I had come to the conclusion that Fedora was of too poor quality to use on a daily basis.


      If your life is significantly affected by the actions of stupid people, you're screwed already. If it isn't, you aren't going to care about this. While you might possibly be able to justify calling this point 'important', it either doesn't matter or there's nothing you can do about it, so it doesn't merit any attention.
    13. Re:Fedora is important by martin_b1sh0p · · Score: 1

      I would like to point out that there is also another group of Linux users, not sure what you call them because they are not newbies but they also haven't used Linux in several years. Most of the guys I work with fall into this category, they have used Linux in the past (as in Red Hat 6 and 7) and have been out of the Linux loop for years.

      Why is this interesting? Well because when they come to me (resident Linux user) because they "want to get back into Linux" they immediately ask/talk about Red Hat. I have to explain the whole "Fedora" thing to them and if I mention Ubuntu, they always say "Ubu-what?"

      So Ubuntu may be uber popular with newbies just starting out, but my experience is for those out of the game and just coming back they just want to start with something they were familiar with "back in the day" which almost always is Red Hat.

    14. Re:Fedora is important by sgholt · · Score: 1

      Agreed, that statement is pure BS.
      Further, the "old RHL" may have been handled badly, but it was not the distro that was going to be pulling people in.
      My first linux was Suse 8.2, but the last few releases have not worked for me...I have been using Fedora Core since FC1...I have strayed, but always returned to it and find it to be one of the best distros ever. FC6 is truely a great distro, and if it had all the hype of Ubuntu, it would be at the top of the distrowatch list.

  3. Good ideas by grub · · Score: 5, Funny


    Makes sense that they plan their future. Pre-arranged funerals can ease the burdon on the survivors.

    Oh wait, this isn't about BSD?

    --
    Trolling is a art,
  4. Fedora Legacy Dropped by Vexler · · Score: 3, Informative

    Apparently one of the results of this summit is the dropping of all support for past versions of Fedora Core prior to FC4, as a note on fedoralegacy.org said this past week.

    I agree that we can't support all the versions in perpetuity, but I thought it would have been more helpful if they had included some reason other than "sorry, we just can't do it anymore". Did it not fit into the big picture of their support? What about future security fixes? etc. etc. As it was, it was very abrupt.

    1. Re:Fedora Legacy Dropped by qortra · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      Fedora has never been considered a system that was appropriate for deployment. I always viewed it as kind of a Debian Unstable or Testing (if you will) to Red Hat's RHEL (which is similar in function to Debian Stable). If I had authority in the Fedora Community, I wouldn't vote for legacy support either. Fedora's claim to fame has always been its ability to quickly adopt bleeding-edge software. It was terribly concerned with stability (or even security).

    2. Re:Fedora Legacy Dropped by Kelson · · Score: 2, Informative
      I agree that we can't support all the versions in perpetuity, but I thought it would have been more helpful if they had included some reason other than "sorry, we just can't do it anymore". Did it not fit into the big picture of their support? What about future security fixes? etc. etc. As it was, it was very abrupt.

      It's been hashed out on the mailing list. The upshot is this: Fedora Legacy depended heavily on volunteers. While there has been demand for them to release updates, there have never been enough volunteers to keep it going. This has been true almost since the beginning, but it finally got to the point where the people running the project looked at it, said "we really can't keep up, can we?" and decided to fold the resources available into the main Fedora Project.

      As I understand it, the current plan is to drop Fedora Legacy entirely, but extend official support for the immediate previous release (which right now would be Fedora Core 5) for several months longer than the old EOL policy.

    3. Re:Fedora Legacy Dropped by Kelson · · Score: 3, Informative

      Just to clarify, "the people running the project" in this case means "the people running the Fedora Legacy project."

      Random Rule of Slashdot #843: The one time you don't use Preview will be the one time you should have.

    4. Re:Fedora Legacy Dropped by Nighttime · · Score: 2, Informative

      From Internet News

      Typically a Fedora Core release comes out every six or seven months. Red Hat's flagship offering, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), by contrast, comes out every 18 to 24 months. Under the new lifecycle plan a Fedora Core release would have 13 months of support.

      "Anything beyond this really seems to be corner cases that would really be better served by something like CentOS for free, RHEL for rock solid support, or Oracle for crackmonkies," Keating wrote. "What does this mean for the "Legacy" project? We feel that the resources currently and in the past that have contributed to the Legacy project could be better used within the Fedora project space."

      --
      I've got a fever and the only prescription is more COBOL.
    5. Re:Fedora Legacy Dropped by pnot · · Score: 1

      As I understand it, the Fedora Legacy Project was originially an independent effort which got adopted by the official Fedora project. I get the impression it's suffered from a shortage of manpower since its inception -- perhaps because many or most Fedora users are the type who would rather keep upgrading to the latest release than maintain an old one, or perhaps because there are just too many releases to maintain on a purely volunteer basis. So I suspect that "sorry, we just can't do it any more" really is all there is to it -- a decision born of necessity rather than a deliberate policy.

