“A reasonably good start for a very promising Linux distro. Tinkerers should give it a shot. Those wanting a bug-free experience should skip this version and wait for the next release” says ZDNet’s Jim Lynch (our review is here). “Red Hat’s Desktop Linux Isn’t Going Away” says eWEEK too, while a Linux developer and user wrote an Open Letter towards Red Hat.
Fedora Core Reviews, Rants
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
its good to see an article thats not so gung-ho about linux, or it stinks, its not ready for the desktop. he reviews its strengths and weaknesses. pretty good article
A Pro journalist complaining about the same things I complained a few days ago “POOR MULTIMEDIA SUPPORT”… I think I wasn’t wrong.
Whine, moan, whine…
Here’s the situation. RedHat is a business. A business needs to make a profit otherwise there is no point in it’s existence. RedHat could not continue to support a free distribution in the way that they used to and make a profit consistently. As such they changed.
So far all I’ve seen is whining and complaining, yet all these people who are so ready to point out what they think is wrong are not prepared to suggest a solution that would allow a Linux distributor like RedHat to stay profitable and still produce a distribution.
Do you hear me whiners?!? Put up or shut up! It’s time to lay out your mircale business plan for Linux distributions since you seem to know what’s so wonderfully good for businesses to make money.
Red Hat STILL gives back to the community.
PAID Red Hat developers are working on Fedora. Red Hat pays GNOME developers. Hell, Red Hat employs Alan Cox, Havoc Pennington, and Owen Taylor. I don’t understand how someone can say that just because they now charge for all of their distributions that they no longer give back to the community. (That seems to be what this guy is saying.) Red Hat is one of the main contributors to GNOME and always has been. As far as I am concerned GNOME would not be where it is today without the support of Red Hat. Red Hat pays people to work on Open Source because they believe in it. Unfortunately Open Source does require money sometimes to make progress.
It sucks that the woman was rude and arrogant. That is plain wrong. It sucks that this guy won’t be able to share Red Hat CDs any more. It sucks that he feels betrayed. I, however, am not going to demonize Red Hat just because they decided that they need to make a profit to stay in business.
To quote Dennis Leary “Life sucks, get a F***in helmet.”
The name could change. A university is claiming the use of the name prior to RH:
http://slashdot.org/articles/03/11/20/1722215.shtml?tid=110&tid=187
*Continued from above*
Another thing that I love about this letter. Is that just because he wrote a package which Red Hat includes he thinks that he can dictate how Red Hat distributes that software. First of all Red Hat has written more software in their distro than this guy. Second, that is the nature of Open Source software. You write your code and give it away allowing anyone to do what they want with it, including profit from it.
I wrote that letter out of frustration. If anyone doesn’t agree with it or see my points which are clearly stated, let me sum it up:
1. Red Hat could solve it by providing support contracts and pay-per-incident support for Fedora. That doesn’t mean that they endorse it, just support it. I never suggested they support it for free. Leave the model the way it is – shorter cycles, no free support of any kind. Hell, they could make people pay more for Fedora support since it would be a little more difficult as it is more of a moving target than RHEL.
2. They should at least present a friendly face, no matter the time of day or topic discussed. The woman I spoke with was more concerned about Red Hat’s bottom line than customer service and my fear is that it will only get worse and become the corporate line at Red Hat.
3. I do not like to trash Red Hat and that was not the intention of the letter. I have always appreciated what Red Hat has done for the community and used RHL for years. The fact that I am entertaining a switch should be of concern to more than myself. The changes are pretty significant.
4. I never said Red Hat doesn’t give back to the community. In fact, I clearly stated the opposite. I also value my time that I have given to the community. It is not as much as some and is more than others, but it is still my time. I contribute, Red Hat contributes. How many of you do?
Thank you, drive through.
“How many of you do? ”
I do.
But you don’t catch me writing nasty letters about distributions, do you? Why not? Because I realize the fact that I throw some time at the open source ideal doesn’t mean I’m arrogant enough to dictate to RedHat/Mandrake/SuSE what they should do.
The gist of your open letter was “HOW DARE THEY NOT DO WHAT I WANT! GIVE ME MY CHEAP SUPPORT AND FREE PRODUCT!” I drew my own conclusions about how in tune you are with the reality of the Linux distribution business. I suspect others will do the same, and reach similar conclusions.
If it makes you feel better, I was pleased by their announcement of academic editions of RHEL, because I really didn’t want to take my laptop on a ride with Fedora – too slow (the laptop, that is), and I never do any real development on it, so I just want a stable platform. $25 a year seems like a good price to me for that.
