Konstantin Ryabitsev sent a funny message to the development discussions related to Fedora Core, published at LWN. In the meantime, Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik answered to this querstion: “So is Red Hat Consumer Desktop next?”: “Now that’s interesting. That won’t be function-based, it’ll be form-based. And when you look at the computing you and I will be using over the next 10 years, we won’t have software resident on our hard drive. You’ll go to somebody — it may well be Red Hat — and you’ll get an e-mail package, a calendaring function, and it will be a subscription-based Web service. It’s not that far away, look at what people do with their cellular phones today.”
Revealed: how Fedora and the Community Interact
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“we won’t have software resident on our hard drive. You’ll go to somebody ”
I can believe it. But it will require that the subscribed-to downloadable software’s are substantial better than what’s already out there for free download. Google appears to be on the same track. Same with SUN. But the opens source community is not going to just sit still and watch.
I think that MS has this idea first.
He is is considering that anyone will have fast internet access all the time.
IMO as someone following the Fedora Core lists for some time, the Ryabitsev parody is dead on and hilarious!
The “community” project is completely controlled by RH, there is near ZERO communication from the leadership, and ZERO transparency in the decision making process.
The upside is that RH has not abandoned RHL users, per Slashdot-ish paranoia. There are tons of RH engineers active in the devel/testing lists for Fedora. Their commitment is obvious, and the product is very good. The fact that RH does maintain control over the Fedora is a relief to many.
They just need to begin communicating, and allowing some meaningful involvement from the community.
Anyone know where Michael K Johnson ended up after he left the helm of Fedora?
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2004-May/msg00026….
They are addressing these issues, apparently the first snag for CVS is the ‘internal’ build system that needs to be reorginized. The community can’t help with that since there are NDA’s aswell as secure lists only a hand full of distros are allowed to subscribe to where they discuss new vulnerabilitys and how to fix them.
alot of stuff going on but they have people working on it full time.
These pop-headline gurus always fail to mention what software will be made available for laptops in this future world of rented online service….
“The “community” project is completely controlled by RH, there is near ZERO communication from the leadership, and ZERO transparency in the decision making process.”
Yes, but that’s what people want. Initially, RH really pushed the whole community-involvement aspect and found that their users just wanted the same old RH goodness. Those who really wanted a pure community-driven distro had already switched to Debian years ago.
RH employs some supremely talented coders and software engineers. The QA is very good, and the releases are all pretty strong. We don’t need (or want) another Debian. Sure, Debian’s an ultra-reliable distro, and deserves respect, but the gigantic community and zillions of package maintainers slows progress down immensely.
So Fedora being controlled by RH isn’t a bug — it’s a feature! Debian is there for pure community development, but Fedora gives us a lot of RH’s latest work (and they contribute a huge amount of code under the GPL) with a small amount of community involvement, but RH QA, testing and polish.
“Anyone know where Michael K Johnson ended up after he left the helm of Fedora?”
Elsewhere in Red Hat, no doubt.
He is is considering that anyone will have fast internet access all the time.
The thing is this isn’t necessarily true. While X is a dog over slow links (and isn’t exactly snappy over fast ones), RDP, aka Windows Terminal Services (aka Remote Desktop) is usable over a 56k modem, with only minor degredations in UI (turn off windows contents while dragging & resizing, bump colour depth down to 16 or 8 bit).
So, if Redhat can get a decent solution based around X that emulates the way Terminal Services works (primarily, the ability to easily disconnect and reconnect to sessions) and is uable over a 56k modem, a fast internet connection may not be a prerequisite.
Alternatively, they’ll just do it with web pages, but that’s not really compatible with things like word processors and spreadsheets, and every webmail client I’ve ever used was awful compared to Evolution and Outlook.
“Yes, but that’s what people want.” …
I’ve been following Fedora for a while, and I missed the part where “RH really pushed the whole community-involvement aspect and found that their users just wanted the same old RH goodness“. Seriously, can you point me to any mailing list or website document where they mention this shift in goals?
The community has been clamoring (with varying degrees of patience) since the beginning for more involvement. That’s why the parody hits a nerve.
I don’t doubt that RH is taking steps internally to get CVS up, etc. But to not communicate intentions or solicit feedback comes off as a bit dysfunctional, at best.
[fedora_us] I’m still not dead.
LOL!!
[fedora_rh] oss_crowd: well, it would be really helpful if you could test some things and file the bugs.
[oss_crowd] fedora_rh: ugh. We ALWAYS did that.
Again?
ROFL
How do you tell the developers at Fedora Project to include USB disk support for non-root users.
Don’t you currently have to edit /etc/fstab to be able to view your own disk?
I know project utopia isn’t finished but I would like a hack for now so it can automatically mount my USB disk. How can this be done?
That will not happen because other people will still offer outright sale software, despite what these guys want. The only subscription software business out there relies on added value content, like real-time news (Reuters,bloomberg) access to facilities (banking, markets), in short, something that cannot be maintained locally. otherwise, the subscription is to services, not software.
Why on earth would I subscribe to a word processor service when so many people still make do with 3/4/5 year old software ?
From the user perspective, this is another variant on the mainframe/dumb workstation notion. It might have a future in corporate environments that include a large number of people who need more or less random access to a number of different applications. This would allow an organization to provide those tools while keeping control.
