Fedora Core 6 review

[mdlbear]

What I would call an entertainingly scathing review:

Fedora Core 6 review - Software in Review

Conclusions and developer recommendations

I'm through hoping that the next version of Fedora Core will fix all of the problems with the previous release. Fedora's identity has gradually eroded over six releases, finally ending up as a second class clone of Ubuntu. On the other hand, Red Hat Linux was never really all that easy to install, configure, and use, so I guess this is just the natural evolution of a product that was destined to be eclipsed by more complete distributions like Mandriva and more easily configured distributions like SUSE.

I appreciate the fact that distributions like Fedora Core are still focused on free-as-in-rights software, but today's Web content requires more proprietary browser plugins than yesterday's did, and today's hardware is increasingly designed to be dependent on proprietary binary blobs in the form of firmware and driver packages. Programmers are not falling over themselves to write free replacements for these things (or they are unable to because of a lack of documentation from hardware manufacturers), and the projects that do exist are non-operational and/or several generations behind current technology. Users do not want to hear reasons and excuses for why the operating environment doesn't work with their favorite Web sites or computer hardware -- all they know is that it doesn't work, and making it work is not a simple or obvious process. It is possible to keep the distribution free-as-in-rights while making it easy to add proprietary extras, but the Fedora Project is not willing or able to do it after six releases.

The Fedora Project has failed six consecutive times to produce a viable desktop operating system. I say pack up, move on, and let Fedora Core die, but remember it fondly as the last of the holdouts from an era when desktop GNU/Linux meant missing out on most Web media while struggling to get network drivers installed and configured. It's nice that my video cards worked with the 3D desktop effects with little effort, but wobbly windows and the cube desktop switcher don't make up for a lack of basic network functionality and ease of configuration.

So, if I may editorialize for a couple of paragraphs:

Red Hat is a server OS, and Fedora Core is basically its beta version even if they don't call it that officially. SUSE is owned by Novell, which just sold its soul to Microsoft for a handful of empty promises.

Desktop Linux is alive and well, however, and the best distro for the average PC user is going to be Ubuntu. For a server or for any non-Intel architecture, go for Debian. There's a reason why Debian and Ubuntu are doing so well: it's because they are under the control of their own users, not some corporation's shareholders.

Comments

[mdlbear]

Ubuntu server only shows up in Edgy, IIRC, so it's early days. That's one reason why I use Debian and not Ubuntu.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

I think Edgy was the first to have dedicated "server" images, but if you use the "alternative" disk you can do a server on Dapper too.

The problem I have with Deb is that so much of the newer stuff you either have to get from backports (problematic) or run Etch... the long release cycle just kills Deb from a "we'd like the *latest* stable stuff, thanks" point of view... I was looking at running the new Milter stuff in Postfix 2.3, but the Sarge milter packages require sendmail explicitly, ruling out Postfix and forcing me to do it from source if atall. Not sure it's worth it, really.

[mdlbear]

Depends on what you need; I tend to run stable on routers, stable or testing as needed on servers inside the firewall, and Etch on workstations. If the Etch release is delayed past mid-December I'll probably switch my file/mail server to it anyway just to get better spam filtering. They're working on a framework for releasing updates to volatile stuff like SpamAssassin and Firefox more frequently.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

They are, are they? Innnnnnteresting. Linky?

[mdlbear]

Googling for "debian volatile" gets you here.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Interesting... sort of. They're not allowing higher version numbers than what is in test... so, what, it's got to make it to test before they backport it to volatile? And then there's Firefox2... which I notice isn't in there yet (nor is Postfix 2.3, although I do see spamassassin...)

I'm thinking a bifurcation is needed... give me a good solid desktop platform (KDE, GNOME, Xfce, whathaveyou), then keep the things that run on top of them up to date: Firefox, Gaim, Thunderbird, Sylpheed, etc. Ditto on the server side: Solid base (dev toolchain - gcc, make, etc.) and then postfix, spamassassin, apache, etc. keep up to date. Although there might be some contention on apache... but you could do apache1 or apache2...

*sigh* It's *almost* enough to make one switch to Gentoo...

[mdlbear]

Some things might still be in experimental; I'm really not sure how it all works.

Gentoo is definitely the way to go if you want bleeding edge; I find that testing is usually good enough, though I've been known to install Firefox and Java from tarballs. And I built Audacity 1.3 from cvs a month or so back, but didn't think it was stable enough to trust with my tracks.

Debian's alternatives system is very good at allowing multiple versions and applications to coexist where it makes sense.