Slashdot Mirror
Fedora Core and Fedora Extras To Merge
Kelson writes to tell us about a
Fedora Weekly News article reporting that, beginning with Fedora 7, the distinction between Core and Extras will cease to exist. This development comes out of the Fedora summit held in November. From the article: "Starting with Fedora 7, there is no more Core, and no more Extras; there is only Fedora. One single repository, built in the community on open source tools, assembled into whatever spins the Fedora community desires." Kelson adds: "The post goes on to list three 'spins' they plan to introduce at Fedora 7's April release: server, desktop and KDE. Presumably these would be 1-disc installation sets, with further packages downloaded over the network, rather than the 5-CD collection needed to install Fedora 6."
The "From the one-hat-to-bind-them dept" probably wont help with that cause.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
I won't have a problem with this. In fact, I think it's about time as a lot of things that were called Extras were actually needed items so this will be a good thing. The once CD idea rocks too.
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
I've been following the development, and while the server install MAY be one cd, I haven't seen anything to suggest that such an artificial restriction would be set. If anything it may be a specific minimal spin.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
If Fedora didn't suck as hard, that could be a possibility. Is it really necessary to do such an insane amount of package updates (esp. kernel...) and breakage? I also just love having a Linux machine lock up regularly...
Whatever. After using it 1-5, I'm now a Debian user. w00t. No ass-ugly default icons! Stability!
Are you threatening me?
...Now if only they could also roll atrpms into Core/Extras.
</wishful_thinking>
(Yeah, I know why they can't)
What evil video game did you get that from? Wolfenstein 3D?
See? Video games turn people into violent Nazi's.
Are you threatening me?
"this is ONLY Fedora"??? Only? Come on now... I ONLY had sex 9 times last night ;)
LINUX ONLINE POKER: Linux Poker
If your machine locks up regularly, then perhaps you should look to something other than blaming Fedora. I have machines from single- to quad-CPU machines that have run for so long on Fedora Core 2 that theit next upgrade was to CentOS 4.4. These are machines that get used 24x7, under heavy loads. Some of the DBMS machines have gone for months without ever seeing a system load below 1.
It may be your configuration, your hardware, or various other causes, but if you're going to complain about Fedora, at least complain about the *valid* deficiencies...
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
We won't, because this is actually a smart move.
It's a smart move, of course, because it makes Fedora more like Debian.
/me dodges incoming bullets
http://outcampaign.org/
I've been a Fedora user from the start and a Redhat user before that. I have resisted everyone's pleadings about Ubuntu and all the rest. But one thing I wish would change (though I know never will) would be having the more fun and useful things included like DVD and other media playback support. Just house that spin in some other country that doesn't care about the patents and stuff...you know?
"if the usually jackasses didn't post the usual anti Fedora FUD."
You mean like this?
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
beginning with Fedora 7, the distinction between Core and Extras will cease to exist.
I think the DOJ refers to that as "bundling".
Push Button, Receive Bacon
So if a distro doesn't support for example hardware properly, that's the now the end user's fault?
...and you wonder why people won't jump ship to Linux.
If it's worked for you and not for someone else who thought they had the proper hardware after the appropriate amount of research that's good luck NOT good management.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Yep. I really want to be an unpaid beta tester. "beta" quality is being generous with Fedora.
"The Federal Reserve is a fraudulent system."--Lew Rockwell
End The FED. -
Indeed. Clearly, it's the fault of the people who made gcc 2.96. *ahem*
It may be your configuration, your hardware, or various other causes, but if you're going to complain about Fedora, at least complain about the *valid* deficiencies...If Fedora ships with a configuration that's unstable on particular hardware, and Debian doesn't---and you're not a developer---then choosing Debian is a smart and cost-effective solution. What do you expect?
http://outcampaign.org/
Fedora Joke
maybe upgrades will work better...
