Fedora 8 A Serious Threat to Ubuntu

Tubs writes "According to MadPenguin.org's latest article, Fedora 8 from Red Hat is a serious threat to Ubuntu. The author writes, "I was never that swept up with past releases of Fedora. There was nothing compelling about it. But for the first time, I cannot help but feel that the Fedora team has been spoon fed an extra helping of Wheaties, which has put them into overdrive with their accessibility efforts."

Threat?...

[sykopomp]

...When are we going to stop seeing distros as opposing forces and stop accepting that it might be nice to have more than one popular distro? SPOILERS: Your favorite distro isn't the best.

Re:Linux Wars?

[Albert Sandberg]

Exactly. If anything. it's a threat to microsoft and apple, but maybe not so much the latter. Since microsoft has screwed up more and more stuff lately, if they don't come on track again, more and more users will start looking towards the alternatives. Since they have a PC computer already, installing linux could be a nice step to take before scrapping the compouter and go Apple and the more dists that looks good and shiney and do what they should, the better.

I was for instance surprised that there was no hassle AT ALL installing my Brother HL-1250 printer the other day while in windows I've always hassled with drivers and previously in linux I had to config some stuff manually, but this time it was just 100% plug in and pl^H^H print. Totally awesome, I had my tabs printed out in no-time.

I've gone the path from windows to linux by testing out a lot of distros (pretty much redhat->suse->debian->mepis->ubuntu) and most people don't have the patience enough to walk through a wall of configuration, so this is good news for everyone! Even the ubuntu crew should benefit from this in the long run.

Happy new year everybody.

Re:fedora is an upgrade treadmill

[modernbob]

New releases come out every 6 months. Basically as soon as a new release comes out fedora is through with the old one. This IMHO makes fedora totally worthless for so many reasons. I have used Fedora from core 2 to Fedora 8 and it's a good distro but this upgrade cycle is what has made me leave Fedora.

Ubuntu is more than just what's on the disc

[IGnatius T Foobar]

It's going to take more to "beat" Ubuntu than just having someone say "this is going to beat Ubuntu." There's more to Ubuntu than just what's on the disc. Since Fedora 8 is really just the beta version of Red Hat "Global" Desktop, all I'm really hearing here is "me too." Ok, so they prettied up the screens and added some more configuration options? Great. What happens when Fedora 9 comes out? Will I just be able to push a button and seamlessly upgrade the whole thing in place? I doubt it. And what happens if I decide I want paid support? Will Red Hat support my free Fedora download the way Canonical will support Ubuntu? No, they'll insist that I run "Red Hat Enterprise" for that. And where are the free Fedora discs being mailed to anyone who wants, just for the asking?

Ubuntu nailed the winning formula for desktop Linux, just like Red Hat seems to have nailed the winning formula for enterprise Linux. I wouldn't use either one in the other's place.

Re:Please be serious

[that this is not und]

I prefer apt, but yum isn't so bad.

Some of us prefer make.

Re:Linux Wars?

[Anonymous Coward]

But they are.

Face it. There is a high percentage of windows users who are not gonna switch to linux, ever (well, at least not for a very, very long time...).

On the other hand there are users who:
a) use just linux
b) use both platforms
c) are looking for ways to migrate from win to linux

Any of users in the second group has to DECIDE on the distro. And decision on the consumer side equals competition on the producer side.

Of course, RH and Canonical compete in:
- getting the largest user base in the second group, by providing the most user friendly/faster/better/ueber coll distro
- sell their services to subset of enterprise users

The way I see it (I am a windows user, but I must say I am VERY dissapointed in their latest/greatest product) too much competition, forking etc. hurts linux adoption and only helps MS: "Devide an conquer".

Here's why:
- there are only so many developers (who are willing to give there IP away for free).
- there are many issues that needs to be solved / projects to complete
- if two teams decide to provide two solutions, the end users will have to wait for a feature complete product almost twice as long

Do we need KDE and Gnome? Koffice and open office? Etc etc.

Why not, for example, finish mono and attract more developers (developers, developers, developers) and end users to make transition from windows?

Some tactics just don't apply to...

[3seas]

..open source.

Media tactic, competitive tactics, licensing manipulation tactics, etc..