      It's certainly not in Red Hat's interest to support Fedora Legacy: after all, Fedora's main benefit to them is as a test-bed for impending RHEL releases, so they are probably keen to keep as many users as possible on the latest release.

      Ah well, looks like it's time to slap Ubuntu 6.06 LTS onto those old Fedora Core servers...

    6. Re:Fedora Legacy Dropped by doktorjayd · · Score: 1

      Ah well, looks like it's time to slap Ubuntu 6.06 LTS onto those old Fedora Core servers...

      why?

      theres plenty of good old redhat (6.2!) and fedora servers quietly humming away in the background doing their jobs quite nicely where i work ( and previous gigs too ).

      sure, these are mainly internal systems that are used for in house stuf, but beyond the niceties of packaged installs of apps/utils, a adistro doesnt die just because 'official' support for them drops off over time.

      my policy for fedora servers is even-numbers for public facing stuff ( ie: fc2, 4, 6), and for in house systems i'm mullung over skipping every second one of them, maybe more, we'll see over time.

      even then, i'm more likely to look at the services they run ( and any security issues popping up around those specific versions ) than ditching a whole distribution. i'll typically build a system for particular purposes: mail or apache or java apps, so lifting off the service(s) and dropping them onto a new host with a shiny new fedora every 12-18 months is nothin'.

      besides, being able to assess, rebuild and redeploy is half my job, so fedora keeps me in the loop nicely :)

      i believe theres also third party services ( like progeny(sp?) ) which can provide paid errata support packages for aging systems.

    7. Re:Fedora Legacy Dropped by pnot · · Score: 1

      >> Ah well, looks like it's time to slap Ubuntu 6.06 LTS onto those old Fedora Core servers...

      > why?

      Lack of security updates. I am a strong advocate for "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" -- but a system with unpatched vulnerabilities definitely qualifies as broke, and I don't have the time to track said vulnerabilities and patch them by hand.

    8. Re:Fedora Legacy Dropped by doktorjayd · · Score: 1

      but you do have time to slap on ubuntu? :)

      see, the way i see it, if you have time to migrate to another distro, you have time to migrate to the newer release of the same distro, but with less pain.

      i just make sure i find time every 12-18 months. same flavour distro, newer packages.

      ( i never could fully appreciate the debian ( hence ubuntu..) habit of smashing packages down to the smallest possible components so your apt-install has to grab a bazillion packages to get anything useful going, but each to their own...)

    9. Re:Fedora Legacy Dropped by uglyduckling · · Score: 3, Informative
      see, the way i see it, if you have time to migrate to another distro, you have time to migrate to the newer release of the same distro, but with less pain
      The LTS bit of Ubuntu LTS means 'long term support' (sorry if you knew this). Presumably the parent's point is that he can switch to Ubuntu once and have 5 years guaranteed support for the server version, wheras upgrading to the newer Fedora/RH offering gives no certainty as to how long support will last. It's not always non-trivial to upgrade to a newer release, so if he/she is going to do it then they should do it once and stick with the distro for a few years.
  5. No mention of users by Intron · · Score: 4, Insightful

    All of the planning described in the article seemed to be oriented on how to best support developers. I didn't see anything about end user goals.

    --
    Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
    1. Re:No mention of users by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And what exactly do you think Fedora is? Seriously? In my opinion its the testing and development part of Red Hat. Very much like testing/unstable in debian.

    2. Re:No mention of users by RAMMS+EIN · · Score: 1

      ``All of the planning described in the article seemed to be oriented on how to best support developers. I didn't see anything about end user goals.''

      Well, developers are important enough. Also, with open source software, the line between developers and users is very thin.

      --
      Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
    3. Re:No mention of users by eln · · Score: 4, Funny

      Also, with open source software, the line between developers and users is very thin.

      Not really. The developers are the guys who write the code, and the users are the ones who bitch about it. Same as any other piece of software.

    4. Re:No mention of users by smoker2 · · Score: 3, Informative
      Fedora is all about developers because it is all about development

      It has never set out to be a user oriented system. It only exists to push the envelope. If you choose to use it in any of its incarnations, you have to accept that. Otherwise, install RHEL or Ubuntu.

      And no, that wasn't meant as a flame, it's the truth. Is Ubuntu based on Debian unstable, is RHEL based on FC6 ?
    5. Re:No mention of users by RAMMS+EIN · · Score: 3, Insightful

      ``Not really. The developers are the guys who write the code, and the users are the ones who bitch about it. Same as any other piece of software.''

