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Raymond Knocks Fedora, Switches to Ubuntu
narramissic writes "After 13 years as a loyal Red Hat user, Eric Raymond, co-founder of the Open Source Initiative, is switching to the Ubuntu distribution. In a message distributed to Linux mailing lists and news organizations, Raymond cited technical issues with Red Hat, such as the way repositories are maintained, the submission process and 'stagnant' development of Red Hat's packaging technology, as well as governance problems, the failure to gain desktop market share and the failure to include proprietary media formats. 'Over the last five years, I've watched Red Hat/Fedora throw away what was at one time a near-unassailable lead in technical prowess, market share and community prestige,' Raymond wrote. 'The blunders have been legion on both technical and political levels.'"
I have never been a RedHat (I'm including Fedora here) fan. I have run almost every version since the beginning because I'm a consultant and RedHat/Fedora is one of the "standard" Linux distros that some companies use. RedHat based systems have always had two basic problems:
1. The install is non-standard. They move stuff into wierd locations and often you have to add special considerations to your build process to make it work on RedHat based systems.
2. The packaging system sucks donkey balls! I can't stress that enough. RPM is awful. They have tried to fix it with all sorts of tacked on systems but they all suck. They're always slow as hell and the dependancy system often doesn't work right. I mean the term "RPM hell" was coined for a reason.
But I am biased because I started with Slackware (basically before there was anything else) and went to Debian not long after. Although I have tried many, many distros over the last 15 years I always come back to Debian based systems. Ubuntu is what I run now because it has the goodness of Debian with a better/faster development model.
I saw the response to Raymond's comments. It's always the "do the right thing" argument which is valid but I believe there needs to be a balance between reality and complete fanaticism. Windows is a commercial product from an "evil" corporation yet they are still top dog dispite morally attractive alternatives. There are many good valid reasons behind that.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
He's responded a few times already.
/ 2007-February/thread.html#01006
/ 2007-February/msg01060.html / 2007-February/msg01082.html / 2007-February/msg01097.html / 2007-February/msg01118.html
Here's the actual mailing list thread: https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list
Here are ESR's responses from that particular thread:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list
He also started another mailing list thread called "Core Values" which I'll let you find in the mailing list index, which I've linked to already (albeit anchored to the beginning of "Goodbye, Fedora").
Ubuntu has signed on to use Linspire's Click-N-Run.
Inside CNR are some things like a legally licensed MP3 plug-in and DVD player. I believe the DVD player was a plug-in for Xine and cost $4.95. Click, buy, done. It was really that simple. I was watching DVDs on a Linspire system in minutes and it was worlds ahead of adding DVD playback on Windows.
So, yes. Ubuntu and Linspire both have a very simple framework for dealing with commercial and proprietary software that Fedora and Red Hat do not.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Can't a prominent OSS person just switch anymore?
Exactly. And for that matter, why the hell should Linus care what DE I ( and a great deal of people ) like to use? Just because Linus likes KDE doesn't mean Gnome is a POS.
Still, I have to agree with Raymond - you are almost forced to use third party repositories like freshrpms or dag because the repositories just plain suck.
Then you get stuck in dependency hell because one site doesn't necessarily use the same package names as the other.
And where the hell is Firefox 2 for Fedora anyway? They decided that we don't need it and they're going to hold out for Firefox 3? What the hell's that all about anyway?
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I agree. The absolute decay of the Fedora package repositories and the total and utter stagnation of RPM were my two biggest reasons from moving away from Fedora Core to Ubuntu. I should never have to chase down dependencies -- ever. Especially not for a package that is considered core to the GNOME desktop. Maybe apt and the Ubuntu/Debian package repositories have me absolutely spoiled, but then again, how is Linux ever going to gain desktop marketshare with attitudes like: "Oh, well, just add this switch to your yum command-line to add the updates-testing repository to your update command and that'll work around the problem." The system should make life easy for me.