So, I agree in part with what you said, but I think your anecdote about the rude salesperson was inane and made you look like a whining idiot. No company is perfect, and spewing forth anecdotes and passing them off as general reality is at best misleading, and at worst malicious. I’ll assume the former.
Learn to write with logical, well thought-out arguments, instead of rants, and I’ll bet you get better responses the next time.
-Erwos
Maybe 2% of Linux evangelists could actually tell you what its flaws are. You think you are informed enough to say Linux will take over the desktop? Fine, then explain to me it’s weaknesses and how you believe it will overcome them. If you can’t do that then who are you to say what will or will not happen.
I’m using it right now and it’s the best Lin desktop system I’ve ever used. Anyone ever think of actually tring it before they complain? It’s still redhat linux, just with a different name.
Something you should consider is, that because Red Hat is and always was 100% commited to Open Source, everyone could offer support for Fedora. This includes you. If you think it’s a good business model, why don’t you take Fedora, polish it up and make it more stable, then sell support contracts for this stable Fedora?
Red Hat is still trying to please their customers and if they wouldn’t, ANYone could take their part.
SuSE (Novell Linux) on the other hand is not Open Source. You cannot take a SuSE distribution and sell it to someone else. Not even for shipping costs. How is that? If you really only care about your own wallet, maybe you’ll even consider this to be more fair with the community. But it just doesn’t make any sense to me.
In other words, Red Hat plays fair because all they create is Open Source and just like they are using your package in the distribution, you can take all the stuff that Red Hat ever coded to make money from it (if you have a plan).
I absolutely don’t see your reason to demand that they offer support for the prices you like (that seems to be the essence of your rant, besides your unfortunate experience with this particular sales woman).
Personally I quite like Fedora Core 1 and don’t have a single grip with it. It sure looks nice, and has a hell of a lot less bugs than SuSE 8.2 has. In fact I’d go as far to say that its the single best distro I think I’ve ever installed. Everything runs nicely and I haven’t run into any problems other than the common frustration with rythmbox.
Other than that its great!
I agree with Erick.
I actually switched *back* to Windows (from Linux) because 1. I don’t like publicly owned companies (Red Hat, Sun) trying to tinker with how GPL software is licensed. I won’t accept that. 2. Would Red Hat have even been born if it hadn’t been for all those Open Source developers?
If a company is going to be so twisted as to obfuscate the GPL so it can survive, and this is the only possible business model for Linux, then maybe businesses should never have started selling Linux in the first place. All a company ever saw was “Free!”
I _was_ a Red Hat supporter until just a few weeks ago. I _was_ going to pay the $100 for their RH Pro Workstation (even though I’ve _already_ bought RH9) until, just a few days before it was released, they decided to change the web page describing it to the effect that I’d have to pay another $100 every year, not just $60.
Then there’s Sun with “$100/employee/year.” Sounds similar to RHEL to me. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to pay THAT much for Linux, when I can get an OEM CD with Windows for the same price, and add a Norton suite of programs to it for ~$60/year. AND I can run all those other programs (Flight Simulator, GoLive, CorelDRAW, etc.) which I’ve had paid over the last few years. Every one of those programs has an Open Source equivalent, but I’m watching large companies shatter everything Open Source was, and I don’t have the time to work with Debian (mind you, I did for a number of months, but “free time” is becoming very precious to me.)
By the way, for the past several weeks, Windows 98SE has not blue screened on me once, Mozilla didn’t hang, and I didn’t need to apt-get a hundred packages to use a spreadsheet.
Why exactly do you think that Red Hat is “obfuscating the GPL” or “trying to tinker with how GPL software is licensed”? Those are really obscure claims.
What I mean by “obfuscate” is… well, I assume you have read the RHEL license (redhat.com/licenses). You have to read a significant portion of that license just to find any mention of the GPL. I’ve read most of that license, and unless I really miss the point of it, Red Hat owns the Intellectual Property for Bluecurve, and all their graphics, and a few programs maybe; also, you need to have services with your product.
The licenses conflict themselves. The GPL supercedes any RH license for GPL software, HOWEVER, I cannot use that GPL software, distributed in RHEL, unless I pay that $60/year, and even then I can only use it on one computer. That’s in ADDITION to the up-front $180, ONLY for use on one computer!
And don’t say “Fedora” in response to that. From what I’ve read, the results people have had with Fedora 1 have been anywhere from teriffic to terrible.
