Intel Switches From Ubuntu To Fedora For Mobile Linux

An anonymous reader writes "According to a report on heise, Intel is switching from using Ubuntu to the Fedora Project for the second version of the Intel supported Mobile & Internet Linux Project Moblin, citing a desire to use RPM package management." So far, of the various subnotebooks I've been glancing at over shoulders at OSCON, though, most of the ones with an easily identified operating system seem to be running Ubuntu.

Oh, the fools...

citing a desire to use RPM package management

There might be valid reasons to pick Fedora instead of Debian based systems, but package management is not one of them. Debian's package management is absolutely superior compared to everything else that I know about out there.

Re:

I'll 2nd that. Way too many times to see Fedora, RHEL, and CentOS users posting about problems as a result of packaging issues. And didn't some big Linux fan make a switch away from RedHat because of RPM issues?

Redhat does currently have a more profitable enterprise so maybe the reason has more to do with RedHat corporate and/or employee backing.

IMO, the customers are going to pay for this as a result since Ubuntu is more consumer oriented and has a good history with their application package management.

LoB

yum

Ever since yum became part of the standard Redhat distro, I have had almost zero trouble with rpm packages. With the repository aware wrapper on top of rpm, dependencies are resolved automatically, just like apt. With the main repository getting larger and larger, there is less reason to use 3rd party repositories that could lend to dependency issues. The main reason to use a 3rd party repository is to add support for proprietary codecs and drivers.

There is even talk of removing the rpm command entirely so that all package management goes through yum.

Re:Oh, the fools...

And didn't some big Linux fan make a switch away from RedHat because of RPM issues?

That was ESR. He forced rpm to remove a package, even though rpm warned him that other packages needed it in order to function. Surprise of surprises, his system stopped working just like he was told that it would.

It was in no way rpm's fault that his system broke. ESR thought he knew better than rpm, and he was wrong.

Re:Oh, the fools...

I've used both, and for what little it's worth, I disagree.

For one thing, with yum I don't need to know what package name I want to install. I can "yum install certtool", and it will determine that certtool is provided by gnutls-utils and install that package. IIRC, apt-get can't do that.

I can also ask yum to install a package that's in the local filesystem, along with whatever it requires. apt-get can't do that, either.

Half of the docs that I've seen indicate that debs should be built by hand, and then the results should be packaged. I don't know what the deal is there, but rpm has always used the "spec" file to build and package software, which is a more repeatable process. Deb has "rules" now. If they were always there, I'd like to be corrected on that point. The fact that there is documentation for other processes suggests to me that the deb build process has been much worse than rpm's.

Beyond all of that, Fedora is building some really nice tools on top of rpm for automated rebuilds and packaging. Basically, all of the tools that they use to manage the distribution are open source, which makes it much easier for someone else (like Intel) to build a distribution based on Fedora's tools.

I know that Ubuntu attracts a lot of users, but I can definitely see why developers would prefer to use Fedora's tools as a base.

Re:

it will determine that certtool is provided by gnutls-utils and install that package. IIRC, apt-get can't do that.

apt-file search path/to/myfile [debuntu.org]

*NOT* exactly

Debian's package management is absolutely superior compared to everything else that I know about out there.

Debian's package management *IS* the best.
But this has *nothing* to do with the DEB format.

Debian's package management rocks because :
- "apt-get" & friends are very well designed to track dependencies (compared to Slackware's TGZ system, for example, which does no tracking by design).

- Huge efforts from the community have gone into building the official repositories in a coherent manner. Thus every package has a clear and non ambigous dependence on other packages (I've seen minor distros where the distro's original package have broken dependencies because the actual needed package got renamed, but the packages needing them didn't get updated)

- Debian is a huge honking distribution with a crazy amount of packages. Most of the time, you only need to get packages from the default repositories, which where well designed as said before.

- As the repositories are well designed and coherent : it's easy to target for 3rd party package maintainers, and produce packages whose dependencies relate nicely to the rest.

