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Red Hat Software Businesses

Fedora Core 1 Released 566

Posted by timothy from the pudding-to-prove dept.
EvilAlien writes "The Fedora Project has released Fedora Core 1, aka Yarrow. The release was expected on November 3rd, but was briefly delayed. The release notes has quite a bit of good detail, and is worth checking out for any preliminary questions you may have. Download options include BitTorrent in addition to the traditional collection of FTP mirrors."
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Fedora Core 1 Released More

Fedora Core 1 Released

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  • Is this the one . . . (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @04:40PM (#7400556)
    . . . that people should be using Windows instead of? Maybe Red Hat can clarify that for us.

    ~~~

  • -where can I buy a boxed set of it? I prefer the convenience of pressed CDs..

  • Slashdot editors are the best. (Score:4, Funny)

    by VAXGeek ( 3443 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @04:41PM (#7400577) Homepage
    Usually, I'd just expect some vague headline, like "Fedora Core released", but our editors have gone ABOVE AND BEYOND the call of duty and attached a brief synopsis of what Fedora is and why this is an important news item. I'm glad they didn't just say "Fedora released" and call it that.

  • A couple of links (Score:5, Informative)

    by Mr_Icon ( 124425 ) * on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @04:42PM (#7400578) Homepage

    Bittorrent Link [duke.edu]

    Alternatively:
    btdownloadcurses.py --max_upload_rate 350 --url http://torrent.dulug.duke.edu/yarrow-binary-i386-i so.torrent

    A few installation screenshots [mricon.com]

    • When you're done downloading and installing, get more rpms from the "old [fedora.us]" fedora (these days called Fedora Extra, I believe).

      Check out this [xades.com] for more details.

      There's also a lot of extras at Freshrpms [freshrpms.net] (although not updated for Yarrow yet).

    • Looking at the screenies, I must ask: how is this different from RH9?

      Please, someone tell me!

      • Re:A couple of links (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Kyouryuu ( 685884 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @05:44PM (#7401271) Homepage
        - Everywhere the Red Hat emblem used to appear, the new Fedora logo does. - Almost all of the major programs in Red Hat 9 have been updated to their most recent incarnations. - CUPS is used for all printing needs. - More recent version of the Linux kernel (still not 2.6, that's for the next version of Fedora). - Same lack of built-in NTFS read-only capailities and MP3 support in XMMS. Based on beta 3, that's about all I'd put down as new. I might go insofar as to say it's a tad bit faster, but it could be psychological. :)

        • Re:A couple of links (Score:3, Interesting)

          by rgmoore ( 133276 ) *

          I'm quite happy with the new kernel version, since it supports DMA mode on my new SATA drive, while the kernel in RH9 would occasionally hang if you tried to turn DMA on. Not a huge thing, unless you happen to have an affected drive, in which case it makes a world of difference. There are some other kernel changes that should make life nicer for laptop users.

          Some other random changes that I notice in their release notes:

          • Improved ACPI support
          • Include new Bitstream Vera fonts
          • Added D-BUS
          • Added DVD+RW t

        • Re:A couple of links (Score:4, Interesting)

          by spurious cowherd ( 104353 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @09:58PM (#7403489)
          no NTFS...yeah..that can be a pain. For some.

          No MP3...as long as the license for the codec is what it is you'll never see anything even remotely associated with Red Hat including it.

          No 2.6...well 2.6 is not ready for the parameters of this type of release yet. And 2.4.22*.nptl does moderately rock...

          prelink is absolulely amazing

          I'm actually looking forward to how the "extras" path will pan out. For me on my personal boxes Fedora is a no brainer

          but not for my servers.

          unlike many of the /. whinegers I'm quite happy to tell the Powers That Be to fork over the money to Red Hat.
          For them it's the "security" factor.Easily understood in their finacial world
          For me it's the oppertunity to finally pay back Red Hat for some quality production level code that I have used over the years.

      • Re:A couple of links (Score:5, Informative)

        by j-turkey ( 187775 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @11:05PM (#7403864) Homepage
        Looking at the screenies, I must ask: how is this different from RH9?