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
However, I feel that there are enough packages where the number of permutations of compile-time options is large and where the number of dependencies between package types is unpredictable that the "ideal" would be to have a web interface that let you roll your own set of ISOs online with just the stuff you want with the options that you want. (This is more restrictive than, say, gentoo, but it would be about the same to QA as the current Fedora with less overhead for the admin than Fedora and less install time than gentoo.)
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)
It's the end user's fault for either A. buying hardware without checking the distro's hardware compatibility list or B. switching operating systems within the lifetime of one computer.
Seriously.
I spent the last 5 years working for TimeSys, and we did a lot of work to adapt various Fedora Core packages for embedded systems use.
One of the tools we developed along the way was something called tsrpm, a set of wrappers for RPM that makes cross-compiling RPMs a relatively painless process. It's open source (GPL), has support for a number of different processor architectures (x86, various flavors of ARM and PPC, etc.), and can be used to compile packages using a glibc or uclibc based tool chains. It's non-intrusive, and uses a hint file (standard bash shell script) to conditionally control various phases of the RPM and source code build process. It's even capable of building a cross-development tool chain from source RPMs, though that process can be a little hairy.
When I left, IIRC, we had over 300 RPMs, mostly from FC5, that we could build for a good 9-10 distros (variations of architecture/libc combinations). That was the result of myself and the tsrpm author (Chris Faylor) spending about 2-3 months on the whole thing... and that included the time it took for Chris to get new gcc-4.x based tool chains building for most of the architectures.
If anyone's curious, you can see the free-as-in-[beer,speech] releases of tsrpm and some whet-your-appetite FC5-based distros here.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
Bloody hell /. is full of intolerance today!
Re-read my comment - the part about doing the appropriate research.
IF you do the research (compatibility list, newsgroups etc.) AND it still fails it's not your fault as an end user. PERIOD. You've done all you can.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I'd believe your comment if I hadn't thrown Fedora on every type of hardware from single-CPU/IDE machines to 4x/8x machines with high-end SCSI arrays and fiber networking, Intel and AMD architectures. Apart from sound and video, there's not a lot of hardware I haven't run it on. Other than one particular issue with a RAID card, it's done a good job of setting up hardware. It's not like it's hard for a distro to add a line to modprobe.conf telling it which driver to load....
If anything, the problems you encounter are, in my experience, more likely to be problems with the Linux drivers themselves than with Fedora, although there may be a handful of cases to the contrary.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
You can do a small net install, I did it with FC6. There are two boot isos (just go look at their ftp server to see them, or any mirror), you need to burn the first to boot and start the install, and point at the second on the network at the install prompt when it tells you after you start, then pick and choose what you want for userland, or just hit the default. No need to even download a full disk to get going then.
I think they just do disks because that is what most folks seem to want. This new deal will still be better than making you do a full DVD or 5 CDs plus more later one, only to not use 3/4ths of what you downloaded. The net install seems the easiest and best to me, though, I'll probably use that from now on it went so smoothly. I also always put in all the kde and gnome desktop jazz though, just to have immediate redundancy in case of a major exploit or bug, it's nice to have that immediate backup right there a logoff and login away. And you know that no matter what distro you use, shift happens...
If you really need all that minute flag options and compilings, maybe just do a linux from scratch install one time and do incremental updates after that. Can't get any more custom and cutdown than that really, and you can just do critical security upgrades for a long time then, and skip everything else.
The usually (sic) jackasses are the reason everyone comes to Slashdot as opposed to reading this on Digg.
Us jackasses that have been hear for many years tend to know a thing or two and have learned a lot of things the hard way. And as to the "anti-Fedora FUD", I prefer to look at it as the openness to non-Redhat-based distributions. And... yes, you can thank Redhat for turning their former legions of loyal Redhat desktop fans on to Debian, Ubuntu, and Gentoo. Thank you Redhat for ensuring diversity in Linux distributions. Some of us have even come back around to Fedora with a new perspective on Linux.
