What's Fedora Up To? Ask the Project Leader 295
Fedora Project Leader Max Spevack offered himself up for this interview because, he said, "I look at stories like [your] posting Ubuntu to Bring About Red Hat's Demise and many of the comments about Red Hat and Fedora seem very rooted in the world of several years ago, when the RHEL/Fedora split took place." This is a chance to clear the air, and get an up-to-date look at what Fedora is up to these days. So ask away; we'll send 10 of the highest-moderated questions to Max and (hopefully) publish his answers later this week.
Link? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Link? (Score:2, Flamebait)
Did I miss something?
Yes. You're supposed to ask a question, which will be submitted to Max and he can answer in a later article.
Welcome to Slashdot :-)
Re:Link? (Score:2)
I am happy with Dapper, myself, so I don't actually care a lot about the future of fedora, but some people might have their questions.
Re:Link? (Score:5, Funny)
Well, if you really want to (Score:3, Funny)
let me rephrase in a more congenial way...
In terms of eventually losing to Ubuntu, why are you?
Ok: About your opinion regarding Ubuntu, what do you think are the reasons for it causing your eventual demise?
Re:Well, if you really want to (Score:2)
What do you think will be the Linux distro of the day after Ubuntu looses favour like every other geek favorite has?
Re:Well, if you really want to (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Well, if you really want to (Score:4, Funny)
A slightly different take. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A slightly different take. (Score:2)
For now I'll stick with Fedora.
Re:Well, if you really want to (Score:3, Insightful)
Error 25 is a disk read error, says the all-seeing eye of Google. It may be caused by bad sectors in the disk. Now, most Linux installers I've seen don't bother checking the disk for bad sectors during creation of file system since that takes a lot of time, so it's entirely possible that either gru
Black Hat (Score:2, Funny)
Go on, mod me down. I deserve it.
Re:Black Hat (Score:3, Funny)
Why such a divide? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, package management seems to be the great divide. What are you doing to bring One Package Manager to all Linux?
Re:Why such a divide? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Why such a divide? (Score:2)
Yes they should and that's exactly what the current system prevents. How many people used to use Debian Unstable merely because the size of the repositories made installing/upgrading software less of a pain in the ass than with other distros. And how many jumped ship when Ubuntu came along?
Today there is little (if any) innovation in the Linux distribution space. The big desktop distros - Fedora, Ubuntu, SUSE, Gentoo are followed by a bunch of smaller ones like Debian, Slackware etc ..... but they are all
Re:Why such a divide? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's because Windows Home and Windows Professional are binary compatible. I can take my Windows Home application, and install it on a Windows Professional machine without having to change anything. For all of Linux's strengths, binary compatibility is one thing that could still use a lot of improvements. I don't see how having multiple package managers improves the robustness or security of Linux in any way.
Re:Why such a divide? (Score:3, Insightful)
As long as people are allowed to deviate from the standard stack: THEY WILL
Get people over this fundamental truth and we can start working for our particu
Re:Why such a divide? (Score:3, Insightful)
2. If there's going to be One Package Manager, nobody wants it to be RedHat's.
Re:Why such a divide? (Score:2, Troll)
Good question. (Score:2)
Hell, in the days of yore, when the IBCS module was being maintained, you could even run binaries from SCO UnixWare or Sun Solaris within Linux at native performance. How different do you need to get?
If you want to be really fancy, then any program with a suf
Re:Why such a divide? (Score:2)
The thing of it is, "package management" and its bifurcations in the Linux world are an in-depth case-study of a much broader issue: software complexity and how to manage it. Granted, there are other platform-specific issues for every system but the crux of the matter is as stated.
A better question would have been: If the Fedora project and/or RedHat are dedicating not insignificant r
Drivers Vs Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
Simple Buy Supported Hardware (Score:2)
ever have driver issues just load and go...
Re:Simple Buy Supported Hardware (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Finding out if hardware works with linux is not so simple, many (in the UK) don't have any indication they will work on anything but windows, so you have to search the net to see if its supported, and it might not be officially (Insert Wifi card model here).
