[Fwd: Wikipidia - Goodbye Red Hat and Fedora]

[Luya Tshimbalanga]

Quoting "D. Hugh Redelmeier" <hugh at mimosa.com>:

> | From: Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com>
>
> | But the first question should be why a separate community is necessary.
> Why
> | is it not possible for one of fedora's goals to be to provide a clean
> | transition to RHEL or Centos at the end of certain development cycles
>
> I think that this idea has some merit.  I'm taking this out of context
> to use as a jump-off point.
>
> [I'm a long-term Red Hat and Fedora user.  I also use Ubuntu
> sometimes.]
>
> Ubuntu 8.04 LTS has seduced me with its simultaneous promises of being
> maintained and having a current code base.
>
> RHEL/CentOS feels too old.  Concrete issues:
>
> - support for video cards
>
> - PostgreSQL 8.3 vs 8.1


Obvious reasons, RHEL/CentOS are enterprise distributions where support for old
applications and old hardware are important. Trying to install a brand new
system without testing stability, perfornamce before applying to enterprise
fields is plain silly. Wikipedia is a non-profit organization, not an
enterprise.

> Ubuntu 8.04 will be quite stale before the next LTS comes out.
> Probably more stale that RHEL/CentOS.  It is all a matter of where
> each stream is in the cycle.  Right now, Ubuntu LTS is ahead of
> RHEL/CentOS.
>
> Ubuntu LTS is in the same series as regular Ubuntu.  RHEL/CentOS are
> not the same as Fedora.  One could predict that the transition costs
> between Ubuntus are lower that the transition costs from RHEL/CentOS
> to or from Fedora.  This is a disadvantage.

 It is very easy to be attracted by low cost transition without considering for
a long term approach. Remember Oracle promised the same thing with their
Unbreakable distribition. In this case, it is about Canonical that are looking
to make money because they are not even profitable since their inception. Time
will tell how successful Canonical strategy will be.

> I find the various Fedora-targeted 3rd party repositories confusing
> and even conflicting.  This isn't healthy.  I've not had this problem
> with Ubuntu but I'm not sure why.

Blame the software patents system. Fedora being an USA distribution cannot
afford for being a big target for patent vultures and, because of this FOSS
philosophy, does not include any closed and patented applications (apart
Firmware which are separate problems). Ubuntu chose to made compromise being a
non-USA distribution but has to follow US Patent law. It will be foolish to not
consider those legal issues especially for company like Canonical and Red Hat.

>
> I like that fedora is willing to take radical steps.  This is the only
> way to do some important experiments.
>
>
> Some changes make me (a conservative at heart) uncomfortable:
>
> - the idea that network connectivity is part of a session just seems
>   bizarre to me.  Network Manager may be useful but I think that this
>   aspect does not fit in with my UNIX world-view.

That is the problem: your UNIX world-view.

> - the idea that non-X consoles will go bothers me.  Just a few minutes
>   ago, I used a non-X console to whack on an X problem.  I hit a lot
>   of X problems due to the way hardware gets introduced more quickly
>   than X versions are released (and debugged).  I may stop using
>   Fedora when this change comes to pass.

What about other methods that may replace the old one?


> - Documentation that I expect is not provided.

Which one?

> - the anatomy of the system changes more quickly than my
>   understanding.  HAL/d-bus/etc. all seem like magic to me.

Perhaps a difficulty to adapt.


-- 
Luya Tshimbalanga
Fedora Project contributor
http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/LuyaTshimbalanga