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Red Hat Software Businesses Software Linux

Red Hat Linux Project Merges With Fedora 293

Posted by simoniker from the indiana-jones-delighted dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Red Hat has announced a merger of its Red Hat Linux Project with Fedora Linux, a group that has specialized in providing high-quality RPM packages for Red Hat. According to Red Hat, 'The Fedora Project is a Red-Hat-sponsored and community-supported open source project. It is also a proving ground for new technology that may eventually make its way into Red Hat products.' From the FAQ: 'Rather than being run through product management as something that has to appear on retail shelves on a certain date, Fedora Core will be released based on schedules, set by a steering committee, that will be open and accessible to the community, as well as influenced by the community.'"
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Red Hat Linux Project Merges With Fedora More

Red Hat Linux Project Merges With Fedora

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  • "Red Hat Artwork" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by soren42 ( 700305 ) * <<moc.yak-nos> <ta> <j>> on Monday September 22, 2003 @02:07PM (#7026325) Homepage Journal
    I think it's interesting that there is what appears to be a "core" part of the Fedora team focused on artwork.

    This, alone, is an excellent move by RedHat to compete with Microsoft in a space they clearly lead the market - desktop UI.

    As the Fedora site says, "Making things look pretty is the name of the game."

    • Re:"Red Hat Artwork" (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Lord Kholdan ( 670731 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @02:17PM (#7026404)
      I think it's interesting that there is what appears to be a "core" part of the Fedora team focused on artwork.

      This, alone, is an excellent move by RedHat to compete with Microsoft in a space they clearly lead the market - desktop UI.

      As the Fedora site says, "Making things look pretty is the name of the game."

      Unfortunately what needs improvement is the GUIs of the programs, not the desktop itself. Even the best desktop is no use if 2/3 of programs have awful GUI or are commandline only.

      • Re:"Red Hat Artwork" (Score:4, Interesting)

        by cgranade ( 702534 ) <cgranadeNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday September 22, 2003 @02:23PM (#7026472) Homepage Journal
        This does rely on a consistant desktop, tho. Much as I hate Windows, MS has a very consistant standard for UI. Right-clicking brings up context menus (which I love), single-clicking selects, double-clicking activates, C+c copies, C+x cuts, C+v pastes, C+n is New, a disk indicates save, a folder indicates open, etc. In fact, MS's devkits (VB, VC++, etc) include standard icon sets so that developers can fit in to the Windows styling easier.
        • GTK includes stock icons, too. If an application uses another icon they really have to go out of their way to do it, so the only reasonable explanation is that they just don't know stock icons exist.
        • MS has a very consistant standard for UI
          Really? When I right-click on something, nothing happens (Pre-1995 Windows). Single-clicking opens something (Post-IE4 Windows). Keyboard shortcuts vary with the application and are subject to the whim of the application developer; CTRL-N is a new email in Outlook, but a new database in Lotus Notes.

          MS's devkits include standard icon sets
          Icons are also subject to the whims of the developer. In the 90s, I could always tell when a new version of Visual Basic had been

          • Re:"Red Hat Artwork" (Score:3, Insightful)

            by BigBir3d ( 454486 )
            And how does Gnome or KDE compare now with their 1995 editions?

            And what is the difference between correctness and convention? Point of view.

          • Re:"Red Hat Artwork" (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Overly Critical Guy ( 663429 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @04:38PM (#7027880)
            Really? When I right-click on something, nothing happens (Pre-1995 Windows).

            Jesus, that was over eight years ago.

            Single-clicking opens something (Post-IE4 Windows).

            No, it doesn't. Only if you turn that option on.

            Keyboard shortcuts vary with the application and are subject to the whim of the application developer; CTRL-N is a new email in Outlook, but a new database in Lotus Notes.

            90% of applications follow standard shortcut procedure, but there are always the exceptions, which aren't the fault of Windows consistency.

