Linked by Robert Trembath on Wed 18th Feb 2004 01:29 UTC
Couldn't stop myself from trying the new Fedora 2-test1 release, even if it is an alpha! The 2.6 kernel, KDE 3.2 and Gnome 2.5 all in the same release was just to much candy to turn away from; too bad it's more sour rather than sweet at this (beta) point than I would have expected.
Permalink for comment
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Recent Original Stories
Recent Comments
Headlines
Random Comments
Random Stories
Random OS Link
"How come Debian doesn't get flamed for this stuff? It has the same 'free over closed' law."
The Non-Free section is available for software that doesn't meet the Debian Free Software Guidelines (http://www.debian.org/social_contract.html). The only prerequisite for software in there is that it be legally distributable by Debian in the first place. Even when this isn't the case, this can often be worked around by providing an installer package that downloads the software from the vendor's own site (the flashplugin-nonfree package works this way).
[Note: unfortunately, the BlackDown JRE can't be distributed even in Non-Free due to Sun's non-compete clause ("you do not distribute additional software intended to replace any component(s) of the Software") which Debian violates by distributing Kaffe.]
Debian also has a much saner (IMO) patents policy, namely that as a rule they'll only worry about patents that are being actively enforced. Thus, mp3 players and mono (to name but two examples) can be found in Debian but not in Fedora.
I agree with you that it's not a terribly big deal for users to download the affected packages from third-party repositories as opposed to Fedora itself, but it's still inconvenient. I think Debian's better in this regard.