At least most of the code in the Proprietary World was written by companies, so there are no conflicting licenses for the same product. There is Microsoft’s EULA, and there’s Adobe’s EULA, and there’s Corel’s EULA, etc. They don’t have an EULA which does not supercede another license, the GPL, yet has ramifications which almost cancel the freedoms the GPL has provided.
Sure, Red Hat wrote a few packages for Linux. Sure, maybe they should be able to make money… but if they’re going to be unethical about it by selling the software they didn’t write not as their own, yet licensed as their own IP, I won’t be their customer. Plain and simple. Microsoft, even with the BSA and Product Activation and the ancient blue screens, is still relatively honest in this respect.
Wow. It sounds like these jerks like it more than RH 8 and 9.
and I love that Denis Leary Quote.
Yeah it is a common article like the othe ones. And some point in this article, i agree, some i am not.
However, i personally never see a rocky system such a Salckware. RedHat and FC1 (rh brother) can not compare with Slackbox on many aspects: stability, speed, less bugs and more. Believe me, I went thru’ many Distros, and make a stop at slackBOX.
//end
The sales rep this guy talked to made a point I don’t think has sunk in with most people yet.
She guaranteed that other Linux distributors would not be around in 2 years time to support their product.
Now, instead of going on too big of a rant just think about what we are left with without any Mandrake, SuSe, or Redhat. We are left with products for developers and admins, by developers and admins. We are left with RTFM and “write it yourself then” kind of people. (i’ve excluded the desktop distros like lindows, xandros and libranet cause they want money too).
So is this the distro we all want? One written and supported by mostly college students and teenagers? Or ones that where
we pay them so they can throw more resources at the features we want? Don’t have to answer we all know which distros have the most users.
In regard to Redhat owning graphics & Bluecurve, you are free to copy the theme, but you can’t use the name Bluecurve. In fact someone has made a clone & Redhat are okay with that. I’m not to sure what you mean by all graphics? Redhat spent a lot of time and money on the Bluecurve theme, so what is wrong with them owning the name to stop people doing cheap rip offs & adding its name to it. I don’t understand why in their licence they should have to put GPL all over it?
Redhat don’t just grab GPL software and package it, if it was so easy why do they employ so many engineers to develope it & quality assure it?
“Sure Redhat wrote a few packages for Linux” If they only wrote a few packages what were all the other Redhat engineers doing? Redhat employees over 400 staff members. They support Gnome,Mozilla, OpenOffice etc & they support all those things via providing staff members to work on them.
“but if they’re going to be unethical about it by selling the software they didn’t write not as their own, yet licensed as their own IP, I won’t be their customer. ”
I think what they are selling is the service ie customer support, quality assurence etc. What GPL software have the licensed as their own IP? I would be interested to find any GPL software that Redhat has turned into IP, could you please name just one?
I recently saw a talk by Bob Young. He said that when redhat started, he forced the company to not only put the product on the web for free, but also to redesign it such that it is as easy as possible to install the dowloaded version. This decision is why redhat is so successful, for exactly the reasons the ranter mentioned. It gave RedHat marketshare. Now, they seem to have forgotten that they did not become so successful because of some superior product, they did so because they made it easy to download and install their product for free. In the short term, I’m sure their revenues will increase. In the longterm, however, I can see their marketshare slipping as their advantages over microsoft,etc. become less obvious.
i must say that-after the fedora-project was announced-i exactly thought similar: “now even red hat is becoming more and more microsoftish.”
since a year or so, i think about the relationship between the (esp. big) distros and the community, and imo it is inevitable that the model which made linux big in the first place-namely companies getting money for their distros which allows them in turn to hire fulltime core-developers which brings linux forward, which in turn attracts developer-users etc. won’t work that way anymore-so why is that?
because the community and the companies have some fundamentally different goals or aims:
– the duty of a (esp. publically traded) company is to make profits, money
– the aim of the oss (or fsf)-community is to provide free software for everyone.
in order to achive their goal of profits, companies have to think about a way to make money out of oss, and one way to achieve that is about services (rhn, you etc.) and certifications (oracle, ibm etc.).
in the case of redhat, nevertheless still too many people (like you) preferred the normal rhl. so in order to improve margins, it had to go-simple businesslogic.
i just took a look at the company profile of rhat-an excerpt:
“For the 6 months ended 8/31/03, revenues rose 37% to $56M. Net income before extra. item totaled $4.9M vs. a loss of $6.3M. Results reflect an increased number of Red Hat Enterprise Linux units sold and reduced non-cash costs.”