But, usual Anti Fedora FUD aside, This is good news for Fedora users and the fedora community - it makes life simpler and less confusing.
Now, I only need to be confused by the dissolution of Fedora Legacy. How about making yum upgrades across Fedora versions seamless, supported, and recommended so that no one gets left behind?
It is a smart move, but I can't help thinking that it's rather like they're attempting to be more like Ubuntu in wake of its popularity.
Of course, being more like Ubuntu is only half a step away from being more like Debian, so I'd better start dodging too.
If Linux is for communists then why are you saying 'Heil Hitler'? As a Nazi, Hitler was staunchly anti-communist. If anything, you should be singing praises about Stalin and Lenin. Get your political history right before lighting up your flamethrower there, Sparky.
I'd believe your comment if I hadn't thrown Fedora on every type of hardware from single-CPU/IDE machines to 4x/8x machines with high-end SCSI arrays and fiber networking, Intel and AMD architectures.
A year or so back, I tried upgrading a Red Hat 9 machine to the latest Fedora. The video chipset, perfectly functional under RH9, wasn't supported by Fedora. Similar issues with another box I was upgrading -- fully functional with RH9, virtual consoles broken under Fedora (bug reported and reproduced, but flagged as "won't fix" for that release -- FC4 IIRC).
It was at that point that I started looking at Ubuntu...
First the Extras, then the Redhat Server distributions. Then CentOs. Then SuSE. Soon Debian, Ubuntu and friends. Then Fedora will consume Mac OS, and last, with a giant belch, Vista. This is all part of their evil plan to take over the universe, and I, for one, welcome our new Fedora overlords!
These single disk flavors of Fedora 7 will sport a modern brown theme and store packages in the superior deb format.
So, what's the deal with KDE and gnome needing different disks then? It seems bizzare to me that a group of hackers so tightly integrated the desktop into a set of apps that they cannot play nicely with other desktops. If it was M$ integrating a web browser into an OS well, that I get, but Linux is practically splitting into two OS's over the choice of window dressing and themes these days. What the heck is that?!? It's like M$ distributing two versions of XP, one with the classic desktop, and one with the XP theme. They would have been the laughing stock of the industry!!!
-- http://thegirlorthecar.com funny dating game for guys
Thanks for being the first news site to not publish a sensationalist headline about this like "Fedora Core Linux is No More!" Though the story seems a little late, the headline is certainly not as misleading.
Hey, I just installed Fedora Core 6 last Thursday, and I'm pretty sure there were 6 of those darned CDs I had to mess around with.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
I had problems with Ubuntu working with my network and SCSI cards, and it was at that point that I started looking at Fedora, which works perfectly with all my hardware. YMMV.
I have to think that there's still something wrong with the process if the average user of a piece of software is expected to read compatibility lists. The sooner we start treating software seriously the sooner it will stop sucking. Honestly, if you buy a car, should you be expected to know its internals? To check "compatibility lists" for its parts?
And yes, I know that certain zealots will just "well that's too much to expect from volunteers" but what I'm saying is maybe it should be expected anyway. I have the childish hope that one day space ships will be as common as the personal computer
We, as a community, have been lax. It has done good and bad things. This is a bad one ("acceptable incompatibility").
I had problems with Ubuntu working with my network and SCSI cards, and it was at that point that I started looking at Fedora, which works perfectly with all my hardware. YMMV.
Indeed it may, but my point was that FC4 actually introduced hardware support regressions against Red Hat 9. I feel uneasy with a distro where my currently supported hardware may become unsupported in the next release.
This is interesting since Fedora Core packages are maintained only by Red Hat employees whereas extras contains both Red Hat and user maintained packages. I wonder if Red Hat will continue to mark a few important packages in the unified repo as Red Hat only, or if they might have more direct leadership over the unified repo than they currently do over extras.