For the typical home user? Nah.
you can check this out
http://primates.ximian.com/~rml/open-carpet/project-utopia/fedora-1…
prebuilt rpms for fedora core 1
”
So, if Redhat can get a decent solution based around X that emulates the way Terminal Services works (primarily, the ability to easily disconnect and reconnect to sessions) and is uable over a 56k modem, a fast internet connection may not be a prerequisite.”
its not about connection speed. its about consumer software model. X already has remote application display which is better than RDP. i can work faster and open up individual apps without “logging in” remotely.
For the typical home user? Nah.
My own mother-in-law is using a PC running Fedora Linux right now without a hitch. In many ways Linux provides a better user experience than Windows due to the lack of overkill.
In many ways Linux provides a better user experience than Windows due to the lack of overkill.
I’m not going to touch this one. Too easy.
“if Redhat can get a decent solution based around X that emulates the way Terminal Services works (primarily, the ability to easily disconnect and reconnect to sessions) and is uable over a 56k modem”
There’s an effort underway to write a NoMachine GUI client for KDE. From http://www.nomachine.com/news_web_read.php?idnews=86 :
“As part of an exciting new initiative by a group of KDE and Debian developers to conquer the enterprise desktop, Navindra Umanee announced on the dot.kde.org site, the KDE project’s discussion board, upcoming support for NX client and server functionalities.”
The NX compression is apparently competitive with that of Citrix so, provided they can get a passable UI together, we have a nice, distro-independent solution to look forward to. Of course, that press release was in December, so a status update would be nice.
There’s an effort underway to write a NoMachine GUI client for KDE.
Does it keep sessions ? This is an important bit of functionality in Terminal Services that vanilla X is lacking. If the network connection goes down, you can reconnect to a Terminal Server and all your apps are still running as they were when the network died. If this happens running X apps, they all die as well.
Anonymous (IP: 61.95.184.—) wrote…
you can check this out
http://primates.ximian.com/~rml/open-carpet/project-utopia/fedora-1…..
prebuilt rpms for fedora core 1
Do just install all those rpms and it will all work?
“Do just install all those rpms and it will all work?”
it did for me
Now here’s a distro that truly deserves a community and is really keeping it free.
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/news/lfs/2004/05.html#lfs51pre2rele…
Don’t you currently have to edit /etc/fstab to be able to view your own disk?
You can use an automounting daemon. Previous versions of RedHat Linux shipped with it, so I presume Fedora does as well.
The Linux Documentation Project has a mini-HOWTO:
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Automount.html
Esentially, you type in the info for the automounter in its own files and when you try to access (for example) the directory “/mnt/usb-disk/”, the automounter mounts it. If there is no activity on this mount for a specified amount of time (I use around 300 seconds), then it gets unmounted. If you need to quickly unmount the disk, either set the unmount timing lower, or umount it as root or with sudo.
Hope that helps!
“http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Automount.html“
This Howto is being maintained by me and its not as up2date as it can be. you might be able to find info on that but i suspect thats not what you really want
Rahul
I have the impression that Fedora Core is completely driven by Redhat feature-wise and the community does not have much say in the process. Having said that I can understand why from a Redhat perspective because Fedora Core is a test bed for their enterprise linux version. I find all this a bit cheeky and a slight misuse(?) of the community because I’m not sure the goal is to produce a really good Fedora Core.
For that reason I much prefer Mandrake (although their relentless releases should slow down, 9.2 works really well for me at home and work, 10.0 is a disaster in terms of stability with the 2.6.x kernel) or SuSE (just ordered 9.1 pro).
Stuff that has been working for a long time in Mandrake does not work in Fedora Core at all… An example is hardware detection. When you see what Knoppix does in terms of hardware detection there’s no excuse for any distros to have sub-par hardware detection.
It’s just my opinion. I understand and accept perfectly that others have better experience with Fedora Core so pls switch off your flame thrower
Didn’t Knoppix initially or still use Kudzu?
Also, RE: USB Disk
Thanks for the replies.
http://lwn.net/Articles/59704/
Apparently a small C program using Redhat libkudzu.
My first distro was RH8.. Not bad for a first impression.. But then I moved to debian woody, then suse 8.2, then slackware 9.1 and now I’ve settled down with Mandrake 10 Official.. Now if RH really wants to see “how it’s done” on a real desktop oriented system then mandrake 10 official is it! The best way to describe it is an exact cross-section of all the best parts of slack and suse thrown together in such a way that it provides anything better then I’ve ever experianced! In fact mandrake 10 community is still better then fedora core.. If you don’t believe me.. Ask a 65 year old friend of mine who swapped his cpu from rh9 to fedora core 1 and had no ability to access his dsl connection and very buggy(putting it lightly) graphics performance.. His actuall comment is this.. “Thank god for mandrake.. Now I can actually USE my computer, along with my digital camera and my all-in-one printer.. Which I couldn’t even do on fedora!” Red Hat had it and now they lost it.. The only thing they have now is name and that’s it.. As you can tell I’m thoroughly disgusted with the direction red hat’s been taking.. That’s why I do like linux.. No vendor lock-down and the ability of choice..
I would really like to know. I smoke a lot of Cannabis but I never have wacky fantasies like these visionaries.
I’ll believe it when I see it. Oh, and who is going to stop Debian and Mandrake and any other alternatives from offering the same “service” for free?