so in sharp contrast to its marketcap of 1,5 billion, red hat can hardly be called a cashcow and from their standpoint, cancelling rhl is very understandable-from the standpoint of the community of course it is not.
but again, the big distros don’t need you anymore (or less and less)-at least if you don’t bring them profits.
at lot more could be said about all this…
The GPL supercedes any RH license for GPL software, HOWEVER, I cannot use that GPL software, distributed in RHEL, unless I pay that $60/year, and even then I can only use it on one computer. That’s in ADDITION to the up-front $180, ONLY for use on one computer
RHEL is a service. If you want to use the software in RHEL, you can download the SRPMS from their ftp site, compile them and use it. It is all free software.
How else does anyone think Redhat will make sure they do not end up supporting 1000 PCs instead of the 100 they pay for. The contract is pretty clear. If you want to get RHEL unpaid for, download the srpms, make an iso and install in on your system. Its really nothing too special probably, other than that Redhat has made an undertaking to support it for the next 5 years or so, so they will work with vendors to make sure that third party software runs on it everytime there is a new release. This is something you can not say for the normal Redhat releases, or Mandrake or SUSE for that matter. If you are going to stay on the bleeding edge, you are better of with Fedora. If you really want RHEL, there is the WS I thnk which goes for 175, and another i hear that goes for less than $100. The reason they stopped providign support for some is because they did not see it as viable. A few people on these sites complain, but until there is a sizeable number of you, like say, 50 000 willing to pay for support, Redhat would be silly to let you pass. Sad fact is that there probably is not that high a number. redhat probably anticipated some of this ‘backlash’, but you are nto a business person if you cannot disappoint a few people when you have to.
The article mentions that the add/remove is buggy but fails to point out that it’s a known problem and has been addressed. I’m not minimizing the problem, this was a major screw up – however I think reviewers should point people to the fix.
The fix can be downloaded here – http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/updates/tes…
(Thanks to the person who pointed out this fix in another review a couple of weeks back. That’s how I found out about it.)
I agree with the above comments about Slack. I’m using Vector now (slack based) for several good reasons. Only thing it’s missing is decent package management and that’s somewhat addressed by Swaret. There’s always Arch, Debian and Freebsd if you want good packages/ports. I too started with SuSE and RH and decided to move away from all the config tools while I’m training for LPIC. Slack (and vector) provide an excellent base to build ur own system and thousands of packages are out there.
There will apparently be no more free redhat (only fedora) but I’m seeing Redhat Professional Workstation at cheapbytes for only $99. Not really out of line to pay that for a decent OS. Not sure how the $99 release compares to $180 RHELWKS. SuSE 9 is (or soon will be) free for ftp install and is only $36 for boxed set of personal and double that for pro. If you’re looking to get a first boxed set, SuSE (or mandy perhaps) is an excellent alternative to the old Redhat releases.
True that SuSE install isos are not free, only the Live CD. I nevertheless see unofficial sets of 8.2 Pro for sale (~ $10) at places. A lot of foreign ftp sites also offer the latest pro releases, probably out of naivete of the license.
Due to XP Pro being so cheap oem, Redhat is probably struggling in the workstation / desktop market. It’s reasonable that they do anything it takes to make a profit. So instead of complaining, get an RHCT or RHCE and share in the profits being made from enterprise linux.
I agree with the article. Red Hat’s strategy will make Red Hat distribution only more one linux distribution on the market, like the Unix fragmentation in past. Red Hat will not be the number one never more, specially now with Novell and other big players in market.
For me, the old way was more intelligent. You could download and use RH for free and then contract support from Red Hat.
People use linux to not be obliged to pay extorsive licenses and to accept EULA’s like M$. Windows became popular only because of “tolerated” piracy of domestic users.
I will not use Red Hat anymore. I am using Conectiva, Mandrake and Debian. I don’t like the iso images restriction of SuSe also. And if Conectiva or Mandrake change your licenses I will only use Debian.
You know, I read here people saying they went back to MS because of Fedora 1. These smart people obviously realize that Red Hat is the ONLY distro out there. SuSE, Mandrake, Slackware, Debian: Those are imposters.
You know, I read people saying that Fedora 1 sucks, and that it’s the worst thing ever, blah blah blah. And? So? What? Red Hat 9 wasn’t any better. (And yes, I have used it). Because it’s so wrong of Red Hat to say “Hey, let’s support this package, and not support this package. Support costs money, so the one we don’t support, we will give away for free.”
Oh, how evil! The horror. Egads! What will we do.