I stole this Sig
I had a painful experience with the 5 FC6 CDS. The discs never passed the media test. I bought a DVD Drive just to install FC6 from a single disc. the idea of a single media rocks.
Sudheera Satyanarayana (First name rhymes with Sudhir)
Binary Vibes
http://www.binaryvibesit.com
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/7
You mean like Ubuntu? It looks like Fedora is taking some tips from the "other" distro.
Personally, that was one of the things I liked about Fedora--I could download the incredibly large DVD that contained everything and the kitchen sink. Download packages over the network? Pff... I used to sit there and remove/insert CD after CD of the latest linux systems. I remember I had SuSE professional that came with 7 discs. When I finally got a DVD burner, it turns out I didn't need it anymore... distros magically fit on a single CD all of the sudden. >:o
> wrong... if the average user of a piece of software is expected to read compatibility lists. ...
>
> if you buy a car, should you be expected to know its internals?
Big difference. The proper analogy to checking a compatibility list is checking that the car will fit into your garage. I don't see how the manufacturer is supposed to help you there.
I am confused about this one - does this mean that unlike current Fedora editions, KDE will not be included at all in the main distro, but only in a KDE spin disc? And that, if few people actually download/use that disc, KDE potentially gets dropped from Fedora?
:)
I.e. would we be in a situation similar to Ubuntu/Kubuntu where mixing/matching your environment from a single install disc won't be possible anymore?
And are we potentially looking a dropping of KDE from Fedora altogether? Being put into a separate spin is kinda like someone being put into "special projects" at work - one foot out of the door.
That would be pretty grim.
But with Fedora, if the user cares about security then they HAVE to switch within the lifetime of one computer!
Fedora is flat out unsuitable for a stable environment. It's only good for people who are happy to upgrade / re-install every 13 months when their current version becomes insecure and unsupported.
That's why my home server is moving to either OpenBSD or Open Solaris - I'm tired of this re-install / upgrade game.
The parent has a very good point. Even in the recent interview with the Fedora maintainer, he seemed to go to lengths to explain why fedora is NOT just a test bed for RHEL (despite the RHEL 4 product manager telling me this in person).
:)) I'll be back on a BSD or Solaris by April when my current FC stops being supported but it's a lot of work to get all the services migrated back and tested. Although, it's still easier than moving to Debian :D
Fedora is a great test bed or desktop distro for bleeding edge users. With its 13 month life-cycle, it's all but useless as a server tool.
I made the mistake of moving from FreeBSD to Fedora at home (we use RHEL at work because we can afford it
switching operating systems within the lifetime of one computer.
Why? Does the spirit of the previous OS remain on the hard drive, thus frightening the new OS so much that it crashes? Does it void the warrenty on my hard disk if I change the partition layout?
Right now, Doom3 and other games are incompatable with my hardware.. I live with it (actualy without it) but I don't blame ID or the other game creators if I am not willing to adapt (at this time). The solution is there for me, it's up to me to decide whether or not to impliment it..
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
Upgrading from Redhat 9 to Core 4 is hardly 'the next release'.
I dual boot for my HL2 fix, cant stand using Windows most of the time. Most Linux distributions I've tried aren't much fun till you install all the "non free" stuff like MP3 support, libdvdcss, ffmpeg and suchlike. (my music collection is all VBR MP3, so no MP3 support = no music while working, browsing, tinkering) Fedora is no exception, was reading though the planned features for FC7, and it looks like they will be adding something to display messages about such problems when people try to play such files, though, which is some progress.
Would be nice if _all_ the third party repos would get their act together so one never has to worry about using repo A and B, but not A and C, except if you have D and A enabled, then its ok.
The third party repos are awesome, but a double edged dependency nightmare.
Upgrading from Redhat 9 to Core 4 is hardly 'the next release'.
I didn't say it was. But the chipset was supported by RH9, and unsupported by FC4. Clearly, at some point, there must have been a transition from a release that supported it to a `next release' that didn't.
