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Red Hat Software Businesses Software Linux

Fedora 8 A Serious Threat to Ubuntu 334

Posted by CmdrTaco from the they-sure-couldn't-talk-more-about-themselves dept.
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."
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Fedora 8 A Serious Threat to Ubuntu More

Fedora 8 A Serious Threat to Ubuntu

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  • Linux Wars? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ThePromenader ( 878501 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @11:01AM (#21856326) Homepage Journal
    I wouldn't consider one open-source project to be a danger to another...

    • Re:Linux Wars? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 30, 2007 @11:19AM (#21856500)
      What are you, a commie? EVERYTHING is a competition. You have to be number one. Coming in second is just not an option. It is your responsibility as a living being to completely win over every other living being at all costs. For example, I make sure I go outside and yell at my lawn at least twice a week and I kick the trees along my street every Tuesday just to show them who's the boss. If Fedora 8 can "win" over Ubuntu, that is a "win" for all of us and we will all laugh and be happy and dance around our living rooms with the now-famous "Unix Wins" dance that we've all seen on TV. If, however, Fedora 8 cannot WIN... then we must all immediately side with Canonical and weep with joy over how wonderful Ubuntu is and how it is the best. Give your head a shake, get a haircut, move out of your commune and join the real world... where there is only ONE WINNER and YOU must be that winner.

      Thomas "the winner of Sarcasm" Dzubin

    • Re:Linux Wars? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Albert Sandberg ( 315235 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @11:28AM (#21856574) Homepage
      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: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by gollito ( 980620 )
        Isn't a Mac/Apple a P(ersonal)C(computer)?

        Back in the day you could make the distinction between Mac's and IBM compatibles by their hardware platform but even then they were still Personal Computers.
        There was of course the distinction between hardware (PPC vrs x86) but even that is gone now.

        • PC? (Score:2, Informative)

          by websitebroke ( 996163 )
          Joe Sixpack calls a computer with Windoze installed a PC, and he calles a computer with OSX installed a Mac. Dumb, but this is how it is.

          • Re:PC? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by nebosuke ( 1012041 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @04:40PM (#21858904)
            This distinction entered the common vernacular when IBM briefly held the trademark on the term "personal computer".

            Every older programmer that I've met still uses the term that way. That usage was also pervasive when I got my first computer as a kid in the 80s, so I still use it that way through force of habit. The Apple switch campaign and pc/mac commercials also continue to make the distinction 'pc' vs. 'mac'.

            It's 'dumb' in that the distinction is meaningless in the sense that macs are technically 'personal computers', but 'PC', as with many other terms, has additional connotations to a certain segment of the population which makes this usage both meaningful and correct.

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by petermgreen ( 876956 )
              Afiact it is quite normal for acronyms to take on a meaning more specific than the words they stand for. HTML reffers specifically to the particular hypertext markup language used on the world wide web not to the concept of hypertext markup languages in general. CSS and XML similarlly. FTP reffers not to the general concept of a file transfer protocol but to one specific file transfer protocol and so on.

              The ms winhlp source format (the old one before they went over to html) could be considered a markup lang

    • Re:Linux Wars? (Score:5, Informative)

      by kripkenstein ( 913150 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @11:29AM (#21856584) Homepage

      I wouldn't consider one open-source project to be a danger to another...
      That's a good point.

      Also, TFA has absolutely no content on which to base its claims. It mentions 4 things, PulseAudio, CodecBuddy, Spins, and the Fedora theme. Ubuntu 8.04 will have PulseAudio; in fact, this is just another example of the usual relationship of Fedora and Ubuntu - Fedora is slightly more 'on the edge', Ubuntu is a little more stable - but still, at least in non-LTS versions, quite risk-taking. Regarding CodecBuddy, Ubuntu has this, and in fact had it before Fedora. Spins are fairly meaningless - a nice idea, but let's see some compelling implementation. And anyhow both Ubuntu and Fedora welcome 'spins' aka derivative versions; Ubuntu has its own Kubuntu/Edubuntu/etc. as well as the non-official Mint, etc.

      Finally, the theme. Well, he's got me there, Fedora does win in that respect. I don't mind the Ubuntu brown, but they aren't doing something nice enough with it so far. However Ubuntu 8.04 will have a brand new theme with a lot of effort put into it, so here's hoping.