“Fedora Multimedia support sucks!” you say as I listen to my CD’s, watch movies, and listen to music on my computer without a problem. “Oh dear God, I can’t listen to my MP3.”
Because your MP3’s are Red Hat’s #1 concern.
But of course, we ALL know you downloaded every release for free, and then told your “clients” to buy the support and use it. And now that support is, what, just under $200 per machine, and Fedora is free, you can no longer recommend it?
So, just to be clear, I want to understand what you are saying.
Technical merits be damned. Either A) You never recommened Red Hat to your clients because it was a good solution for them, but because you use it at home to listen to your MP3’s, or B) it was good technically for them, but now that they have raised their prices (to a point still much, much less than Microsoft support) you tell your clients that Red Hat is not good for them, and they should go to what: Windows (One person did switch from Evil Red Hat to Perfectly working Microsoft?
Because Red Hat is supposed to listen to you. They should run their business because you say so. Obviously, because you know how much money they were getting, or losing because of their support.
Yeah, Red Hat sucks because now they are allowing people to redistribute and make copies of their core system. A desktop geared distro for free. Yeah, that’s evil. It’s evil for them to say “Hey, we don’t want to support it.” Because choice is not allowed. Damn them for making one.
Note: Sarcasm where is counts, and if you don’t get it, don’t reply. In fact, I won’t read the replies, mostly because this topic and many of the arguments presented by people here are as important to me as the air speed velocity of an unladen ketchup bottle. If your one of those people making these arguments: Sorry, but the truth hurts.
Well said Jason.
and Marcelo of course everyone liked the old way, the got the same product for free, problem is everyone was using only the free product and being thier own support so it costed redhat big time. they have WAY too many users to just support for free. do you have any idea how much it costs to be the largest bandwith provider on the east coast? and thats just the BANDWITH.
I have a question. why is everyone looking to SuSe as some knight in shining armor? don’t they have questionable licensing? only i386 iso (for download)? FTP installs? they package any kind of propriatary software they can get thier hands on like MP3, video codecs, pine, qmail and now going to bundle codeweavers and SUPPORT chosing windows applications? Who knows what Novell has planned ontop of that. Am i missing something here? why are they our saviour? Cause they’re not American? Cause they’re not #1 in userbase? Frankly i just don’t get it.
Anonymous your statements indicate a lack of understanding regarding the Enterprise License agreement. The company I work for users RHEL so I feel I’m better qualified to know what it does and does not require than you.
Basically all the license boils down to is that the distribution itself is not free because it contains RedHat copyrighted and trademarked artwork and words.
I can take all the source RPM’s (just about) and create my own distribution from RHEL if I wanted quite legally (as long as I remove the specific RedHat material that the EULA mentions), I just can’t install and use RedHat trademarked material on every machine, so therefore the GPL does not supercede in this case because of how copyright law works with aggregates.
An example of the freedom to create your own distribution of RHEL based of it is found at:
http://www.whiteboxlinux.org/
There are a few others popping up as well.
Do you honestly think that the same company where Alan Cox, Owen Taylor and other major Linux kernel and application developers work would support a EULA that grossly violates the GPL? I sincerely doubt it.
The only support I’d ask is automatic updates in the form of RHN. And promise software like Oracle will run stable. I’m willing to pay some money for RH Network, but $100 a year?
Jason is right.
Recently I also could not understand Eugenia’s disappointment over Fedora. She had clearly stated for many times that she liked Windows XP more than current Linux desktop offers. And now Fedora is only the first step of a new distro. But she blamed it for all its bugs. Before, bugs of Mandrake and other systems were taken lighter.
I am using both Windows XP and Fedora at home, and I would recommend using Fedora to new users. When I recommend something I am also ready to apply patches for the new user, so that everything would work (Application Add/Removal, mp3 and such).
Just try recommend any Windows version without updating BEFORE going into the Internet. The Blaster worm will immediately blast your reputation! 🙂
“Frankly i just don’t get it.”
A lot of reasons, one of them probably being that it wasn’t their CEO that advised us all to use Windows.
You don’t get it? Your loss…
Lynch argues that Fedora isn’t ready for corporate desktops. He’s correct, because Fedora doesn’t appear to be aiming there. Any distribution that promises new relases every 3-4 months is clearly a bad candidate for corporate use.
The first sentence on Fedora’s home page tells us that it is a “proving ground” for “new technology” that “may eventually” be included in Red Hat’s official product line.
The second sentence on that page states that Fedora “is not a supported product of Red Hat”.
