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Fedora 8 A Serious Threat to Ubuntu
Tubs writes "According to MadPenguin.org's latest article, Fedora 8 from Red Hat is a serious threat to Ubuntu. The author writes, "I was never that swept up with past releases of Fedora. There was nothing compelling about it. But for the first time, I cannot help but feel that the Fedora team has been spoon fed an extra helping of Wheaties, which has put them into overdrive with their accessibility efforts."
I wouldn't consider one open-source project to be a danger to another...
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
when they gain back some serious users - specifically the ones they decided weren't important enough to continue to support.
The Ubuntu zealots are also very vocal and defend the Debian apt system from which Ubuntu gets its package manager. Has yum improved that much to match apt? I doubt.
Posting from an Ubuntu 64 workstation, running several Debian Etch VPS containers in VMWare Server, and a couple of dedicated Debian and FreeBSD boxes on this LAN.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
"having better control over your sound device is just what popular Linux distros need right now."
I think theres probably A THOUSAND THINGS you could say linux distros need right now. So what.
When fedora gets anywhere near usable on the desktop let me know.
Because it assumes the Ubuntu folks are seated idle and doing absolutely nothing.
Fedora is an upgrade treadmill. With Fedora, you're stuck upgrading every 12 months or so, or you can't get security updates anymore. With Fedora, install an LTS version and you're covered for 5 years on the server. That's why I switched.
"I see solid indications that Fedora could dethrown Ubuntu with its latest release."
Well, that choice of *cough* vocabulary does describe a rather enthusiastic dethroning...
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
I've got Fedora 8 on my computer in my office. It's pretty sweet. I've never use ubuntu so I don't really have any basis of comparison.
I wasn't aware that the different distros were in competition though.
what's that now?
Who cares unless it is a serious threat to WINDOWS.
I'm getting tired of the Linux wars... the fight to be the best distro... and still very few people you run into every day have even heard of Linux and want you to figure out why the wireless doesn't work on Vista. Until Microsoft gets some REAL competition, it will be this way, and they won't get real competition if the distros feel it best to fight one another.
The Apple commercial has Mac vs. PC... not Mac vs. Penguin or Mac vs. Solaris, because nobody would care.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
...When are we going to stop seeing distros as opposing forces and stop accepting that it might be nice to have more than one popular distro? SPOILERS: Your favorite distro isn't the best.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
As long as it uses RPM, it will never be a threat.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
This is just an announcement for a series of articles. or did I miss something?
I run fedora 8 on my desktops at home and at work, mainly due to installation ease, and also due to the fact that all of our servers run RHES - consistency being the key. In brief, yum has improved vastly since earlier fedora core releases, the addition of packages yum-fastestmirror and yumex (Yum Extender), allow for a better yuming experience.
The Gnome-online desktop is something else worth mentioning, the incorporation of your various social networks into your desktop is more exciting than anything else reported in the desktop OS world, and the fedora team seem to be on the right track with this one. Dont get me wrong, the infrastructure is in its infancy, but could this be the future Windows killer?
In F/OSS environments we welcome alternatives and diversity.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
I agree. We should be all happy because we actually have freedom on what distro to choose.
I personally don't like this kind of news fomenting wars between opensource projects.
MOVE ALONG NOTHING TO SEE HERE!
So a sound server, yet another proprietary codec installer (which Ubuntu already has), a application that lets you make custom install CDs (I'll note that Ubuntu already has such a project in the works) and a new theme is a threat to Ubuntu's usage?
These aren't even reasons why I use Ubuntu or Kubuntu. Nor would they be reasons for most other people I know who use the *buntu systems on their desktops. I don't even see these as killer features that Ubuntu lacks.
I don't agree with this reviewer.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
What the hell is dethrown, does this person possibly mean dethrone ? The author could at least try some basic spell checking before posting.
I've installed both on the same machine within the past 2 weeks. Once the desktop is up and I'm clicking around it would be very difficult to tell which OS is running on the box except for the backdrop and default color scheme. Gnome 2.20 is pretty much Gnome 2.20 no matter which distro it sits on top of. Icon placement, desktop panels, menu arrangement, they were pretty much identical. Who cares about apt vs yum either, click Applications->Add/Remove Software and point'n'click your way through installing whatever you need installed.
There is no "war" between distros. I can run Firefox on any Linux distro. Same goes for Amarok, K3B, OpenOffice, Thunderbird, etc...
Get over it.
It's going to take more to "beat" Ubuntu than just having someone say "this is going to beat Ubuntu." There's more to Ubuntu than just what's on the disc. Since Fedora 8 is really just the beta version of Red Hat "Global" Desktop, all I'm really hearing here is "me too." Ok, so they prettied up the screens and added some more configuration options? Great. What happens when Fedora 9 comes out? Will I just be able to push a button and seamlessly upgrade the whole thing in place? I doubt it. And what happens if I decide I want paid support? Will Red Hat support my free Fedora download the way Canonical will support Ubuntu? No, they'll insist that I run "Red Hat Enterprise" for that. And where are the free Fedora discs being mailed to anyone who wants, just for the asking?
Ubuntu nailed the winning formula for desktop Linux, just like Red Hat seems to have nailed the winning formula for enterprise Linux. I wouldn't use either one in the other's place.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Used to be a Die Hard Red Hat Fan, switched to Ubuntu a few years ago when RH quit
the desktop biz. I could not be happier with Ubuntu, always stable for me and there
is no way I am going back to rpm based package managers. Apt increased my productivity
by a large magnitude, something I will just not give up.
Got Code?
Mr. Sulu, set maximum magnification on the viewer.
Yet Socrates himself is particularly missed.
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed.