2) Some hardware that is supported is so badly supported it might as well not be. ATI cards are like this, I hear Nvidea are easier to setup but are still suck-tackular.
3) Not everyone builds there own computer, jo
I'd consider this a Real Problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
On that basis, I'll ask my question: Users are forever complaining about a lack of drivers, but the drivers they are often presented with are a very small subset of the Open Source drivers that exist. Is this a problem Fedora will be addressing, or will it be largely left to such drivers being absorbed into the mainstream kernel?
Re:I'd consider this a Real Problem... (Score:3, Interesting)
On that note, are you considering employing/persuading developers to develop clean-room reimplementations of closed source drivers, ala OpenBSD? If not, why not?
Re:Drivers Vs Linux (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Drivers Vs Linux (Score:2)
What's changed? (Score:5, Interesting)
Daniel
I can answer that one! (Score:3, Insightful)
Today, the popular view is that Linux is highly stable and can be run out of the box by a WalMart customer, but I just had to reformat after Fedora Core 6 pre barfed after a yum update fried X totally and irretrievably. (And before someone says anything, yes I'm fully aware that running a
MP3 Licensing (Score:2, Redundant)
Re:MP3 Licensing (Score:4, Informative)
Worst Aspect of Fedora? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Worst Aspect of Fedora? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Worst Aspect of Fedora? (Score:2)
Well, you could, except possessing a
Solution: (Score:2)
Never put bare drives into a RAID. Partition them, set the drive-sized slice to 0xFD, and enjoy device name independance.
Actually the answer you are looking for is udev. You could name your disks via their serial# or some such but there are too many guides and documents and scripts out there that rely on the simple first-seen-first-labeled sd[abcde...] nomenclature that they aren't going to make that the default.
Check this out:
http://www.reactivated.net/writing_u [reactivated.net]
This evening (Score:4, Funny)
Vista a Problem? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm hoping that Linux distros are not pressured into adding unneeded bells and whistles in a desperate attempt to compete with Vista. Are you invulnerable from this mentality?
Mac OS X a Problem? (Score:2, Interesting)
Linux presence (Score:5, Interesting)
What is Fedora's Comparative Advantage? (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you tried Ubuntu? (Score:4, Interesting)
NTFS support in Fedora/RedHat. (Score:5, Interesting)
Users do need this option (unlike RedHat's customers, which are organizations as far as I know), and for evidence, Linux-NTFS is one of the projects with the most downloads on sourceforge.
I would like to add that NTFS is part of the mainline kernel. Compiling it as a module will cause it to not take any memory resources other than the few kilobytes on disk that any un-used hardware module is taking, unless of course the user has a mounted NTFS partition.
RedHat's reason for disabling NTFS support was that RedHat is a US-based organization and that they fear patenting problems from MS. No law action was ever taken, and no actual patent was referenced. As far as I know, NTFS is not even patented or patentable. Fedora is not RedHat as you say, so this old reasoning is not exactly valid for Fedora. The IBM/SCO saga also cleared the issue about patents in the mainline kernel.
Unless Fedora will change this simple flag in the kernel config file, I assume it is still controlled (and not only sponsered as some would say) by RedHat.
Re:NTFS support in Fedora/RedHat. (Score:2)
However, there may be something in the driver which performs some patented task. But I see no patent on reading and w
Distro Improvement (Score:2, Interesting)
Home recording/music production (Score:2, Interesting)
Or, really, any plans for any other speciallising options?
Linux development direction? (Score:2)
My question, therefore, is do you believe this is an accurate representation of Linux development today? Do you believe that the standard user applications are an area that Linux shoul
Fedora (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Fedora (Score:3, Insightful)
"Fedora is unstable testbed material for RedHat to use folk as guinea pigs, certainly not suitable for corporate use. Fine for personal web server use or perhaps coloc OS for small business that have geeks with time on their hands, if the occasional kinks and hiccups aren't too annoying. "
If one does not want to spend money on RHEL, and is told
Directory Server (Score:5, Interesting)
Empirical evidence? (Score:2)
I know that the the Ubuntu numbers that are usually reported are silly, because they are based on Distrowatch [distrowatch.com], which as 10 year Linux user, was a site I had never been to before questioning the Ubuntu installation numbers, and being refered there.
