2:58 a.m.
Hi
I came across your review [1] of the second test release of Fedora Core
4 . I have a few suggestions and remarks.This is the first review of a
test release of Fedora Core 4 that I have come across and as such it
was certainly a interesting one to read.
"I am one of many who felt that Red Hat's abandonment of their desktop
user community was treacherous at best. I see the logic in this from a
customer support perspective--after all, answering questions from
randoms who've coughed up the money for a Linux distribution at CompUSA
can be time-consuming, but that's how you build market share."
Stopping retail distribution of Red Hat Linux and moving towards a more
frequently updated Fedora project isnt equivalent to abandonment of the
desktop users. Red Hat has never produced a distribution that directly
targetted the desktop segment. While its true that Red Hat wouldnt isnt
directly involved in retail distribution of Fedora, independant vendors
continue to do that extensively. Fedora release cycle combined with the
Fedora legacy project would provide something thats pretty close yet
better to previous releases of Red Hat Linux. While your point about
building market share is pretty true the reality is that support costs
would be higher for the desktop market compared to servers (limited and
restricted usage scenarios).
Red Hat continues to work on things that are meant to improve the user
experience for Fedora. For example extensive work on GTK, dbus, hal and
things like Network manager are some of the pieces of desktop
infrastructure that springs up to mind. Efforts to improve bootup speed
using bootchart [2] and things like GDM early login [3] are primarly for
desktop users. servers arent going to rebooted that often for boot up
speed to be a significant factor . right?
Work on GCJ ( GNU compiler for Java) would enable the significant amount
of Java code in Openoffice 2.0 to e run under a natively compiled free
Java stack which I believe you would agree is a important thing for the
desktop market.
"On my screen, the subtitles read "To sponsor a project and people who
will develop stuff that we can suck directly into future RHEL releases.""
While Fedora project definitely is the basis of Red Hat Enteprise Linux,
inviting the community to work on things is meant to enable more
innovative growth and take Linux into directions which Red Hat cannot or
does not want to work on currently. Fedora Extras is just one such
direct benefit of the work done by the community. Instead of a scattered
set of third party repositories we will now have Fedora Extras
repository which follows Fedora Core release cycle and is enabled by
default in Fedora Core 4 which will enable users to access a whole lot
of software more easily
You have provided a table that shows the changes in version numbers of
the things that you find important. It would have been better to link to
the release notes [4] for the test release for users who want to dig
for further information after reading you review
The following things are what I would consider important features that
are planned to included in Fedora Core 4 that you have not mentioned in
your review
Xen [5] - A para virtualisation software that would enable users to run
multiple operating systems or versions of it.
Red Hat GFS [6] - Cluster filesystem
SELinux update - Significant number of additional deamons will protected
by SELinux in Fedora Core 4
Free Java stack which includes Eclipse and Apache Jakarta
Fedora Extras yum repository enabled by default
GDM early login and removal of rhgb would be a significant change in
user experience for desktop users
Evince document viewer [7]
Yum will use sqllite database and perform much faster that previous releases
regards
Rahul
[1] http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reviews/5830/1/
[2] bootchart.sf.net
[3]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2005-April/msg00416.html
[4] GDM early login -
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraDocs_2fReleaseNotes_2fCore4Test2
[5] Xen - http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/
[6] Red Hat GFS - http://www.redhat.com/software/rha/gfs/
[7] Evince - http://www.gnome.org/projects/evince/
3:18 p.m.
Stopping retail distribution of Red Hat Linux and moving
towards a more frequently updated Fedora project isnt
equivalent to abandonment of the desktop users. Red Hat has
never produced a distribution that directly targetted the
desktop segment.
Beg to differ on this one Rahul. My RH 8.0 boxed set is full of pretty
pictures of the "New, Improved" Bluecurve desktop, with improvements on the
desktop layout and usability.
And anaconda has always (at least since v5.2) supported a "Personal Desktop"
installation.
While I am strongly pro-Red Hat, I'm another who felt a little bit abandoned
when RH9.0 went end-of-life. The Fedora community does well for support,
but it is not a substitute for having someone who will receive your email
and promises to deliver an answer.
While its true that Red Hat wouldnt isnt
directly involved in retail distribution of Fedora,
independant vendors continue to do that extensively. Fedora
release cycle combined with the Fedora legacy project would
provide something thats pretty close yet
better to previous releases of Red Hat Linux.
This depends on your point of view. A release every six months to a year is
preferable to me than a new release every three months or so, especially
when there's a very significant change.