            MS's devkits include standard icon sets
            Icons are also subject to the whims of the developer. In the 90s, I could always tell when a new version of Visual Basic had been released, because Windows shareware would have new and inexplicable icons.

            Um...huh? What does the changing of some default dev icon have to do with the interface consistency? Most apps use their own custom icons.

            Microsoft's user interface is not consistent over time. It is not consistent between applications, except those from the same vendor (and even then it's questionable). What seems like consistency and logic in the UI is really a huge installed base and a decade of acclimatization.

            Completely false. Windows is considered a bastion of homogenized consistency (good or bad), especially compared to the hell that is the Linux desktop attempt.

            • Re:"Red Hat Artwork" (Score:3, Insightful)

              by 0x0d0a ( 568518 )
              Jesus, that was over eight years ago.

              Fair enough.

              No, it doesn't. Only if you turn that option on.

              No. It does *unless you turn that option off*. Very large difference. The vast majority of desktops use the default.

              Windows is considered a bastion of homogenized consistency (good or bad)

              Wow. I'm not sure exactly who've you been talking to, but they either aren't HCI or were buzzed at the time. Windows is infamous for being used as Microsoft's testing grounds for the latest version of their widge

        • Re:"Red Hat Artwork" (Score:4, Informative)

          by iceT ( 68610 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @04:49PM (#7027996)
          MS has a very consistant standard for UI.

          Bullshit. Microsoft USED to have a very consistant UI. Gradually, they are corrupting individual packages to make them INCONSISTANT.

          Example: Word vs. Excel.

          Open 2 word documents. You get 2 items on the task bar. And each window is totally seperate. Use the upper-right close button to close one window, then then other.

          Now, open 2 EXCEL documents.. Two windows... Two icons on the task bar. Click the upper-right close button on one of the windows... BOTH WINDOWS CLOSE>

          Excel has always had a dependent window model, each spreadsheet was a sub window of the master window (a la program manager in Windows 3.1), but, users complained because each sheet didn't show up in the task bar.. So they completely trashed the dependent window model for Excel, and now window-management between Word and Excel have different behaviors.

          There are other consistancies in double-clicking in windows explorer, and etc..

      • Amen Brother! (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Gorignak ( 701686 )
        What kind of lame idiots call it a GUI when a click of an icon brings up a text interface window. Also, I believe there is way to much "Burger King" GUI programming going on in Linux. To many projects doing it their own way. There needs to be lots more standards put in place, starting with the desktop itself. There needs to be a merger of the features of GNOME and the 'look and feel' of KDE into one standard desktop before Sun's MadHatter muddies the water anymore. Frankly, I'd like to see allot more org
        • Also, I believe there is way to much "Burger King" GUI programming going on in Linux.

          The product is so underdone it's still cold, and you get sick if you eat it?

      • Unfortunately what needs improvement is the GUIs of the programs, not the desktop itself. Even the best desktop is no use if 2/3 of programs have awful GUI or are commandline only

        Read the developer and HIG guidelines HERE [redhat.com] I think the direction they're going as far as GUI is excellent. look how nice things are now since RH did thier GUI crackdown last year.

    • Re:"Red Hat Artwork" (Score:3, Interesting)

      by cgranade ( 702534 )
      True. Look at OSX and XP (Aqua v. Luna) if you for even one second doubt that prettiness is important. Why else would Apple and Microsoft each spend millions of dollars reinventing their visual styles?

      • Re:"Red Hat Artwork" (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Micah ( 278 )
        Why else would Apple and Microsoft each spend millions of dollars reinventing their visual styles?

        Because they think it will make them money. Which it probably will.

        But will these new styles really make things a lot easier?
    • More important than prettiness is reliability and responsiveness, two things linux currently lacks in the GUI department.

      And don't think it can't be done. Just look at OSX.

      • Re:"Red Hat Artwork" (Score:3, Informative)

        by fault0 ( 514452 )
        Responsiveness? OSX's GUI is *way* less responsive than X, because everything is doublebuffered through the video card. That makes it *very* smooth, but it's not responsive at all. X isn't terribly responsive either, but it's better than OSX's.