I also know that you have no interest in getting into a "measuring" contest -- because fedora is not about that. BUT if it were about that -- what do you think is a good way to measure "popularity" of a dist
.rpms and the LSB (Score:5, Interesting)
filesystem support (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:filesystem support (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:filesystem support (Score:2)
At the installer prompt:
linux selinux=0 reiserfs
Dependency hell (Score:5, Interesting)
That's clearly wrong. I only want to install a PostScript previewer. Doing so should not require a filemanager (which I don't need or want), and certainly not a CD burner. But these are added as dependencies due to the clumsy packaging that seems to be increasingly prevalent in Fedora. Perhaps (and I remain unconvinced) there's some aspect of evince that can make use of nautilus being present. But if so, I haven't seen it. I could well believe that nautilus could make use of evince, but not really the other way around. But assume for the sake of argument that it can use nautilus. That still isn't a reason to have it depend on it. Dependencies should be packages that are required in order for another to run, not packages that will merely enable additional functionality. In this case -- the prime function of evince is to view documents, which isn't significantly enhanced by having a file browser present.
Fedora is still my distribution of choice, but it's becoming increasingly hard to use for those of us that prefer to run with a minimal system due to the way that the dependencies have been getting out of hand. Are there any plans to fix this, or is any work already underway to do so? I understand that some consideration has been given to providing "soft dependencies" within RPM (like dpkg's suggested dependencies), which would help. Is there a timeframe for this? Is anything else being done?
I quite understand the focus on getting the system to be usable for the average unskilled user. But the impression I'm getting is that it's being done at the expense of letting those of us that know what we're doing do what we want. Does Fedora have a position on the type of users it's aiming for, or is it still trying to be a general purpose OS?
Re:Dependency hell (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Dependency hell (Score:2)
Sub-modules are a stupid solution. USE flags are much better.
Re:Dependency hell (Score:2, Informative)
I can see why evince depends on nautilus:
This is a case where
evince is not just a "PostScript previewer". (Score:2, Interesting)
If you want only a PDF or PS viewer, then try something like Ghostscript/GSView, or xpdf. Even the display program of ImageMagick might be su
WIFI (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:WIFI (Score:2)
What's the diffference? (Score:5, Interesting)
Really "clear the air" (Score:2)
What brand of air freshener do you use? Do you like incense? Have you ever experienced Febreze scentstories?
Installer bugs (Score:2)
It's like every 6 months a new installer is released and you hope all the bugs from the last one are fixed. Sometimes they are but now a whole new lot of bugs are introduced and you have to wait 6 months only to be
Fedora Core's usefulness to Red Hat (Score:3, Insightful)
mass end user appeal (Score:4, Interesting)
1) A pre-built image file on C:\ that will be the linux hard drive.
2) A
3) When run, this kernel boots off the image on NTFS.
I know this can be done with existing technology (or at least the hard parts are already working). The NTFS driver can write to an existing file if the size does not change. Linux kernel can init on an already powered up machine and reset the hardware. I know Red Hat does a lot of kernel work and other developement, so I know you guys capable of doing this very quickly.
This gives the vast majority of users a way to download linux like any other program, run it without rebooting into some scary 'repartition' software, and still get the full benefit and experience of linux. In fact, immediately after downloading they just click the program and say "Yes" to "Shutdown Windows and start Linux?" and 20 seconds later they are in a Fedora core system. If they like it, they can install a normal Fedora directly onto the system. If they don't like it, just delete the image file.
My question is, will you at least consider doing this? Something like this would be huge for linux adoption and therefore Red Hat mindshare.
Re:mass end user appeal (Score:2)
But a base OS image or tarball, instead of the adventures of negotiating the RPM installers at base installation time, would simplify and speed the process a lot. Having just enough there to allow RPM to function and talk to local or remote repositories would ease installation and update: this approach has been used by
Re:mass end user appeal (Score:2)
With VMware you get a pretty bad linux experience, and especially with Fedora Core where vmware actually has to interpret a lot of the code because of the virtual memory space FC uses. I've actually been able to watch the terminal redraw individual lines. You get poor disk performance, not much hardware acceleration for graphics, etc.