Seriously, anymore they're just GNOME distros; while one might get advantages that the other doesn't have currently, they all go to the common collective and soon enough both distros are using it. Codeina/Codec Buddy, Alacarte (the menu editor), PulseAudio for being desktop neutral and a compelling replacement to ESound, etc.
Reminds me a hell of a lot of the quote from Armageddon (the only memorable thing about that movie): American Components, Russian Components... All made in Taiwan.
... you will see the difference ... In Ubuntu i get right away the message that there is a "restricted driver" available. I can enable this and after a reboot i can enable compiz through special desktop effect. Enabling nvidiain Fedora is already a task on itself. have to search through 20 - 30 packages with names like kmod-nvidia bla bla .. several versions ...rpm .. legacy drivers ... 1094 .. wtf.
...I stopped using Fedora when its librarians couldn't even manage to avoid yum update conflicts. The infamous "ekiga" incident cost Fedora users when even ESR bailed on them.
I use Centos 5.1 on my personal server, and Ubuntu 7.10 on one of my laptops.
One thing I noticed recently, Fedora no longer supports many common Ethernet cards out of the box. This is very discouraging -- it's one thing if you have to look for drivers and download. But to not be able to access an old ethernet card is terrible -- it makes the installation disc a frustrating experience.
The interesting thing about this is that RH doesn't even want desktop users -- there just aren't that many profitable desktop market segments. The only reason they even pay lip service to the desktop is to keep Ubuntu at bay.
The Ubuntu people have a serious problem -- they've got the desktop market for linux sewn up, but it's not worth anything. So they have to leverage their desktop market share to try and get web server business.
As someone who has run a hosting ISP for 10 years, I can tell you that hosting is like 80% Red Hat and its variants ie Centos -- just do a search for "linux dedicated server"
Sadly, the only market left for Fedora is RH server administrators who want to run a similar environment on their desktops. And those people are more likely to run Centos as their desktop anyway.
I knew Fedora was dying when I saw the RH5 beta program. I mean, what's the point of Fedora at all at that point?
..open source.
Media tactic, competitive tactics, licensing manipulation tactics, etc..
As both projects are open source, as are many others, they all can use the best of any of these.
But in open source it all really comes down to a sum of humanities produced value.
Selecting "ubuntu" as a lable for a linux distribution is in recognition of this.
And of course it doesn't make Ubuntu the best by just naming it this way, but it does point out a recognition of what makes things "best".
There are so many tactic that work outside of open source, but open source is doesn't fix in supporting those tactics.
However, because of this non-fit, you can always identify an outsiders attempt to apply such tactics.
The different distributions of linux, the value is no so much in competition of the same general user system but in specialization.
Its good we have an overall target of improving desktop and server systems, but the time has come when this flushes out that such system are similiar enough that there is little difference if any thing more than a distro name.
When the magazine industry first started there was a target of general interest publication and at some point when this was filled competition lead to the beginnings of specialization. Today we have magazines that specialize in more things that only a few are aware of them all. The same is beginning to happen with open source OS packages. Multimedia distros like dynebolic, artistx, studio64 etc.. and there are others. What the specialization provides is better integration of specialized packages, kernel tuning, etc...
Specialization is where open source competition is and also where there are fewer competing, if more than one.
They can both package up the latest software, Yum is nearly as good as apt as far as I can tell. They both offer GNOME and . . Firefox.
I mean what noticeable difference is there?
In the end, what lasting advantage can one have over the other if they both have access to the same range of open source components?
I have used the latest Fedora 8 and Ubuntu and I can't get excited about either of them. Pulseaudio was and is an utter pain in the neck to get working with Enemy Territory, Skype and Firefox all needing different workarounds and what is so astounding about it from a user's point of view? After the effort, stuff works like it did except that Youtube videos now randomly cause Firefox to crash.
There's nothing happening in user interfaces - they are stagnating and Fedora 6,7,8 and Gutsy Gibbon all seem the same to me from that point of view. The new 3D effects cause reliability problems and do only a little bit more than nothing for usability.
There's a lot of "lets-learn-programming-by-implementing-what-others-have-done-before" going on but not a lot of innovation.
This is all just my personal opinion.
Does RH officially support Fedora now? Or is it still their 'sandbox'?
If that is the case, then there is still no 'threat'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I don't know. Personally I think they both have their strengths and weaknesses. I have switched to Ubuntu (not LTS) and have had only one technical problem with the distribution, which was fixed with the next apt-get upgrade. With Fedora I always had the impression I was working with something broken. The other thing I like about Ubuntu is it's lite install especially with server. Fedora is just too bloated even on a minimal install. Fedora does give someone a cheap way of learning Red Hat's distribution even though certain features are not in RHEL yet. It has been a few releases, since I have used Fedora, so objectively I need to try it out again. The one think I do like about Fedora is their documentation organization. In contrast, I find Ubuntu's documentation to be here there and everywhere.
The new 3D effects cause reliability problems and do only a little bit more than nothing for usability. Damn, having a bad hair day today? ;-)
Having worked with both, including making my own RPMs and specfiles, I can safely say, that using RPM is a dream compared to trying to do anything interesting with apt.
.deb format. I still have to see a package manager that beats APT in practice (and that includes commercial systems - and it's not that APT cannot improved...). Why the RPM people went with yum instead of using (or modifying) a proved solution is beyond me.
It's weird that having worked with packages, you confuse the package format (RPM/DEB) with the package manager (APT/YUM). The main reason why ubuntu rocks is APT, not the
Here's the updated summary soon to appear after Taco makes his edit:
Not every darned scenario in the world must resolve to some sort of Darwinian competition. Sometimes people just like to create at the peek of their powers for the sheer joy of creating something amazing, and not because they feel the need to destroy the competition. Ask the best painters, musicians and writers if their best work came about because they felt threatened --or if they felt in love with their medium and with the world in general. --Or rather, if you are a coder, how was the best code you ever wrote generated? Were you wearing your Nikes or were you just obsessively having fun trying to solve a problem?
