Goodbye, Fedora

[Miles Lane]

Regarding package management, I have found apt to work much better
that either SuSE's YAST or Redhat's yum.  dpkg and rpm are both
challenging for me, and I have struggled with dependency issues
with each.  I tried to track OpenSuSE and found it completely
undoable.  Now I track Rawhide and Ubuntu's development packages.
I have had repeated success upgrading installations to Ubuntu's
development tree.

What I appreciate in Fedora is the SELinux integration and all the
patches that get applied to the kernels.  The kernel expertise at
Redhat is fantastic.

Although I know that eventually the Gnome folks will whittle all the
beryl options down to a manageable few, with a more spare
configuration UI, compiz lacks any configuration UI.  Since Ubuntu
has gone with Beryl and Fedora is more committed to compiz,
I have found it easier to get a pretty solid 3D desktop under Ubuntu.

Currently, I have almost identical desktop environments under
the Fedora and Ubuntu development installations.  I contribute
bug reports to both.  I find that Fedora bugs tend to get more rapid
fixes that Ubuntu.  This is really important to me.  I contribute testing
to Linux desktops because I want to see Linux and OSS contribute
to empowering users globally.  I have been contributing for about eight
years, and have been very happy with the progress that has been made.

I have recently been tracking the work being done under by folks
associated with the desktop-wireless summits (under the auspices
of OSDL).  There is still a lot of work to do with wireless support.
I've been glad to see both Fedora and Ubuntu get on the
NetworkManager integration bandwagon.

We need strong distributions that can put finishing touches on
all the integrated projects.  We still have a ways to go with desktop
usability and so forth.  I hope that Fedora will flourish and continue
to play a vital role in coordinating, evolving and integrating all the
codebases that feed into it.  It's an invaluable role.