      Returning to your point, in fact most of these examples prove it. Fedora led the way with PulseAudio; Ubuntu saw it was possible, and will now do it as well. They might even benefit from the code. Similarly, Ubuntu led the way with CodecBuddy-type things, which Fedora wisely adopted. Hopefully Fedora's nice theme will encourage Ubuntu to focus more on that. Thus, we have in effect excellent examples of how FOSS project spur each other to better and greater things.

      • Re:Linux Wars? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 30, 2007 @12:56PM (#21857222)
        I love how Ubuntu is given 'credit' for codec buddy. Who wrote codec buddy? Bastien Nocera who works for Red Hat and Thomas Vander Stichele who works for Fluendo (you know, the guys who want your soul so you can play mp3's)

        Red Hat pays someone's salary to write codec buddy and yet 'ubuntu' comes out the better. Sounds like NetworkManager all over again. Red Hat pays to write the code the fanboys think ubuntu is the greatest thing ever....

        • Re:Linux Wars? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by xenocide2 ( 231786 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @06:01PM (#21859592) Homepage
          PackageKit (slated for Fedora 9 it seems) and codecBuddy are based on the ideas first implemented in Ubuntu under the spec Easy Codec Installation [launchpad.net], intended to generalize the idea. Redhat does great work, no doubt. ConsoleKit, Network Manager, etc, and I hope they can fix up Network Manager to have system-wide, user independent connection settings.

          But lets not just up and declare that Ubuntu just steals credit. I don't think anyone is saying that Ubuntu wrote codec Buddy, but the features are similar enough.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by fwarren ( 579763 )
        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 extr

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by 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,

    • Re:Linux Wars? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nine-times ( 778537 ) <nine.times@gmail.com> on Sunday December 30, 2007 @12:15PM (#21856926) Homepage

      That's pretty much what I came in here to say.

      Why does the most recent Fedora seem so competitive to Ubuntu? Well probably because they're pulling their updates from a lot of the same places.

      But if you want to imagine the two groups fighting it out, go right ahead. Insofar as they are competing, there's only one possible winner: us. Each group is trying to improve Linux more, each will feed off of the other's improvements, and the end result will be a better FOSS operating system that will be accessible to all of us.

      Good luck to both of them.

    • Red Hat and Canonical are competing corporations. They have very similar business models and they are targeting the same markets (Canonical recently announced a push to enter the enterprise market, Red Hat's stronghold).

      Ubuntu's main selling point was that it was easy to set up and use, that it "just worked," and that it had some fun media programs. Fedora 8 has all those strong points, and a few features that are of interest to people who know about computing (the way daemons and applets interact, for

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by JavaBear ( 9872 ) *
      I agree, though the added competition can only be of the good.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by remitaylor ( 884490 )
      Danger is my middle name.

      Some projects come along and "kill off" their open-source "competitors," surpassing them in functionality or ease-of-use or ... whatever. So there is a bit of a sense of danger.

      This is a good and healthy thing. Projects benefit from competitiveness, just like businesses do.

      I, for one, am exceptionally happy to hear this. I'm a very happy Ubuntu user, on the desktop and server, but I've been waiting for an excuse to use and support another distro for awhile, if for no other reason

  • Wake me up.... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by nighty5 ( 615965 )
    when they gain back some serious users - specifically the ones they decided weren't important enough to continue to support.

    • Re:Wake me up.... (Score:5, Informative)

      by rasjani ( 97395 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @12:00PM (#21856804) Homepage
      And things have changed how exactly from days of when redhat was redhat and there was no fedora? Gone worse ?

      Seriously. How many redhat releases there where ? 9 majors if i remember right and few .1 and .2 releases + the ee versions. So, how much time have gone into 8 fedora releases ? How and how much progress has happened in them ? Does redhat still back up fedora development, do they provide services like bugzilla/mailinglists, mirrors, what ever to fedora project ? And what about the community ? There more more 3rd party wiki pages, news sites, *RPM REPOSITORIES*, support forums and what not than there was ever provided by Redhat alone..

      And you say that support has gone worse because "they dont want to support the serious users"..