The ideas of Darwinism and Competition certainly hold validity, but they are also two of the most highly abused concepts ever invented. Sheesh, the whole 'final solution' thing was based on Darwin. Talk about an abuse of concept!
-FL
1. Bloated System
2. Apt beats yum hands down
My Linux experience started with Fedora Core 1 but after couple of releases I had switched to debian.
Why is it bad that Fedora is backed by Red Hat? Why do you even ask "Has yum improved?" when you admit you don't know (or care) about the answer. Asking "How can Fedora be good if it is backed by Red Hat?" and "Has yum improved?" are both empty questions meant to cast both into a bad light instead of offering some insight instead of investigating the issue. I honestly never understood why people don't like "yum" but like "apt" when they seem to match each other feature for feature. There maybe something deep down that one does that the other doesn't but at a high level: "# yum install firefox" and "# apt-get install firefox" are equivalent.The Ubuntu zealots are also very vocal and defend the Debian apt system from which Ubuntu gets its package manager. Has yum improved that much to match apt? I doubt.
Beyond this, I really don't see why Ubuntu or Fedora need to "beat" each other. We should be celebrating the difference in strengths and the choice. I'm never convinced by fanboys on any side who think everyone needs to their favorite distro.
Now this is a truly awful article. The article isn't a review of Fedora 8. It's someone blithering that they're going to do a review of Fedora 8. This is a review of the press release.
The author has trouble with English, HTML, and the concept of free software. If you think the text is painful, try "view source". The page was apparently generated with Microsoft FrontPage, then hacked by hand. Badly. There's code from at least five sources, some of it in Visual Basic.
Notice the link right after the article: "Click here for prices on Linux distributions".
Madpenguin.org isn't exactly known for their editorial prowess (neither is Slashdot, but that's well established). Think of it as an opinionated guy who thinks that he's actually being taken seriously, without realizing the fact that he has no actual talent at what he does.
I had used Fedora for years, primarily because it was the only distro I could get to work on our bleeding edge PowerMacs in our lab. However, as we acquired more machines the need to reinstall machines to get new versions became tedious. Yes, occasionally an upgrade could be forced, but often it just did not work. I first tried Ubuntu via the VMWare Browser Appliance, using it for some development on a Windows laptop. The biggest change was converting certain idioms from yum to apt, but that was relatively minor in the long run. The next time one of my desktops reached Fedora end-of-live, I figured I might as well try Ubuntu since I have to reinstall anyways and haven't looked back... So long Fedora, it was nice knowing you.
Hear Hear!
I've used SuSE 10, 10.1 and 10.2... The package manager was a lot slower, if it would work at all... I don't know if Fedora has that problem, but that's one of the reasons I went away from rpm based distros... I know I should blame it on the package format.
There are two hings that really bug me about Yum. First, Yum is s-l-o-w! I don't know for sure, but I suspect it is because it keeps all of its information in XML format and has to be reparsed every time you do anything. Second, I do not see a good way to find which package to install. Using yum search spits out an unordered list containing every mention of the word making it hard to find the wheat in all the chaff. What a bother.
/var/cache/apt/pkgcache.bin). You do need to apt-get update occasionally but I have cron do that at night so it is always ready. As for searching for a package, package.debian.org (or the Ubuntu equivalent) does it for me. I can either browse by category or search by package name or description. Much more functional (except when the network is down). Locally, apt-search works wonders also.
Apt, on the other hand is *fast* (probably because it keeps the data in a preparsed binary format in
Lest someone accuse me of not giving it a fair shake... I started off using RedHat back in the 5.2 days. I was extremely proficient, serving as a sysadmin up util the 7.x disasters when I decided that RH no longer considered me part of their demographic. Someone at work pointed me to Debian and, once I got over it's different approach to things, found that I really liked it. Since then, I have also used Ubuntu which I recommend to everyone getting into Linux for the first time. Periodically, I try various other distributions just to see what is out there but I always end up back at Debian for my personal machines. Mostly because DEB tools are so much better than RPM. As for Debian vs Ubuntu, I always come back to Debian, primarily because it is hard to argue with 15,000+ packages catering to my every whim. (Even so, I often find the answers to my Debian problems in an Ubuntu forum!)
It has taken me a while but I think I finally have figured out the difference between the RPM-way and the DEB-way. RPM-based systems are based on a "closed world assumption"... It is assumed that the only packages you will need to install are the ones provided by the distribution. This is consistent with their "commercial approach" but makes it very difficult to find and install software that is not part of the official distribution. And because only the most popular packages are part of most RPM-based distributions, I often need to look for external packages. (As much of a service as it is, installing via rpm-find is less than successful. I never know if the package I am installing will destabilize my system. Once again, the uncertainty with installing external packages is a symptom of the closed-world assumption.)
DEB-based systems, on the other hand, are based on an "open-world assumption"... That there may be many sources of packages for your system. Clearly the canonical tools are geared to maintaining packages that are part of the official repository, but they installing external package are also easy. (The caveat that bad packages can make your system unstable still applies but I have almost no trouble with external packages in practice.) I have decided that I much prefer open-world package management systems to closed-world ones. Others may feel the opposite and thats fine. Competition is a good thing.
In short, I am glad that Ubuntu is making Debian easier for the masses. It is also feeding back improvements to Debian. A symbiotic relationship.
As for Fedora unseating Ubuntu? Not as long as users have needs that a closed-world distribution does not fill. Branching out with a RPM-based system is painful; branching out with a open-world DEB-based system is nearly painless in my experience. The difference is so clear that I will not go back. YMMV.