        Yeah -- those screenshots really tell the whole story, don't they? ;)

        All kidding aside, they've made some significant changes to the RH9 core. Check out the release notes [redhat.com].

        The stuff that really interests me is:

        • Prelinking: (search for it in the link above) From an end user perspective, it will make applications load faster, as dynamicly linked libraries will be loaded ahead of time into unused memory.
        • Exec-Shield: (again, search for it in the release notes) Exec-shield purports to randomize VM addresses and make parts of applications (as well as their stack) non-executable. Think of it as "damage control" for security holes. The integrated stack protection (that the Exec-shield kernel addition replaces/includes) is very important for foiling buffer overflow attacks.
        • /proc/cpufreq (again, see the notes) Maybe this has been done elsewhere, but I've neither used or seen it. Apparently, you can do CPU clock throttling. This is particularly useful for laptops where CPU speed is scaled down to conserve battery. This technology is still in its infancy (for Linux, anyway) and has a way to go, but is an excellent start nonetheless.
        • Laptop mode compliments /proc/cpufreq and changes disk access to a sort of block-mode that will space apart disk accesses allow for the disk to spin down and conserve battery.
        • Extended RPM/Up2Date support: Up2Date now supports APT and YUM, as well as local databases. (I read somewhere that the default package management is now APT but cannot confirm this.)
        Anyway, this is just the stuff that piqued my interest. There are plenty of other changes that look pretty promising. I hadn't read much about Fedora until recently, and nothing technical until today -- but after scanning over the release notes, I'm ready to dump my RH9 desktop box and install Fedora.
        --Turkey
    • wget -qO - kungfunix.net/fatality|sed -n '1!G;h;$p'
      lynx -dump perfidious.org/eraymond|sed -n '1!G;h;$p'|sed '/\n/!G;s/\(.\)\(.*\n\)/&\2\1/;//D;s/.//'

      l ike fear

  • crappy desktop (Score:4, Funny)

    by madHomer ( 2207 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @04:43PM (#7400598)
    I hear the desktop is pretty bad [slashdot.org]. I'll just stick with windows :)

  • Still concerns about security errata (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @04:44PM (#7400611)
    Good, solid base of stable kernel, glibc, gcc and XFree86 releases. Not sure how the 8-month no-backport security fix policy is going to work though; it could be a right shambles having to update all sorts of stuff and dependencies just because of hole in nano requires upgrading to the latest version etc.

    Still, looks like RH's first-rate QA has been put into place (unlike in Mandrake), and hopefully they'll keep that up as the community gets more involved.

    M

    • Re:Still concerns about security errata (Score:5, Informative)

      by Rik van Riel ( 4968 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @04:57PM (#7400768) Homepage
      One of the nice things about Fedora being an open source project is that participation by others (eg. the Fedora Legacy people) is encouraged.

      If a lot of people want backported security fixes, there's nobody stopping them from doing the work and putting up an apt or yum repository with those packages.

      (one nice feature of Fedora is that up2date now talks apt and yum, so you can get your packages from anywhere you want, not just Red Hat)
      • One of the nice things about Fedora being an open source project is that participation by others (eg. the Fedora Legacy people) is encouraged.

        (I would use a different description, maybe "with an open development system", rather than "open-source", since the are neither mutually exlusive nor mutually inclusive)

        I really wanted to know though how that differed from (say) Debian, Gentoo and Mandrake (who have been had open development systems for at least a year each, especially Debian).

        If a lot of people

  • Features (Score:2, Insightful)

    by AKAImBatman ( 238306 )
    And the most amazing feature of Fedora? The fact that it's bigger than our Sun! I mean, what the *7#$ is on those 3 CDs?! Oh wait, let me guess. In true RedHat fashion, we have 3 FTP server, 7 email servers, 300 email readers, 20 instant messenger, 5 web browser, 3 versions of xBill, several hundred programs that sound like they do something interesting but don't, and 1 kitchen sink.

    I mean really, what ever happened to "core system" vs. "extra software"?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Features (Score:5, Insightful)

      by freeweed ( 309734 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @05:02PM (#7400831)
      You know, no one's forcing you to install any of what you listed.

