LinuxElectrons.com is reviewing Red Hat’s Fedora Test-3. Screenshots included.
Red Hat’s Fedora Test 3 Review
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Video Player… Video Player….Video Player…
Hey, I just was wondering what is the minumum PC configuration to have a great desktop experience.. you know, Ram , cpu and stuff… AFAIK a pentium 200mmx with 64mb ram won’t would be a pain in the ‘you _know_’
Does anyone else notice that ‘newbie-oriented’ distros like RedHat and Mandrake are more sluggish than, say, Slackware, Debian or Gentoo? Is there any good reason for this? It always puzzled me, since fundamentally they all run the same kernel and the same software.
I’ve noticed that SuSE is a little faster to get around in. Maybe because it uses ReiserFS.
what happened to the package-manager…i noticed on my machine and in this reviews screenshots it went back to the old Add/Remove program instead of the newer version they were working on as seen in this screenshot:
http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/config-tools/images/redhat-config…
this version was at least a step in the right direction, letting you add/remove third-party rpm’s
Have you, by any chance, tried Fedora? I’ve been using it for some time, and I wouldn’t call it ‘sluggish’ at all…
Does anyone else notice that ‘newbie-oriented’ distros like RedHat and Mandrake are more sluggish than, say, Slackware, Debian or Gentoo?
It’s your elitist imagination.
It’s because the newbie distros run LOADS of extra services by default.
These can be turned off though, and when they are, the systems perform comparably.
Gentoo is source base. It compiles to the
cpu you are using witch sometimes results
in extra speed.
Slackware, Debian do not much bloat.
Eg not so much stuff installed by defult
Have you, by any chance, tried Fedora? I’ve been using it for some time, and I wouldn’t call it ‘sluggish’ at all…
Testing it since its release, its sluggish as hell compare to Slackware or Debian.
Also every unstable.
Linux distros are like icecream flavors. It’s up to you what flavor you like best. Would you eat something you don’t like just because som one else said it tastes good?
I’m not out to talk down on any distro, but I do think every distro has some side of it that not every one like, so they choose another distro.
You use your distro. I use my distro. As for the right distro, the correct distro, and the only distro, it does not exist.
if you liked Redhat/Fedora’s style yet want something with less bloat try JAMD Linux, it is a redhat-9 clone optimized for i686 and had the bloat trimmed off so everything required for install fit in one ISO, No Gnome and KDE is the default desktop yet fully Redhat-9 compatible so any redhat packages will work in it… http://www.jamd-linux.com/
I more or less agree entirely with what you say, but of course, the vast majority of people don’t want to spend time trying every distribution to see which one is the best. They’ve simply got different priorities than us, the kind of people that post to OSNews.
That’s why it’s quite useful to do some basic research beforehand, such as reading reviews like the one above (in addition to the distribution’s own material) to see what each distro’s focus is and what its strong/weak points are likely to be. Of course there’s no objective “best” distribution, but I think it would be hard to contest the fact that Mandrake is better suited for newbies than Debian or Gentoo, for example, especially if they were looking to install it themselves.
[/Plug]Of course, the new Debian installer, together with the Desktop subproject, looks set to improve the distribution quite a bit in this respect, but now we’re getting off-topic… ;-)[/Plug]
Running a p200 64mb here, and Slackware 9.1.
The speed depends on what apps you run, Linux can be efficient, but it can’t magicly create cpu cycles.
I use Windowmaker for a wm, dillo/Firebird for the web, pan for news, xmms and mplayer for media.
The only time more speed is required is playing high quality films. And, to be honest, iexplore on win98 is faster than firebird on the same computer for the web, but the lack of stability/security of win98 makes it unuseable for me. Dillo is faster on a p200 than iexplore on *any* computer, but it aint exactly crammed full of features.
I would imagine Fedora could work well too, but you’d spend a long while tuning and turning off stuff to get the same speed as a ‘cleaner’ distro.
Of course, the new Debian installer, together with the Desktop subproject, looks set to improve the distribution quite a bit in this respect, but now we’re getting off-topic… 😉
And when it gets to the point where it’s easy for “everyone”, watch all the Zealots go on the “Debian sucks” kick. It just isn’t “kewl” to like something that is for “everyone”. (Rebels without a clue.)