Red Hat continues to work on things that are meant to improve
the user experience for Fedora. For example extensive work on
GTK, dbus, hal and things like Network manager are some of
the pieces of desktop infrastructure that springs up to mind.
Where can someone discover basic data about new features? I'd want for
something less than a tutorial and more than a release note. I had little
idea about what hal, dbus, etc. were before installing and experimenting.
Efforts to improve bootup speed using bootchart [2] and
things like GDM early login [3]
If this is intended to allow login prior to a full bootup, I hope that users
can disable it. If the intent is to make the computer more like Windows,
it's no help. This is one user's opinion: allowing a user access to the
desktop and applications does no good if the infrastructure isn't working
yet.
This is one of my significant complaints about Windows. I am allowed to
start applications, such as my email reader, before it is able to operate
(because network connections are not up yet). When I try to do something,
like download email, the client encounters an error and I have to wait
longer for the failed action to timeout. In other cases, actions like
opening files take longer (because the system is busy in the background) and
the result is a system that at best appears bloated and sluggish.
are primarly for desktop
users. servers arent going to rebooted that often for boot up
speed to be a significant factor . right?
Work on GCJ ( GNU compiler for Java) would enable the
significant amount of Java code in Openoffice 2.0 to e run
under a natively compiled free Java stack which I believe you
would agree is a important thing for the desktop market.
Bravo! Again one user's opinion. More and more of what I do requires Java.
I would be happy to see a completely free Java stack.
. . .
The following things are what I would consider important
features that are planned to included in Fedora Core 4 that
you have not mentioned in your review
Xen [5] - A para virtualisation software that would enable
users to run multiple operating systems or versions of it.
Hurrah!
Red Hat GFS [6] - Cluster filesystem
Nice.
SELinux update - Significant number of additional deamons
will protected by SELinux in Fedora Core 4
Lukewarm. Some of my students have had significant problems with SELinux,
and the advice they have received is generally along the lines of "Oh yeah,
it doesn't work right on Fedora, so just turn it off."
Free Java stack
which includes Eclipse and Apache Jakarta
Very cool.
Fedora Extras yum
repository enabled by default
OK.
GDM early login
???? I'll wait and see.
and removal of
rhgb would be a significant change in user experience for
desktop users Evince document viewer [7]
Yum will use sqllite
database and perform much faster that previous releases
Good, good, good.
regards
Rahul
Just my 40% of a nickel, with a word of thanks for a wonderful distribution.
Erik Hemdal
3:41 p.m.
On Wed, 2005-04-27 at 16:18 -0400, Erik Hemdal wrote:
Beg to differ on this one Rahul. My RH 8.0 boxed set is full of
pretty
pictures of the "New, Improved" Bluecurve desktop, with improvements
on the
desktop layout and usability.
Sure, there is some stuff for desktop, however the release itself was
not completely geared for desktop. There was plenty in the release that
has no business on a desktop system.
And anaconda has always (at least since v5.2) supported a
"Personal
Desktop"
installation.
There is also server and custom and etc... These are all things that the
release has support for, but it is geared for none of these completely.
While I am strongly pro-Red Hat, I'm another who felt a little
bit
abandoned
when RH9.0 went end-of-life. The Fedora community does well for
support,
but it is not a substitute for having someone who will receive your
email
and promises to deliver an answer.
This I always questioned. At what time could you get Red Hat Technical
Support for a Red Hat Linux product? (not Red Hat Professional or Red
Hat Enterprise, Red Hat Linux).
> While its true that Red Hat wouldnt isnt
> directly involved in retail distribution of Fedora,
> independant vendors continue to do that extensively. Fedora
> release cycle combined with the Fedora legacy project would
> provide something thats pretty close yet
> better to previous releases of Red Hat Linux.
This depends on your point of view. A release every six months to a
year is
preferable to me than a new release every three months or so,
especially
when there's a very significant change.
And if you look at the release history of Fedora Core, it has been about
every 6 months. The range is 4 to 8 months, and we just happen to land
on 6~ for the first four releases....
--
Jesse Keating RHCE (geek.j2solutions.net)
Fedora Legacy Team (www.fedoralegacy.org)
GPG Public Key (geek.j2solutions.net/jkeating.j2solutions.pub)
Was I helpful? Let others know:
http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=jkeating
4 p.m.
Jesse Keating wrote:
Sure, there is some stuff for desktop, however the release itself was
not completely geared for desktop. There was plenty in the release that
has no business on a desktop system.
I have to agree with you on that one, Jesse. It wasn't a
perfectly-tailored desktop. But one of the neat things about Red Hat
Linux was that they gave you so much more than what would be needed for
a desktop. That's why I was so enamored of RHL.
