OT: What's the deal with Ubuntu?

[Rahul Sundaram]

Hi

>They are (and should be) basically the same things packaged and
>installed differently.  What's the point of being free and open
>if you don't use the best available even if you didn't invent it
>yourself?  That is, if can quantify something as 'better', then
>everyone might as well be using it.
>
>  
>
Again. The concept of which one is better if not the best application in 
its category is fuzzy. Red Hat is investing in new applications and 
technology. I cited Evince and SELinux before. I could add the Free Java 
stack using GCJ which includes parts of Openoffice.org 2.0, Eclipse, 
Apache Jakarta as another major change.  GCC4 is a improvement. So these 
would flow from Fedora to others. Other changes could come from other 
platforms to Fedora.  If we cannot share core, we can share ideas. 
Fedora project is defined by the merits of people who are willing to 
contribute theirs ideas and the ability to move beyond those ideas into 
code or documentation or anything thats actually useful.

>>http://people.redhat.com/sundaram/fedora_notes.html
>>    
>>
>
>This is a moving target for all distributions.
>  
>

exactly. See above


>  And in the context
>of fedora, the servers most likely aren't re-installed from scratch
>every 6 months.
>  
>

Support for Fedora Core 2 was moved to Fedora Legacy when Fedora Core 4 
test 2 was released.  Fedora Legacy has a FAQ on  its support policy.  
http://fedoralegacy.org/about/faq.php
So its not necessary to do any reinstallations every 6 months. Fedora 
due to its upgrading method of staying close to upstream rather not 
backporting may not be suitable for servers anyway. I will write and 
post more about this later

>I don't think it is something that should be answered in theory.  
>  
>
If you are interested in helping out, working out the packages 
practically would be helpful. Like you said this can be answered in 
theorotical statements that top 20 packages should be picked


>Ummm, yes, most people would probably wait for Linus to accept SELinux
>  
>
Linus already accepted SELinux during 2.5 development lifecycle and it 
has been 2.6 kernel right from the start.  Are you talking about usage?. 
If so Linus is a kernel developer and is not comparable to Linux users 
who want to use more secure systems. Whether Linus is actually using 
SELinux or not is not the right way to determine whether you should be 
using it.


>I'm not sure I understand the concept of a 'core' that is right for
>both a desktop and a server install.  
>  
>
So you think core should be focussed towards desktop. Thufir just mailed 
me yesterday about his opinion that none of the DE's should be included 
within Fedora core to accomodate users preferences better.  This is 
certainly a subjective thing

regards
Rahul