Two years after its first attempt fell short, Red Hat is trying again to reach beyond its own employees for help developing its Linux line.
Red Hat tries again with Linux enthusiasts
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Red Hat is a great distro, has done more than any single other corporate entity to promote and develop free software. Communities have developed around other distros precisely because they are not corporate, though. Gentoo has a very open development process, incredible user/dev forums, and a widely diverse and knowledgable userbase. Gentoo is where its at. Suse is a great desktop distro as well, YaST is really good at keeping linux configuration simple and easy to maintain. RH will continue to have a future, but I forsee good things from Novell/Suse.
While I agree this is a long time coming, it is not too late. Fedora has a lot of users. Opening its CVS repo will bring in more users and keep those who might go to Ubuntu etc.
What I am wondering about is the build system. As a long time FreeBSD user, I can say that one of the points in its credit is that you can literally update and rebuild the core system with a few commands, and this process has been practically idiot-proof for some time.
I am not sure if this is the plan for Fedora…perhaps someone can elaborate. This would make it somewhat Gentoo-like, but it would be nice if people had that option.
This could also mitigate some of the issues of conflicting repos for apt, yum, etc.
Anyway, if anyone can elaborate on exactly how this will work, please post.
Red Hat’s novelty wore off after I got into Slackware, Debian, and the BSDs. RPM is seriously dated, overly complex, and doesn’t really solve the problems of package management. I’ve always found the Red Hat installer frustrating whenever I want to manage my own disks. Red Hat also seemed to like to screw around with /etc more; I didn’t find it intuitive.
In short, if I want Linux, there are other great distros to pick from, and if I want UNIX, that’s what Sun is for.
n early 2003, the Raleigh, N.C.-based company launched Fedora, a free Linux package. The company had two objectives. It hoped numerous users would be drawn to the !!!gratis!! software
this is what it said in my firefox- that`s free in norwegian
dos other`s get that too?
Really OT, I know…
actually “gratis” is latin, is also used in english and means
specifically “free of charge”. Probably used in the article
because of the “free as in beer”/”free as in speech” ambiguity.
Feel free (no pun intended) to mod this down.
The problem with Fedora project has been Red Hat’s insistance on control over Fedora. Red Hat really don’t want Fedora to diverge too far away from RHEL because to Red Hat, Fedora is really a test bed. If Fedora’s underlying technology diverges too far from RHEL, it doesn’t make any business sense for Red Hat to support Fedora. This control that Red Hat imposes on Fedora is the cause of why Fedora isn’t attracting developers. The volunteers essentially feel like they are working for Red Hat for free. What Red Hat needs to do is to give up it’s control and let the community make the decision based on technology.
As a couple of persons mentioned in a previous thread about NetBSD, I hope that Redhat/Fedora can add another option in the installation: Bare Bones Install.
A real bare bones one for people who just want to install core components, and then build up from that.
>Red Hat will hold its first-ever Fedora User and Developer
>Conference–FUDcon
FUDcon???? Shouldnt that be a MS or SCO conference
ever since ubuntu was released, i have switched from fc2 to ubuntu completely. well actually i switched for a moment to fc3, but there was a taste of it being a little rushed (cd testing problems, incomplete selinux permissions [particularly with apache and mysql through phpmyadmin], no ‘officially endorsed’ extras, and other problems. that made me switch back to the new and relatively untested ubuntu.
so far so good. i’ve upgrade my desktop machine to ubuntu hoary, and will do so as well with my laptop as soon as gnome-applets 2.9.4.1 or later is released. in fact, this is the first time i have ever dared to try out ‘testing’ software, especially big ones like gnome. i guess it’s because of how apt-get/synaptic/debs seem to have solved my upgrade problems with redhat/fedora.
what made me switch to ubuntu was the ‘recentness’ of packages like gentoo without having to compile, with ‘limitless’ upgradability unlike it seems with fedora systems. and judging from page views in distrowatch, and the volume of traffic on ubuntuforums and the mailing lists, it seems i’m not the only one. all hail debian with the scariness.
The thing I can’t agree with, is the fact that RedHat provides Fedora as i386 packages, while it cannot run on a machine that is as slower as an athlon 1 GHz, it could gain in reactivity and speed if it could be compiled as i586 or better.
Am I wrong ?
Well, FUDCon could mean in this context “Fedora Users and Developers Conference”
Red Hat’s novelty wore off after I got into Slackware, Debian, and the BSDs. RPM is seriously dated, overly complex, and doesn’t really solve the problems of package management.
You forgot that YUM is a package manager much like APT and urpmi that is available for Red Hat products. You forgot that SUSE, Mandrake and other clones are rpm based distros that has already their own package managers listed above.
Once again, rpm is very much like Debian dpkg. IMHO, rpm is the most misundestood thing so it is unacceptable to still use the myth about rpm ‘dependancy hell’.