      So, honest question, could you actually give some real facts how things are worse now than they where ?

  • Please be serious (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bogaboga ( 793279 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @11:05AM (#21856360)
    How can Fedora be a "serious threat" to Ubuntu when according to well known facts, the Fedora platform is a testing ground for RedHat and will always be?

    The Ubuntu zealots are also very vocal and defend the Debian apt system from which Ubuntu gets its package manager. Has yum improved that much to match apt? I doubt.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Junta ( 36770 )
      Your first point is quite valid, they've left legacy in a quagmire, and generally aim to be bleeding edge cannon fodder for the sake of the RHEL releases. If you want a stable long term free distribution in that family, you must go with CentOS. Meanwhile, Ubuntu releases are mostly short term (similar to Fedora), but don't aim to be testing ground for anyone else, and continually makes decisions toward stability forgoing not-yet tested features (i.e. KDE 4, which Ubuntu 8.4 decided to skip, and Fedora 9 w

    • Re:Please be serious (Score:4, Interesting)

      by rasjani ( 97395 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @12:06PM (#21856854) Homepage
      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.

    • yum Is Solid (Score:5, Insightful)

      by EXTomar ( 78739 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @12:38PM (#21857092)

      How can Fedora be a "serious threat" to Ubuntu when according to well known facts, the Fedora platform is a testing ground for RedHat and will always be?


      The Ubuntu zealots are also very vocal and defend the Debian apt system from which Ubuntu gets its package manager. Has yum improved that much to match apt? I doubt.

      Why is it bad that Fedora is backed by Red Hat? Why do you even ask "Has yum improved?" when you admit you don't know (or care) about the answer. Asking "How can Fedora be good if it is backed by Red Hat?" and "Has yum improved?" are both empty questions meant to cast both into a bad light instead of offering some insight instead of investigating the issue. I honestly never understood why people don't like "yum" but like "apt" when they seem to match each other feature for feature. There maybe something deep down that one does that the other doesn't but at a high level: "# yum install firefox" and "# apt-get install firefox" are equivalent.

      Beyond this, I really don't see why Ubuntu or Fedora need to "beat" each other. We should be celebrating the difference in strengths and the choice. I'm never convinced by fanboys on any side who think everyone needs to their favorite distro.
      • I don't know enough about the inner workings of either apt or yum, or of dpkg or rpm, but I suspect it's the latter pair that matters.

        Consider another distro: Gentoo. Are "# yum install firefox", "#apt-get install firefox", and "#emerge firefox" all equivalent? From a UI perspective, yes, but the lower level is important.

    • Re:Please be serious (Score:5, Informative)

      by MSG ( 12810 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @12:45PM (#21857148)
      How can Fedora be a "serious threat" to Ubuntu when according to well known facts, the Fedora platform is a testing ground for RedHat and will always be?

      That's not a fact, it's a characterization. It's not a particularly good one, either. Stability is, in fact, important to the Fedora developers, because they're users too. Slashdot did an interview [slashdot.org] with Max Spevack, the Fedora Project leader a while back. His answers, particularly to question #8, are relevant to your assertion.

      Quoted: Fedora is the best of what works today. RHEL is the best of what will work for the next seven years.

      Fedora isn't going to be the latest beta of stuff that doesn't work. The people who tell you that are advancing a political agenda.

      Has yum improved that much to match apt?

      It's likely that you know a great deal more than I do about apt, so you should correct me if I'm wrong about this:

      While yum is slower than apt to resolve dependencies, I think it's a much more useful tool. apt can install a package if you know its name. Yum can install a local package, and get its dependencies. It can also install a package based on its name, a virtual capability, an actual capability (library name or executable), or a file provided by the package (by path).

      Yes, yum is a little slow, but in exchange it is capable of better doing what I want it to, as a user. I think it's better than apt. As a Fedora user, I have the option to use either one, and I stick with yum.
    • It's that kind of FUD that makes this article wrong. We're always going to have people that believe that crap, and get modded insightful when they're really just a troll.

      The real reason Fedora 8 won't gain significant ground is that everyone's going to remember when they tried FC3 for a few days, and assume nothing's changed in 2.5 years.