Actually, I would vote strongly against switching to JAMD.
Most glaring is the fact that the first person is used throughout the site, indicating that it’s a one-man effort. It’s also pretty new. If you’re being optimistic, perhaps you’ll say that’s because it’s just getting off the ground, but remember there’s a pretty good possibility of it just vanishing off the map altogether as other priorities take up the developer’s (yes, only one, from the sounds of it) time.
Additionally, I really think the distro’s obsolete. The very name “Just Another Modified Distribution” is obviously intended to be tongue-in-cheek, but in fact it’s very apt, especially when you couple it with this FAQ entry:
“Are you aware that Red Hat’s next version is going to have more of a desktop focus?
Yes. JAMD began before Red Hat made any indication of where they are going with their distro.”
Okay, he goes on to say that he intends to continue JAMD regardless, but the way he’s phrased his response strongly suggests to me that he wouldn’t have started the distro if he’d known about Fedora at the time. And for good reason, IMO: just browse the Fedora developers’ mailing list for yourself and you’ll see that there’s tons of people interested in maintaining focus on the end user.
In short: don’t use this, it doesn’t look like it’s going to be around for the long haul. Or at least, don’t use it until the development team expands beyond the size of one, and it develops enough of a following that the community would sustain itself if the lead developer were to disappear.
i did get mplayer installed on fedora rc3. took more than a minute for c-span stream to load full screen in mozilla. freebsd 9.1 really has them all beat with regards to mplayer speed. i’m sure moms/pops will appreciate freebsd for that.
and real player install is broken. i can mange to get through the realplayer wizard to install mime types and plugins and set dsl speed but the real player window will not open after install. ?????
i have to use floppy to boot into fedora. i use the beos bootman and can get to the fedora grub on hda5 but can’t load kernel. complains about being out of range.
boy that up2date thingy is quite active with it’s rawhide updating. 2 kernels in less than 24 hours.
not sure how long i will stick with fedora. mandrake 9.2 is arriving soon and i keep my eye on freebsd again. i really have missed that freebsd since uninstalling it a month ago. it bugged me that it could not handle the new kde. i was too harsh.
I can take out all the services from RedHat 9, and it’s still slower than Debian Stable with my hand-rolled 2.4.22 kernel. When I do a default RedHat kernel compile, from the config file in /boot, it takes *forever* to compile modules. Personally, I think RedHat puts too many modules and experimental features (ie devfs) into their distro. That’s one reason I’ve already ordered Slackware 9.1!
I’ve tested the debian-installer, and I’m not convinced it will be newbie-friendly. It definitely will be the geek-friendliest installer ever: flexible, powerfull, costumisable and every possible install scenario can be done. But it’s modularity is confusing, all text is highly technical and the default partitioner won’t be Qtparted…. I suspect that a Morphix iso will become a popular installer for sarge. It will include a GTK-partitioner and it will be fully compatible with official the Debian repositories (unlike Knoppix).
I dunno. Mass market stuff tends to suck pretty badly. Britney Spears, Bose speakers, Luna… The masses have poor taste, and if WinXP is what you get when you do a lot of focus groups and design something for “everyone” then I want nothing to do with it.
I wonder if there are even any plans to do Fedora on AMD64…anyone know?
When is the expected release of Fedora?
“But it’s modularity is confusing, all text is highly technical and the default partitioner won’t be Qtparted”
All three of these things are up to the distributor to define, not the end user. The technical text can certainly be removed, and the default partitioner can be made whatever you want it to be. If the worst came to worst, the subprojects could each provide their own installer tailored for their target user base, but I’m certain the installer has support for allowing the user to select from different profiles, e.g. “Basic” and “Advanced” or “Desktop” and “Server” installs.
For an excellent example of how straightforward and user-friendly the new installer can be set up to be, check out Skole Linux (http://developer.skolelinux.no/). From what I remember, there is no scary technical text thrust in the user’s face, little technical knowledge is assumed from the user, and very few questions are asked before finishing with a usable system from the get-go.