>While I am strongly pro-Red Hat, I'm another who felt a little
bit
>abandoned
>when RH9.0 went end-of-life. The Fedora community does well for
>support,
>but it is not a substitute for having someone who will receive your
>email
>and promises to deliver an answer.
>
>
This I always questioned. At what time could you get Red Hat Technical
Support for a Red Hat Linux product? (not Red Hat Professional or Red
Hat Enterprise, Red Hat Linux).
Well, I know that support was available for Red Hat 8.0 because I bought
the boxed set and received the 30 days of email support. I actually had
occasion to use it and found that I got what I needed. Support was also
provided as far back as v 5.2 (the first release I tried) although I
never had to use it then. I recall some higher levels of support you
could pay for.
After the thirty days, you had to pay $60 a year (or more depending on
support level) for continued support and updates. Signing on was easy
online, but signing off was a challenge (to do so, one had to send a
registered letter 60 days prior to expiration to Red Hat's address in
North Carolina.).
If you are curious, I can try to dig out the specific data from my old
package.
>>
>>
>
And if you look at the release history of Fedora Core, it has been about
every 6 months. The range is 4 to 8 months, and we just happen to land
on 6~ for the first four releases....
I think I stand corrected on that one, Jesse. I was working on the 3-4
month target that I remembered reading from the Web site, but I might
not be remembering correctly. Apologies for getting it wrong.
Erik
4:08 p.m.
On Wed, 2005-04-27 at 17:00 -0400, Erik Hemdal wrote:
Well, I know that support was available for Red Hat 8.0 because I
bought
the boxed set and received the 30 days of email support. I actually
had
occasion to use it and found that I got what I needed. Support was
also
provided as far back as v 5.2 (the first release I tried) although I
never had to use it then. I recall some higher levels of support you
could pay for.
Ok, there was installation support for 30 days, but nothing official
beyond installation support. Also, the $60 a year was for up2date
services, not for any levels of email/phone support on a product. If I
recall correctly (and somebody from Red Hat can correct me) Red Hat
Linux never had anything beyond the 30days of installation support.
After the thirty days, you had to pay $60 a year (or more depending
on
support level) for continued support and updates. Signing on was
easy
online, but signing off was a challenge (to do so, one had to send a
registered letter 60 days prior to expiration to Red Hat's address in
North Carolina.).
If you are curious, I can try to dig out the specific data from my
old
package.
I would be curious as to if you had something more than updates.
--
Jesse Keating RHCE (geek.j2solutions.net)
Fedora Legacy Team (www.fedoralegacy.org)
GPG Public Key (geek.j2solutions.net/jkeating.j2solutions.pub)
Was I helpful? Let others know:
http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=jkeating
4:22 p.m.
On Wed, 2005-04-27 at 14:08 -0700, Jesse Keating wrote:
Ok, there was installation support for 30 days, but nothing official
beyond installation support. Also, the $60 a year was for up2date
services, not for any levels of email/phone support on a product. If
I
recall correctly (and somebody from Red Hat can correct me) Red Hat
Linux never had anything beyond the 30days of installation support.
Ok, I was just informed by some Red Hat folks that there was in fact
additional support available for purchase on Red Hat Linux product
lines, however they aren't clear on what was available as it changed
pretty frequently. I stand corrected on that point.
--
Jesse Keating RHCE (geek.j2solutions.net)
Fedora Legacy Team (www.fedoralegacy.org)
GPG Public Key (geek.j2solutions.net/jkeating.j2solutions.pub)
Was I helpful? Let others know:
http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=jkeating
4:45 p.m.
On Wed, 2005-04-27 at 16:18 -0400, Erik Hemdal wrote:
> SELinux update - Significant number of additional deamons
> will protected by SELinux in Fedora Core 4
Lukewarm. Some of my students have had significant problems with SELinux,
and the advice they have received is generally along the lines of "Oh yeah,
it doesn't work right on Fedora, so just turn it off."
Ouch!
Since you have students involved, I'll risk the off-topic reply. :)
As with any new security paradigm, existing applications are likely to
have a few stumbling spots.
The targeted policy for Fedora Core 4 works _extremely_ well. The
updates for FC4 resolve many of the problems people had in FC3. The
policy patching community has increased a lot since inclusion in Fedora
Core.
Usually a person is having a single problem with SELinux, such as a
legacy CGI application getting AVC errors.
The solution, aside from writing a few pieces of policy to fix it[1], is
to disable SELinux for the daemon, i.e., Apache.[2]
Unfortunately, too many people are told to entirely disable SELinux.