      It's the same kind of thing with choices of desktop. In the past couple months I've heard someone complain about QT not being "free" as in GPL, which it has been for a whil

  • Lately, I have been looking into other distributions that, like Ubuntu, are working to make strides to attract new users. I still have Debian Etch burned to a CD, waiting for a test in our lab. Next up is going to be Fedora.
    (emphasis mine) I'm supposed to take this reviewer seriously, when he hasn't got around to testing Debian Etch but wants me to trust his knowledge of Linux systems, including Ubuntu? Right.

    Posting from an Ubuntu 64 workstation, running several Debian Etch VPS containers in VMWare Server, and a couple of dedicated Debian and FreeBSD boxes on this LAN.

    • Re:Issues with the article already. (Score:5, Funny)

      by DoofusOfDeath ( 636671 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @12:48PM (#21857176)

      I'm supposed to take this reviewer seriously, when he hasn't got around to testing Debian Etch but wants me to trust his knowledge of Linux systems, including Ubuntu? Right.

      Posting from an Ubuntu 64 workstation, running several Debian Etch VPS containers in VMWare Server, and a couple of dedicated Debian and FreeBSD boxes on this LAN.

      Are you like, totally serious? You've set that all up by yourself. OMG OMG OMG!!! Please, like, tell us your opinion on FC8 vs. Ubuntu. Pleeeeeasssseeee ;)

      (I so can't wait to tell my friends that I actually talked to you! OMG OMG OMG... )

    • It gets better. Fedora is a "threat" to Ubuntu, but compared to Debian... He likes the "CodecBuddy" page, which looks a lot like the Ubuntu "Restricted Formats" page, but with less data in how to fix it free. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats [ubuntu.com] He is a big fan of Pulse Audio, a feature he has not tried! As someone who was in the Gutsy testing, there is a damn good reason it is not default for everyone! This article had no content at all. Sounds like a press release from Microsoft.
    • +5, Insightful? You must be joking. I've mod points, but I'd rather reply to this. What does his not having tested Debian Etch have to do with his "knowledge of Linux systems" (what does that even mean, exactly?) except that he's probably not familiar with Debian Etch? And so you run a couple of VMs and a couple various boxes... Does this prove anything about your "knowledge of Linux systems" other than the fact that you can install Debian to a VM and to bare-metal?

      I've never run Debian in any meanin
  • ...Misleading. Why?

    Because it assumes the Ubuntu folks are seated idle and doing absolutely nothing.

  • fedora is an upgrade treadmill (Score:5, Funny)

    by Jepler ( 6801 ) <jepler@unpythonic.net> on Sunday December 30, 2007 @11:07AM (#21856376) Homepage
    Fedora is an upgrade treadmill. With Fedora, you're stuck upgrading every 12 months or so, or you can't get security updates anymore. With Fedora, install an LTS version and you're covered for 5 years on the server. That's why I switched.

    • Fedora is an upgrade treadmill. With Fedora, you're stuck upgrading every 12 months or so, or you can't get security updates anymore. With Fedora, install an LTS version and you're covered for 5 years on the server. That's why I switched.
      I think you wanted the bolded text to read "Ubuntu".

    • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by the eric conspiracy ( 20178 )
      Agreed; Fedora is a waste of time because of the upgrade cycle and lack of stability. Not even close to being a challenge to Ubuntu.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by modernbob ( 558981 )
      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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by siride ( 974284 )
      How is this ANY different from your standard Ubuntu fare? Yes, Ubuntu has the LTS releases, but honestly, who doesn't upgrade when the next Ubuntu comes out, especially since they refuse to backport newer versions of software to older versions of Ubuntu.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Wdomburg ( 141264 )
      Install Red Hat Enterprise or CentOS and you're covered 7 years for both desktop and server. Fedora, like regular Ubuntu releases, are focused on features rather than longevity. The releases are just branched and branded differently rather than being done inline like Ubuntu. I prefer the Red Hat model, since they start with a feature set frozen from an established release rather than doing a new release with new features. I trust a "dot zero" release of RHEL/CentOS far more than I trust a "dot zero" ver
    • Fedora is an upgrade treadmill. With Fedora, you're stuck upgrading every 12 months or so, or you can't get security updates anymore. With Fedora, install an LTS version and you're covered for 5 years on the server. That's why I switched.

