OSNews

With the creation of Fedora, RedHat has now clearly seperated its experimental/testing branch from its stable commerical branch. Although somewhat akin to Debian's stable, unstable, and experimental, it is more more akin to the analogy that Fedora becomes to RedHat, what Debian is to Libranet, Lindows and Xandros. Moreover, Fedora now brings a number of hitherto quasi-proprietory RedHat tools into the wide open, esspecially the excellent Anaconda installer. This is esspecially good for a company like Progeny which specializes in customizing Linux for their clientel.

So Ian Murdock, in his genius, thought rather then work from a base of RedHat or Debian, as so many variant distros do, they could now work from a unified base of Fedora/Debian, if three issues were addressed. 1) a common package manger, 2) a common installer and 3) a common configuration framework.

On the first account developemnt had already began. With the advent of alien and then apt-rpm, it's but a stones throw to roll .rpm management, along with .deb, into a unified Apt. And suddenly the whole package management debate is a hairsbreath from resolution (Hallelujah!).

On the second, Fedora gives us Anaconda which is about as close to a perfect installer as one could ask. With a little alteration it works just as well for Debian as it does for RedHat. Now Debian's antiquated installer can finally drop dead. (Another hallejuah!)

And lo, we are but one step away from a unified Fedora/Debian. Interestingly it wasn't by any direct intent to unify the two per-se, but rather only to expedite Progeny's work. I think this actually says something about the whole Open Source and GNU/Linux movement in general. For one, there has been much concern the GNU/Linux would fail for the same reasons UNIX did. But now it is clear, the Open Source community, which UNIX lacked, is exactly what will prevent this from happening. Secondly, and more importantly, it shows the a standards base for GNU/Linux is developing naturally out the needs of its users. Although LSB tries to artifically create a standards base from the top down, and succeeds to some degree, there is also the opposite natural tendency for standards to develop from the bottom up. Between the two, GNU/Linux is, slowly but surely, developing a real standards base.

But the fullfilment of this improvement depends on one important factor: adoption. There will no doubt be a backlash against Progeny's work. But I must implore all parties involved to seriously consider what it means to our community: the birth of a true standard.

This means, among other things, that those involved with LSB should follow the natural flow and embrace the unified Apt and allow .debs into the specification. From there they should concentrate on a common configuration framework. For Debian developers, this means we must graciously ask them to move to Anacanda. I know the developers who have worked so hard on the new Debian installer will bulk at this, but it is sometimes a hard fact of life that we must, figuratively speaking, kill our babies. And Fedora developers should embrace the new unified Apt (as much as I like the word Yum). Together, and with the adoption of Discover, which has already become somewhat of a defacto-standard for hardware detection, GNU/Linux will be "better, faster, stronger" then ever before. Which is something we all want.

If you ask me, it's a great day in the world of GNU/Linux!