As both projects are open source, as are many others, they all can use the best of any of these.
But in open source it all really comes down to a sum of humanities produced value.
Selecting "ubuntu" as a lable for a linux distribution is in recognition of this.
And of course it doesn't make Ubuntu the best by just naming it this way, but it does point out a recognition of what makes things "best".

There are so many tactic that work outside of open source, but open source is doesn't fix in supporting those tactics.
However, because of this non-fit, you can always identify an outsiders attempt to apply such tactics.

The different distributions of linux, the value is no so much in competition of the same general user system but in specialization.
Its good we have an overall target of improving desktop and server systems, but the time has come when this flushes out that such system are similiar enough that there is little difference if any thing more than a distro name.

When the magazine industry first started there was a target of general interest publication and at some point when this was filled competition lead to the beginnings of specialization. Today we have magazines that specialize in more things that only a few are aware of them all. The same is beginning to happen with open source OS packages. Multimedia distros like dynebolic, artistx, studio64 etc.. and there are others. What the specialization provides is better integration of specialized packages, kernel tuning, etc...

Specialization is where open source competition is and also where there are fewer competing, if more than one.

Where is the difference between Ubuntu and Fedora?

[thaig]

They can both package up the latest software, Yum is nearly as good as apt as far as I can tell. They both offer GNOME and . . Firefox.

I mean what noticeable difference is there?

In the end, what lasting advantage can one have over the other if they both have access to the same range of open source components?

I have used the latest Fedora 8 and Ubuntu and I can't get excited about either of them. Pulseaudio was and is an utter pain in the neck to get working with Enemy Territory, Skype and Firefox all needing different workarounds and what is so astounding about it from a user's point of view? After the effort, stuff works like it did except that Youtube videos now randomly cause Firefox to crash.

There's nothing happening in user interfaces - they are stagnating and Fedora 6,7,8 and Gutsy Gibbon all seem the same to me from that point of view. The new 3D effects cause reliability problems and do only a little bit more than nothing for usability.

There's a lot of "lets-learn-programming-by-implementing-what-others-have-done-before" going on but not a lot of innovation.

Re:Please be serious

[rasjani]

Define improvement?

First off, i've been using apt for Redhat since redhat 6 release .. Few package repositories provided only apt interface but since then apt and yum repo's have same backend so any apt rpm repo works now with yum too

Since version 7 fedora, i've been starting to use yum irregullary and after upgrading to fc8 and the latest yum, i've been a really happy camper with it.

- Latest yum works much faster than previous versions.
- Configurability is much better with yum than with apt. 3rd party plugins can do really wonders.

Ubuntu Vs Fedora

[cyberkahn]

I don't know. Personally I think they both have their strengths and weaknesses. I have switched to Ubuntu (not LTS) and have had only one technical problem with the distribution, which was fixed with the next apt-get upgrade. With Fedora I always had the impression I was working with something broken. The other thing I like about Ubuntu is it's lite install especially with server. Fedora is just too bloated even on a minimal install. Fedora does give someone a cheap way of learning Red Hat's distribution even though certain features are not in RHEL yet. It has been a few releases, since I have used Fedora, so objectively I need to try it out again. The one think I do like about Fedora is their documentation organization. In contrast, I find Ubuntu's documentation to be here there and everywhere.

Re:Umm, no.

[siride]

I just love it when people get angry at/about RedHat without realizing that without RedHat, Linux would not be where it is today. It has been the foremost corporate contributor to Linux and Linux on the desktop by far. It has also proven to the market that there is a viable business model selling Linux and Linux services. Without that, it'd be doubtful that as many corps and organizations would not have adopted Linux. Some people seem to think that if there were no evil Linux corps, Linux would be better. Well, this isn't 1992 anymore. Weekend coders can't produce a fully-functional OS and software stack with QA and performance factored in. Linux would be NOWHERE without the corporations that have hired many people to work full time on Linux projects. RedHat is the chief among these. BTW, I'm agreeing with you, but just adding some more points.

Re:Linux Wars?

[fwarren]

Also, TFA has absolutely no content on which to base its claims. It mentions 4 things, PulseAudio, CodecBuddy, Spins, and the Fedora theme.

The article links to a list of "things" that are in Fedora 8. What I find the most interesting is the removal of PAM for authentication and using dBus instead.