      Unless the Fedora installer has changed from what RedHat (free) used to have, you can pick and choose as little or as much as you want. Install just the core stuff and you won't even be asked for the 2nd and 3rd CDs.

      Personally, I like it. Much easier than hunting around for online all day.

      Oh, and last time I checked, many other distros are even larger (iirc, Debian was up to 5 CDs a while ago), so I don't see where the RedHat bashing comes from.

      • Re:Features (Score:3, Interesting)

        by AKAImBatman ( 238306 )
        I have no problem with extra software CDs. All I want tho, is the ability to download the core system without having to juggle 3 CDs! If I then want to install extra software, I'll go get the third CD. Do you have *any* idea how long it takes to download 3 CDs? Even on the OC3 at work, we're still talking an entire day.

        • Re:Features (Score:3, Informative)

          by jspaleta ( 136955 )
          there is a boot.iso image that is very very small.
          Its actually sort of a waste actually to burn such a small iso to cd...unless you have a business card cd.

          Anyways burn the tiny iso to a cd...then do a net install. No fuss, no muss.

          And there is certaintly room for community effort...ie YOU...to help rework some of the installer software groupings so you could have a very minimal working install using just one cd and no network. In fact i think people are sort of working on that very issue, though they wan

        • Re:Features (Score:3, Insightful)

          by freeweed ( 309734 )
          Re-read my post.

          you can pick and choose as little or as much as you want. Install just the core stuff and you won't even be asked for the 2nd and 3rd CDs.

          Just download the first CD. Done. Assuming you don't want any extras that is :)

          Having said that, if it takes you an entire day to download 3 CDs, talk to your provider. Takes me a couple of hours at most with my cable ISP. Or use the nice Netherlands mirrors, they're always fast :)
    • Spoken like someone who really hasn't kept up. The last few releases of RHL have tended towards stripping more and more things *out*. 'Course, everyone complained about that too.
    • Your ignorance is showing. Fedora Core specifically does *not* include hundreds of duplicated packages.

      Check out this thread on fedora-devel-list [redhat.com], someone complains about *only* having two desktop environments by default, redhat and community developers point out that this stuff should and will go into fedora extras.

      Just face facts, for today's computers, 3 CDs is nothing. If you don't need all the desktop apps, i.e for my webserver which runs fedora, don't install them.

      Now perhaps we can talk about
      • > Your ignorance is showing.

        Indeed it is. I'm asking where all the space went. My only guess is that it was wasted in true RedHat tradition. However, if you have a better answer PLEASE tell me. The size of Linux distros is becoming astronomical, and I can't figure out why. Sure, there are commercial OSes on 2 CDs, but that's one CD less, plus they have 10-100x the level of useful software packed on them.


    • To be honest, I'd rather spend a few extra minutes downloading, than spend hours trying to hunt down every "extra" piece of software that I'd like to install.
      • > To be honest, I'd rather spend a few extra minutes downloading

        Ahem. Minutes? Try hours. Lots of them.

      • Re:Features (Score:3, Informative)

        by cayenne8 ( 626475 )
        I've been using Gentoo for awhile now. I really like the fact that it only installs a base system, and you add what you need.

        When ever I need something....if I know the name of the program, just do emerge and it grabs the code, takes care of all the dependencies, grabs any other progs it needs...voila, in minutes, I have the program compiled for my system, and with the flags I want for it. No clutter with 5 different verisons of a functionality unless I want it.

        Updates are a breeze too. emerge -u bang.

    • Distros on DvD? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by phorm ( 591458 )
      I think that DvD's are becoming popular enough that perhaps big distros will be available on the larger media format as well. If I had to choose from >2 CD's or a DVD for a slightly higher price, I'd go for DVD.

      Oh, and "core system" vs "extra software" went out the window when the GUI came around in popularity and people started biatching "how come software X isn't here, bah!"

      I'd say that if you were a previous RedHat user, Fedora's multiple CD's shouldn't bother you, and you can always stick with De

    • Re:Features (Score:3, Informative)

      by QuantumRiff ( 120817 )
      Your wrong, it doesn't even come close to windows.

