Some review of Fedora 7. First, eWeek concludes: "We were impressed to see how amenable to customization this popular Linux-based operating system has grown." Linux.com also reviews Fedora 7. "Fedora 7 was released last week, a little bit behind schedule, with a spate of new features, updates, and live CD installable "spins" of Fedora in KDE and GNOME flavors. I found a lot of good in this release, but a bug in the FireWire stack that attacked my external backup drive made this release just a little shy of perfect." Update: Two more Fedora articles, a review and a news article.
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2005-07-06
Using the last guys logic (whom you replied to), no one should use OpenSuSE or Fedora because they're buggy riddled POS. Fedora is Red Hats community based distribution for their enterprise release, and OpenSuSE is the basis for Novells Desktop product (SLED SP1 for instance is based on OpenSuSE 10.1 plus patches).
Also, 'It is not recommended for production use' - who doesn't recommend it? some nameless person with a blog located at some place in the middle of no where? how do you define production? someone who needs 24/7 uptime and support, or merely someone who wants a distro for his or her desktop use?
Why do people equate 'community based distributions' as nothing more than 'experimental versions'? sure, these companies make up the majority of contributors. If people choose not to muck in and actually contribute, who sit outside these establishment, then why blame Red Hat or Novell? All these companies offer is a distribution based on the community version with long term support both software, telephone and consultancy. What the heck is wrong with that?
Member since:2006-10-11
Nothing. Taking this "community based" equals "experimental" to the extreme you could say that Debian or Slackware are "experimental" and I think not many things are further from the truth.
Fedora 7 is an impressive release, not impressive enough to replace Debian as my main GNU, but I'd still say it is the best out-of-the-box GNU/Linux distribution for the desktop right now.
Member since:2006-03-22
Using the last guys logic (whom you replied to), no one should use OpenSuSE or Fedora because they're buggy riddled POS. Fedora is Red Hats community based distribution for their enterprise release, and OpenSuSE is the basis for Novells Desktop product (SLED SP1 for instance is based on OpenSuSE 10.1 plus patches).
Well, I don't think I'd have read quite such an extream view from his statement. However, yes it could have been cleaner.
I believe he was just saying SuSE was more stable than Fedora (I'm not sure if he was specifically refering to Open Suse, or the pay for distro).
If OpenSuse is to SLED, as CentOS is to RedHat EL, then yes, OpenSuse would be geared more towards a "static production environment", however if it is the same as Fedora, then I would say neither are applicable for a produciton environment (I'll clarify lower down what I mean by production).
Also, 'It is not recommended for production use' - who doesn't recommend it? some nameless person with a blog located at some place in the middle of no where? how do you define production? someone who needs 24/7 uptime and support, or merely someone who wants a distro for his or her desktop use?
Well, I suppose the first thing to clarify is the statement "production use" and what that actually means, as it is bandied about a lot, with out a defenition.
I've been working as a systems administrator for about 10 years now, in various companies. In that time "production use/ environment" has primarily come to mean long support cycles.
I want to be able to install a server, and know that once it is working, I can forget about it's upgrade cycle for a significant amount of time, but be confident that security erata is available.
Fedora, does not, has not, and will not provide this, and I don't want them to.
In addition to this, Fedora has released things that HAVE caused problems, migration to the 2.6 kernel was far from smooth, introduction of SElinux was atrocious (now, it's just fan dabby dosey), I don't want to have things like this thrown on to a "production system".
Kernel upgrades within releases for fedora have broken things quite spectacularly.
I think it boils down to the fact that "production environment" tends not to mean "dynamic", dynamic bad, static gooood.
However, for me on my desktop, at work and at home, fedora has proved to be excellent, desktop and laptop. So from that perspective it's absalutely fine.
Why do people equate 'community based distributions' as nothing more than 'experimental versions'? sure, these companies make up the majority of contributors. If people choose not to muck in and actually contribute, who sit outside these establishment, then why blame Red Hat or Novell? All these companies offer is a distribution based on the community version with long term support both software, telephone and consultancy. What the heck is wrong with that?
Erm, I think your going over board here, the discussion was Fedora and OpenSuSE, at no point in time have we mentioned "community based distrobutions", remember there are many other community based distro's out that other than fedora/ opensuse. Critasism's aimed at them has nothing to do with slackware for example.
Member since:2006-08-09
Agreed.
Fedora is generally a stable and well-worked out OS, and if certain major bugs turn up, it shouldn't be taken for granted and co-define Fedora's identity as "not for production use". Instead, the bugs should be fixed.
It may not have as few bugs as CentOS or Debian Stable, but that doesn't mean that there is not a minimal level of stability that must be reached before Fedora can be released in the first place. and as far as I know, Fedora cares about that level.
As someone more or less biased in favour of Fedora, I wouldn't like people to say, 'let's forgive Fedora for this (say) major filesystem bug, after all it's not meant for production use.' That would make little sense.
Edited 2007-06-07 09:20 UTC
Member since:
2006-03-22
"Those who run Fedora are the same as those who would run OpenSuSE"
I don't know if I agree with that. Fedora is not recommended for production use. Suse has more of a stable reputation. You are right that everyone use whatever they want but it pays to consider what that distro was intended for carefully.
Just to be clear, one guy is talking about OpenSUSE, and you are talking about SuSE, bearing in mind, I don't think those are the same thingm or is it a RedHat, CentOS relationship?
Edited 2007-06-07 07:07