From http://fedora.redhat.com/participate/schedule/:
“Fedora Core 1 / Cambridge
* July 21 2003 – Test 1 (originally called Beta 1) release
* September 25 2003 – Test 2 release
* October 13 2003 – Test 3 release
* November 3 2003 – General Availability”
Unlike Debian who release “when it’s ready”, they claim to “produce time-based releases”. Whilst meeting release targets is always a bonus, I sincerely hope they won’t be too anal about it and release it on November 3rd no matter what. Quality first, and all that.
Yeah, the “lackluster multimedia” as the review puts it, is rather disappointing. 🙁 But I have to quibble with the way the author puts it: “However, this is due to cost and respect for others intellectual properties.”
Okay; with regards to DeCSS, this might be a fair point, on the cost angle at least. I don’t believe you’re infringing on anyone’s intellectual property by playing that DVD you’ve legally purchased on Linux, but that’s a digression. But for sure, RedHat could only distribute it at great cost, since the media cartels would immediately sue them under the DMCA.
With regards to MP3 decoders, it’s just not the case. First of all, the “infringing intellectual property” part is still bogus, since if you refused to distribute any software that had a patent of some sort applying to it you’d be hard pressed to keep even “hello, world” in your distribution. Secondly, what cost? When Fraunhofer’s patent was brought up on ./, the company made a statement regarding this:
“In a posting appearing Tuesday August 27, 2002 on the Web site ‘slashdot.org’, an individual cited a change in the mp3 license fee structure of Thomson and Fraunhofer. The writer of the post apparently misread the mp3 licensing conditions, as Thomson’s mp3 licensing policy has not experienced any change.
To clarify, since the beginning of our mp3 licensing program in 1995, Thomson has never charged a per unit royalty for freely distributed software decoders. For commercially sold decoders — primarily hardware mp3 players — the per-unit royalty has always been in place since the beginning of the program. Therefore, there is no change in our licensing policy and we continue to believe that the royalty fees of .75 cents per mp3 player (on average selling over $200 dollars) has no measurable impact on the consumer experience.”
So, there’s no reason why Fedora couldn’t start a “Non-Free” tree similar to Debian and just pop blatantly patent-encumbered stuff in there. Like Debian, if the patent ever showed signs of being actively enforced, the infringing software would then be dropped. RedHat/The Fedora Project itself won’t be selling CDs (therefore the mp3 players won’t be “commercially sold”) and resellers can just omit Non-Free from their CDs if they so choose.
Okay, so it’s not a very big deal to download an mp3 player from a third-party source (probably a great deal quicker than writing this post, lol) but it’s still a silly inconvenience, and a completely un-necessary one IMHO.
There’s that elitism mentioned earlier in this thread. You are the sole purveyor and judger of what is good taste, of course. Everyone who disagrees with you has bad taste.
I love closed-minded folks.
I have been on Fedora’s mailing list and Fedora looks like a complete mess. Too many kids playing hackers, which is a good thing in the long term, but it won’t be what I put on my server. Yes, A. Cox is there and posts often but he and the handful of Red Hat employees seem to have a hard time putting out a quality release. I have tested Fedora Test-3 on 3 different computers, a desktop, a server and a laptop and it’s full of bugs, some subtle, some blatantly obvious.
Eventually it will grow into something wonderful or so I hope, but for the time being my computers at home will use something else.
> I have been on Fedora’s mailing list and Fedora looks like a
> complete mess. Too many kids playing hackers, which is a
> good thing in the long term, but it won’t be what I put on
> my server. Yes, A. Cox is there and posts often but he and
> the handful of Red Hat employees seem to have a hard time
> putting out a quality release.
Although it’s hard, I would have to agree with you. RedHat used to provide such high quality releases (remember the 5.x, 6.x and 7.x days..). It would almost be easy for one to say that it was the corporate management (as distinct from community management) that allowed them to maintain the high quality and consistency. I’m of the opinion that Fedora doesn’t have a proper heirarchy of leadership. Much in the same way as a country cannot function without a heirarchy of government.