Or do you mean that Fedora Core can't be regarded as the same distro as the original Red Hat series? Perhaps there's something in that; I might have had better luck with RHEL or an unbranded equivalent.
"The usually (sic)[sic] jackasses are the reason..."
"Us[sic] jackasses that have been hear[sic]..."
My pedantry trumps your pedantry.
That's being said, I'm pretty much in complete agreement with your post.
As I see it, incompatible third party repos are the biggest hurdle in fedoras way right now. Please third party providers, get your act together.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yeah, my life became immensely easier once I realized that atrpms, freshrpms, Dag, Dries, and PlanetCCRMA were compatable with each other, but not with livna. GRRRRR!
Which is not to say that everything is peaches and cream now, of course -- right now, yum is complaining about missing dependencies for several packages which I am not trying to install. What use is an error message saying "module spaz is required by package bstflk" when I am trying to install foo and update bar?
Well, he did say he was a Debian user! ;)
Most people seem to check whether their car runs on petrol or diesel. Only an idiot would complain if his car didn't work with the wrong fuel. If you're going to use a bad analogy, you should at least use it properly.
One of the things which is painful, is that atrpms is the repo with mythtv.... but enabling atrpms as the default repo is a very bad idea, as it will replace many of the normal packages too, not just add new ones (which has broken several systems for me and friends).
Because the whole point of Fedora is to invest time in the bleeding edge. You can't do that if you have to support incompatible old technologies. See Microsoft ...
If you want seamless upgrades, then use RHEL instead, or even WBEL if you want it for free. Based on Fedora proven technology, but smoothed out for the end user.
While that's true, it's still TWICE the expected lifespan of a Windows XP install.
The future isn't here until I can type "car keys" into Google and have it say "You left them in your pants last night."
Dude, let it go. People have been complaining about that for six years, and the complainers have been wrong for six years. The truth is that 2.96-rh was a better compiler than any previous gcc release. The "bugs" were actually increased strictness - see this page for details.
No, the analogy is wrong. It compares to the average user buying components for his car, and then putting it together. In which case, he IS responsible for compatibility. Purchasing a car is akin to purchasing a preconfigured computer from dell or whomever. Their hardware is compatible, and verified (i'd imagine).
If you're building the car from components, or replacing a major component (like the OS), you'd damned well better check for compatibility. Or be very handy with part modification to make it fit (like writing your own device drivers, I suppose).
We, as a community, have been lax. It has done good and bad things. This is a bad one ("acceptable incompatibility").Nobody thinks it's "acceptable" that some (note: not very much, really) hardware is incompatible with Linux, but what do you think "the community" should do about it? The reason incompatible hardware exists is very simple: The hardware vendors don't support Linux. The community doesn't need very much support; the community doesn't need them to write drivers, provide fancy installers, etc., all that's required is some documentation. But if the vendors won't provide that, then what? Sometimes, an enterprising individual manages to reverse engineer the hardware interface and write a driver in spite of the lack of documentation, but that's very difficult, and it takes time.
If you think the community has been lax, and consider yourself part of the community, why don't *you* stop being lax and fix the problem. Or, at a minimum, bother to understand the problem.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
A year or so back, I tried upgrading a Red Hat 9 machine to the latest Fedora. The video chipset, perfectly functional under RH9, wasn't supported by Fedora.
Between RH9 and FC4, XFree86 was taken out back and shot. Xorg replaced it. Now Xorg took a snapshot of XFree86 before the license changes hit so you'd expect that all the chipsets that XFree86 4.3rc2 had would be supported. So now I'm curious. What chipset do you have?
Almost all the Linux distros have moved to Xorg a long time ago, so if FC4 is busted for you and, say, Ubuntu 5.10 works (being about the same age), it's probably down to a configuration problem.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
'The "From the one-hat-to-bind-them dept" probably wont help with that cause.'