      If you want a have a windows 2003 Server, thats 1 CD, an exchange server 1CD, office 2003 3 CD's, visual studio.NET 5 CD's, SQL Server at least 1CD etc, etc, etc.. I love how anyone that compares windows to linux (bug reports, install size, etc) seems to forget that there is a hell of alot of software on distribution CD's. It includes everything, not just the base OS that windows includes. I wonder how many bugs windows has in bugtraq if you add window

      • > Your wrong, it doesn't even come close to windows.

        Huh?

        Larger than the Sun... check
        Where's all the space going... check
        Solaris is on two CDs... check
        Other distros break stuff out into extra CDs... check

        Who said anything about Windows?!

  • What the... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Geekenstein ( 199041 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @04:44PM (#7400622)
    64 MB minimum for text mode, 192 minimum for graphical? When did we get so bloated? It looks like we're catching up to MS with an OS that has always had efficiency of resources as a primary strength. What gives?

    • Re:What the... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by bluelip ( 123578 )
      64MB is _CLOSE_ to a recent Windows install?? HA!

      You are still mostly free to uninstall whatever you'd like.

      This isn't the only distro out there. If you need something small, try one of them that will even leave space after being put on a few floppies.
    • Ha! I just booted a Gentoo system with 16MB RAM, and it had 2MB left for disk cache! I had to bring my roommate down to 64MB on her Gentoo/KDE3 machine for a few days while selling memory/ordering new stuff and she was fine, just noted that it was a bit laggier than her usual 512MB.

      I did it just for shits and giggles, but building your own system from a core set of utilities can really produce a much more streamlined experience. I've always felt that the RPM-based distros were pretty bloaty, the maintainer

    • Re: What the... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jensend ( 71114 )
      You can still run a text installation using RH packages with quite a bit less than 64 MB. Graphical environments for Linux have become much more resource-intensive than they used to be, but an X 4.3 install with a less-resource hungry DE than Gnome or KDE, such as XFCE, can still do fine with 64 MB. RedHat is here giving numbers which they will support and which ought to provide plenty of performance, not the "actually tolerable with" or much less the "bare minimum" numbers.
    • Don't forget the hanging installer that silently fails to tell you you are out of RAM. I've had lots of RedHat installs lock up the VM (I think) on the machine. Specifically during the OpenOffice install. Install on a machine with 128 MB of RAM with a pretty small swap space (~128MB of RAM). The installer will hang installing Open Office. I guess it isn't so bad, because OpenOffice will run like a dog with that little RAM. When you do an install of OpenOffice you need plenty of VM (either real, or swa

    • Re:What the... (Score:3, Informative)

      by lactose99 ( 71132 )
      This is really for the install, as the install process is contained in a ramdisk. You could run the OS with 8-16 MB of RAM after its installed, although I don't know why you would want to (particularly if you had 64 MB at your disposal for the install).

  • One important issue... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by swagr ( 244747 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @04:47PM (#7400657) Homepage
    I looked around the website and they don't really explain how important a priority stability is.
    They do have a QA "project", but they also say they want to "Be on the leading edge of open source technology..."

    I take it we're not talking OpenBSD/Debian-stable level of reliability. That's fine. But what's the goal? Will this stuff be /directly/ used by RedHat, or is there a "polishing" step?

    • Stability? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by tjwhaynes ( 114792 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @05:23PM (#7401038)

      I looked around the website and they don't really explain how important a priority stability is. They do have a QA "project", but they also say they want to "Be on the leading edge of open source technology..."

      I take it we're not talking OpenBSD/Debian-stable level of reliability. That's fine. But what's the goal? Will this stuff be /directly/ used by RedHat, or is there a "polishing" step?

      If you are talking about this stuff ending up in RH Advanced Server, then yes, this will be heavily polished before release.

      If you are talking about RH Linux 10, well, that won't be happening. This is the new world right here.

      Speaking as someone who runs Mandrake Cooker (someone pick up that reader who just fainted) stability concerns really don't worry me too much as I can hack the problems as they occur :-) However, this stuff has gone through basic Redhat QA so it can be assumed that it won't eat your dog or sleep with your wife :-)

      This is a distribution for the release early, release often crowd. The primary release (which this is) should be treated as being a reasonable base to build on. Once you hook up the apt-get or yum tools to the respective repositories, upgrading broken packages should be easy enough. Fedora will be making an appearance on my laptop in the next week or so - time will tell whether Fedora is stable enough. If you are nervous about being an early adopter, sit back and watch the forums, newsgroups and mailing lists for show stoppers that might hit your configuration.