OpenBSD, Debian, Mozilla, Apache, PostgreSQL and many others are prime examples of how community run projects can achieve a high level of quality and vision while releasing in a marketable way.
I think you have just put your finger on it. I do hope that things will evolve and improve.
Without a clear leader and vision, the project will stall. It only makes me value L. Torvalds all the more for the rare qualities he brings to the table: a conciliatory leader with an incredible technical background.
The problem might be that Fedora appears to be a solution looking for a problem. What does Fedora offer?
*Red Hat with a repository of easy to install software. At least, that appears to be their mission. Trouble is that Mandrake and Debian have been doing that for years. The former luring the average users, the latter the more technical ones.
Fedora seems like a reactive response to the fact that installing software under Red Hat can be a hair-pulling experience. It is also reactive because it comes as a result of not being able to establish a foot in the door for the Linux desktop at the CompUSA level. My bet for this last goal is on either Mandrake or Lindows. The former for technological leadership, the latter for its marketing savvy.
I think, personally, that RedHat is treading on thin ice as far as customers are concerned. Right now, there are *many* small to medium sized businesses implementing the stancard RedHat distribution. Unfortunately, I don’t think that this Fedora project will be able to maintain even the quality that RedHat could, and of course RedHat (the company) won’t have paid employees maintaining security updates for EOL RedHat distros.
I think that RedHat is trying to get more Enterprise customers, basically destroying the notion that “Linux is cheaper than Windows.” (I can get a full 4-cd Slackware set for $40 at Slackware store, or $20 to $10 elsewhere, compared to hundreds for Windows and much more for additional software.) It’s too bad RedHat didn’t take the SuSE approach: if you want their Linux distro, you pay, or you get it from FTP, or you get a Live CD. The SuSE approach makes more sense, business wise. I just don’t see how a community project and a company which needs money can mix well.
i’m running test 3, and i’m pretty happy with it. it fills my home desktop needs nicely… which is exactly what it’s meant to do. i don’t run a server… and i’m not under the illusion that’s what fedora is intended for, but you can do that if you want. it’s intended to be a free bleeding edge home desktop distro. it has the newest versions of most software, which means more features, and better functionality of said features.
It’s because the newbie distros run LOADS of extra services by default.
That and a lot of perl config scripts and $ environment variables, which do slow even the login procedure,
I don’t mind the resulting slugish if it auto-config my Operating system for me (I’m lazy!) which is what my Mandrake does.
Nah, syntaxis, I think you have the wrong idea on JAMD.
It is a great distro and very fast and so far (2 months) very stable.
There could be 1 person behind the whole thing, maybe not, but who cares. The system is very easily updated, and who really needs the developer there to hold their hands when they get stuck ?
I have installed jamd on a few other pcs of friends, and more people have asked for the disk so they can install it themselves. This is of course after they have seen the system in action.
Like a said. very fast, very stable and looks nice too.
Stick it on your box, then maybe I might listen to any arguments you might have…
Oops…
When I wrote “Non-Free”, I really meant “Non-US”. Should’ve proof-read my post more carefully. 😛 Of course, the name’s a bit out of date since it would now appear that software patents are going to be valid throughout Europe, too, but the purpose of the branch remains clear enough.
I cannot reach the site. Can someone please mirror the article?
Thanks…
“who really needs the developer there to hold their hands when they get stuck?”
How about “anyone who wants software updates and security patches packaged for their distribution?” I’m willing to take your word for it that it’s better (less bloated, faster?) than Fedora or RedHat 9, but I personally won’t install a distribution unless I can be reasonably confident that it’ll still be around tomorrow. I just don’t want the maintenance burden that its abandonment would entail.
Okay, you might be able to use RedHat/Fedora repositories in the event that JAMD disappears, but there’d be no way to ensure 100% compatibility, and besides, if you were doing that, you might as well just use RedHat/Fedora in the first place.
“I have installed jamd on a few other pcs of friends”
Whoops! 🙁 If they can’t even install it themselves, that means that, unlike you, they won’t possess the knowledge to switch distributions if/when JAMD goes under. Whilst I’m sure your intentions were noble, I personally wouldn’t do this to my friends. At the very least, be prepared to be on-call to visit each of them in turn to install a different distribution for them.