/. editorial troll since Katz.
What did you expect?
Its Kdawson - the biggest
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo! http://goo.gl/J9bkO
I use Linux a very long time. Linux run on mobile phones, server clusters and others. It's a very powerful OS. What is common between Linux and Nazih or Linux and Communism. You have absolute no idea about history and distinction between Nazih and Communism. Probably you stay on mustdie and only hear about Linux. I recommend you Fedora or SUSE to try. But you need medical asistence first.
Let me guess - a Dell 6300-series server w/ an old LSI card? (at least that's the one prob I'd found with RHEL (yes, RHEL), but even there there was a workaround - install AS 2.1 then upgrade to 4).
I think when most folks whine ab't hardware support and Fedora, it usually concerns the wireless Centrino thingy.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
That's just rubbish. A decent XP install will last for 2 years easily. Install and patch behind a firewall, ensure regular patching and use firefox as a browser. And at least the vendor won't pull the rug out from under you like Fedora have just done.
In November last year I thought I had at least 1.5 years left on this box - I would just have to use -legacy. In december I found that I have 5 months to migrate to a new platform. Microsoft have never screwed me like that!
Apart from sound and video,
Hey great! You've got linux working on everything except the two things people most often use their desktop computers for!
THIS IS THE YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP
If an operating system release is not supported with security patches in the long term, it may not be a good long-term choice for production machines. The folks maintaining http://www.fedoralegacy.org/ recently announced that they were punting on maintaining everything before Core 4. Ask yourself: in 1.5 years, do I really want to be forced to install a new OS because I can't get security patches on this one? Compare against Ubuntu LTS, which will be around for at least 3-5 more years.
So why did you go with Fedora in the first place? It was obvious when Fedora Core 2 came out and required a reinstall via CD that they weren't concerned with providing ongoing support. That's the point at which I said "Screw you, Red Hat" and moved to Debian...
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
It's Fedora's fault. They haven't upgraded to Firefox 2 yet (the one with the built in spellchecker).
End of Line.
jumping from a 2.4 kernel to a 2.6 kernel is a big step and 2.6 doesn't support everything that 2.4 does. redhat 9 had 2.4 and fedora 4 has 2.6 i don't want to state the obvious but this is something you should consider before saying "Or do you mean that Fedora Core can't be regarded as the same distro as the original Red Hat series?" and therefore concluding that you need to purchase RHEL. I used to use the various Redhat products, I even purchased RH8 professional and had a subscription to the redhat network for a while. I would have kept paying for that service but Redhat decided that I was not a market they were striving for, and realistically it was the correct choice for them to make. I am very happy with Fedora and I like the choices they have made with their plans for 7.
"but money is the God of Algiers & Mahomet their prophet." - Rich. O'Bryen June 8th 1786
That wasn't meant to say that it didn't work with sound and video, just that the assortment of sound and video I have used has been far less diverse than the rest of the hardware. My bad.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Comparison:
The ubuntu 'main' component contains ~1300 packages. These are the only packages available by default (apart from a very select choice of non-GPL software in the 'restricted' component), and the only packages that are officially supported. 1300 packages (one CD) just stretches to linux, gnu, x11, gnome, perl, python (and openoffice) - things you'd expect on every system. If you want anything else (and you certainly will), you can find at least 15000 packages in the 'universe' component, which contains the majority of GPL software in existence. This is the wealth of Debian. But unfortunately, these packages are not available by default, and are not supported. They're rarely updated between releases. This is sad, it's a waste of Debian's greatest asset.
Fedora Core contains 5 CDs of software (2250 packages) all of which is maintained by Red Hat employees and officially supported. On top of this there are 5500 packages in extras, which are avaliable by default, of equally good quality, and updated between releases. The only difference is they are maintained by 'the community'. Many maintainers were Red Hat employees anyway, which is one reason they've come to integrate the two. This means the next release will include, support, and provide updates for some 8000 packages.