AFAIK, RHEL4 is based on Fedora Core 3 meaning yum is the default package manager.
“The thing I can’t agree with, is the fact that RedHat provides Fedora as i386 packages, while it cannot run on a machine that is as slower as an athlon 1 GHz, it could gain in reactivity and speed if it could be compiled as i586 or better.”
Fedora Core 1 and 2 are compiled for i386, optimized for i686
Fedora core 3 is compiled for i386, optimized for Pentium 4
The compiled for i586, optimized for i686 binaries ran slower than the compiled for i386, optimized for i686 binaries.
Red Hat actually uses -march=i386 -mtune=pentium4. There have been _huge_ discussions about this internally, and kernel contributors like Arjan have done testing. It turns out that you don’t actually get much benefit from using -march=i686. GCC also doesn’t have enough granularity in its tune options. Furthermore, projects that use Fedora RPMs have certain hardware support requirements that don’t necessarily include Pentium class processors. Its all about balancing hardware coverage with performance, and you don’t loose much performance by using -march=i386.
Uli Drepper (glibc maintainer) wrote:
“Using -march=i386 (or -march=i486 which is no different) plus -mtune=pentium4 provides the best support for the current processors.”
I hope that Redhat/Fedora can add another option in the installation: Bare Bones Install.
Fedora has always had that option.
“Fedora has always had that option.”
Oh, what I meant was something like no telnet, pcmcia-cs, cups..etc. Or probably an option to select packages manually.
Hold on, I think this may be available on the graphical install. I haven’t tried it since 7.2, heh.
Hmm, I’m getting a head-ache trying to figure out how RedHat is an enterprise system. Technically, RedHad uses the same open-source software all other distros do right? They may add their own administrative utilities and such, but the kernel is essentially the same, so is gnome, X, etc. Maybe with a few patches here and there…
Oh, wait, is it RPM that makes it an enterprise system? HAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHA!
Could it be that RedHad runs well-tested software. Or maybe it’s the support.
I don’t know. I just think many commercial distros claim THEY created the best Linux system available when open-source developers and the ones creating software. RedHad and others just package things together (it’s no small task though) and put a nice red ribbon on it.
>>RedHad and others just package things together (it’s no small task though) and put a nice red ribbon on it.
RedHat has contributed more than anybody else. A big number of distributions are based on RHL.
red hat already has been blessed by big corporations that run servers. It’s either Red Hat Enterprise, FreeBSD or Windows over there. Weird how SuSE got some traction then kinda creeped away..
Red Hat dosen’t need a developer community they make loads of money. They are just afraid of CentOS and Whitebox taking away money from red hat EL.
Hm.. what am i running under a cheaper name?
I think the community has done very well for itself and is well on the way to surpassing them by a comfortable margin and will continue to do so long after Dead Rat and their marketing schemes hit the ash heap.
er81: See this blog entry:
http://log.ometer.com/2004-09.html#5
Did you actually read the article?
I don’t see any problem with the name. Linux distributions are distinguished by its names.
When you buy RedHat you obtain several benefits you cannot get in other non-comercial distributions:
– RedHat provides you with Technical support, not only for installation but also for the general system maintenance and troubleshooting. This support is ruled by SLAs -very important- I have worked with RHEL v3 and believe me, this is not the “30-day free support!” you find in other distros…
– Suppport is provided during all the product lifecycle so you do not have to worry if your RHEL version is not the lateste and greatest one.
– No, RHEL kernel is not the same you will find in other distro. Kernel has been fine-tuned by RH people with Enterprise needs in mind.
– Pagakege selection does not include the latest versions but manufactured guarantees that what is in the box works without problems (and pays you if this is not true throug Open Source Assurance program)
– etc.
Sorry but I would never install a distro like Fedora (or Ubuntu on Debain) in a production environment -no ofense inteded-
David
I’ve got FC3 running on a 300MHz AMD K6 laptop. It’s not fast, but it’s no slower than Knoppix (installed to disk) or Ubuntu.
I think its time for someone to work on a new operating system. One with the ease of windows but the security and flexibility of Linux. It’s obvious neither Windows or Linux is going to be the “answer” for the future. Window is way to insecure. Linux has some insane command line names that scare away new users. Not to mention every distro has to go and specialize their configuration system. Switching from one distro to another can be like learning a new operating system in some cases.
By the way the destruction of programming jobs in the United States is going to decrease the chance anyone is going to spend their free time (or even have the knowledge to do so) on Linux programming. I have a M.S. in Computer Science and couldn’t find an entry-level programming job anywhere in the U.S. Now I am back at school for accounting and I am not going to spend my spare time trying to keep up with programming when I am already too busy!
Have you ever heard of a company called Apple? If Microsoft is the Chevy of computing, Apple could be the Toyota or Lexus. I guess Sun could be the BMW.