      While that's true to an extent, there are two things that make open source software different from the norm:

      1. Many developers write the software for their own use (rather than for money)
      2. Users can and do change the software to better suit them

      This is what blurs the line between developers and users. Of course, both of these are also reasons why developers can and do ignore users' requests, and get away with it.

      --
      Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
    6. Re:No mention of users by schwaang · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I think Red Hat is still working out how to allow real community involvement while still keeping control. And they seem to be making progress. If they get the balance right, maybe they'll end up with more people on their boards who will take users' needs into consideration more naturally.

      Transparency needed to come first, and that's way better now. Fedora's governance was non-obvious, with a different Leader of the Week handing down Red Hat fiats. Now they seem to be consciously trying to expose more of the decision making process, and the leadership team seems more stable and active. This is all to the good.

      I'd still like to see more voices on the advisory board that take the user point of view. You'll get some swinging dick who says "Hey let's just track all Fedora users so we know how many there are, and who cares if some people whine about privacy." And nobody is there to say: "Whoa there cowboy, we're not Microsoft yet."

      But if they're moving towards more open governance as it appears, I think they'll end up hearing out their users' concerns more as a consequence.

    7. Re:No mention of users by r3b00tm0nk3y · · Score: 1

      Not really. The developers wonder why Linux isn't making any progress as a desktop OS, and users know why Linux isn't making any progress as a desktop OS. Slightly different in this case.

      --
      This sig is alpha and shouldn't be viewed on production machines
  6. The Fedora paperwork is the current killer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I tried contributing to Extras this year. I gave up due to the paperwork. Wading through pages and pages of the Website, and following the instructions got me exactly nowhere. No response. No approval. Nothing.

    Only later did I find out that I had to jump through some more hoops.

    What would be helpful is a more streamlined, and MUCH better documented system.

    Given the other packages which conspicously lack Fedora support, I suspect that I'm not alone.

    I do hope this changes, as Fedora is my preferred distro. But right now, it is definitely hurting contributions to the project.

    1. Re:The Fedora paperwork is the current killer by gdek · · Score: 2, Informative

      Yep. Which is why it's pretty much Number One on the hitlist for the new Fedora Infrastructure chief.

    2. Re:The Fedora paperwork is the current killer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thank you. I hope it's true and that something actually gets done about it. It's exciting, and a pleasure, to be able to give something back to a community. It's also a deep disappointment to find roadblocks which prevent you from doing this. The minization of these roadblocks is what makes other distros vibrant. I was seriously considering switching distros, as I'd rather be closer to a community which accepts my input, than one which rejects it. Perhaps I'll hang around Fedora a bit longer and see what happens with it.

  7. High time to stop duplication by namityadav · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think the first objective for all the Open Source teams should be to stop duplication. A lot of our resources are wasted in getting features ported from other applications and (Even worse) redoing features on different applications (Because of underlying differences). I know that one of the strengths of Open Source is to have "choices", but some of these choices are just plain silly. I am not asking for these choices to go away completely. But there should be at least some sort of coherence between different alternatives (They already have some coherence, thanks to the Kernel .. but we need to see a lot more of the same in more higher level applications too)

    Imagine how much more work could be done to a package manager if every distro was using the same. Imagine how good OpenOffice and KOffice could have been if there were not 200 other Open Source alternatives. I am glad to hear about efforts to unify KDE and Gnome. We need to focus on something similar for a lot of other applications too. And this should be one of the top most priorities for Redhat, Novell, Ubuntu/Debian teams.

    1. Re:High time to stop duplication by Kelson · · Score: 1
      A lot of our resources are wasted in getting features ported from other applications and (Even worse) redoing features on different applications (Because of underlying differences).

      OK, which project would we have been better off without? Can you be sure that Project A would have come up with the feature they were copying from Project B? Or that Project B would have been as successful without learning from Project C's mistakes? If the people from Project B had been working on Project A instead, would that nifty feature have made it through the design process to prove its appeal?

      Choices aren't just good for their own sake. They're good because each project is going to have its own sensibilities, and is going to go off and try different things. Some ideas will be successful. Some will not. After the Mozilla Suite, Netscape 6, Galeon, and K-Meleon, it finally took Firefox to weaken IE's stranglehold. If everyone had just stuck with contributing to the Mozilla Suite, there's a good chance they would never have hit upon the type of browser that would be positioned to take advantage of crumbling confidence in IE.

    2. Re:High time to stop duplication by RAMMS+EIN · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I disagree. Having alternatives is healthy. Not only because of choice, but also because the competition between them provides incentives to improve them, and because if something happens to one, there's always another to fall back on.

      The amount of duplication within the open source world is actually pretty limited, I would say just about enough to provide the benefits I pointed out earlier, and to cater to the many niches there are (e.g. some people want full-featured systems, others want simple ones, yet others want performant ones, etc.)