“Without a clear leader and vision, the project will stall.”
Oh, I don’t know… Debian seems to be doing okay, and by no stretch of the imagination could it be said that the developers as a whole have any common goal other than the very broad one of making a quality distribution that is 100% Free Software. Within those parameters, everyone is free to work on pretty much any area that pleases them, with the sole caveat being that package maintainers have pretty much 100% jurisdiction over their respective packages (provided that they follow Policy). Provided that Fedora borrows sufficiently from the Debian model which clearly *is* working, I think they have a fair chance of success.
“The problem might be that Fedora appears to be a solution looking for a problem. What does Fedora offer?”
This is a good question. However, because of the wide following that the RedHat consumer distribution enjoyed, I think it’s safe to say that Fedora has the critical mass necessary to evolve into *something*, but exactly what that something is has yet to be seen. I mean, there are still ongoing discussions on the developers’ list as to whether they should continue to cater for the desktop and server environments equally, etc. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens further down the road. If nothing else, though, the Fedora-Legacy subproject will be a handy platform for providing updates and security patches for EOLed RedHat releases, and, in the future, EOLed Fedora releases.
“RedHat (the company) won’t have paid employees maintaining security updates for EOL RedHat distros.”
RedHat won’t, but others will. Check out the Fedora-Legacy project if you’re interested, explained in more detail here (http://fedora.redhat.com/participate/terminology.html).
Hi,
site with review still seems to be down, where’s a mirror?
Bye,
Tom
I´m a long time windows user who wants to try linux. Is this fedora distro a good one for newbies? Would you recommend a different one?
Why is it that everytime there is an article about RedHat, we get the typical BS replies about how it is slow, or not as good as distro X? Most of these posts are completely false and only serve to make the poster look like a troll. So now it is my turn to troll…I have used Mandrake, Suse, and RedHat this year, and to me, RedHat has been by FAR the most responsive, and the most organized and complete distro. Suse came in a close second. I love it when people post about RedHat’s quality and then go on to say that they use Mandrake. Mandrake is a good distro, but it notoriously buggy and incomplete.
As for Fedora, I think the negative posters are underestimating the project. RedHat has some of the most knowledgeable and experienced engineers, so I would be surprised if Fedora 1 was not a solid release. In fact, you can attribute much of the success of Linux to these same engineers.
-G
Yes, Fedora is a good one, but wait for the official release. But some like Mandrake or Suse better. Read more on desktoplinux.com or distrowatch.com about the differences.
The above link isn’t working for me either.
On the Fedora site its clearly stated that there will still be tight control by Red Hat over the content of the distro, so it will be probably as nice as Red Hat Linux 10 would have become. But this time with integrated apt-get/yum support, better use of user feedback and faster release schedules.
Don’t forget, along with Red Hat Enterprise for corporations there will be a shrink wrapped box sold again, with limited support. I will cost $99 and will be called Red Hat Professional Workstation. It will be as “stable” (older software) like Enterprise and updated less often than Fedora.
“As for Fedora, I think the negative posters are underestimating the project. RedHat has some of the most knowledgeable and experienced engineers, so I would be surprised if Fedora 1 was not a solid release.”
I’m not overly negative about Fedora’s chances (lol – at least I don’t *think* I was one of the posters you were talking about) and I wish them every success, but there are still issues which need to be addressed, and there will doubtless be many growing pains as Fedora matures.
For instance: your faith in the abilities of the RedHat software engineers is touching, but could you perhaps explain how it is that they plan to outsource an increasing amount of the development to the community, whilst still sticking to a time-based release schedule?
Of course the RedHat personnel are going to find the time to work on the distribution – they’re paid to! Conversely, you can set a volunteer whatever deadlines you want, but what guarantees do you have that he’ll meet them? He has other priorities in his life, such as his job, his family and other hobbies. This is one of the main reasons that Debian release dates are constantly pushed back, and their “It’ll be released when it’s ready” mantra is (as well as showing their focus on quality) an acceptance of this fact. I fail to see how Fedora hopes to avoid this problem, unless they plan on shoving each release out the door on a specified date whether it’s ready or not. This problem will become ever more acute as Fedora’s packages grow in number and the community takes on an increasingly larger role.