This reminds me of people being told to turn off ipchains or iptables if
they couldn't get a working firewall rule for their application.
I don't think SELinux is going away anytime soon, so we might as well
get familiar with it.
cheers - Karsten
[1] To quote myself on writing small policy pieces:
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/selinux-guide...
[2] Changing a Boolean setting to disable protection for a daemon:
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/selinux-guide...
--
Karsten Wade, RHCE * Sr. Tech Writer * http://people.redhat.com/kwade/
gpg fingerprint: 2680 DBFD D968 3141 0115 5F1B D992 0E06 AD0E 0C41
Red Hat SELinux Guide
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/selinux-guide/
8:50 p.m.
Karsten Wade wrote:
Ouch!
Since you have students involved, I'll risk the off-topic reply. :)
The solution, aside from writing a few pieces of policy to fix it[1], is
to disable SELinux for the daemon, i.e., Apache.[2]
Unfortunately, too many people are told to entirely disable SELinux.
Thank you for the post, and apologies if this is getting off-topic. But
I appreciate the thoughtful reply and the pointers in your post. I had
one student this past term with just the issue you mentioned (Apache and
SELinux not getting along) and he was finding it hard to get help in the
"usual places". The answers came down to "disable SELinux for the
daemon", which wasn't an answer for him: his goal was to get SELinux
working with Apache!
If it's improved in FC4, again kudos and thank you for taking my post
seriously. Erik
[1] To quote myself on writing small policy pieces:
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/selinux-guide...
[2] Changing a Boolean setting to disable protection for a daemon:
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/selinux-guide...
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Fedora-marketing-list(a)redhat.com
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12:05 a.m.
Hi
While I am strongly pro-Red Hat, I'm another who felt a little bit
abandoned
when RH9.0 went end-of-life. The Fedora community does well for support,
but it is not a substitute for having someone who will receive your email
and promises to deliver an answer.
Its not possible to get an SLA for Fedora from Red Hat. People who want to sign up
for SLA's usually also want a very long support lifecycle. Trying to satisfy the
customers who wanted longer release and support lifecycles and people want a spanky new
Linux desktop was a tough balance. Red Hat decided to fork it up. It looked like a pretty
rational decision to me though not everyone would agree with it. So calling the transition
from Red Hat Linux to Fedora Project "treacherous" was hard to disgest.
This depends on your point of view. A release every six months to a
year is
preferable to me than a new release every three months or so, especially
when there's a very significant change.
Fedora releases are currently about every 6 months or so. add up Fedora
Legacy and you might even get a better lifecycle.
Where can someone discover basic data about new features? I'd
want for
something less than a tutorial and more than a release note. I had little
idea about what hal, dbus, etc. were before installing and experimenting.
Red Hat Magazine (http://redhat.com/magazine) has some of the details.
I had the same idea about having a more end user friendly version of the
release notes ( think: GNOME release notes) which I suggested on the
fedora-docs list . I suspect I might have to do it myself. Of course any
help on this would be most welcome
>Efforts to improve bootup speed using bootchart [2] and
>things like GDM early login [3]
>
>
If this is intended to allow login prior to a full bootup, I hope that users
can disable it. If the intent is to make the computer more like Windows,
it's no help. This is one user's opinion: allowing a user access to the
desktop and applications does no good if the infrastructure isn't working
yet.
This is one of my significant complaints about Windows. I am allowed to
start applications, such as my email reader, before it is able to operate
(because network connections are not up yet). When I try to do something,
like download email, the client encounters an error and I have to wait
longer for the failed action to timeout. In other cases, actions like
opening files take longer (because the system is busy in the background) and
the result is a system that at best appears bloated and sluggish.
Read this and subsequent discussions :
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2005-April/msg00416.html
I believe it would answer all your questions and yes it can be switched
off and the process does require significant changes to the start up
scripts and the right balance to not reproduce any of the Windows boot
up issues you have pointed out. Currently the development tree has a
rough cut. I trust the developers will get it done right before Fedora
Core 4 is released
regards
Rahul
12:21 a.m.
On Thu, 28 Apr 2005, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
Its not possible to get an SLA for Fedora from Red Hat. People
who want to sign up for SLA's usually also want a very long
support lifecycle. Trying to satisfy the customers who wanted
longer release and support lifecycles and people want a spanky
new Linux desktop was a tough balance. Red Hat decided to fork
it up. It looked like a pretty rational decision to me though
not everyone would agree with it. So calling the transition
from Red Hat Linux to Fedora Project "treacherous" was hard to
disgest.