        Windows is probably the most responsive.

  • Does that mean apt will be included? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Kynde ( 324134 ) <kynde@[ ].fi ['iki' in gap]> on Monday September 22, 2003 @02:08PM (#7026334)
    But isn't up2date the service they plan on making money with?

  • No more "Red Hat Linux" product. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mr_Icon ( 124425 ) * on Monday September 22, 2003 @02:09PM (#7026339) Homepage

    Red Hat Linux 9 was the last in the line. Instead of being "Red Hat Linux 10" it's going to be "Fedora Linux 1[.0]" when it's released within the next few weeks/months.

    • I think this is totally right, wish I had a mod point. Pretty interesting that "RedHat" will be going the way of the enterprise, while "Fedora" will be the community version.

      Pretty cool, IMO.

      Now, I just wish they'd update packages AND version numbers, so I can more easily satisfy silly Symantec / Norton port security scanning... :-P (say Hi, httpd-2.0.40- with- everything- up-to-47- added- but- not-the- version- number)
      • In the past, Red Hat only backported security fixes and major bug fixes, but not new features and other new things, in the updates to a given release. So your httpd was not in fact version 2.4.47, but 2.4.40 with security patches for 2.4.47. This practice helped ensure intra-release stability for commercial users. It is considered an acceptable practice and is used by other distros, like Debian stable.

        Now, one of the goals of the Fedora Porject is to do more maintenence upstream, from which I imply that th
        • Yep, I know about RH's policy of not pushing out new versions until they're really needed, but it's hell when you have to try to explain that to a under-knowledgeable security guy for the Federal Agency you're contracting for:

          "Well, my security scan says you're using Apache version 2.0.40, but the latest version is 2.0.46, and there are security fixes in there that you'll need."

          "I know, but my version of Apache has the security fixes back-ported to 2.0.40, so it's safe."

          "uhh". Blank stare.

          If you can co

    • Re:No more "Red Hat Linux" product. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by zerocool^ ( 112121 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @03:17PM (#7027005) Homepage Journal
      I beg to differ with you on this one... I think redhat will still be the commercial one for at least the next release.

      Which, by the way, no one knows [amazon.com] if it will be called Trendy "Red Hat X" [amazon.com] or if they will stick with Plain "Red Hat 10" [amazon.com].

      Having said that, good lord, quality control will be a godsend in redhat RPM's. If for no other reason than to make sure that THE SOFTWARE IN ONE RELEASE IS ACTUALLY COMPATABLE WITH THE OTHER SOFTWARE IN THE SAME RELEASE [redhat.com]. I pray for the day that redhat actually tests their software, to make sure they don't do something completely retarted like redhat 8 again. For example: Bundling apache 2.0.x with mod_perl that works with apache 1.3.x, but NOT with 2.0.x.

      Thank you, fedora, for adding quality control. Redhat may only care that it looks pretty, and I know that they want us to spend $4000 on RH-enterprise, but it's important to have standards, and releaseing software *after* testing and *after* checking to make sure that it works at all is pretty important.

      ~Will //gentoo fan
    • "Red Hat Linux 9 was the last in the line. Instead of being "Red Hat Linux 10" it's going to be "Fedora Linux 1[.0]" when it's released within the next few weeks/months."

      From reading their web pages, it certainly sounds like that is more or less the plan. It seems that RH wants to drop the consumer version of their distro. This amply clear from the packages that have disappeared in RH8 and RH9. Considering the hacker/hobbyist base of Linux, I was shocked to see them dropping mature popular window manag

      • Re:No more "Red Hat Linux" product. (Score:4, Informative)

        by MSG ( 12810 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @06:28PM (#7028811)
        I was shocked to see them dropping mature popular window managers (fvwm et al), and classics like xtetris and xevil, as well as UNIX staples like fortune.