In other words, Fedora is what it says it is. Assessing it as the successor to RH9 is inappropriate.
That said, I’ve not experienced the problems Lynch noted. The “Add/Remove Packages” function works fine for me. I don’t care about MP3’s, DVD’s, etc., so don’t mind that they’re not here. (Did Lynch note that this has been longstanding Red Hat policy?) I tend to favor Gnome, finding KDE’s design overly busy, but don’t feel any sense of “loyalty” to either.
Red Hat’s CEO never said Linux users should use Windows. Nor did he say Windows is better than Linux. He said something most Linux users say already: Linux still needs work on the desktop, and that normal home users looking to buy a Windows replacement can just stick with Windows for now. Linux for businesses? That’s fine, that is ready, now. And he didn’t say anything to the contrary. What is good for the business isn’t the same thing as good for the home user.
Saying that Red Hat’s CEO said “People should use Windows over Linux” without fully understanding what he meant is like saying that Al Gore said he invented the internet, which is something he never claimed.
Why do you describe yourself as a former Red Hat “supporter”? That suggests an emotional commitment to Red Hat. Why would you feel that?
Your relationship with Red Hat was as a customer. Red Hat wants your money, not your support. Absent your cash, support is useless to them. When you purchase a product, you aren’t showing support for the seller, you’re just making a marketplace decision to buy something.
When you see yourself as a “supporter” of a business, invariably you will expect that business to display similar loyalty and support for you. That’s an unreasonable expectation.
You get what you pay for, you know.
Lots of folks here, and elsewhere, whining about their allleged abandonment by Red Hat, and bitching that they can’t get Red Hat for free anymore.
Folks, there is no — repeat, no — retail market for shrinkwrapped Linux. Red Hat figured that out and has left the market. Good for them. As a publicly-held business, their primary obligation is to make a profit for their stockholders.
(As a little point of interest, I live a few miles from Red Hat corporate headquarters, Even in this area, finding a store that carried the retail line of Red Hat was difficult. Why? Because there’s no profit in trying to sell it.)
Most people don’t want to pay for Linux, because they equate the “free” in the GPL with “I don’t have to pay for it”. That’s wrong, of course.
Red Hat’s code is available on the net. If you want it, go and get it. Neither the GPL or anything else obligates Red Hat to give away compiled code.
I have installed and have been using RH Fedora Core 1 on my new P4 system, since it was available for download.
I must say, it is the most solid Linux Distro that I’ve tried. They’ve done a decent job of simplifying the structure, on disk and in the menus, of the default install.
It had a problem detecting my sound card, ethernet card and the keyboard driver works a little strange ( no “lock” keys get lit and kudzu keeps wanting to remove the driver ). However, run sndconfig for the sound card and redhat-network-config for the ethernet card and then both cards worked fine.
In regards to Linux in general, I would say that in the area of tightly coupled graphics and solid Audio/Video, it is still highly lacking. But, it is a far cry from just a couple of years ago.
I think that if Desktop Linux is to be successfull going head to head against the other major OS’s ( Windows, Mac, etc. ), then it needs to have a more “micro” kernel, a tightly coupled graphics system ( with support for X-Windows calls ) and a robust audio/video system. And of course, more drivers ( always, more drivers ).
All things considered, it is the best Linux Distro available and it’s free to download
Truly, grubbing for money is the root of all Evil.
There are lots of other great distos you can use.
Libranet is a very nice one, check it out at http://www.libranet.com/
If your a little more technically savy, run Gentoo, it has a excellent community/forums and works great as a server.
I read the letter and I can tell that their is some serious frustration. My immediate thoughts are that he isnt the only one. I also completely agree that the women he spoke with was definately a “B” and that her attitude IS indicative of RH’s attitude these days. The arrogance is completley disgusting IMO and RH wouldnt be number one in the US had it not been for their free distribution. Its like theyre basically saying yes thank you everyone for your time and code and making us the number one distro, but now its time for us to tell you all to go fly a kite. Ive always avoided RH becuase of their selfish attitudes. I understand that a business needs to make money, but you cant piss of the people that made you what you are and not expect serious backlash. At least with SuSE you can purchase a home or pro version at a very reasonable cost that includes 90 days of support with the assurance that you can also get further support down the road if need be. My open remark to that sales rep at RH, and anyone else there that shares her attitude, is enjoy working while you can, cause Novell/SuSE and your own ignorance will drive your company into the ground.
