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."

Comments

Linux Wars?

[ThePromenader]

I wouldn't consider one open-source project to be a danger to another...

Re:Linux Wars?

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you, a commie? EVERYTHING is a competition. You have to be number one. Coming in second is just not an option. It is your responsibility as a living being to completely win over every other living being at all costs. For example, I make sure I go outside and yell at my lawn at least twice a week and I kick the trees along my street every Tuesday just to show them who's the boss. If Fedora 8 can "win" over Ubuntu, that is a "win" for all of us and we will all laugh and be happy and dance around our living rooms with the now-famous "Unix Wins" dance that we've all seen on TV. If, however, Fedora 8 cannot WIN... then we must all immediately side with Canonical and weep with joy over how wonderful Ubuntu is and how it is the best. Give your head a shake, get a haircut, move out of your commune and join the real world... where there is only ONE WINNER and YOU must be that winner.

Thomas "the winner of Sarcasm" Dzubin

Re:Linux Wars?

[kripkenstein]

I wouldn't consider one open-source project to be a danger to another... That's a good point.

Also, TFA has absolutely no content on which to base its claims. It mentions 4 things, PulseAudio, CodecBuddy, Spins, and the Fedora theme. Ubuntu 8.04 will have PulseAudio; in fact, this is just another example of the usual relationship of Fedora and Ubuntu - Fedora is slightly more 'on the edge', Ubuntu is a little more stable - but still, at least in non-LTS versions, quite risk-taking. Regarding CodecBuddy, Ubuntu has this, and in fact had it before Fedora. Spins are fairly meaningless - a nice idea, but let's see some compelling implementation. And anyhow both Ubuntu and Fedora welcome 'spins' aka derivative versions; Ubuntu has its own Kubuntu/Edubuntu/etc. as well as the non-official Mint, etc.

Finally, the theme. Well, he's got me there, Fedora does win in that respect. I don't mind the Ubuntu brown, but they aren't doing something nice enough with it so far. However Ubuntu 8.04 will have a brand new theme with a lot of effort put into it, so here's hoping.

Returning to your point, in fact most of these examples prove it. Fedora led the way with PulseAudio; Ubuntu saw it was possible, and will now do it as well. They might even benefit from the code. Similarly, Ubuntu led the way with CodecBuddy-type things, which Fedora wisely adopted. Hopefully Fedora's nice theme will encourage Ubuntu to focus more on that. Thus, we have in effect excellent examples of how FOSS project spur each other to better and greater things.

Re:Linux Wars?

[nine-times]

That's pretty much what I came in here to say.

Why does the most recent Fedora seem so competitive to Ubuntu? Well probably because they're pulling their updates from a lot of the same places.

But if you want to imagine the two groups fighting it out, go right ahead. Insofar as they are competing, there's only one possible winner: us. Each group is trying to improve Linux more, each will feed off of the other's improvements, and the end result will be a better FOSS operating system that will be accessible to all of us.

Good luck to both of them.

Re:Linux Wars?

[Anonymous Coward]

I love how Ubuntu is given 'credit' for codec buddy. Who wrote codec buddy? Bastien Nocera who works for Red Hat and Thomas Vander Stichele who works for Fluendo (you know, the guys who want your soul so you can play mp3's)

Red Hat pays someone's salary to write codec buddy and yet 'ubuntu' comes out the better. Sounds like NetworkManager all over again. Red Hat pays to write the code the fanboys think ubuntu is the greatest thing ever....

I object to the word "threat".

[A beautiful mind]

In F/OSS environments we welcome alternatives and diversity.

They are the Same

[ArkiMage]

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.

Re:Issues with the article already.

[DoofusOfDeath]

I'm supposed to take this reviewer seriously, when he hasn't got around to testing Debian Etch but wants me to trust his knowledge of Linux systems, including Ubuntu? Right.

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.

Are you like, totally serious? You've set that all up by yourself. OMG OMG OMG!!! Please, like, tell us your opinion on FC8 vs. Ubuntu. Pleeeeeasssseeee ;)

(I so can't wait to tell my friends that I actually talked to you! OMG OMG OMG... )