Choice is a good thing, but I would say excessive choice with little benefit is a problem. Open source software means one choice is an infinite number of choices because you can change whatever you want, no one is forcing you to do anything. Multiple distros, each with their own separate versions of Gnome and KDE, each using different config panels and menu systems. It's a problem.
If there was at least a baseline common platform for things like apps, drivers, config panels, menu systems, look and feel etc, it wouldn't matter, but every one of them change these things constantly. It doesn't surprise me that mainstream users aren't flocking to Linux on the desktop, its a mess.
Why have they finally ditched rpm for a sensible package format now?
Or are they claiming yum works?
May you go blind in the very near future. See if you still don't care about accessibility.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
...is getting hold of the games people. That IS the last bit they need to conquer. Me? I've been a Linux user for over 10 years now, but I've always had an installment of Windows on a partition or a separate computer - just for that moment of online-gaming with the friends, can't dump the friends because of an Operating system - but I'd really like to say goodbye! Get the games - and windows goes BYE BYE!
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Most of us? People who only know English are a distinct minority.
Any RPM distribution I've tried has annoyed me no end. Many people think apt and deb are superior. You can get apt for rpm, but it's not the same.
Debian based distros and Gentoo are the easiest to keep in a nice working state.
Joe Sixpack calls a computer with Windoze installed a PC, and he calles a computer with OSX installed a Mac. Dumb, but this is how it is.
The biggest difference in my mind between them is that if you install Fedora, and then decide you want paid support, you have to migrate to RHEL, which may not contain the same stuff as the latest version of Fedora.
With Ubuntu, you install the edition you want (Ubuntu / Kubuntu / Edubuntu / Server / Whatever) and if you decide you'd like to purchase some support for it, you just pay Canonical and start asking questions.
Most people out there just want something that works, and don't care to ever know how or why. Reseller Advocate http://www.reselleradvocate.com/ is a trade mag for (duh) Resellers. Last month, the "What Matters" column was "Stuff that Works." It was all about the non-workability of Vista contrasted with the workability of XP. Even Linux was mentioned (which is rare for that mag...) but with the phrase "Would it give Linux a chance to displace Windows?" The last line of the article is A quote of what is needed in the reseller industry. "Look, our top three OS choices get at least 20% higher 'it just works' score than the new Windows." This is really where Linux needs to look... People that don't care how, just that it works. That is most of the vendors, and most of the customers, weather we like it or not.
Support. With Ubuntu, you have ubuntuforums.org which is the most noob friendly support forum I have ever seen, and can purchase support from Canonical.
With Fedora, you have to forums and lists which or noob predatory on occasions, and for support you have to reinstall.
There are some upgrade differences after 6 months as well, but those are minor compared to the above.
If there was at least a baseline common platform
Empirical evidence shows that this does lead to even worse a situation. Do not cars have a basically identical configuration of their PUI (Physically Usable Instrumentation), but still do people seem to be unaware of how to steer them properly, avoiding crashes that sometimes brick the vehicles and freeze their users to death, especially in winter time when one should expect everything to run extra smooth?
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
I know we all love a certain Disto more than all the others. Anyone you can say they love any Linux Distro has already wandered off the edge of normative behaviour. I believe this to be true because my mother failed to notice any really difference when I replaced her old Pentium 4 (Win XP home) with a new iMac. The change in OS would have been extreme for me. She had a slight learning curve she attributed to it being new, overcame that curve and was off to the races.
I don't really use Slackware anymore, but it was my first Linux Distro and it will always have a special place in my heart. Right now I have both Ubuntu and Ferdora 8. Side by side, literally. One on a notebook the other on this workstation. I was just curious because I really don't have a strong preference to either. They are just two sides of the same coin as far as I can tell. I know some feel that the differences are huge, enough to rant and rave about, but I don't see it.
I'm talking about user experience. I still feel that a "Linux War" is a tempest in a teacup, no one outside the cult cares who leads it. And since you have to type commands to get simple things (compared to XP, OSX or even Vista) to work (did I just say Vista works... sorry), like watch a movie or listen to MP3s... you know, stuff people do with their computers, Linux continues to pose little threat. If replaced my mom's system with either a Ubuntu or Fedora system and spent as much time (and I mean use a stopwatch) to set them up, she would hate it. And anyone who believes otherwise has lost touch with what non-geeks are willing to do to get their computer on.
I personally don't like this kind of news fomenting wars between opensource projects. What war? It's just friendly rivalry. If one distro gets a few lines of coverage, no big deal. Next time some other distro will. The only ones who get upset are the rampant fanboys, who kind of embarrass the rest of us anyway.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
was a real nightmare.
I almost gave up installing Fedora 8 in my sister's laptop in the end.
Once I removed PulseAudio - things began working again.
Apart from that (and after much sweat) Fedora looked pretty OK.
But I doubt any casual user would have the same patience.
Fedora has it's niche - and many competing (even excelling) strengths.
But it is definitely not for the non-techie and complete newbie to Linux.
Slackware user here.
While GNOME is the default DE there is no hope for either. GNOME is worse than windows 3.1 as a desktop environment, The utilities have come very far but gdm is broken. And there is no theme or compositor that can solve that. It is too slow and resource hungry yet quirk-ridden.
X is largely at fault but I have switched to XFCE Xubuntu and I believe that with a little more polish it would surpass Ubuntu easily. Faster and cleaner. GNOME's "goo windows" might be fun to watch at for a while but have no real use. While GNOME stays as the wm of choice there'll be no Linux in the desktop. KDE 4 might be a little better but the GTK-QT divide adds to the unpolished feel of the Linux GUI.