I have been using Fedora 1 about 2 days after it came out. I waited a week, hooked myself up to some yum repositories, and I am on my way to be best open source desktop bliss that I have ever experienced. Yum is wonderful, the community support and involvement is there. Everyone is informative and a quick glance at the fedora-users list archives will have your problems solved with a few clicks and keystrokes. It took me about 15 min of customizing fedora with add-on packages and I haven’t had a problem since first installing it. It’s stable (running packages BUILT for fedora), dependable and well worth the time it takes to install it. There’s even 4MB bootable .iso’s for install over FTP/network. I am extremely happy with Fedora and the next version looks like it will include linux kernel 2.6 with all of its goodies such as alsa and preemptive kernel and latency patches. This with another Gnome just released will make it a nice snappy desktop. I can’t express how much I like fedora. Definitely worth trying out.
People complaining that RedHat doesn’t support Fedora don’t seem to understand how support works and how much it can cost.
RedHat broke Fedora off from RedHat because they saw that Enterprise clients and home users have different goals.
Enterprise clients are willing to pay for support, want a product that doesn’t change very often, and are willing to accept slightly out-of-date software if it means a little more stability.
Home Linux users generally don’t want to pay for support (at least not much) and want very up to date software, necessitating rapid release cycles.
Seeing this, they broke the distributions into RedHat for enterprise clients and Fedora for home users / tinkerers. If you look at the basic characteristics of RedHat vs. Fedora, you’ll see that RedHat is inherently easier to support. It has been through much more QA and doesn’t change very often. Fedora, on the other hand, would be VERY difficult to support and RedHat simply doesn’t have the resources to support it.
“Ive always avoided RH becuase of their selfish attitudes.”
Yes, a company which turned millions of dollars into free software all those years and whose product could be downloaded for free is incredible selfish. How could a company only think about profit? It’s an abomination!
I recommend to uninstall every software which has code from Red Hat (gcc, glibc, xfree, binutils, gnome, and many others). Let’s show that we don’t love Red Hat anymore. I am already running Windows XP.
“Yes, a company which turned millions of dollars into free software all those years and whose product could be downloaded for free is incredible selfish. How could a company only think about profit? It’s an abomination!”
Youre missing the point. The point is that not that they are taking away a free product….because Fedora is free. The issue issue is that they are eliminating all support for most of their supporters. We are now limited to an overpriced enterprise distro or an unsupported hobbyist distro. All the while Novell/SuSE has very attractive home/pro distributions at reasonable cost with support. Its Ok though, everyones entitled to their own opinions. From everything Ive read thus far though, Id say youre in the minority. The proof will also be in the pudding. Just watch as RH gets its hind quarters handed to them.
As far as uninstalling gcc, glibc, xfree, etc…dont be ridiculous. Im not boycotting RH and any code theyve ever touched. I simply avoid their distros because of their attitude. To the dismay of many, they raped both Gnome and KDE (mostly KDE) with Bluecurve to meet their own goals. They pissed off God only knows how many people by dropping their primary distro…..and they did it on a whim and with an attitude on top of it. Im sorry but that is just garbage. It wouldnt have been as bad if they 86’d the attitude, but no, they have do the “Ya so we dropped it..so, so what, we’re number one so there…we can do whatever we want and dont care what anyone thinks.” Its not enough to merely disappoint your loyal supporters, no they have to piss them off at the same time.
I am really confused. Ignorant fool that I am, when I read the Fedora web page it looked to me as if Fedora basically *IS* RH but without any company customer support.
Since they are not charging anything, I guess they can reasonably consider the users to be non-customers. (pay money=become customer). However, people paid by RH will still be working on the Fedora project and helping with it, even though RH isn’t going to make a dime directly.
They decided that their main source of software was the community, so they went with a community model, while still putting money into development. After all, employees cost money. And from what I read, Fedora will include RH employess. In return for providing project mangement and development assistance to the community, they may or may not wind up using some of the software in their enterprise version.
The enterprise version will be sold to businesses who are willing and able to pay for hand holding.
The question that puzzles the heck out of me is this, What part of this is evil?
The business part of it is not evil. In fact nobody ever said it was evil. There are far worse companies, MS ahem, that have evil business practices. The part the sucks is the we can do whatever we want, we’re number one, and if you dont like it then tough attitude. (I know, Im probably beating a dead horse on the attitude thing now).