Re:mass end user appeal (Score:2)
Re:mass end user appeal (Score:2)
Geez, how hard can this be? Disable interrupts, write a new page table, jump to new kernel. It's 28k of Linux code, and that is more complicated that need be since for Windows you only care about x86 versus linux that works on many a
Goals (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there an objective in the Fedora Project? One that is clear and may motivate developers to join? Or is it here really just to reduce costs for the Red Hat team?
Support for Free Drivers (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do you even matter? (Score:3, Insightful)
Shortly after I had paid the one year subscription fee for your support network your company sent me an email that basically said, we don't want your business, and oh bye the way, we are keeping your money and cutting off the service you just paid for. Your idea of compensation was to offer me a discount on the same product at a much higher price. In other words, you robbed me and then tried to extort even more money from me. You are nothing but thieves. Even Microsoft has never actually taken my money and given me nothing in return.
After that experience I was forced to waste time seeking a new distribution and converting all my computers. The time cost to do that was much greater than the dollar value of the service fees you stole from me. If you count my lost time and revenue I am out several thousand dollars because of you. So, you might say I am a little bit biased against your company. I wouldn't actually spit on you if I were to meet you face to face, but I would like to.
OTOH, I found Debian and found that I had been paying RedHat for something I can get for free from Debian. Recently I converted my desktops and laptops to Ubuntu, an even better solution than Debian, and again for free.
So, considering that there are better versions of Linux available from honest organizations, organizations who have never robbed their customers, I have to ask WHY DO YOU MATTER. Aside from suckering stupid big companies into over paying for your software, what service do you provide that is even worth the time to read about?
Stonewolf
Re:Why do you even matter? (Score:2)
I have a question for you though, just how many trucks does it take to carry all that emotional baggage around?
Re:Why do you even matter? (Score:2)
RedHat did cheat people out of their money as GP poster has said. Why do business with a company that cheats people? Why call a legitimate complaint about such a thing "emotional baggage"?
Re:Why do you even matter? (Score:2)
Re:Why do you even matter? (Score:2)
You are right that RedHat gave the little guy the shaft a while back. However, for big biz you answered your own question, RedHat does provide responsive support and datacenter-level management tools (however good or bad) to big business that pays RedHat the big bucks. Ubuntu does not. So most Big biz won't touch Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Slackware, etc.etc.; they won't matter to big biz
Re:Why do you even matter? (Score:2, Insightful)
If the chips on your shoulder weren't already obvious, this comment lets us all relax.
I work as a cosultant for several stupid big companies who are installing Linux to replace [NAME YOUR OS HERE].
Not one of them considers their decisions stupid.
Not one of them considers themselves ripped off.
The service provided by Red Hat is excellent. Good enough that HP and IBM (among others) resell the products and try to do their own support.
Re:Why do you even matter? (Score:3, Insightful)
Since other people have chimed in calling you a whiner I figure I might as well chime in stating that I share your experience.
I'm another small user who was using Red Hat and paying for Red Hat when they decided to leave us out in the cold. I didn't want to switch from stable RH to unstable Fedora so I switched distributions which required some effort.
That's it: just the facts. People can call it whining if they want but once a company burns you it's very difficult to ever consider a product by that c
An argument for a stable Fedora (Score:3, Interesting)
Compare to RedHat's stack. Rawhide maps to unstable, only less stable. More accurate would be the Fedora Test releases compare to Unstable. Fedora roughly maps to Testing and RHEL to Stable except it is only available bundled with a service contract. It is probably safe to say few developers develop on rawhide, from what I see on the mailing lists at least, most appear to use Fedora and add some packages from Rawhide/Dag/livna/etc. For the corporate world RHEL is worth every penny, as the RedHat financial statements attest. But you guys don't have anything to offer in the vast space between the deveopers and the major site installs.