Before I switched to Linux, I thought it was all the Kernel's fault but in fact it is very fast and efficient, close to FreeBSD. 'startx' turns my 2.6 GHz CPU into a 486, and GNOME turns it into a 2.5MHz Z80. Oh, and my graphics card is supported fully so everything is hardware accelerated.
1. Canonical would have to crap out another release as fundamentally screwed up as 7.04 was. I can see this happening if they keep focusing on eye candy instead of fixing things like the volume controls GNOME (still completely broken in 7.10).
2. Red Hat would have to reimburse me for the support subscription I'd just bought when they forked Fedora and reneged on our contract. Somehow I don't see this happening...
for my tastes, .deb is the superior format, not apt. i dont want to go in detail here.
.deb which rocks.
it is the combination of apt and
deb is a superior packaging format, but that's not what makes Debian Debian. It's the (much maligned) DFSG and their strict packaging policies that make it great.
God Fucking Damnit
Please say it ain't so! Now where's my nice (Micro)soft security blanket?
Have gnu, will travel.
Wake Up! *Offers Anonymous Coward a cup of coffee*
Accessibility upgrades are always welcome. I've always been annoyed by the fact that there is almost no standardised accessibility tools under Linux distributions. I usually don't use mainstream distributions, but they should be complimented for their superior accessibility integration relative to less used distributions.
I have to admit I'm a Fedora user, something that took my by surprise in recent years, but as far as Linux distributions go, Fedora leaves little to be desired.
I started using Linux way back in the day with RedHat 6.0, purchased in a box at Office Depot (back when such a thing were possible--they even had FreeBSD in a box). Actually, the first distributions I purchased was Mandrake because it "looked easy," but RedHat started looking easier after Mandrake's X server would never stop crashing, so I exchanged the two in the store.
I was pleased with RedHat. It was stable and robust--a solid, no-nonsense Unix clone. I used it faithfully for some time until I found out I could get SuSE through my school free of charge (back when SuSE came in a giant box and cost an arm). Getting excited about SuSE's advanced configuration tools and massive package repository (on CD), I never looked back. A year or two later I married BSD and only tried Linux distros occasionally.
I kept trying RedHat back when it was just RedHat, pining for the golden days of 6.0, when a full install was only half a gig and everything ran full speed on my 586 with 40mb of RAM. RedHat got huge faster than I was buying new computers, so I threw up my hands in resignation and basically never used any Linux distro again because of this perplexing resource-gobbling problem.
As I sat in my BSD bunker, I kept reading the news and seeing all the delicious looking technology advancements made by Linux. When 2.6 was released, I was frothing at the mouth--this was something to take seriously. I vowed to get back into Linux, but didn't do much about it for a long time.
One day I participated in a programming competition hosted by the ACM, and I noticed all the machines ran Fedora. I have to admit it was rather impressive to look at, and something about it felt rather nice and attractive, so I went ahead and downloaded it at home.
Fedora was a pleasant surprise to an old Linux expatriate. I frequently dabbled in other distros after that, but I always went back to Fedora. It wasn't until Ubuntu became fancy/popular that I was able to run another distro for months at a time, so I did the Fedora/Ubuntu shuffle, basically using them both based on whichever made a more recent release.
Just recently, after comparing Gutsy Gibbon on my laptop to Fedora 8, Fedora was just the clear winner. For an experimental technology distribution, Fedora seems to garner remarkable stability--I've had Ubuntu installations trip over their own feet and muck up everything, but no such problem with Fedora.
Fedora regularly offers things that other distros don't touch. The default setup uses LVM. Strong SELinux out of the box and a tough software firewall turned on by default. Hardened userland settings, like non-administrative users having no sbin in their path. Fedora may seem like "Linux for dummies" since their team focuses so much on ease of use and targetting a general Desktop audience, but don't be fooled... this is not your Grandpa's unix. Fedora 8 sweetens the deal with much improved desktop front end and including some GPL Java that isn't just freaking GCJ.
So, for those of you who are reading this and never once tried Fedora, or tried it several releases ago but not recently, I urge you to give it a look.
I was flamed for this, but I'll state it again: Ubuntu tried PulseAudio by default before Fedora. The Ubuntu developers set it to default in Hoary until a huge flow of bug reports came in. I am curious whether Fedora will suffer the same fate, or if PulseAudio has matured enough from when it was called Polypaudio.
Consequently, Hoary was the release of Ubuntu with horrible audio problems ranging for ESD lag to polypaudio not playing sounds in some programs to OSS emulation causing only one program being capable of playing sounds at a time.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
And never will. I used Red Hat's distro back when it was RED HAT 6. That alone was a nightmare that made me cringe at the very thought of rpm distro's. And after that mandrake 8. After those experiences, I vowed never to tough any rpm based distro again. I understand there yum, and you know what? I used yum on red hat back then too. And it was worse then rpm hell. I'm not trying to be trollish. If your a new user, as I was back then, You don't want ANY problems. It didn't help I had a dell, but thats beside the point. The first impression is always the most important one. Even though I despise ubuntu,If forced to chose, I would chose a apt based system.
Restore the madness of youth's lechery
Don't ever forget that. When you install Fedora, it's understood that the software being installed may not be production software. Fedora exists to be a test bed for RHEL, and that equates to accepting that some stuff just ain't gonna' work. On the lighter side, you can run Fedora with this understanding and help file bug reports to make RHEL and CentOS a better product. Ubuntu, on the other hand, is not a test bed for anything. There may be a certain amount of bleeding-edge stuff in there, but the intent of the distribution is far different than that of Fedora. Fedora is a good way of giving back to the community if you choose to follow up with bug reports.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
Guy #1: Ubuntu is the shit and all others bow before it. [Reason why]
Guy #2: STFU nUb! Fedora kicks Ubuntus ass! [Reason why]
Guy #1: Does not!