- DEB is mostly only used by Debian. Other distro using DEB are usually variants of Debian (for example: Knoppix is basically Debian-installed-on-an-image and Ubuntu is a very close derivative of Debian), they are not unrelated distro. Thus if a user picks up a .DEB somewhere, chances are high that the package will work, because it was designed for debian to begin with.
Whereas RPM are used by pretty much everyone else - sometime by distro that have nothing in common (RedHat is mainly used in RedHat derivatives, but openSUSE for example has some Slackware in it's ancestry - thank fully they have also participated in important efforts such as UnitedLinux and LSB to make the distro compatible with others). A Fedora user may pick a RPM from a random site on the intertubes thinking it will work, but, surprise, it was designed for a distro with a different layout or organisations.

- apt-get & friends are fast (openSUSE has nice depencencies solving systems in YaST, and has good quality 3rd party repositories like Packman - but all this is bloody slow compared to apt-get)

So in short, Debian package management is good because of the software handling it and even more because of the quality of the repositories.
The exact same could be imagined with RPMs.

Re:

I'm not a maintainer of any package in debian, But I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

There, fixed that for you.

RPM vs DEB

Is that not like switching to a different brand of cola? What kind of lame reason to switch distros is that?

Dependencies

I hope Intel has a good rehab program in mind to tackle the dependency hell...

Well... Um...

I keep turning this over in my head, and keep coming back to the same scenario:

Steve Ballmer, in the Throne Room of his secret volcano lair: You begin to understand the true nature of my diabolic plan: If we cannot make Windows better, we will make Linux WORSE!

Anonymous Intel lackeys: Yes, master!

Steve Ballmer: Now go! Take these Fedora DVDs and install them on every Linux computer you find! Soon the foolish rebels will be BEGGING for Vista!

Steve Ballmer rips a bolted-down chair from the floor and holds it above his head, cackling devilishly, while his lieutenants and lackeys scramble for the exits.

==
(...with apologies to all three happy Fedora users...)

rpm -qa --queryformat "%{NAME}\t%{LICENSE}\n"

I *think* what Intel wants is this command:

rpm -qa --queryformat "%{NAME}\t%{LICENSE}\n"

I didn't know that .deb didn't support this. Can anyone provide a similar dpkg command?

Re:

There really isn't one. Most Debian packages come from main and are FOSS, so the licensing isn't a big deal. The package does contain /usr/share/doc/$package/COPYRIGHT by policy but that leaves the human grepping around. It would be trivial enough for the dpkg folk to add it but it has not been an issue up to now.

It's not JUST RPM they're after

I wasn't sure why Intel would choose Fedora over Ubuntu either until I remembered the maintainer tools that Fedora has been working on.

It's not just RPM that Intel is after. Fedora has made a concerted effort over the last three or four releases to provide all the tools a group would need to make their own customized Fedora-derivative distro. I can't remember the software names off the top of my head, but groups like Fedora Unity use them to create more updated "spins" of Fedora releases.

So all Intel has to do now is build their own repository manager server and they can have automated testing, building, and packaging of any packages they want, up to and including the entire distro.

Re:Intellectual property issue

Except that deb packages (by policy) do include that info.

Re:

I don't see how this would even be a problem in the first place. Ubuntu has Main, Restricted, Multiverse, Universe, etc. So if you download things from main, and universe things, they are 100% OSS. And Restricted/Multiverse are not OSS. As for third-party Debs, it is the same thing with Windows EXEs and that hasn't stopped countless computer makers from pre-installing and recommending Windows. Plus, in 99% of GUI applications, going to help and then about will give you the licensing info. For others, a comm

Re:Intellectual property issue

The package metadata does not contain the license beyond whether it's considered free or non-free, however every package is required to include usr/share/doc/[packagename]/copyright with the text of the license.

Re:Problems...

Stop it. This is a total troll and is 100% FUD. Fedora isn't a "trial" version at all -- it's a bleeding edge distro made for people who don't need commercial-grade support for their distro, but they want a Red Hat based system. Plus, Fedora isn't just "usable," it's awesome. Far from being a collection of bits and pieces, it's a coherent, organized collection of software -- in short, it's everything you expect a distro to be. You should check out: This [fedorafaq.org] and this [redhat.com].