      Who wants to run a 5 year old Linux desktop system? Gnome 1.4, KDE 2.2 no CUPS. Red Hat 7.2 was a decent release, but people expect more nowadays. Unlike Red Hat, Ubuntu didn't even exist 5 years ago so who knows how committed Ubuntu really is in the future regarding 5 year
    • Just to be clear, we're talking about desktops, not servers.

      I think every desktop distribution is an upgrade treadmill. The "5 years of support" thing might true technically but after 12 to 18 months you find packages they didn't produce for your version, or there's some new flashy thing that you want that really works better when built with a tool chain that doesn't match yours. You look for your own solutions for a few weeks/months, but then you say "screw it" and go for the upgrade.
      The upgrade scri

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MSG ( 12810 )
      Yes, support lifetime on Fedora is short, but I think most users see Fedora, RHEL, and CentOS as a family of distributions in much the same way that Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu are the same family. If long term support is a requirement, RHEL and CentOS have a seven-year support cycle.

      I stick with Fedora for some reasons that are pragmatic: I think its tools are great. There are political reasons, too. I like that Fedora is purely Free Software. Not just the software in the distribution, but the software used

  • Threat?... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sykopomp ( 1133507 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @11:10AM (#21856408)
    ...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.

  • I object to the word "threat". (Score:5, Insightful)

    by A beautiful mind ( 821714 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @11:22AM (#21856528)
    In F/OSS environments we welcome alternatives and diversity.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gsn ( 989808 )
      Diversity is great - just as long as you don't have to administer or heaven forbid, fix anything but your distro/computer. I'd be quite happy with one completely dominant distro which I am free to put onto any computer I like. I think Ubuntu will become this in the relatively near future.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • They are the Same (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ArkiMage ( 578981 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @11:38AM (#21856632)
    I've installed both on the same machine within the past 2 weeks. Once the desktop is up and I'm clicking around it would be very difficult to tell which OS is running on the box except for the backdrop and default color scheme. Gnome 2.20 is pretty much Gnome 2.20 no matter which distro it sits on top of. Icon placement, desktop panels, menu arrangement, they were pretty much identical. Who cares about apt vs yum either, click Applications->Add/Remove Software and point'n'click your way through installing whatever you need installed.

    There is no "war" between distros. I can run Firefox on any Linux distro. Same goes for Amarok, K3B, OpenOffice, Thunderbird, etc...

    Get over it.

  • Ubuntu is more than just what's on the disc (Score:5, Interesting)

    by IGnatius T Foobar ( 4328 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @11:42AM (#21856670) Homepage Journal
    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: (Score:2)

      by joe 155 ( 937621 )
      "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"

      To be fair I tried doing this on ubuntu but it just wouldn't work. It was a real nightmare, caused by a couple of programs from the repos that didn't have partners but I also didn't get the option just to remove, which I could in the end only resolve by installing another OS from scratch. And I'd really like to say that people are looking at setting up a system where yo
  • Used to be a Die Hard Red Hat Fan, switched to Ubuntu a few years ago when RH quit
    the desktop biz. I could not be happier with Ubuntu, always stable for me and there
    is no way I am going back to rpm based package managers. Apt increased my productivity
    by a large magnitude, something I will just not give up.
    • Apt increased my productivity by a large magnitude, something I will just not give up.

      How on earth does a front end to a package management system increase your productivity? What does apt-deb do that yum-rpm doesn't?

      --
      Regards

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ErikZ ( 55491 ) *
      That's an excellent point. Why should Red Hat care about being on the desktop when they're aimed at servers and other business needs? They did abandon the desktop and Fedora has always been more experimental than usable to my experience.

      I'm no longer the guy who likes tossing on various flavors of Linux to see how they work.

  • Some tactics just don't apply to... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 3seas ( 184403 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @12:01PM (#21856814) Homepage Journal
    ..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? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by thaig ( 415462 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @12:02PM (#21856818) Homepage
    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.
    • The biggest difference in my mind between them is that if you install Fedora, and then decide you want paid support, you have to migrate to RHEL, which may not contain the same stuff as the latest version of Fedora.

      With Ubuntu, you install the edition you want (Ubuntu / Kubuntu / Edubuntu / Server / Whatever) and if you decide you'd like to purchase some support for it, you just pay Canonical and start asking questions.