Guy #2: Does too!
How is Linux ever supposed to be successful if we have all of this in-fighting? I have used both and find it difficult to decide which is the better operating system. They both have their strengths and weaknesses.
Ubuntu is easy to install and easy to use. It runs smoothly on older machines. But I find the use of before doing anything of value to be irritating.
Fedora has many different options for what desktop environment to install right out of the gate. Also it comes with many features that I find value-added. I find the clean interface flattering to the eye. But I don't like how takes so long to fetch a list of applications. Most of the time it takes longer than the app install just to get the name of the app on the screen.
The game.
Mod parent up - parent actually read the article and saw it for what it was - meaningless crap with sales links. That it's on a website called "Mad Penguin" which is proudly run on FreeBSD just further illustrates the point.
Actually, the .rpm packages use a low-level package manager which is also called rpm. So .deb and .rpm packages and I much prefer rpm.
the comparison of rpm (the program) against apt-get makes sense. I've worked with both
From a package manaagement stand point, yum (the icing on top of rpm) is getting better and will likely
match apt-get soon in features and speed.
drivers - On Linux distros, Linux drivers are the only possibility. No choice there really.
config panels - GNOME or KDE
menu systems - GNOME or KDE
look and feel - GNOME or KDE
When it comes to "Windows replacement" or "Mac replacement" technologies, there is really only two choices currently: GNOME or KDE.
And that is a good thing, as they keep each other on their toes. Now, there are an infinite number of choices, if you know where to look. But most people only have to choose between GNOME or KDE. Look at all the main, user friendly distros.
Linux on the desktop is a mess? That's true, but compared to Windows they look pretty damn organized. Can you say "SPYWARE?" However, on Windows this type of malady is accepted as a part of life, which doesn't have to be the case.
The thing I like about Ubuntu is that much of the software I had to hand-compile under Fedora is available with full functionality via apt-get on Ubuntu. Very nice. I don't know if Fedora 8 fixed this annoyance because I made the switch as F8 was released.
Ultimately, I muck about with the distro so much it doesn't really matter to me all that much anymore where it comes from.
One pet peeve for both Ubuntu and Fedora is the lack of support for having multiple monitors in a way that is easily configurable. I had to muck about directly with xorg.conf on Ubuntu as much as I had to do under Fedora to get all 3 of my monitors to come up properly! Come on, guys! This is a no-brainer on Windows and the Mac. Why is this still a pain under Linux???
Overall, I like Ubuntu a bit better than Fedora at this point -- though another pet peeve is that their default desktop is Gnome and not KDE. A minor nit, but one I find pestering.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
I agree, this story is useless and lame.
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
The OSS competition is EXACTLY what you want. Yes, it is there. Everybody wants to pretend that it does not exists, but it does and it always will. The best part about it, is that it really is Darwinian in nature; the best survives, with the lesser occupying a niche arena until it has the chance to get better. For example, the OSS world has THE standard for web servers (apache). But is that the only one? Nope. We have numerous others, but they are in niches. Likewise, we have sendmail, which is also the mail standard. But postifx is up and coming. GNOME and KDE are still battling it out. Etc, etc... This is VERY healthy. The best part of this is that each project is free to use the others ideas and even code to adopt the better parts. This is Genetic Algorithms at its best.
The real problems come in when you think that there is competition, but there is not. In particular, on ANY of the closed systems that also sell the app software. When that happens, there is no real competition. Apple and Windows are the 2 best examples of that. They both shut out competition in the name of helping the users, but in reality, helping their bottom line. Apple makes up for it, but infusing itself with the results from OSS's competition. Basically, the strongest of the apple and windows world is decided by jobs and gates, as well as their bottom lines, not their users.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
if you think it's a threat now, just wait until Fedora 12 comes out next year!
Accessibility is important as it opens new markets for Linux. In many countries this kind of features are required for government use. I would also imagine that not caring for people with disabilities could leave corporate users in some countries open to lawsuits or additional cost when integrating employees that happen to get blind or otherwise disabled during their employment.
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
Yes, i just wasted two days on downloading it, burning it to a DVD and installing it on two different machines, just to write the previous note on /.
:) In other words, something that is easy to use (to me).
Obviously i did all the fuss to vent some steam.
Obviously it wasn't because Ubuntu isn't that easy to use, right?
My problem is that a GPL'd driver back from 2005 didn't find its way into the kernel of 7.10, and yeah, i used to own my machine's root password. If ubuntu does it differently, it isn't my problem, i will just use something that i got used to
And that's what i said, it wasn't easy to me, i got something easier.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Like the old margerine ad claiming "there is no difference" this piece reads like an ad. I would hesitate to put any stock in it for a number of reasons. Having installed and configured both I cannot see how Fedora 8 is anything but YARHR (yet another red hat release) i.e., bumping the version as "development theater" with ittle actual improvement. There's little difference bttn F8 and F7 much less any of the earlier releases.
Since installation is similar (though the Ubuntu "live" CD allows for better hardware driver validation), the first thing to compare is the gui package front-ends. Both are good but Synaptic is better than Yumex, far better in actual use. It is intuitive for those who are not Linux gurus where Yumex is not. Deb packages also tend to have fewer dependencies and there are more of them. Firefox3 for example, was available to Ubuntu users first.
Second most important item is the kernel, mainly the wireless drivers. Ubuntu wins here, particularly on laptops and older hardware. Example: adding a wep key. Click and paste in Ubuntu where it's easier to edit the poorly documented text files in Fedora.
One of my pet peeves is default security. Run 'netstat -anp' on a newly installed RH box and you'll be shocked to see how much is running and listening for network connections. Big difference from Ubuntu where you will likely see a much smaller process table and only ports 22 (ssh) and 68 (dhcp) open to the world.