      ``They already have some coherence, thanks to the Kernel''

      Err, well. The kernel is only a tiny part of the system, and one you don't typically code for directly. The personality of the system is actually much more determined by the standard library of whatever programming language you're using.

      ``Imagine how much more work could be done to a package manager if every distro was using the same.''

      I don't think package managers are or should be so complicated that they'd greatly benefit from everyone hacking the same one. At any rate, the diversity allowed me to choose the vastly superior apt-get when most people were using rpm (I know there are working wrappers for rpm that resolve dependencies nowadays, but back in the day, there weren't). I'm glad about that.

      ``Imagine how good OpenOffice and KOffice could have been if there were not 200 other Open Source alternatives.''

      Again, I'm not sure it matters much. I think adding more developers to OpenOffice.org will only contribute to the bloat, leading to new problems. Koffice seems to make great progress, despite the existence of various competitors (OOo being the big one). AbiWord was a good word processor years ago, before OOo existed, and I can't imagine it's gotten worse since.

      ``I am glad to hear about efforts to unify KDE and Gnome.''

      You mean that they're standardizing mechanisms? I'm glad about that, too. Standards are good. So are alternatives. Both can, and should, exist at the same time.

      --
      Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
    3. Re:High time to stop duplication by fishboiler · · Score: 1

      What is nice with firefox is that they have limited user choice from the start by excellent packaging and limiting of features. Open source can be successful either on a a pure technical basis (like MRTG for example) or by the combination of marketing, technical merit and packaging like firefox.

    4. Re:High time to stop duplication by eelcoh · · Score: 1

      If there'd be one package manager, there would be somebody who had an idea how to make a better one. And then you'd have two package managers. And if this package manager is better than the previous one, there will be a distro that will use it. And if it really makes a difference, more and more people will start using that distro. That is how open source gets better and better every day. The choice steers the evolution. It's that simple.

    5. Re:High time to stop duplication by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Insigthful? Sorry, it's bullshit. "Imagine what we could get if we just limited the choices!" Yeah, right. Too bad the only things that mindset brings to mind is Lada and Trabant...

    6. Re:High time to stop duplication by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's exactly the fractured result of that process repeated so often that reminds us of the merits of intelligent design, should we find ourselves clever enough to impliment it.

    7. Re:High time to stop duplication by l2718 · · Score: 1

      Imagine how good Microsoft Word and WordPerfect would be if there were not 200 other alternative. How good Minix and Xenix would be if there were no other x86 Unix-like operating systems ... Competition is good. People contribute code and ideas to the project they care about, not to the program they are supposed to be using. If there were only two options the people who really cared about the other alternatives wouldn't suddenly switch camp -- they would simply go site on the sideline, to everybody's loss.

      Porting good ideas from one program to another is good by the way. In a big project, you can't get anything done except by committee -- it's non-trivial to get your good idea even tested by other people. It's easier to get the small project you care about to add the extra feature you want. Later other projects might notice this feature and pick it up. This is not duplicatio of effort -- this is about having parallel efforts to sift out good ideas. Having Gnome, Qt, Xforms and Motif all together [as well as Win32, Aqua, BeOS and whatnot] is essential for any one of them to have good features and a loyal userbase,

    8. Re:High time to stop duplication by colinrichardday · · Score: 1

      How much would projects benefit from having more programmers? What if having more programmers bogged down development?

    9. Re:High time to stop duplication by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      You are, of course, assuming that the people who duplicate work are programming for others and not themselves. And that would be wrong. Programmers don't volunteer their efforts as a result of some arbitrary higher calling -- they do it because it benefits them in some way. This is not a bad thing; it is a very good thing. This is why all the good things in the world exist.

      They may value the learning experience or the skills they develop. They may value the recognition. They may value the experience of being involved in a volunteer group effort. They may value the fact that some annoying bug is finally fixed. Perhaps they simply value the feeling they get by helping out.

      So let's get to the point. The question is not "why aren't these programmers working on some other project instead of duplicating effort?" The question is "why should these programmers work on some other project valued by others (or some arbitrary group such as majority opinion) instead of the project they value for themselves?"

      I think we all know the answer: Because programming for YOUR project isn't what makes them happy, and making themselves happy, in whatever form that may take, is exactly why they program.

    10. Re:High time to stop duplication by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Corollary: If you're willing to pay, then I'm willing to put my personal interests aside and work on your project.

    11. Re:High time to stop duplication by droopycom · · Score: 1

      [quote]
      ``Imagine how much more work could be done to a package manager if every distro was using the same.''