        In all cases, it is because these programs conflict with the goal of selling the Redhat distro as a business desktop system, with minimum variations between installations and nothing "non-professional"

        Actually, xtetris and fortune were both dropped for licensing reasons. Tetris is copyrighted, and Red Hat doesn't have the rights to distribute it. Fortune doesn't have copyrights to a large portion of the quotes in the standard databases. These items, along with mp3 software support were dropped as Red Hat (and everyone else) becomes more aware of the property issues that have from time to time been ignored.

  • History of Red Hat/Fedora (Score:5, Informative)

    by jbellis ( 142590 ) * <jonathan@carnage ... m minus math_god> on Monday September 22, 2003 @02:09PM (#7026340) Homepage
    Oddly (for something one link away from the Fedora main page), it has nothing to do with Fedora. Still, the Red Hat timeline [redhat.com] under History is an interesting read, particularly for someone like me who only used relatively modern versions of Red Hat. (Starting with 5.0 in my case.)

    Still wouldn't mind seeing a history of Fedora per se though. Seems like it's a more open, community-oriented Rawhide. Is that accurate?

    • Re:History of Red Hat/Fedora (Score:5, Informative)

      by MSG ( 12810 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @02:22PM (#7026468)
      Seems like it's a more open, community-oriented Rawhide. Is that accurate?

      No, it's more like a more open, community-oriented GNU/Linux distribution. Rawhide will continue to exist as an unstable repository of packages that are being tested (as it's always been). Fedora will apparently be replacing the traditional "Red Hat Linux". Red Hat's "products" will include their Enterprise Linux distributions, developer tools, database product, etc.

  • Never heard of it. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 22, 2003 @02:09PM (#7026341)
    I have never heard of this project before and I am curious as to the reason for its existence. It would seem that the Red Hat Corporation has the same function as the Red Hat Project/Fedora so, what is the point of the redundant project?

  • Why the name Fedora? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 22, 2003 @02:09PM (#7026346)
    Why Fedora? Why not sombrero or chapeaux? Why pick something associated with the mob?
  • at least they are sticking with the hat motif. If a company like Caldera merged, it wouldn't make any sense.
    • Well . . . it's a bit of a stretch but a caldera is in part created by a volcano "blowing it's top."
      Hat's are tradiationally worn on top of the head.
      I don't know. It'd be contrived, but one could make a connection.

  • What about patent-protected multimedia and DMCA? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by JoeBuck ( 7947 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @02:11PM (#7026361) Homepage

    Fedora currently distributes packages like xmms-mp3, mplayer and ogle, which violate US patents, as well as the DMCA. Will those packages now go away?

  • Debian (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jdavidb ( 449077 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @02:11PM (#7026363) Homepage Journal

    Sounds like RedHat is trying to achieve some of the advantages of Debian. I'll welcome this, although I won't switch any machines over right away.

    It'll be nice to get new software packages and rpms. I think apt-rpm has illustrated the need and the market for this. RedHat also has several great advantages over Debian, notably the installation process and more up to date software, so this could really revitalize them.

    With projects like Linux From Scratch and Gentoo, distribution-building has gone fomr being an arcane art of wizards to something the community can do, and I'm glad RedHat wants to partner with the community in doing this.

    • Re:Debian (Score:4, Interesting)

      by SwansonMarpalum ( 521840 ) <redina.alum@rpi@edu> on Monday September 22, 2003 @02:31PM (#7026525) Homepage Journal
      Having recently swapped over to Gentoo from Red Hat there are three advantages to it that are fundamentally against the Red Hat machine: 1) Strong, FLAT LEVEL community. People in Gentoo help each other and there is no official Gentoo support facility. Likewise as Gentoo isn't trying to make money off of support contracts they actively work with the community forums and support them. I think this was the big thing that made me switch. 2) Streamlined "distribution". Gentoo is a meta-distribution engineered for helping you build your own distribution package from the ground up, letting you control what will be supported by the binaries you generate yourself. RedHat has a monolithic attempt to support everything out of the box. 3) Portage vs. Up2Date. Both can serve similar purposes (though portage will do more than up2date as most anyone who's used gentoo can tell you) in that portage lets you keep software up to date as up2date also does. Portage is a free service that is integrated into the heart of Gentoo. Up2date you have to pay for more than one machine (and have to 'pay' with demographic information every 60 days). If you're confident with Linux it can really be a nobrainer.