      I'm happy to see Fedora hit the streets. I've been running RH 8.0 on this laptop for a while now and I miss the absolute bleeding edge that the Mandrake Cooker tree gives me. Running Fedora on this laptop will allow me to track the latest stable release series. Mandrake Cooker allows me to track the latest developer releases on my desktop box.

      Cheers,

      Toby Haynes


    • My take on it is that just like before, there will be the whole gauntlet of develop/test/release cycles with Fedora (and its various components), since Fedora will be the source for what eventually shows up in Enterprise. I don't see any reason that there won't be "stable" releases of everything that goes into Fedora. Like now, those who are more inclined to participate in the development process will be installing and working with more recent (and untable) versions, but I'm thinking that won't be the case

    • Re:One important issue... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Eyston ( 462981 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @05:29PM (#7401093)
      I think Fedora is an answer to the whining of people who run Debian but say even unstable is too behind the times (gnome, xfree, etc).

      All the flaming of Redhat for switching to a model that resembles a commercial Debian has been amusing. They take away boxed CD's that you could buy for XX dollars (which tons of slashdotters would flame anyways, 'who would pay for what you can get for free', as seen by SuSE 9 threads) and replace it with a leading edge distro that focuses on quick updates that would be impossible to accomplish with a boxed distrobution method (call it debian unstable). They will then take what they learn from Fedora and incorporate it into Redhat Enterprise line of software (think of it as analogous to debian stable).

      Of course that asks why use Redhat instead of just Debian? For personal use it really comes down to flavor, but for Enterprise use it is an easy question.

      -Eyston

  • Theme Song (Score:5, Funny)

    by use_compress ( 627082 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @04:48PM (#7400665) Journal
    We're tired, we're droopy
    We're all a little loopy
    A Fedora Core Test Release
    Is invading your PC!

    New features - interesting!
    The code could use some testing
    That's why we are requesting
    new bug reports quickly!

    On our ftp site is the place where you will see
    The stuff that we've been working on since 1993!
    We're tired, we're droopy
    We're all a little loopy
    It's a Fedora Core Test Release
    Come and join the fun!

    -- http://lwn.net/Articles/50994/

  • can't install linux on a VIDEO CAMERA (Score:5, Funny)

    by positive ( 12069 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @04:53PM (#7400725)
    this is a funny story. I have a new asus motherboard with firewire built in. I was running windows (just to test the hardware, mind you..) and then finally got around to trying to install linux on a separate hard disk.

    linux (redhat 6.x and latest gentoo) and even freebsd refused to install! huh? never saw THAT happen before.

    well, turns out that I had my firewire camera (not a real camera but a canopus firwire media bridge that looks like a FW camera) connected and all I can think of is that the funny asus bios considered THAT a 'disk' and when linux and bsd scanned the 'installable devices' via a probe, it found the camera device but wasn't smart enough to know it wasn't a disk/storage device. so the install hung hard.

    removing the firewire cable allowed the installs to continue (all of them).

    the very thought of linux or bsd trying to install itself on a VIDEO CAMERA just makes me laugh. imagine the design issues of that - when the system boots up, does it display titles on the video camera eyepiece? if it fscks, does it have to rewind the tape often? does it have the 1024 cylinder limit if you boot from mini-DV? ;)

    just kinda funny, I guess. the new motherboard bios' are trying to abstract the media type and say 'disks are disks, no matter if ide or scsi or firewire'. ha!

  • Sounds like... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by OECD ( 639690 )

    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.

    Hmmm, what does that remind [apple.com] me of?

  • best feature: up2date does apt and yum! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by stephenb ( 18235 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @05:02PM (#7400835) Homepage
    From the release notes:
    The Red Hat Update Agent (up2date) now supports installing packages from apt and yum repositories as well as local directories. This includes dependency solving and obsoletes handling. Additional repositories can be configured in the /etc/sysconfig/rhn/sources file.
    Cool!