    • Support. With Ubuntu, you have ubuntuforums.org which is the most noob friendly support forum I have ever seen, and can purchase support from Canonical.

      With Fedora, you have to forums and lists which or noob predatory on occasions, and for support you have to reinstall.
      There are some upgrade differences after 6 months as well, but those are minor compared to the above.

  • Support (Score:2, Troll)

    by nurb432 ( 527695 )
    Does RH officially support Fedora now? Or is it still their 'sandbox'?

    If that is the case, then there is still no 'threat'.

  • Ubuntu Vs Fedora (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cyberkahn ( 398201 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @12:07PM (#21856872) Homepage
    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.

  • Divide and Conquer. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Fantastic Lad ( 198284 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @12:27PM (#21857018)
    The attitude of Coke vs Pepsi and Democrat vs Republican doesn't sit well with Open Source.

    Not every darned scenario in the world must resolve to some sort of Darwinian competition. Sometimes people just like to create at the peek of their powers for the sheer joy of creating something amazing, and not because they feel the need to destroy the competition. Ask the best painters, musicians and writers if their best work came about because they felt threatened --or if they felt in love with their medium and with the world in general. --Or rather, if you are a coder, how was the best code you ever wrote generated? Were you wearing your Nikes or were you just obsessively having fun trying to solve a problem?

    The ideas of Darwinism and Competition certainly hold validity, but they are also two of the most highly abused concepts ever invented. Sheesh, the whole 'final solution' thing was based on Darwin. Talk about an abuse of concept!


    -FL

  • 1. Bloated System
    2. Apt beats yum hands down

    My Linux experience started with Fedora Core 1 but after couple of releases I had switched to debian.

  • Truly awful article - reviewed before installation (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @12:41PM (#21857112) Homepage

    Now this is a truly awful article. The article isn't a review of Fedora 8. It's someone blithering that they're going to do a review of Fedora 8. This is a review of the press release.

    The author has trouble with English, HTML, and the concept of free software. If you think the text is painful, try "view source". The page was apparently generated with Microsoft FrontPage, then hacked by hand. Badly. There's code from at least five sources, some of it in Visual Basic.

    Notice the link right after the article: "Click here for prices on Linux distributions".

  • ...is getting hold of the games people. That IS the last bit they need to conquer. Me? I've been a Linux user for over 10 years now, but I've always had an installment of Windows on a partition or a separate computer - just for that moment of online-gaming with the friends, can't dump the friends because of an Operating system - but I'd really like to say goodbye! Get the games - and windows goes BYE BYE!
  • Any RPM distribution I've tried has annoyed me no end. Many people think apt and deb are superior. You can get apt for rpm, but it's not the same.

    Debian based distros and Gentoo are the easiest to keep in a nice working state.

  • Just switched from Fedore to Ubuntu (Score:3, Informative)

    by flajann ( 658201 ) <fred...mitchell@@@gmx...de> on Sunday December 30, 2007 @03:59PM (#21858572) Homepage Journal
    Having been a long-time Fedora user, I just switched to Ubuntu as my platform choice for development. Now, my particular development environment does have some dependency on the Fedora directory structure, but this was easy enough to work around on Ubuntu.

    The thing I like about Ubuntu is that much of the software I had to hand-compile under Fedora is available with full functionality via apt-get on Ubuntu. Very nice. I don't know if Fedora 8 fixed this annoyance because I made the switch as F8 was released.

    Ultimately, I muck about with the distro so much it doesn't really matter to me all that much anymore where it comes from.

    One pet peeve for both Ubuntu and Fedora is the lack of support for having multiple monitors in a way that is easily configurable. I had to muck about directly with xorg.conf on Ubuntu as much as I had to do under Fedora to get all 3 of my monitors to come up properly! Come on, guys! This is a no-brainer on Windows and the Mac. Why is this still a pain under Linux???

    Overall, I like Ubuntu a bit better than Fedora at this point -- though another pet peeve is that their default desktop is Gnome and not KDE. A minor nit, but one I find pestering.

  • There is a difference (Score:3, Interesting)

    by r7 ( 409657 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @05:50PM (#21859492)
    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.

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