      • okay, but.... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by mattdm ( 1931 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @03:23PM (#7027057) Homepage
        Your rant is nice and all, but it's largely irrelevant. This new project exists _exactly_ to cover these concerns -- well #3 and #1, at least. #2 is a matter of style.

      • OH NO! (Score:4, Funny)

        by tempest303 ( 259600 ) <jensknutson@@@yahoo...com> on Monday September 22, 2003 @06:02PM (#7028605) Homepage
        It's that time again, folks, since it's apparently a "no-brainer" now to choose Gentoo over Red Hat (or any other distro). Yes, it's time for another link to... the Amazing Gentoo-Linux-Zealot Translate-o-matic! [upevil.net]

        • Re:OH NO! (Score:3, Insightful)

          by jdavidb ( 449077 )

          I'm too stupid to understand that circular dependencies can be resolved by specifying BOTH .rpms together on the command line, and that problems hardly ever occur if one uses proper Red Hat packages instead of mixing SuSE, Mandrake and Joe's Linux packages together (which the system wasn't designed for).

          Hmmm, actually, now I'm glad I read that. I've never seen "dependency hell," and now I know why. I've only recently started occasionally pulling rpms off of rpmfind, and I always do it for my exact ver

  • For another distribution that focuses on providing updates to RedHat, see KRUD [tummy.com], recommended by Eric Raymond. This one's not as community-oriented, however.

  • Let me be the first to say... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 22, 2003 @02:19PM (#7026437)
    ..."hats off" to these guys.

  • Next objects of merger: (Score:5, Funny)

    by burgburgburg ( 574866 ) <splisken06@@@email...com> on Monday September 22, 2003 @02:20PM (#7026445)
    Derby, Bowler, Porkpie and Kangol.

  • hmm . . . Sounds like Mandrake, to me (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Idou ( 572394 ) * on Monday September 22, 2003 @02:26PM (#7026494) Journal
    "The goal of The Fedora Project is to work with the Linux community to build a complete, general purpose operating system exclusively from open source software."

    Yet another example of Mandrake innovation influencing and improving the industry.

    I fully support Red Hat's push to be more open and community based. However, if you are interested in a more mature implementation of such ideas, please visit mandrakeclub.com.

    Funny how Mandrake started out as a knock-off of Red Hat and now Red Hat appears to sometimes follow Mandrake's lead.

  • PGP key management (Score:5, Informative)

    by tarvin ( 644214 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @02:29PM (#7026515) Homepage
    The Red Hat/Fedora merger sounds OK. One thing, though: In the past, it has been very difficult to verify the PGP signatures in Fedora's packages: The packager's public keys were hard - sometimes impossible - to find. I have looked through the fedora.redhat.com web site, hoping to find out how they plan to manage PGP-keys and signatures in the new Fedora distribution, but I couldn't find any information. Does anyone know?

  • Sorry if this is a dumb question... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ngunton ( 460215 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @02:33PM (#7026543) Homepage
    Will this mean that security updates will still be available for RedHat 7.3 after it is End of Life'd at the end of this year? If not then I will still be switching to Debian when that happens.

    Anyone have any insight on that issue, which is the biggest one by far at present for me regarding RedHat?

    TIA /Neil
    • Not a dumb question at all - this is one of our major worries about RedHat at the moment too. However, looking at their site (and FAQ), it seems like this (Fedora) is going to be very similar to the RedHat we know at the moment (not the enterprise bit) - ie, major releases every six months or so. It's quite reasonable to expect support for the old releases to fall off very rapidly (it's really not economical to continue to support more than two distributions at a time), and there is certainly no indication
    • It looks like they will only provide security updates for ~9 months after each release comes out.