I don't have a computer so I can go around chasing problems all the time.I need to do real work, and the package system is the LAST thing that should get in my way.
I'm not saying Ubuntu is perfect by any stretch. But in the two years I've been using it, I've only seen one update that caused any problems at all and the mailing lists were filled with "don't update package so-and-so because it is broken" the day the bad package was released, a workaround for those who did get the update was posted just after that, and a fixed package was ready by the next morning. I'm just not seeing that level of response out of the Fedora camp.
My blog
RedHat was my first choice for whenever I wanted a Linux box; because of its long history. It just wouldn't install on my laptop, and I had better things to do than figure out why. Ubuntu was a snap. Synaptic package manager is very intuitive. I just wish it included more geeky items. I know Ubuntu is "for the masses", but it's still Linux after all. However, I was able to use a combination of apt-get and tarball to make it fulfill my latest needs, and it's sitting there happily chugging along. Like all Linux desktops, it's a bit flakey. I have to use keyboard shortcuts to make windows re-appear, and if I had been a real n00b I probably would have had to ask somebody. Still though, the bottom line is that it installed. If it can't do that, game over. The willingness to include proprietary drivers may have had something to do with that.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
But his two main arguments are not valid:
1. He stated that his system got trashed because of what he did and said that it is Fedora fault. And nothing else. He didnt tell what he did exactly. So you can or cannot belive him. But he has not given any details. He said something like "I did something and then my system crashed". But he did'nt specify if he did "rm / -rf" or "apt get update kernel". So this argument is shallow.
2. He stated some retarded stuff about Fedora not including WMF support. First of all I think he mistook WMF with Windows Media. Secondly he stated that Ubuntu provides support for given WMF and Fedora doesn't. Either Fedora and Ubuntu support WMF. Either Fedora and Ubundtu do not support Windows Media.
So he *is* basically stupid because all he said is plain false.
But it's not the fault of Fedora or Ubuntu if two different people setup their own public repository with incompatible versions of packages not in the core repo. It's not even the fault of the individual repo maintainers, because they build all their own packages compatible with the base and with themselves. It's the fault of the user for not being aware of what they're installing. That problem exists on any platform. How many people do you see with Windows boxes laoded with spyware/adware and an inability to play a handful of avi file because they installed 3 different kazaavideocodec packages that were incompatible? It sure was easy to install but not much more usable (in my experience). That's not the fault of Microsoft. I've had the same thing happen on my Mac. It wasn't Apple's fault, it was my fault for installing too much incompatible 3rd party stuff.
There was an effort put forth, last time I used Fedora Core, for the most popular 3rd party repo maintainers to standardize how the built packages and how they versioned their packages, so that the repos would be compatible. But it didn't entirely work, because one of them didn't want to join the club. If memory serves, that lone standout was Livna, which I think somewhat/halfway became Fedora Extras (haven't used Fedora since FC3 I think, might have tried 4). The only thing Fedora can do is maintain a list of 3rd party repo maintainers who are certified compatible with each other on a particular release. Beyond that it's up to the user. Just like on Windows and Mac.
The issue of repos is more visible in Linux because more often than not people on Mac and Windows get extra software direct from the software provider. If you need divx you got to divx.com. If you need The only real exception I can think of is people who are heavy into p2p and get media codec/player packs from their favorite p2p sites. On Linux the model is usually add repo X, install package Y.
I'll listen to him for this, if nothing more.
Best thing around. "Tell me how to do X!" Give 'em the link, and they either realize that they've been assholes, apologize, and try again, or they storm off in a huff and never come back. Both are good.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Most commercial programs do it this way, it is by far the easiest way for non-free applications. But remember, it is not just HD and bandwidth... it's also RAM and disk cache. Not to mention, when a security bug is found in libxyz, it is going to be really fun upgrading all those packages that includes libxyz.
All in all, I do not think that static linking is a good approach, except maybe for a few "emergency" class packages.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.