Their realisation of this fact will hardly be crippling, it will simply spur a migration over to Debian’s “when it’s ready” release process. I just chose to dwell on it here because I think it’s a good illustration of some of the highly unrealistic expectations that have been built up around this young project. Of course people are going to be sceptical when Fedora makes such grandiose claims. As I said before, best of luck to them, but I think they’re setting themselves up for a fall by being so ambitious with regards to their release dates. Even if they make November the 3rd, it’s just not sustainable in the long term without making some concessions to quality and testing, which would mean that they’ll forever be second fiddle to Debian anyway.
my fedora rc3 has just improved. was able to find realplayer8 and 9 for it at a fedora apt site. am listening to npr now with realplayer8. cool. had to play with helper aplications in the mozilla preferences, probably because i spent some time getting rid of the other realplayer 8 that i got from real.com
as i mentioned earlier, mplayer works too.
gosh, i spent all last night learning to mkbootdisk so i could boot into the new kernel.
fedora might stay awhile if i don’t break it.
I downloaded Fedora Core Test 3 this weekend and it’s seems to be a reasonable desktop OS.
Things I liked:
* Seems to be a bit quicker booting (once I removed most of the unnecessary services) than the equivalent [post-service-removal] 8.0 desktop I normally run.
* They’ve added “Show Details” to the graphical boot sequence (desperately needed, otherwise you’re left in the dark), though I confess I’ve toggled it back to textual boot 🙂
* Nvidia’s closed-source graphics drivers worked first time (had to set IGNORE_CC_MISMATCH=1 before running the installer).
* Open Office 1.1 (Raw Hide or Fedora Core are the only ways to get Red Hat RPMs of OO 1.1 at the moment).
* Latest Sun Java works fine (it’s always been a separate download, something I’ve got used to by now).
* Bitstream Vera fonts now shipped with the OS.
Things I didn’t like:
* Maybe I missed the screen (by forgetting to tick a box somewhere), but has the Tree/Flat view of packages you can pick gone now with the Test 3 release? I hope it hasn’t because I usually like to tweak the package list and the catagorised list is too cumbersome to use to locate a particular package (I like the Flat view because it’s an A-Z of everything).
* Even with “Show Details” on in graphical boot mode, error messages sent by boot programs to stderr *still* don’t appear.
* smartd still scans way too many of your /dev/ devices, puking out error messages during startup.
* Struggled to get Real Player 8 or 9 to work as a browser plug-in in Mozilla 1.4.1 (the players are fine as standalone helper apps).
* Can’t “easily” remove nautilus any more (you try “rpm -e”‘ing it and you’ll end up in a dependency mire) – I was never a fan of nautilus myself.
* Still starting up way too many services by default for a desktop user – e.g. sendmail, apmd, atd, gpm, irda, isdn, sendmail, pcmcia – 99% of desktop users don’t need any of these !
Overall, the usual “mixed bag” for Red Hat – I’d say it’s a small improvement on 8.0/9, but nothing completely earth-shattering. Maybe when Fedora Core ships with a 2.6 kernel (no idea when they’re planning that, obviously not for the November release), a re-review is in order…
I’m running Fedora RC3, but my main gripe/problems is that everytime I try to install the Nvidia video driver, this thing complains that I don’t have Binutils installed, but I know I do, since I saw it when the systems was updated from up2date.
If I could fix this and learn how to make this thing see my ntfs partition, I’ll be okey.
It works, it’s free, it’s consistent, it’s up to date, it’s supported if you want (RHEL), it’s fast, it’s documented, it’s reliable, it’s professional and it has a direction.
No other linux or UNIX distribution can claim all of these.
RH could and should take the market with Fedora and the derived RHEL. They deserve it for finally providing what REAL USERS (ie business users like myself) have been wanting since linux appeared.
If you have any complaints about Fedora, please put some cash forward and purchase RHEL or it’s workstation equivalent.
Oh and screw all the zealots and all the advocacy types. You really don’t matter in the long run.