Re:

I have to disagree here. I use RHEL5 on my office desktop, Fedora 8 for the server in my garage, a recent Ubuntu release on an old beater laptop, and used to run Sparc Debian (Sarge) on a variety of old Sun gear. I would say this gives me a fairly good understanding of the differences. Here's my unsolicited opinions

1. RHEL is not a superset version of Fedora. It is a release with a guarantee of 5 years of patch support. Fedora's lifetime is much shorter. Enterprise customers (hence the 'E' in RHEL) don'

Re:Problems...

Fedora by design isn't a *real* distro. It is a testing ground for RHEL. Now, Fedora is usable, and nice and all. But Ubuntu is a *real* distro, you don't have to pay for the "full" version. With Ubuntu, you get Debian cleaned up. With Fedora you get all the bits and pieces that make up RHEL in a developer-oriented way.

You just like Debian is the testing ground for Ubuntu? It would in fact be much more precise to describe Fedora as a testing ground for Ubuntu too, since the technology pioneered there drips back into Ubuntu. Ubuntu is probably a nice distro, but it is not known for its technological contributions to Linux, unlike e.g. Red Hat or Novell who pays a lot of software engineers to improve or develop core Linux software, that e.g. distroes like Ubuntu can use.

Intel needs to give people a real distro, not a "trial" version of RHEL.

There you go again. Fedora is a real distro and a fine one too, a good mixture of the most modern software and maturity. Please state what kind of software Fedora lacks to become a "real" distro.

I have using Linux for many years, and one thing I don't get about distro fan-boys like you is why you need to bad-mouth other distros than you favorite-distro-of-the-month, especially when you are unable to back it up with technical arguments.

And by the way, RPM (at least the "true" RPM versions) seem to be outdated and DEB in most ways is superior. (Note: Not trying to start a flame war, but merely stating facts)

That are some really impressive technical arguments you gave there - not! I wonder if you actually know what DEB or RPM is? Please give an actual example why rpm is outdated to dpkg? Well, you can't. Try to read 'man rpm' one day to get a overview of what you are talking about.

Re:Problems...

DEB in most ways is superior. (Note: Not trying to start a flame war, but merely stating facts)

If you want to state the "facts", try detailing something that the dpkg tools do, which rpm tools do not. Otherwise, you're just flaming.

Re:

--dist-upgrade-mode is for upgrading to the next release of your distro, such as for ff2->ff3 (via eg ubuntu gutsy->intrepid).

You're right that "upgrade" only upgrades to the latest version available for your distro. Some distros offer multiple independent versions within one distro (eg) both Python2.5 and Python2.4. In that case:

$ sudo apt-get install firefox3

I still can't see this as any reason to switch from one package manager to another. :(

Re:

The only reason I could think of switching to Fedora from Ubuntu is if you had a nVidia 8200 motherboard. The Fedora Core 9 kernel version (2.6.25) supports it, and the one in Ubuntu 8.04 (2.6.24) does not.

KDE support in Fedora may be better as well, I haven't looked at it in a while so I'm not sure. KDE is stagnant as hell in Ubuntu/Kubuntu land for now (no LTS support for KDE in 8.04, etc.), due to all the churn with the very beta-like and some would say ill-planned KDE 4.0 release.

Wrong reason

Actually it has nothing to do with RPM vs Deb. It's apt vs yum. Install apt-rpm in Fedora and see how fast you can install stuff (Actually, it has to do with yum updating the package lists every run vs apt just doing it with apt-get update).

Re:7yrs with Linux and dead set on DEB

Funny, from a desktop perspective I went Slackware -> Red Hat -> Fedora -> Ubuntu -> CentOS because HOLY CRAP an Ubuntu upgrade totally hosed my system and ended up with some thoroughly fucked dependency issues. :) And from a server perspective I went from Solaris -> Debian -> CentOS because the idiots at Debian release a 3.0 with a known broken PHP package and then proceeded to leave it broken for six months. /counterrant