Otherwise both have their high and low points. The big downer is the stuff that gets "deprecated" and made incompatible with previous release for no good reason. This is mostly GNU's fault to be sure. Sometimes I think they break stuff just to differentiate Linux from Unix. I really dislike Linux upgrades because so much breaks, far more than in a BSD, IBM, and Sun OS upgrades. Rewriting shell scripts to account for parameter differences that have no evident rational gets old after the 4th or 5th time (say "nslookup has been deprecated" three times fast, but wait, now it's been un-deprecated, ah but the output format has been changed, again...). But I digress, and am grateful to all FOSS coders, especially those who don't make work difficult for those of us who install, upgrade, and manage their systems.
Not really sure why RedHat is allowing its distribution to fall so far behind. I suppose they're fat and happy to get paid for RHEL support, RHEL bugfixes, and RHEL repos. Like SCO before them, IMO, it's a short-term business model that won't hold up to Debian's community process much longer.
I have to use centos every so often, and RPM's just annoy the hell out of me. That said though, I've only ever used yum to install apt-rpm, I then type apt-get -f install and on a default installation, it will still fix dependencies. I then use apt for everything.
RPMs aren't so bad when you have something sane managing them.
The would be linux n00b would be better off asking 'which distribution is most popular' rather than 'which distribution is best', then going with the most popular. Chances are that's the major distribution which is easiest to use and which has a large user base (lots of online help/forums if needed). Asking 'which is best' just opens the can of worms you refer to regarding choice, as some who answer will advocate for whatever it is they like, while others will answer fairly, if unhelpfully, 'there is no best distribution, it depends on what you want, yadda, yadda, yadda'.
Personally, I think the abundance of choice with Linux distributions is a good thing, and something Linux users with at least some experience may find interesting to explore. But it can be bewildering to the potential new user, especially if they make the mistake of asking which is best.
Loose lips lose spit.
While I've test driven the new fedora(8), and have found it to be by far the best fedora release to date, there is one fundamental problem I have with Fedora... the 13 month support cycle. I think to gain major acceptance on corporate desktops near and far, you have to have a long-term support cycle, ala Ubuntu LTS(or redhat, or suse enterprise). Also, if you're developing a product based off of a fedora release, what happens to your product when the release you've chosen goes out of support, and new bugfixes or updates are no longer applied to the distribution? If you released your code/product with say an Ubuntu LTS release, you know that you have up to 36 months of updates/bugfixes. To me it would make sense to develop code or a product that will be supported for a longer period.
As a sysadmin, it also makes alot more sense to roll out desktops of a product that will have long term support. I don't want to have to upgrade all the machines to a current release every 13 months.
All that being said. There are things that I love about fedora. I love how fedora handles automated installations(kickstart). I've had to install fedora with the same setup on several machines(all the same hardware), and the kickstart installations make that an absolute breeze. I like how SELinux is an option, as is a built in firewall. It's nice to see that emphasis on security.
As with every distro, Fedora has it's good and bad points, but the support cycle is the real dealbreaker for me.
All things are subject to interpretation, whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and n
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
The Fedora features list for this release 8 includes many "100%" delivered features with this one odd exception. What 5% was left incomplete? Clicking on the link reveals 2 - 3 months to get it into a really awesome state and some stuff about D-Bus and wpa_supplicant over D-Bus. Is this really that much more than Debian, and are the release notes as critical as implied to serious users?
How difficult do linux users here find it to port their data & apps from one linux distro to another? It seems to me that something to automate that task as much as possible would be welcomed.
i wish i could stop
I think that in fact qualifies him to be reviewing Linux for new users.
Or can your grandmother write raw HTML better than Frontpage hacks it up?
Didn't think so.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
I hate it when I get to a story late. Been using Fedora for a couple of weeks now. The thing that almost killed me was finding out that it does not allow you to use a static IP address.
Lots of info available on this via google. The best fix I found was to revert the Network Manager to the one from F7.
http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=172205&highlight=networkmanager
You gotta admit that's pretty lame.
Tony
. waterwingz
Lack of an official "non-free" repository.
Yes, I am well aware that this will never happen given the legal issues involved, however as an end-user, this is the biggest pain-in-the-butt reason not to use Fedora, which is a fine distro in itself.
And yes, I know you can "just add Livna", but sometimes Livna doesn't have what you want but another repo does... and then you get caught in the painful process of evaulating which repos contain quality software, which conflict with each other, which alter the "core" of Fedora, etc.
I know there are efforts to unify the repos, and I wish them luck, but in the meantime, my lazy ass will be running Ubuntu.
As any one use rpm lately? Even with the yum front-end, it's still a PITA.
Well as a long time linux user. You can make it as simple or as complex as you want. The easiest way is to setup a separate /home partition. There are tons of other ways from NFS mounting, Samba PDC roaming profiles, etc...
I use unison onto my server but its whatever your needs are.
And Picard was the better captain.
Don't call me back. Give me a call back. Bye. So yeah. But bye our, well, but alright we are on a shirt this chill.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
As long as Canonical keeps delivering free CD's, Fedora shall never beat Ubuntu.
Until Fedora can be tried and installed from a single CD-ROM (not two, not DVD), I'm hesitate to play with it.
Just when i start taking an interest in the linux flavor of the month, the flavor changes.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
Nice argument. Why would Slashdotters care to see grandma review a press release for a linux distro, again?