      I don't think package managers are or should be so complicated that they'd greatly benefit from everyone hacking the same one. At any rate, the diversity allowed me to choose the vastly superior apt-get when most people were using rpm (I know there are working wrappers for rpm that resolve dependencies nowadays, but back in the day, there weren't). I'm glad about that.
      [/quote]

      Actually, a good question is: Why was apt-get developed for dpkg/debian in the first place and not rpm/redhat ? Does the existence of two distinct package managers had a positive or negative impact ? Would linux popularity/market share/visibility/ have increased faster if dpkg didnt exist and apt-get was developed for rpm in the first place ?

      Hard to say...

    12. Re:High time to stop duplication by petrus4 · · Score: 1

      Whenever I see someone expressing this perspective, I make very sure to feel grateful that it is only held by a fairly small minority.

      Imagine how much more work could be done to a package manager if every distro was using the same. Imagine how good OpenOffice and KOffice could have been if there were not 200 other Open Source alternatives.

      You're probably not consciously aware of it, but the only reason why you think like this is because Microsoft introduced and then encouraged/enforced a monoculture, during which time you were brainwashed to believe that such was actually a good thing. That being the case, I would like to invite you to continue to use Windows, rather than attempting to promote ideas which, if they were to be sufficiently widely adopted, (although mercifully, they won't be) would potentially lead to the destruction (or at least severe technological compromise) of Linux/FOSS.

      Thank you.

    13. Re:High time to stop duplication by asuffield · · Score: 1

      Firefox has not succeeded based on technical merit, it's succeeded based on being the only damn thing out there, unless you use KDE or proprietary software. On Windows, it's been driven by marketing (largely by Google).

      If it was a choice based on technical merit, we wouldn't be going with the memory-leaking hog.

  8. Fedora is unimportant by Skewray · · Score: 1

    I started out on RH 5, but I will never forgive RH for dumping support after RH9. By the time Fedora was announced, I was already using SuSE. I am now in the midst of switching to Ubuntu; not really because of the recent Microsoft deal so much as because the package management system doesn't appear to function any longer, at least for me.

    1. Re:Fedora is unimportant by jamstar7 · · Score: 1
      We just retired a server this morning that was running RH9. Never gave us a bit of problems til the hardware died. We pulled the backups we needed off the drive and installed a 'more modern' distro - Ubuntu Edgy. So far, so good.

      I loved RH in the day, ran Fedora Core up til a couple weeks ago, when I switched to Edgy amd64. Some stuff is a bit different, but all in all, I still like it.

      I'll always have a soft spot in my head for FC, though...

      --
      Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
    2. Re:Fedora is unimportant by Skewray · · Score: 1

      I still have a partition with RH7. At some point someone broke the scsi tape driver so it wouldn't read my old backup tapes. Don't throw out those old install cd's!

    3. Re:Fedora is unimportant by McNihil · · Score: 1

      re-backup those old backups and then re-backup any dvd backups older than a couple of years. Migrate to new media so that you have a way to read things easy. this is preemptive workload BUT it will save your butt.

    4. Re:Fedora is unimportant by Skewray · · Score: 1

      This project exists on my list of things to do. Sadly, since it isn't in the top five, its prospects are not good.

    5. Re:Fedora is unimportant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      RH 7 series was the best evah. It just worked for this noob, never a bit of problems doing anything I wanted to do at the time. Worked on my old hardware, printers worked, every one I tried, managed to get all my various old monitors detected and running well, etc, etc. It all worked. In fact I was dumfounded at the time and was wondering why all these people, businesses and home users, were still running MS jazz with all the headaches back then when they could use this "linux thing" I had heard about and tried.I knew *nothing* about linux then, just that it existed so a friend had broadband and burnt me a disk, shazzam! I thought it was pretty darn cool and complete and all the apps that came with it was an unexpected good bonus. And I didn't mind paying full boxed price for it either (after my first DL for free and burnt version).

          I am still scratching my head, though, why they would want to trash a small (well, it was probably a lot of people) but steady revenue stream from people who just wanted the pressed disks, the dead trees manual and the ability to pull updates easily. That's all I ever needed. No matter,I run FC6 now but they get no cash! Their choice! If they are happy with that, who am I to argue with RH? I just wish they had a one (1) CD install for a base system, and limit releases to once a year max. It's actually too good to just customize it the way you like it then trash it every few months and start over. Maybe someday they will get incremental diff-only updates down better so that won't be necessary.

    6. Re:Fedora is unimportant by GnuAge · · Score: 1

      Try Blag Linux out of Brixton, England. It is a single CD Fedora based distro that seems only to issue a release every other cycle (FC3, FC5), plus it uses apt-get (as well as YUM). It is updated frequently (the FC3 version, for instance has Firefox 1.5.0.8 in its repositories). it is one of only a half dozen distros certified by the FSF as only having free software in the distribution image or package repositories, but still comes with support for mp3s out of the box, unlike Fedora. It has a friendly, helpful community. It has got to have one of the easiest installation routines ever. If you want it to take over your disk just boot the disc and type blagblagblag.