I think Fedora trumps Ubuntu here. The wealth of linux is the vast quantity and quality of software freely avaliable. Distributors produce less than 1% of the distro, they just select some GPL projects and glue them together. This is why there's so little difference between Ubuntu and Fedora. The majority of code has been written by thousands of preceeding developers working on their respective projects who may never use either. Fedora is right to embrace the work of the thousands of free hackers, rather than deny the quality of their software because they can't control it.
Fedora's media check has historically been pickier than it needs to be. If the media passes, you know it's good, but there are things that will make it fail other than an actual bad disc. They suggested booting the installer with "linux ide=nodma" if it fails with the default settings. The release notes for FC5 and FC6 don't include this note, so they may have fixed the bug. I can't say myself, since FC4 was the last time I installed from CD.
No, it makes Fedora better than Debian. Paid developers steering the project and (hopefully) steering clear of making decisions by committee (see camel story).
Volunteers getting all the fancy packages they want, as they proved they could do, and did with the Extras project. So a real community distribution.
It's no Ubuntu, but they do still remain true to their Free/Open Source roots, so that makes them especially more appealing to the hardcore types too. Unlike Ubuntu. And its Redhat, the most consistent of the Linux companies. In terms of their Open Source/Free Software credentials, they have an unmatched record in the community.
That would be at http://www.fedora.info/
I went with FC4 because of the Fedora legacy project. This meant that I could have a lifespan around what I wanted. Then they binned that with just a few months to go of FC4's lifespan. Arse!
I would move to Debian / Ubuntu, but they just make my blood boil. Worse, they make it difficult to get support for the core things I run (Exim and Apache) because of their own special, non-standard way of handling the config.
And have you reported these problems to the ATrpms mailing list? Axel Thimm is a nice guy and extremely patient when it comes to explaining countless times to people how to manage their packages or how to fix things if something has gone wrong (regardless if the mistake had something to do with ATrpms packages are not). Any problems with packages always get fixed ASAP.
Personally the first thing I do after a fresh install is add the ATrpms repo and do an upgrade. Has never gone wrong so far.
I do agree with something that was said before: don't mix Livna and ATrpms, I've had nothing but problems with that combination.
True enough, but as pointed out by the other poster there is hardware that was supported by the 2.4 kernel and not 2.6. For many of these devices someone will have made a new or updated driver for it, but no doubt there are some that have slipped through the cracks (this, combined with speed concerns, is why some people oftem recommend using a 2.4 or even 2.2 kernel on older hardware). As for the comment regarding RHEL. I would recommend using an unbranded release like CentOS to first test that your hardware is supported by the distribution. Then once you've ascertained that it fills your needs buy RHEL and the associated support contract if you intend to deploy in an environment where you need it.
jumping from a 2.4 kernel to a 2.6 kernel is a big step and 2.6 doesn't support everything that 2.4 does
That wasn't the issue here, though: Knoppix and Ubuntu had no trouble with it.
I would have kept paying for that service but Redhat decided that I was not a market they were striving for, and realistically it was the correct choice for them to make.
I think they decided I was not a market worth striving for, either: my original plan was to put RHEL on all the boxes I had responsibility for -- these machines are running proprietary applications with 5-figure annual subscription fees, so the Red Hat tithe would have been pocket change. I spent a few weeks firing emails at various Red Hat sales, customer support, and enquiries addresses... not a peep. Perhaps they're not interested in the Australasian market...
No, I don't, because I don't want those packages. I just want some packages which I can't find in FC and Livna - usually just mythtv.
As I understand it, this is the case for automotive replacement parts such as tires, spark plugs, and batteries. Auto parts stores have the compatibility lists posted, either in paper or on an electronic kiosk.
No, but your peripheral manufacturers have made a business decision to put more money into making their products work with the most popular consumer operating systems.