  • silly, but not... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gid13 ( 620803 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @05:05PM (#7400856)
    Although this was silly of me in a certain sense, I originally interpreted "download options include bittorrent and..." to mean that the web browser in this release would include a bittorrent client. And then the obvious occurred to me that they just meant you could use torrents to download the iso. But really... It would be VERY nice to have an integrated torrent client. Mozilla Firebird people, are you listening? Just because you're the best browser around doesn't mean you shouldn't implement this. :)

  • I'm a switcher... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by lww ( 323019 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @05:06PM (#7400869)
    to debian from RH8/9 servers. At the risk of inviting religous controversy, if I'm going to use a non-sponsored distro, I'd rather use one with more of a proven record as a successful community driven project.

    Plus, let's face it, apt-get is apt-goodness.

    • Re:I'm a switcher... (Score:3, Informative)

      by maelstrom ( 638 )
      Apt-get works with Redhat too.

      http://freshrpms.net

    • Re:I'm a switcher... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Espectr0 ( 577637 )
      Seems to me that all that Debian has got to offer these days is apt-get. That's the first thing they say, and forget to say that almost every distro in the world now supports apt-get (even slackware)

      Debian users say that debian is great because it's so stable. Well, if i wanted to use a stable server i would use freebsd (record in uptime in netcraft)

      Debian users say that debian is great because the latest software is always available, i still say "no xfree 4.3" and tons of other packages that are missing,

  • VNC installation (Score:5, Interesting)

    by petard ( 117521 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @05:07PM (#7400875) Homepage
    Installation via VNC is now supported. To initiate a VNC-based installation, pass vnc as a boot-time option. If necessary, a password can be set by adding "vncpassword=<password>" to the boot-time options. The VNC display will be "<host>:1", where <host> is the hostname or IP address of the system installing Fedora Core.

    It is also possible for the Fedora Core installation program to initiate a connection to a listening VNC client. This is done by using the vncconnect boot-time option[...]

    That's really cool, and more useful than it sounds... I was looking for just this feature several months ago when installing RH on a laptop whose video card was supported by XFree but for some reason wouldn't work with the graphical installer. (Tweaks were required for the configuration file.) I know there's a text-based installer as well, but it's so much easier to select packages on the GUI install. It sounds like this will be a nice successor to RH 9.

  • Fedora vs. RedHat, and RHCE (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Doc Hopper ( 59070 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @05:09PM (#7400897) Homepage Journal
    My interpretation of their move is this:

    1. They weren't making money on commercial RedHat releases. There are a few zealots like myself that run down to CompUSA (or whatever) to grab the latest release when it hits the shelves, but it was mostly to show our support for the company.

    2. There is a lot of profit to be made in "support" in boxed product sales, and the enormous expense of Windows server licenses validate this proposition. They just need to be priced considerably below Windows support levels to compete.

    3. Most desktop users want a bleeding-edge distribution so they can run the latest games and apps, and RedHat didn't want the tech support headaches and expense.

    I think they just looked around at the playing field, saw that they could do little or nothing to prevent people from repackaging their product and selling it for a couple of bucks a CD, saw the numbers from their standard box sales versus the impressive revenue from comparatively few Enterprise Linux sales, and said "screw it, it's not worth our money to try to sell what everybody gets for free anyway".

    Sad fact of life, that. Not enough freaks like me that like to buy the boxed set, I guess.

    But I'm excited that Fedora is coming out with a release hot on the heels of the end-of-life announcements on RedHat boxed products. I think they'll find that the flexibility afforded them by a more open development model for their distribution, ala Mozilla.org, will help keep their server products competitive and "feed" the Advanced Server distribution with good ideas.

    It remains to be seen how well it will take off, though... an awful lot of "mindshare" of hard-core Linux geeks is already invested in other distributions. As for me, I think they are doing it right, and although I'm certain they'll be off for 4-6 months of a rocky start, within a year they'll have a pretty solid volunteer contribution effort and a distribution that finally keeps up with cutting-edge features of other distributions. They've been behind the curve a long time (ugh "up2date" sucked vs. apt-get upgrade) on keeping their distro fresh; it is nice to see they've moved to a method that, perhaps, can keep it more current.