    7. Re:Fedora is unimportant by mark_osmd · · Score: 1

      ... put in a bug report on the tape driver?

    8. Re:Fedora is unimportant by Skewray · · Score: 1

      I did, to Novell. But since I am switching to Ubuntu, I am not being very responsive to their requests for testing at the moment. I really just need to start rewriting the tapes, which isn't very difficult, given that I have two tape drives.

  9. ObTag by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


    obtag: itsamap

    hehe.

  10. What has Red Hat ever done for us? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    REG:
            They've bled us white, the bastards. They've taken everything we had, and not just from us, from our fathers, and from our fathers' fathers.
    LORETTA:
            And from our fathers' fathers' fathers.
    REG:
            Yeah.
    LORETTA:
            And from our fathers' fathers' fathers' fathers.
    REG:
            Yeah. All right, Stan. Don't labour the point. And what have they ever given us in return?!
    XERXES:
            The aqueduct?
    REG:
            What?
    XERXES:
            The aqueduct.
    REG:
            Oh. Yeah, yeah. They did give us that. Uh, that's true. Yeah.
    COMMANDO #3:
            And the sanitation.
    LORETTA:
            Oh, yeah, the sanitation, Reg. Remember what the city used to be like?
    REG:
            Yeah. All right. I'll grant you the aqueduct and the sanitation are two things that the Romans have done.
    MATTHIAS:
            And the roads.
    REG:
            Well, yeah. Obviously the roads. I mean, the roads go without saying, don't they? But apart from the sanitation, the aqueduct, and the roads--
    COMMANDO:
            Irrigation.
    XERXES:
            Medicine.
    COMMANDOS:
            Huh? Heh? Huh...
    COMMANDO #2:
            Education.
    COMMANDOS:
            Ohh...
    REG:
            Yeah, yeah. All right. Fair enough.
    COMMANDO #1:
            And the wine.
    COMMANDOS:
            Oh, yes. Yeah...
    FRANCIS:
            Yeah. Yeah, that's something we'd really miss, Reg, if the Romans left. Huh.
    COMMANDO:
            Public baths.
    LORETTA:
            And it's safe to walk in the streets at night now, Reg.
    FRANCIS:
            Yeah, they certainly know how to keep order. Let's face it. They're the only ones who could in a place like this.
    COMMANDOS:
            Hehh, heh. Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh.
    REG:
            All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
    XERXES:
            Brought peace.
    REG:
            Oh. Peace? Shut up!

  11. OSS and natural selection... by Junta · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Forks/duplications of efforts can have negative repercussions, but they are not without reason. A fork reflects a difference of opinion on how to proceed. Duplication of work occurs on similar goals, but one of two things happen. Either the reason behind the fork was not really popular or not sufficiently different to pursuade userbase and the fork dies, or the cause for the work was justified and the fork lives on or overtakes the original.

    Can probably point out tons and tons of failed forks (I believe mplayer has had a few unsuccessful forking attempts). They happen all the time.

    A shining example of a 'fork' like endeavor coexisting with the original is Debian and Ubuntu. Ubuntu has a set of technical and marketing goals that didn't mesh perfectly with Debian. Ubuntu was justified and the community has greatly accepted it. Meanwhile Debian has not really lost much in its userbase (most Ubuntu users come from RPM based distros rather than Debian) because the concepts Debian hold as important still matter.

    And sometimes fork reflect the need to meaningfully continue a project that has for all intents and purposes lost touch. Xorg is a fork of XFree86 that has effectively killed off the original. They still twitch, but they've even taking down their ultimately embarassingly list of distros that still supported them (generally by not having updated yet rather than a concious future decision). The breaking point was a licensing technicality, but it's clear that XFree86 had technical problems as well in adopting new graphical features.

    Hell, linux itself is spiritually (not technically) a fork of minix. The basic point is simple, projects by and large once established tend not to do revolutionary new things as the people at the head are heading basically where they meant to go. Forking is a logical way for revolutionary change to happen and the userbase decides the fate of the original and new.

    --
    XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
  12. Fedora Holds Summit? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's nothing! Just last week the neckties were demanding autonomy!

    THE MENSWEAR UPRISING MUST BE STOPPED!

  13. Re:back that mutha up!!! by jamstar7 · · Score: 1
    Been there, done that, got the tshirt, wrote the screenplay, stole the hat.

    Need I say more????

