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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."
...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.
Exactly. If anything. it's a threat to microsoft and apple, but maybe not so much the latter. Since microsoft has screwed up more and more stuff lately, if they don't come on track again, more and more users will start looking towards the alternatives. Since they have a PC computer already, installing linux could be a nice step to take before scrapping the compouter and go Apple and the more dists that looks good and shiney and do what they should, the better.
I was for instance surprised that there was no hassle AT ALL installing my Brother HL-1250 printer the other day while in windows I've always hassled with drivers and previously in linux I had to config some stuff manually, but this time it was just 100% plug in and pl^H^H print. Totally awesome, I had my tabs printed out in no-time.
I've gone the path from windows to linux by testing out a lot of distros (pretty much redhat->suse->debian->mepis->ubuntu) and most people don't have the patience enough to walk through a wall of configuration, so this is good news for everyone! Even the ubuntu crew should benefit from this in the long run.
Happy new year everybody.
New releases come out every 6 months. Basically as soon as a new release comes out fedora is through with the old one. This IMHO makes fedora totally worthless for so many reasons. I have used Fedora from core 2 to Fedora 8 and it's a good distro but this upgrade cycle is what has made me leave Fedora.
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.
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I prefer apt, but yum isn't so bad.
Some of us prefer make.
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.
Define improvement?
.. Few package repositories provided only apt interface but since then apt and yum repo's have same backend so any apt rpm repo works now with yum too
First off, i've been using apt for Redhat since redhat 6 release
Since version 7 fedora, i've been starting to use yum irregullary and after upgrading to fc8 and the latest yum, i've been a really happy camper with it.
- Latest yum works much faster than previous versions.
- Configurability is much better with yum than with apt. 3rd party plugins can do really wonders.
yush
I just love it when people get angry at/about RedHat without realizing that without RedHat, Linux would not be where it is today. It has been the foremost corporate contributor to Linux and Linux on the desktop by far. It has also proven to the market that there is a viable business model selling Linux and Linux services. Without that, it'd be doubtful that as many corps and organizations would not have adopted Linux. Some people seem to think that if there were no evil Linux corps, Linux would be better. Well, this isn't 1992 anymore. Weekend coders can't produce a fully-functional OS and software stack with QA and performance factored in. Linux would be NOWHERE without the corporations that have hired many people to work full time on Linux projects. RedHat is the chief among these. BTW, I'm agreeing with you, but just adding some more points.
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.