I can hardly wait for it to be refined a bit and rolled into Ubuntu.

I have been using Linux since 1999. Slackware, Redhat, Mandrake, PCLinux, Knoppix, Mepis, Gentoo, and 10 or 15 others. I used to have 2 extra partitions on my drive just for trying new distros and I tried any I could get my hands on.

I finally ended up back in Slackware. Much faster than Fedora and easier than Gentoo. I have had my share of RPM hell and tgz packages rocked. With every new install I would spend 2 or 3 days downloading tgzs, compiling custom packages and resolving compiler errors to get my system the way I wanted it.

I finally tried Ubuntu around Dapper Drake times. What I discovered is that 98% of all the software I used was either in the Ubuntu or Debian repositories. Pretty much the only thing NOT in the repositories are 5 or 6 dock apps I like to run. So my average install takes about 4 hours now. Install, update, install packages and finally compile the few missing programs.

Unless the Fedora repositories have improved in the last 2 years or so. I can set up a bitchin Fedora Box in no time flat. Then I have to risk it to strange RPMs and possibly end up in dependency hell. Or I have to run down all the devel packages and build all of the goodies I use myself.

Unless I have a sudden surplus of time on my hands, I think I am sticking with Ubuntu. But I am all for cross-pollination. Anything RedHat does that is better Ubuntu gets to adopt. Anything that Ubuntu does better, RedHat gets to adopt.

There is a difference

[r7]

Like the old margerine ad claiming "there is no difference" this piece reads like an ad. I would hesitate to put any stock in it for a number of reasons. Having installed and configured both I cannot see how Fedora 8 is anything but YARHR (yet another red hat release) i.e., bumping the version as "development theater" with ittle actual improvement. There's little difference bttn F8 and F7 much less any of the earlier releases.

Since installation is similar (though the Ubuntu "live" CD allows for better hardware driver validation), the first thing to compare is the gui package front-ends. Both are good but Synaptic is better than Yumex, far better in actual use. It is intuitive for those who are not Linux gurus where Yumex is not. Deb packages also tend to have fewer dependencies and there are more of them. Firefox3 for example, was available to Ubuntu users first.

Second most important item is the kernel, mainly the wireless drivers. Ubuntu wins here, particularly on laptops and older hardware. Example: adding a wep key. Click and paste in Ubuntu where it's easier to edit the poorly documented text files in Fedora.

One of my pet peeves is default security. Run 'netstat -anp' on a newly installed RH box and you'll be shocked to see how much is running and listening for network connections. Big difference from Ubuntu where you will likely see a much smaller process table and only ports 22 (ssh) and 68 (dhcp) open to the world.

Otherwise both have their high and low points. The big downer is the stuff that gets "deprecated" and made incompatible with previous release for no good reason. This is mostly GNU's fault to be sure. Sometimes I think they break stuff just to differentiate Linux from Unix. I really dislike Linux upgrades because so much breaks, far more than in a BSD, IBM, and Sun OS upgrades. Rewriting shell scripts to account for parameter differences that have no evident rational gets old after the 4th or 5th time (say "nslookup has been deprecated" three times fast, but wait, now it's been un-deprecated, ah but the output format has been changed, again...). But I digress, and am grateful to all FOSS coders, especially those who don't make work difficult for those of us who install, upgrade, and manage their systems.

Not really sure why RedHat is allowing its distribution to fall so far behind. I suppose they're fat and happy to get paid for RHEL support, RHEL bugfixes, and RHEL repos. Like SCO before them, IMO, it's a short-term business model that won't hold up to Debian's community process much longer.

Ask not which linux is best

[fyoder]

The would be linux n00b would be better off asking 'which distribution is most popular' rather than 'which distribution is best', then going with the most popular. Chances are that's the major distribution which is easiest to use and which has a large user base (lots of online help/forums if needed). Asking 'which is best' just opens the can of worms you refer to regarding choice, as some who answer will advocate for whatever it is they like, while others will answer fairly, if unhelpfully, 'there is no best distribution, it depends on what you want, yadda, yadda, yadda'.

Personally, I think the abundance of choice with Linux distributions is a good thing, and something Linux users with at least some experience may find interesting to explore. But it can be bewildering to the potential new user, especially if they make the mistake of asking which is best.