As far as:
“However, people paid by RH will still be working on the Fedora project and helping with it, even though RH isn’t going to make a dime directly”
Dont be fooled here. While Fedora is a way for RH to save some face, its also a huge proving ground for all future enterprise releases. Not to mention it will prevent most of their engineers from taking off on them. How exciting is it work on an enterprise distro that only updates once in a blue moon. The real enjoyment is in the cutting edge stuff that makes Linux move forward. Dont think for second that Fedora is a profetless favor to the RH community.
“Now, they seem to have forgotten that they did not become so successful because of some superior product, they did so because they made it easy to download and install their product for free.”
If Red Hat had forgotten the advantage that they had from offering a free download, they probably wouldn’t have offered Fedora at all. Fedora was a response to two business realities:
1) The non-enterprise boxed versions of Red Hat were money losers. Most people preferred CDs made from the free, downloadable version.
2) Users of the free but unsupported version of Red Hat Linux still demanded free support from Red Hat, neglecting that Red Hat clearly stated that only the boxed version came with support.
Red Hat dealt with the first reality by no longer selling boxed versions, and initially dealt with the second by forbidding CheapBytes and its kin from using the Red Hat trademark (at least not without a hefty fee). Once they had stopped selling boxed retail versions of Red Hat Linux, they took a new approach to the second issue; “Fedora” would be the new name and trademark of the downloadable distribution, and CheapBytes and kin would be expressly allowed to use this new trademark.
I wrote an email to Eric and he suggested that I should repost it here. He seems like a pretty cool guy. So here it is:
Hey there, I read your article at (http://www.gnomepro.com/dedrat.phtml) and
think you made some good points. I would just like to add something that might
help clarify the situation for you in your mind. It is not a coincidence that
you are upset by what Red Hat is doing because they are *deliberately* trying to
shift their business model away from pay-per-incident support to their expensive
Enterprise contracts. In short they are quite deliberately screwing people like
you, and it’s no wonder that you are pissed off.
However, it’s important to remember that Red Hat is a profit-oriented business
and if the business model that worked for you and your business doesn’t suit
them — that really is none of their concern. They might be ditching you for
higher-value contracts, but that is their right — even if they are wrong (okay,
bad joke, but still). The only rational course of action is for you to switch
over your clients to other distributions that have a business model that better
matches your own.
Cheers, and good luck.
-rt-
Just an FYI: We (SciTech) just wrapped up testing SciTech SNAP Graphics for Linux running on Fedora Core 1 and have now added it to our list of certified and supported distributions.
Feel free to download it and give it a try with Fedora!
http://www.scitechsoft.com/products/ent/snap_linux.html
The part that sucks is RHCE is going to be an expensive proposition. $600 for copy of workstation plus server OS, even more for advanced server. Add to that the $350 to $750 for rhct or rhce test. Argh.
With free MS evals and distros, LPIC or MCSE or even SCSA is a lot cheaper to train for.
Use <your distro here>!>!>!
The flaw in rh is that it you won’t be able to buy it in a store for 39.95.
“You know, I read here people saying they went back to MS because of Fedora 1. These smart people obviously realize that Red Hat is the ONLY distro out there. SuSE, Mandrake, Slackware, Debian: Those are imposters.”
I can understand people being loyal Red Hatters, but this statement is just outright ridiculous. ALL of these are good distros whether you think so or not.
1. Before replying to a post, you should read the entire post.
2. Think before you type.
3. A statement that is outright ridiculous has a strong possiblity of being sarcasm.
Following this, if you still believe what I wrote in that sentence, have I got a bridge to sell you!
Okay, seriously: I was being sarcastic. Yes, that statement is ridiculous. But guess what: That is what I am reading from a lot of people. Indeed, some guy (don’t feel like digging up the post) in this thread said he want back to Windows because of this. And that, my dear Nute, is the purpose of the particular sarcasm.
That Fedora is just a never ending beta for Red Hat’s distro now.
Just ditched Suse 8.2 and 9. Getting very sick and tired of all the stupid little issues I have with Suse.
Installed Fedora Core 1 expecting it to be very beta and am really suprised. It is excellent – better than RH9, faster, more stable and looks so good.
Now to stop myself buggering about with apt and buggering up my fine install!! Bought code weavers xover office and am very serisouly considering replacing XP on my main machine.
Seriously, to pay a wedge for cash for the Suse distro and have niggles with the yast runlevel crashing, then upgrade to 9 over FTP and have DMA issues is pathetic. Will be sticking to Fedora from now on!!
PS. Have also used debian in anger – excellent for LSB but a bummer to get work done and not waste time tinkering.
PPS. Fedorea core excellent platform for Komodo and my Python development. Highly recommended.