Catharsis - slowly my FC4 world crumbles around me

[Phil Schaffner]

On Fri, 2005-07-22 at 12:41 +0900, Dave Gutteridge wrote:
> I checked out CentOS, and it looks interesting.
> 
> One of the reasons I went to Fedora was because I was interested in 
> getting a completely open source Linux OS. Philosophically, I'm an open 
> source advocate, and I thought I should put my money where my mouth was. 
> I Googled for "open source Linux" and Fedora came up more than anything 
> else. In fact, at the time I did it a few months, I don't recall seeing 
> any other options. I didn't come across Centos, and hadn't heard of it 
> until it was mentioned here.

Currently #15 on Distrowatch http://distrowatch.com/

> In any case, Fedora seems to have the biggest community, the most amount 
> of interest in its development, and so on. And despite how clueless I 
> must seem when it comes to my understanding of Fedora, I did read 
> through the web site and it didn't give me the impression that what I 
> was getting into was a lot of experimentation.

May still be a good choice if you want a more leading[bleeding]-edge
experience.  The community is definitely very active.

> For example, it says on the download page, under the heading 
> "Understanding What You Are Doing":
> "You are downloading an entire operating system, and in most cases, you 
> are then going to install the operating system on your computer."
> I was fully mentally prepared and desiring to install an "entire 
> operating system". That sounded fine.
> 
> It does *not* say "You are downloading an experimental cutting edge 
> operating system which in which each new version will be trying out 
> things that are just as likely to not work and you should be ready to 
> work through and solve problems..."

They probably out to make it more clear that Fedora is a "perpetual
Beta" distro.  The text at the top of http://fedora.redhat.com/ does
hint at the nature: "The Fedora Project is an open source project
sponsored by Red Hat and supported by the Fedora community. It is also a
proving ground for new technology that may eventually make its way into
Red Hat products. It is not a supported product of Red Hat, Inc."

> I mean, maybe somewhere on the site it says something more explicit 
> about the goals, but my point is that information like that is not front 
> and centre. It's very easy for someone like myself to get the 
> impression, as I did, that this would be a new OS in need of tweeks, but 
> not that it expected me to be a hacker getting under the hood all the time.
> 
> I'm not upset that I got into Fedora and discovered that it's not what I 
> was looking for.  I'm just wondering about the alternatives when it 
> comes to Open Source Linux distros. The thing about Centos is that it's 
> got this really squiky way of saying how it's based on code from "a 
> prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor", which I assume is Red 
> Hat, but if they can't even name them, then how close is this 
> assocation? I'm sorry, Centos people, but it seems dodgy.

They would be a lot more explicit were it not for recent visits from the
Red Hat legal team:

http://linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/2005021401026NWRHLL

http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3488781

The issues were over Red Hat trademark issues, and I have seen no
indication that they are trying to squelch CentOS, WhiteBox, Tao,
Scientific Linux, or any other Enterprise Linux clones.  On the
contrary, they seem to be tacitly supportive as long as their trademarks
are respected.  Arguably, as a committed open source company, they could
not be otherwise.

> In any case, last night I made a fresh clean-and-install of Fedora 4, 
> just to see if I can walk a little more slowly this time and dodge some 
> settings problems. I'm willing to give Fedora another shot. But if it 
> drives me nuts, are there other Open Source Linux distros beyond Centos?

Many.  See above - mentioned the RHEL derivatives I have test-driven.
Have been running (and buying) Red Hat pretty much continuously since v.
2.x in 1995 so I tend to stick with RH-based distros, but opinions
differ.  CentOS is my current favorite for a stable system since RH got
too rich for my private pockets with the RHEL line, but playing with
Fedora is a great diversion if you are so inclined.  Definitely not for
everyone.

Distrowatch is a good starting place.

Good luck.

Phil