    • Re:Sorry if this is a dumb question... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Alan Cox ( 27532 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @03:52PM (#7027402) Homepage
      The goal of the project is to be current and up to date. That should actually make updating easier since much of the time people tracking current updates will find they basically have the next release when a release point is declared and 'official' .iso images created.

      Even with current Red Hat 8, 9, .. upgrading is no big deal. I've taken boxes from 7.1 to 9 without rebooting.

      Supporting old releases is expensive and gets vastly more expensive over time. Its why nobody does it in detail for old releases except in the enterprise space, Debian included.

      Various non Red Hat folks have talked about doing unofficial RH 7.3 errata, I guess it depends if enough people willing to pay them to make it cost effective.

      • "upgrading is no big deal."

        I guess that's pretty true if you stick with a stock installations but, given enough time, I've always drifted into configurations that seem to entail some loose ends (un-official software that I've installed).

        As a result, while supporting old distibutions is expensive for vendors, repeated upgrade cycles are likewise unpleasant for me.

        As a result, I have to be dragged kicking and screaming from one major release to the next. I skipped RH8 altogether.

        The important thing is tha

  • QA? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Ricin ( 236107 )
    Occurs to me that RH basically bought a QA system for packages. Since in a linux distro, apart from the kernel pretty much anything is a package, it makes one wonder if they were thinking their own QA wasn't good enough.

    "Release fast release often" ring a bell? Red Hat is in the business, what, 8 years, and they're heading for a double digit main release. Way too much even if you're only in the business of putting something on retail shelves.

    Perhaps they were afraid of another Drake emerging from this pro

    • Re:QA? (Score:2)

      by sab39 ( 10510 )
      Doesn't sound like that to me. Although QA is clearly *one of* the benefits of going more community-oriented, they already had "community QA" in the form of RawHide.

      Sounds to me more like what they got is *development* of desktop-based packages so that they can concentrate on the enterprise space.

  • And what about KDE for Red Hat? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Jungle guy ( 567570 ) <brunolmailbox-generico&yahoo,com,br> on Monday September 22, 2003 @02:54PM (#7026711) Journal
    It is another community-oriented project that makes high-quality RPMs for people that have Red Hat Linux, but think Red Hat have messed up bad with KDE. Also, they allowed me to upgrade from KDE 3 to 3.1 using Red Hat 8, without breaking my system. Check these guys out at kde-redhat.sourceforge.net [sourceforge.net].

  • Does this mean no more "Pink Tie" nonsense? (Score:4, Informative)

    by J. J. Ramsey ( 658 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @02:57PM (#7026736) Homepage

    Copying myself from OSNews . . .

    From http://fedora.redhat.com/about/name.html [redhat.com]:

    The rules for using the Fedora trademark will be generally more permissive than the rules for using the Red Hat trademarks. The separate name and trademark are necessary in order to have different rules for using the trademarks. The rules for using the "Fedora" trademark will be available before the first release of Fedora Core.

    I wish Red Hat weren't so non-committal here, but does this mean that instead of CheapBytes selling Pink Tie [cheapbytes.com], LinuxCD selling Blue Jacket [linuxcd.org], and OSDisc selling Red Tux [osdisc.com], every third-party CD Vendor will just call it Fedora [redhat.com]?

  • Releases (Score:3, Insightful)

    by __aahlyu4518 ( 74832 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @03:03PM (#7026832)
    The project will produce time-based releases of Fedora Core about 2-3 times a year with a public release schedule.

    So will RedHat release a new product everytime a core gets delivered? Will we see a .0 a .1 and a .2 in 1 year? 3 releases for the core a year sounds rediculous to me. The core is the thing you want to be stable as a rock, not being in beta forever, which is basically what a 3 time release schedule means.