It took me several weeks (first time and early adopter penalties) to get F6 running on my HP DV7000 laptop. Video, touchpad and especially wireless on broadcom were all issues. I never did get F7 wireless running. I gave up on wireless after a week or so, all posted methods failed miserably, and sadly wiped F7 off my system. So I switched to Ubumtu 6/7 with good results. I especially enjoyed the Synaptic software installer. After reading this post, I went on to read the release notes for F8 and decided to give it a try. It took a couple hours to get everything going. The system correctly loaded the bc4 module but I still had to use fwcutter for the broadcom microcode but thats really a BroadCom issue and not F8's. wpa_supplicant was installed by default but not wpa_supplicant-gui for some reason. NetworkManager actually worked and it was a done deal. Power management seems much improved from F6/7 and suspend almost works, someday NetManager will be able to restart wireless by its self on a suspend. So I have F8 running as well as Ubuntu 7 but have better security with selinux enforcing etc. Even though it still took a bit more tech savvy than an average computer user might have, I'd say that F8 is a contender again and good job to the Fedora teams and keep it up!
I agree that upgrades are Fedora's weak spot. I upgraded from 7 to 8 without reinstalling or burning CDs, but it required some googling and a few "magic incantations" (otherwise known as command-line stuff). I'd like to see one-click upgrades like Ubuntu has.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
The LSB was put together by a bunch of companies who deliberately excluded Debian, so it's no surprise it pushes RPM support. But since RedHat still can't seem to get the bugs out of RPM (I last had a hopelessly corrupt RPM database earlier this year), frankly it's RedHat and Novell that ought to be thinking about switching.
If Ubuntu switches to RPM, I'll switch back to Debian.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
That headline will read, to the general population:
unknown thingy a serious threat to another unknown thingy.
Seriously, there's still people out there who:
- don't know WTF Linux is
- don't know Linux is free
- think all computers on the planet run Windows
I like many things about fedora but once it's updated (which is very often), you must upgrade your system if you want keep up. Where as Ubuntu releases are supported much longer! The article also talks about how great the fedora nodoka theme is, I searched google images and cannot see much different from ubuntu theme. Besides, most people do not use the default theme nor do they download a theme, they create their own look. I would not suggest anyone use fedora over ubuntu or debian, unless you have system hardware that fedora supports and ubuntu or debian doesn't. If this is the case, you are probably better off with SUSE.
Ubuntu IS the greatest thing ever. What other easy to use hegemonic Linux distro is going to force a hideous brown on your desktop insuring that Microsoft will never lose their hegemony?
Steve Ballmer
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Here are facts:
acpi-support (Ubuntu) Confirmed Critical
pm-utils (Fedora) Invalid Unknown redhat-bugs #391671
"Then we have the CodecBuddy, Fedora's approach to dealing with restricted codecs. What I found most refreshing was educating the user in the immediate space rather than merely telling them they might be breaking the law and then providing a link to another page. Very cool. And of course, this page just made my day because the person who wrote it did so by speaking plain English, instead of boring us with maybes and possibilities regarding legalities. Providing me as a user with a clear reason why I should be using open formats was really quite refreshing."
I just install mplayer or vlc and everything just works don`t know what is this about.Don`t understand why are restricted codecs a mess in linux, I have no problems with them, and I use MP3,divx and play DVDs all the time.
"Fedora Spins. I love this idea - a Fedora release for gamers, developers and those who are interested in working with electronics outside of just computing. If there is one thing that is becoming obvious to me, it is Fedora's attack on Ubuntu."
Fedora is NOT atacking ubuntu, it`s not called atacking it`s called RACEING, distros can`t atack one anther all they can do is compete.
"Then we have their new theme. OK, let's be honest, I'm getting pretty tired of the same old Ubuntu theme over and over. Yes, it takes just a minute to change it, but when trying to attract new users, it helps to have something attractive to look at. And I must admit, Fedora's Nodoka is definitely a clean look without being totally boring. Sweeet!"
If you don`t like the default theme then change it, GNOME and KDE comes with a lot of themes and color chemes, no one is forcing you to use the default theme!
The main thing is that Fedora can`t atack Ubuntu, saying the oposite is like saying that a nation is atacking itself, this article doesn`t show any new feature that (k/x)ubuntu doesn`t have and fedora has, then if I`m not provern wrong fedora is NOT better than ubuntu.
All the Linux companies are helping each other in the development of software, with the collaboration of substantial amounts of people doing things just for the fun of it.
They compete in service, but in general stuff that proves god in one distro quickly finds its way into others.
This is the way it should be, companies failing to play this game will be abandoned by users and developers like hot potatoes.
So tone down the incendiary, unnecessary confrontational tone. It is completely unnecessary and unwarranted.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You missed the point. It would be fine if the split was Gnome/KDE.
The split is between each distros version of those desktops, they change stuff all the time. Where the buttons are on a specific panel, what the app menu looks like, etc. They also have a habit of changing Gnome every few months, panels disappear, configuration options get reduced to single buttons on a small window. Even if the distros weren't changing stuff, the desktops themselves change constantly. When stuff changes this much it becomes difficult to support end users.
The KDE panel for configuring Wi-Fi just changed recently in kubuntu 7.10, you now can only let the system autonegotiate WPA2 and DHCP, or you can manually enter the IP info and enter a WEP key. Yes there is no option whatsoever to choose LEAP, RADIUS, WPA2, WPA, etc. It was there in the past. It's there in suse, gone in ubuntu. Thats a split between the same version of the same desktop just because the distro is different. Ridiculous and unnecessary.
Next, drivers are a bigger problem than they seem. As a developer you have 2 choices, either GPL your driver and hope someone cares enough to develop it to the point that mainline will accept it (Which could take so much time the hardware is obsolete), or you can compile your driver for every version of each distro. It's GPL or nothing and a lot of companies are just going to ignore Linux because of it. Broadcom still doesn't care and they HAVE a driver already developed.
Linux only looks good because Microsoft is incompetent. It's a house of cards on the desktop right now, its quite solid on servers and embedded devices but its going to cave in on the desktop if something doesn't change.