When you dropped RHL I grabbed the RHEL source and started White Box, since joined by at least three more rebuild projects. However a new user understands none of that, only seeing Red Hat's offerings, which has nothing for them. They see Fedora Core, which has an expiration date not much longer than milk. Installing a new OS is traumatic enough, the thought of being forced to do it twice a year is right out, especially if they actually do it once and fight the war to get a working system. (drivers, media support, etc) And if they do invest the time to learn linux the Fedora way, unless they work at a site that is a candidate for RHEL there isn't any place to use that knowledge in the real world. Hint: Most of the Linux machines in production use aren't candidates for RHEL. Try selling management on a RHEL support contract that costs more ANNUALLY than an NT license for a file/print server. Critical web server, yes. Oracle server, no problem. But most places start smaller.
Compare to Ubuntu. Most users DO know Ubuntu is Debian based. But unlike Debian, Ubuntu compromised Free Software principles enough to make it fairly easy to get a working machine. So a new user can get going fairly easy and they aren't told they MUST upgrade annually, semi-annually preferred. And once they learn, Ubuntu LTS can be used for real work and it is only a small hop to Debian for a server or Sid to participate in development.
Re:An argument for a stable Fedora (Score:2)
foot meet mouth.
Re:An argument for a stable Fedora (Score:2)
When can we get you to merge with CentOS so we don't need to support two mirrors?
Re:An argument for a stable Fedora (Score:2)
You are correct that Ubuntu, alone, is unimpressive. But Ubuntu + Debian will become unstoppable in another year unless someone does something about it. Witness the reponse of Novell with OpenSUSE and even the attempt to open up whatever the heck Lindows is calling themselves this week. They see the threat and are doing something about it. What is Red Hat's plan?
Compare and contrast the relationship between Ubuntu and Debian with Fedora
Fedora for Non-Desktops (Score:2, Interesting)
What are your plans for the future? Where does Fedora plan to live and how can people go from Fedora into CentOS or RHEL like you will be able to with Ubuntu?
Also are there any Fedora initiatives for Mobile Devices? Any kind of WinCE alternative planned? You would be the best to do it as you are also involved in the OLPC project.
Thanks
Dependency hell - needless cross-dependencies (Score:2)
To use a concrete example:
I was having problems with an update (from Rawhide) due to a missing Perl module (not yet updated) causing Spamassassin to fail to update. Now, I don't *need* SA installed on my workstation - I do the filtering at the mail server, so I tried to remove SA - only to find that Evolution *REQUIRES* SA.
In my humble opinion, Evolution shouldn't require SA - it should *use* SA if SA is installed and otherwise g
Will Fedora use Conary? (Score:2)
Many Linux users and developers see Conary [conary.com] as the logical successor to RPM for package management. Will the Fedora Project use Conary? If so, how do you see the change to Conary taking place? If not, what reasons do you have for not wanting to use Conary?
Cheers,
Tom
One CD installs (Score:3, Insightful)
And why does it install pointless crap like ISDN and Bluetooth in a "minimal" install?
Bloat is not a feature.
Making it more user friendly (Score:2)
It should ask which all data it needs to store. The user selects the data (directories/files).
When the installation is done, in the $HOME, we should have the stored data back.
I know the FS is different, and that we need to reformat the whole HD, but this would help the multitude of people who wants to change from Windows to Linux.
- a lot -
playing nice with closed source (Score:3, Interesting)
Single CD Base Install (Score:2, Insightful)
Driver issues (Score:3, Interesting)
So the questions: What is Fedora doing to improve the quality of the kernels and drivers? What is the purpose of all the tweaking? Some folks use stock kernels with Fedora, why all the messing around?
RHEL vs RH9 vs FC3-5 (Score:4, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Mod Parent up and extend the question to include: (Score:2)
Doing this would also help push Linux as a driver towards hardware standards rather than responding to Wintel.
myke
Re:Mod Parent up and extend the question to includ (Score:2)
Re:A Question Regarding Bloat In Fedora. (Score:2)
Re:Live CD? (Score:2)
Re:Incorrect Category (Score:2)
You're right on the second part, though.