    --
    Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
  14. Re:Fedora's imminent death by joe+155 · · Score: 3, Informative

    "You won't be missed you corporate-enabling proprietary garbage"

    I think you fundamentally missed the point of fedora there. Fedora is 100% free, so much so that it doesn't ship with mp3 or DVD support. It's a small hastle but it's the price of freedom... so not really proprietary

    --
    *''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
  15. Maybe, but it needs improving. by jd · · Score: 1
    Packages are often way behind the software releases - by months or sometimes years. The SPEC files aren't always validated carefully - I've had to do all kinds of manipulations to get RPMs from the official trees to installed due to typos in the dependencies. At the moment, I'm having huge problems with some packages using one Python API and other packages using another, somehow resulting in X barfing and the kernel not being installed correctly, neither of which depends on Python to install.


    Fedora Core is great, but the current package management scheme sucks. Either the builds should not be this fragile or the package scheme needs to auto-exclude invalid permutations (so you can update the updateable without killing the install) or there should be a secondary branch of auto-built RPMs that fix the dependency screw-ups where people can live with the risks that involves. But you really need something. How it stands just doesn't cut it. Back in the days of the SLS and MCC distributions, this wasn't as much of a problem. If things broke, I could recompile from source. But now?

    --
    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
    1. Re:Maybe, but it needs improving. by jmorris42 · · Score: 1

      > If things broke, I could recompile from source. But now?

      Now you can still recompile from source. Admittedly the documentation isn't as good as it should be, but rpmbuild isn't rocket science and if you cut your teeth on SLS/MCC you should be able to figure out a .spec, tar.gz and some .diff files about as easy as "./configure ; make install".

      --
      Democrat delenda est
    2. Re:Maybe, but it needs improving. by jd · · Score: 2, Insightful
      I cut my teeth on those and have the fillings to prove it. :) Seriously, I've mucked with .spec files and written a few. The documentation isn't so much poor as virtually non-existant and you'll get far more information from grabbing good, working pre-existing ones. If you want anything compiled with the -march=pentium4 flag (may or may not be a Good Thing, depending on program) or to use optional libraries that need to be compiled in if present, then this is the way to do it. It's slower and more tedious to pick through than a simple ./configure script, but you can do it.


      Slower? Yeah - you don't know if any of those patches touch the configure options, so you've got to get part-way into an RPM build, break out, find the source directory, find the options, go back to the SPEC directory, find the .spec file, find the call to configure, rebuild, realize that that fixed the wrong architecture, go back, fix the right architecture's call, rebuild, realize your new dependencies aren't correctly reflected, go back, fix the dependency list for the options you are wanting, rebuild, discover that the compiler doesn't include something that is needed, repeat all of the above for the GCC compiler, then rebuild the package for real.


      Sure, I went through dependency hell with tarballs. The "golden era" was more brass-plated than gold. The number of problems was probably comparable, the only package I ever recall swearing at to this degree was X11R4. (Do you know how long that takes to build on a 386SX-16? Do you know what it is like to build the entire distribution tree, only to discover that due to some obscene/obscure bug when on the Linux architecture that random portions will mis-configure, mis-compile, barf on GCC or implode except when run on a non-existant resolution that causes the monitor to give a high-pitched scream and run down the street?)


      Nonetheless, with the exception of X, most problems were quick to discover and quick to fix. (In fact, I have yet to get X to compile correctly with any serious platform-specific optimizations. I won't forgive the Berlin/Fresco group for abandoning their alternative GUI.) The same cannot be said of exactly the same programs managed through .spec files and SRPMs, as there is way too much detail in too many different locations within the .spec file, within the patches, within the build system itself and within interactions with any quirks thrown up by already-installed RPMs. Too many unknown variables and no clean way of finding out what they are.

      --
      It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  16. CentorOS? Fedorent? by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 1

    How come there isn't more combination of CentOS (RHEL) and Fedora (RH)? If Red Hat leverages the same core team to do both their enterprise and "generic" OS versions, how can disparate gratis versions keep up?

    --

    --
    make install -not war

    1. Re:CentorOS? Fedorent? by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 1

      "How come there isn't more combination of CentOS (RHEL) and Fedora (RH)? If Red Hat leverages the same core team to do both their enterprise and "generic" OS versions, how can disparate gratis versions keep up?"

      I guess I don't see why this would be Red Hat's problem to solve. If somebody's copying my paper during a test, they don't really have a right to complain that "you were erasing and rewriting your answers way too often; it was impossible to keep up".

      --
      #DeleteChrome
    2. Re:CentorOS? Fedorent? by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 1

      It's not Red Hat's problem. But it is the Fedora community's problem.

