Fedora comments (was: [PLUG] Copying text from pdf)

Paul Heinlein heinlein at madboa.com
Sat Oct 18 18:17:01 UTC 2003


On Sat, 18 Oct 2003, Bill Spears wrote:

> BTW, I've been meaning to ask you for your opinion on the future of
> Red Hat.  I read somewhere that us coolies were going to be using
> something maintained by Fedora. Would you comment on whether the
> average user (one or two systems, medium Linux skills) should stick
> with Red Hat or maybe move to Debian?

It's a good question. I've been pondering it myself. I hope my musings
don't come off as troll bait...

I've had Debian installed for some time on an old Alpha. I don't power
it up all that often -- it's mostly a plaything, really -- so my
experience with Debian had been pretty limited.

More recently, however, I installed Debian 'testing' on my wife's
computer. Now that it's running, it's a piece of cake to maintain. The
apt-* tools are really slick.

Getting it running, however, was pretty tedious. I'm sure that more
experienced Debian admins know better ways of getting the 'testing'
release installed, but for me it was difficult:

1. Tried various iso's and floppy images of the testing release -- but
   couldn't successfully complete any of them. (This trial-and-error
   process took hours...)

2. Finally, I installed a very minimal version of Debian stable and
   then tweaked (and retweaked quite a few times) the
   /etc/apt/sources.list file to point at the testing section of the
   mirrors.

3. Ran 'apt-get dist-upgrade' to get move to testing.

4. Since Debian stable is still running a 2.2 kernel, I installed a
   2.4.22 kernel package. The module settings for my NIC, however,
   didn't migrate smoothly at all. It took a bit of experimentation to
   figure out that the 2.2 rtl8139 module has been replaced in the 2.4
   series by 8139too. A newbie would have been completely stymied.

5. Then ran apt-get quite a few more times to get a working X
   installation. Again, it's not a process for newbies...

Had I simply wanted Debian stable, it would have been cake. Getting
Debian testing -- which has packages I consider reasonably up to date
-- was, for me, tedious.

But, like I said, now that it's running, it's great. I've got a
feeling I won't have to do anything but the occasional 'apt-get
update' and 'apt-get upgrade' for a long time, which makes me smile
very broadly.

Fedora will be an interesting experiment. I think of it as driven by
Red Hat, but enhanced by the community. There will be Fedora Core
(Red Hat-driven, core packages) and then Fedora Extras
(community-driven, other stuff).

So far, Red Hat is talking about two Core releases a year. Many
(most?) admins, of course want nothing to do with two upgrades a year.
Once a year is good for development desktops, and once every 24 to 36
months isn't so bad for servers and business desktops.

The big question is, will the Fedora community be successful in
supporting older Core packages once Red Hat has moved on? What we're
discussing on the Fedora Legacy mailing list is how we're going to
choose which Fedora Core releases we (the community) will support and
for how long.

It's an open question as to how well it'll work.

On the other hand, the Fedora Core beta installations have worked
pretty well for me. A couple hiccups, but, really, they're
tremendously easy to install -- and you get software that's very, very
current, often more so than Debian testing.

The great thing is, you can't really lose. Debian and Fedora/Red Hat
are both wonderful. Compared to one another, they both have strengths
and weaknesses. Compared to anything coming out of Redmond, they're so
far superior that it makes your head spin.

--Paul Heinlein <heinlein at madboa.com>




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