    The release cycle of linux distros is what will kill them eventually if they don't slow it down. Most of them have 2 releases (not major ones, but new boxed sets anyway) a year. And they all want the users to pay for them. That's only logic, they're running a business. But the linux distro's and the software they deliver seem to be in eternal beta. People always want the latest and greatest I guess. Lots of distro's have close to 0 people running their stable release. The thing 'we' are all so proud of (stability and security) will be going down the drain real soon if we don't start focusing on them again iso getting a filemanager #311 and a desktop #24. Lets first settle down and get everything stable. And then have a look at what needs a change.

    If I buy a distro version 9, it has a lifecycle of 6 months, a year at most. Then I do need to upgrade. if you want businesses to adopt your distro or joe average to use it, cut the upgrades down. It looks silly... We are so stable and secure, but you need to upgrade every 6 months to keep up. A business doesn't want to be in an eternal upgrade cycle. Neither does Joe Average. They want to get work done. Not upgrade or do a complete reinstall with the next release just a few weeks after they have their configuration just as they want.

    I started using Linux in 1996 because I wanted something different, a new challenge. I loved the "if you don't need the new feature and it is not a security thing, why upgrade program X?" mentality. Now it's just the other way around. My wife is still running Windows 98 SE on the laptop. That was released what.. 5 years ago? Sure... there were upgrades for a lot of things... but did she need to upgrade the OS itsself every 6 months ? No .

    *sigh*... I'm getting old I guess... nevermind me.... I just want my Linux to be stable, secure, and also all the apps i'm running on it. And preferably without losing all support for it because i'm running a distro that is more than 1 yr old.

    Sure, my computer doesn't crash when 1 program does. But the program shouldn't crash. I want that to be fixed, not another feature added. Microsoft won't kill Linux... It's doing just fine on its own.
    • It sounds like you want Red Hat Obsolete Enterprise Linux, and they'll be happy to sell it to you.

    • Re:Releases (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Alan Cox ( 27532 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @04:00PM (#7027527) Homepage
      Red Hat Enterprise Linux - long support, aimed at maximum stability (jn the sense of predictability especially), with various pricing options from the low end to 24x7 support (its not just a $2000 a year deal!). Aimed mostly at business.

      Fedora Project - 2 or 3 releases a year, and as many easy ways of getting it and its updates we can think of - including hopefully stuff like BitTorrent. I'm even kicking around an idea for some wireless "FedoraPoints". After all many people who have wireless but can't share their internet connection due to ISP rules will probably have local Fedora mirrors for their own use too.

      Time for drive by upgrading

  • At least now Red Hat will have decent KDE packages (Score:4, Informative)

    by Roberto ( 1777 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @03:07PM (#7026875) Homepage
    http://kde-redhat.sf.net
  • "Rather than being run through product management as something that has to appear on retail shelves on a certain date, Fedora Core will be released based on schedules"

    So instead of basing it off dates, they'll base it off dates! Ah, well in THAT case...
  • I can't believe they're going to allow officially sanctioned packages which conflict with core packages; this will be like the Ximian Desktop problem but worse because these Alternatives will be semi-encouraged.

    • If apt is used, conflicts are not necessarily a problem, provided that the conflicts are correctly described in the apt database. If you try to install a package that conflicts with some other package, you are given the option to proceed (and remove the conflicting package) or not, and with either choice your system stays consistent.

  • Software Developer Concern (Score:3, Insightful)

    by RichiP ( 18379 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @05:55PM (#7028541) Homepage
    As a third party software developer, I'd like to know what will be guaranteed to remain static within a given release of Fedora and its updates. If I write software that's dependent on, say gtk2-2.2.5 and which will break down (hypothetically) with a newer version of the gtk2 package, will I be guaranteed that this won't be the case with updates to a specific version of Fedora?

    One concern of software developers is guaranteeing minimum requirements for the software they develop. Look around you and you'll see developers stating their software "works with RH 9" or whatever. If Fedora becomes too much of a moving target, it will be a headache to develop software for it.

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