    I wonder how they plan to handle RHCE's? I plan on taking the exam as soon as I finish reviewing for it, but I can't help but wonder if this move to Fedora on the desktop means that soon-to-be prospective RHCE's will no longer be able to just download the latest Redhat release and go, or if they'll need some special "student edition" of their Enterprise Linux product?
    • or if they'll need some special "student edition" of their Enterprise Linux product

      Is there any need for the "student edition"? Can't I just copy enterprise just as easily as I could their desktop distro?

  • Inadequate version number. (Score:5, Funny)

    by ChangeOnInstall ( 589099 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @05:09PM (#7400899)
    You don't honestly expect me to "upgrade" from Linux 9.0 to Linux 1.0 do you? At this rate we'll never catch Windows 2000.
  • I just installed the last beta/release candidate/whatever last night, using the ~4MB boot.iso image available in the "images" directory of the distribution. I was able to install over FTP without any problems. Just a heads up for those who don't want to download between 1 and 3 CD's.

  • Worst release process ever... (Score:5, Informative)

    by A Masquerade ( 23629 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @05:29PM (#7401094)
    Red Hat have always had a bit of a reputation for lousing up the release process of a distribution when it comes to getting mirrors ready before the release.

    Fedora has taken this to new and astounding heights. I got the notification that Fedora was ready to mirror 31 minutes before the supposed official release time. The download.fedora.redhat.com name wasn't in the DNS. The permissions on the repository prvented us rsyncing, and there were no pre-release torrents in place.

    So at release time there were no mirrors and no torrents available. Worse, the mirror list their download page points to are the old Red Hat mirrors which use a different directory heirarchy to the new Fedora tree, so those links are both wrong and to machines that don't have the damn software.

    Its now 4.5 hours after release time. I have had a torrent client set running for most of that time (as soon as I got a torrent URL), and the torrents have not completed. The immediate throwing open of the release to the general public means I can't get rsync access to the main site. So my mirror, and I guess many other are not anywhere near synced.

    Frankly I'm pissed off and will probably not bother to mirror in future.

  • Intriguing (Score:2)

    by jd ( 1658 )
    In other news, I just got word that the University of Kent is working on an OS based on and written in the Occam programming language.

    So?

    Occam is inherently parallel, and has very fast thread switching from the ground up. In short, picture MxN threading over a variable-sized heterogenius cluster, complete with automatic thread migration.

    That's what I would call a seriously powerful OS.

    (Not that I'll stop using Linux. Or OpenBSD. Or FreeBSD. Or Plan 9. Or BeOS. Or any of the other OS' I currently hav

  • The King is Dead, Long Live the King (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Schlaegel ( 28073 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @05:56PM (#7401409)
    RH 10 == FC 1

    Red Hat still puts resources into Fedora.
    Red Hat still puts QA into Fedora (in fact they caught flack for delaying it).
    Red Hat opened up the development to outsiders through Fedora.
    Red Hat changed the products name into something everyone can use and sell.

    We get a more open, supported, release often OS.

    So far this sounds great. In the coming months we will see if this really is a win/win.

  • Open Source Licenses Software, Not Freeloaders (Score:3, Interesting)

    by reallocate ( 142797 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @07:04PM (#7402208)
    How many of you whiners who have the temerity to bitch about something other people are making and giving away actually bought a shrinkwrapped copy of Red Hat?

    Unless you're a stockholder, RedHat owes you squat. If you are a stockholder, RedHat has a moral responsibility to make a profit and pay you dividends.

  • The real reason behind rh / fedora... (Score:4, Funny)

    by fo0bar ( 261207 ) * on Thursday November 06, 2003 @12:24AM (#7404239)
    RHL was at version 9, and now they're switching to Fedora Linux 1.0. There's only one logical reason for this. Apple has patented the use of "10" (or "X") in versions. Think about it... how many software projects have gotten to version 10 without chaning their version number system (to "2006", "GP", "Supa-Dupa")? Very few, and those that chose to use version 10 are licensing the technology from Apple.

    I know this is true. I heard it from a guy on the internet.

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