kudos to the packagers

[Mike Wright]

Here's to acknowledge a job well done by the Fedora Team.

Have a client with an rh7.2 server running about 40 websites for whom 
I'd scripted a thumbnail generator using html uploads fed to php which 
used gd create the thumbnails.

After a new box based on fc6 with a custom kernel, filesystem 
translations, mail and httpd reconfigurations, dns, yada....  We fired 
it up and it took up where the old box left off, with nary a hitch save 
one:  the image uploader didn't work.

Fast phpinfo() between the older rh7box and new fc6box showed that one 
of the apache php modules had been compiled --with-gd (graphic support 
package) and one without.  Oh my, this was going to be very messy, 
thought I.

So I ssh'd over to the brand new remote loc'd fc6 box and tried "yum 
install php-gd" just to see what might happen, and was WOW'd to see that 
all the old scripts suddenly worked!  The transition, on a live box, 
went flawlessly.

Demonstrates the care that has been taken to identify and then package 
"just what you want" to allow you to build "just what you need".  Very 
impressive.

I've never much cared for (or understood rpm), and like Gene Heskitt, 
feel more comfortable "making and installing", but I have to admit that 
I am very impressed at how _easy_ this was.  (...and it made me look 
really slick ;)

So here it is.  Cheers and kudos for a very impressive job!!!

Thanks for making my job easier,
Mike Wright