      --

      --
      make install -not war

  17. Hot distribution chronology by heroine · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Redhat disappeared so fast from the map, hardly any of this year's user base has even heard of it, let alone Fedora. Every 4 years the entire user base turns over. Old distributions disappear, everyone learns on a new distribution, and software over 4 years old doesn't work anymore. The hot distribution chronology seems to be:

    1996-1997: Slackware
    1997-1999: Debian
    1999-2001: Redhat
    2001-2002: Fedora
    2003-2004: Suse
    2004-2006: Ubuntu

    1. Re:Hot distribution chronology by BokLM · · Score: 1

      What about Mandrake/Mandriva ?

      I don't agree with your list of the hot distribution ...

      Actually I think nobody will agree on what distribution is or was the hot distribution, so this list is quite pointless.

      --
      wtf.n0x.org
  18. maybe by zogger · · Score: 1

    you left out three biggees (and many mid levels), gentoo, knoppix and mandrake in that list, if you are going by enthusiastic posts on the intartubes over the past several years.

  19. Your error is not RPM's fault by DragonHawk · · Score: 4, Informative
    You almost always have to force the installation using --no-deps --force, because RPM binaries are usually targeted at a specific distro/version.


    No. All binaries are targeted that way. When you run ./configure, it runs through a bunch of checks to figure out where things are and how they are configured, for all of the dependencies. And "dependencies" includes everything from special-purpose libraries to glibc and the kernel. It includes all the configure options, source defines, patches, compiler switches, and anything else that changes the configuration of the binary. RPM keeps track of all that stuff because that's the only way to be sure it will work. If you change any of it, sure, the resulting binary *might* *appear* to work, but it might just as easily segfault.

    Binary compatibility is hard.

    The "--force" switch tells RPM, "I know you think this is a bad idea. I say I know otherwise. Do it anyway". You can't then turn around and complain that things broke when you did that. RPM took your word for it when you said you knew better. If you didn't know better, that's your own damn fault, not RPM's.

    Put more briefly: If you think you need to use --force, you're almost certainly wrong.
    --

    dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
    I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
  20. Re:Fedora's imminent death by cferthorney · · Score: 1

    So does Ubuntu. Both include "easy" options via Fedora Extra Repo/Universal or EasyUbuntu packages. I favour the methods show by Fedora, (mostly due to RHCE certification) but both can have easy Desktop use :) Fedora will not die - look at Slackware - RH will always have faithful users. It will just possibly become less and less popular over time (rightly or wrongly)

  21. Wish List by FatherOfONe · · Score: 1

    Ok, here is my wishlist.

    1. Include Suns JVM. Get rid of the GCJ stuff. I believe the JVM is GPL2 now, so it should be easy to do now.

    2. Easy video driver support. This has improved, but it would be great if it was like SuSE. I have an Nvidia card and I can get it to work, but at the end of the day another update comes out and it appears to break all over again. At the worst case, please have an official way to get it installed and then support it in your updates.

    3. Audio/Video Playback - Make it easy to play DVD's MP3. Again, like the video card, this can be done, but I wish it was an option during the install, or at least I wouldn't have to go to the command line to accomplish this.

    4. Flash 9. Like the others mentioned, please make it easy to install this during the initial install.

    5. Update the ISO's every so often so if I download Core 6 and install it, I won't have to then download 100+ updates.

    Lastly, thanks for all your effort so far. It does appear to be a nice distro. Given the recent sellout by Novell, I am looking forward to working with Fedora or Ubuntu in the future.

    --
    The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.
    1. Re:Wish List by Kelson · · Score: 1
      1. Include Suns JVM.

      Could happen. As you said, it's finally been released under an open-source license. Not sure about patent status, though.

      2. Nvidia drivers
      3. play DVD's MP3
      4. Flash

      Not going to happen. Fedora has a policy of including only open-source, Free with a capital F software that is not encumbered by patents. NVidia drivers and Flash aren't open source. DVD and MP3 playback are covered by patents.

      5. Update the ISO's every so often

      There's a group called Fedora Unity that does this. Check their site for Re-spins.

    2. Re:Wish List by FatherOfONe · · Score: 1

      thanks for the link about the updated ISO's

      However, as far as non free software, Fedora could provide a much easier way to get that software and then work on not breaking it with an update.

      How many people try Fedora out for a client and don't want to load Flash, MP3 and DVD support?

      Again, this is just a wish list, but the video driver issue is a real pain.

      --
      The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.
  22. fedora woes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I downloaded their dvd iso image for fedora core 6 and it failed to install. It might help users to be able to install their product to form an opinion on them. D-
    Some may think that divine intervention is the only way that the fedora project can be saved.

  23. Red Hat will close Fedora within 2 years... by mnewcomb · · Score: 1

    Just wait and see... Everyone who got burned by RHEL will know and understand what I'm talking about...

  24. Fedora to Exhibit at SCALE 5x by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Fedora will be exhibiting at SCALE 5x, the 2007 Southern California Linux Expo on Feb 10-11, 2007.