Fedora promises to be available only as CD and DVD (yay) ISOs with no boxed product. Does this, in any way, suggest that future versions of Fedora will be upgradable via the Internet? I ask because one of my main gripes with Linux distros is how I am compelled to install from new CDs to get the latest version of the software. It seems to me that Fedora will have more independently upgradable components. Is there any reality to what I am reading in to it or am I only deluding myself?
An example annoyance: Redhat 9 does not have an “official” 1.4 build for download.
Example distro which does what I want: Gentoo. I would like to avoid compiling and I prefer RedHat, but I really like how you just tag the apps and it can check for updates. Will Apt/Yum work this way?
I meant to say 1.4 Mozilla build. Sorry about that.
In the future, it would be helpful if you would indicate whose post(s) it is that you are you replying to.
“It works, it’s free, it’s consistent, it’s up to date, it’s supported if you want (RHEL), it’s fast, it’s documented, it’s reliable, it’s professional and it has a direction.
No other linux or UNIX distribution can claim all of these.”
If you say so. Of course, just to show exactly how weak your argument is, the same lame spiel could be used to advocate many distributions. Take SuSE, for instance (selected at random; this is obviously not me plugging for SuSE, because Debian is my distro of choice). You have the option of an FTP install vs purchasing the Enterprise edition. Free if you like, pay for support if you so choose, and in both cases consistent, up to date, fast, documented, reliable, professional and with a direction.
You’re blatantly trolling. You haven’t provided any evidence or line of reasoning other than your own bare assertions/opinions, and you act like Fedora’s the perfect distribution, which it clearly isn’t.
“RH could and should take the market with Fedora and the derived RHEL. They deserve it for finally providing what REAL USERS (ie business users like myself) have been wanting since linux appeared.”
What are you smoking? “The *derived* RHEL”? RHEL was around long before Fedora, so you obviously haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.
“If you have any complaints about Fedora, please put some cash forward and purchase RHEL or it’s workstation equivalent.”
Or (shock horror!) consider using a different distribution that *does* meet your needs. If you don’t need support, why should you pay for it? Check http://www.distrowatch.com for a wide selection from which to pick and choose.
“Oh and screw all the zealots and all the advocacy types. You really don’t matter in the long run.”
Strange to hear this coming from your mouth, since you’re very obviously one of them judging from the content (or rather the lack thereof) of your post.
“Does this, in any way, suggest that future versions of Fedora will be upgradable via the Internet?”
Yes. 🙂 Essentially, you just track the repository, and install updates as and when they appear. Then, when that release is EOLed, you either switch to the appropriate Fedora Legacy repository (if you don’t want to upgrade, but still want to get e.g. security patches) or, better yet, upgrade to the next release. Lather, rinse and repeat.
“Example distro which does what I want: Gentoo. I would like to avoid compiling and I prefer RedHat, but I really like how you just tag the apps and it can check for updates. Will Apt/Yum work this way?”
Yes, though Debian (where Apt was ported from) is still the best at this IMO, provided you stick to official repositories or other sources where the packages are heavily QAed, e.g. those provided by Debian developers. AFAIK there are some weaknesses inherent in the RPM format itself (no support for Recommends or Suggests fields, for instance) but yes, Fedora should be able to do what you want.
The way the various repositories are set up is explained nicely at http://fedora.redhat.com/participate/terminology.html .
I am the Anonymous user (coward?) who asked and want to thank you for the response. This is great news. As I stated I thought this was the idea, but I was not sure. This makes me more excited than ever to be a RedHat user and Nov 3 is inked and highlighted on my calendar.
I really hope Fedora Core 1 is kernel 2.6 ready and we can just drop that in once it becomes stable. It bugs me that my RH 9 kernel is so ancient (2.4.20+) and I only have one box I use for Linux so I am cautious about manually updating core components.
It’s odd, Red Hat was one of the first GNU/Linux distributions I ever tried and I absolutely hated it. After trying almost every distro out there, and having settled with Mandrake for some time, I finally gave RedHat another shot with version 8. I loved it and RedHat 9 was even better. Fedora looks to be even more to my liking.