The problem is not why Red Hat did what it did. IMO the main
problem is that Red Hat totally hid the Fedora Project from its
users in the discontinutaion email that sent them. It said
that's all, no free lunch anymore. I was in the Real World Linux
Expo last week. Again, there was the Red Hat booth, with no sign
or name of the Fedora Project. Somebody giving a talk mentioned
it, just that. To me, it seems like Red Hat is trying to hide
Fedora, in the fear that they lose their customers, while we all
know that it can't be true. People do not buy Red Hat simply
because Red Hat does not provide a free version. There are a
zillion free distros out there. For more than 99 percent of
personal (nonbusiness) users out there, Fedora is at least as
good as Red Hat Linux was. This 99 percent never received any
support from Red Hat. Never ever. But Red Hat makes it sound
like Fedora is something community driven so low quality.
--behdad
http://behdad.org/
1:35 a.m.
Hi
The problem is not why Red Hat did what it did. IMO the main
problem is that Red Hat totally hid the Fedora Project from its
users in the discontinutaion email that sent them.
https://www.redhat.com/archives/redhat-watch-list/2004-April/msg00000.html
which leads to
http://www.redhat.com/solutions/business/migration/
It said
that's all, no free lunch anymore. I was in the Real World Linux
Expo last week. Again, there was the Red Hat booth, with no sign
or name of the Fedora Project. Somebody giving a talk mentioned
it, just that. To me, it seems like Red Hat is trying to hide
Fedora, in the fear that they lose their customers, while we all
know that it can't be true.
Fedora Project in linked from the homepage of http://redhat.com. We have
an exclusive Fedora users and developers conference aka FUDcon.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDConVideos (FUDcon 1)
http://www.redhat.com/magazine/006apr05/departments/fedora_status/
(FUDcon 2)
Red Hat magazine covers articles on Fedora and its status every month.
Fedora Project related news is posted regularly in many major websites.
Fedora is after all the official Red Hat. How can we ever hide that ;-)
People do not buy Red Hat simply
because Red Hat does not provide a free version. There are a
zillion free distros out there. For more than 99 percent of
personal (nonbusiness) users out there, Fedora is at least as
good as Red Hat Linux was. This 99 percent never received any
support from Red Hat. Never ever. But Red Hat makes it sound
like Fedora is something community driven so low quality.
All of the Fedora Core development is done by Red Hat employees which
contains a good number of software developed by the community.
Encouring the community to participate in the process through efforts
like Fedora Extras and Fedora Legacy only helps to enhance it obviously
regards
Rahul
8:49 a.m.
Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>
>
>
All of the Fedora Core development is done by Red Hat employees which
contains a good number of software developed by the community.
Encouring the community to participate in the process through efforts
like Fedora Extras and Fedora Legacy only helps to enhance it obviously
regards
Rahul
I come down in agreement with Rahul on this one. I can completely
understand Red Hat's reasons for discontinuing Red Hat Linux, and I
don't think it was treacherous, just disappointing. I was hoping that
Red Hat could make it go, and I'm happy that RHL lived as long as it
did. The fact that Red Hat continues to support Fedora indicates a
level of integrity that not all firms have anymore. I also believe that
Red Hat did a lot to bolster the credibility of Linux in the eyes of
many people.
I don't think Red Hat ever hid the Fedora Project. I got the EOL email
and it pointed me to the Red Hat site with the big RHEL vs. Fedora
links. The choices were pretty obvious to me. I had to scramble a
bit....because I was a couple of weeks away from starting a new class on
RHL 9, but I switched to FC1 and pulled it out.
Erik
2:21 p.m.
On Thu, 2005-04-28 at 09:49 -0400, Erik Hemdal wrote:
I don't think Red Hat ever hid the Fedora Project. I got the EOL
email
and it pointed me to the Red Hat site with the big RHEL vs. Fedora
links. The choices were pretty obvious to me.
IIRC, this was a total SNAFU. Meaning, it was an oversight not to
better highlight Fedora in the EOL email, people were -very- vocal about
that from the outside, and that vocalization carried internally.
Subsequent emails did a better job of highlighting Fedora.
When you have a choice between "It's a Conspiracy!" and "it's just
stupid humans doing stupid human stuff," most likely it's the latter.
- Karsten
--
Karsten Wade, RHCE * Sr. Tech Writer * http://people.redhat.com/kwade/
gpg fingerprint: 2680 DBFD D968 3141 0115 5F1B D992 0E06 AD0E 0C41
Red Hat SELinux Guide
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/selinux-guide/
4:12 p.m.
On Thu, 2005-04-28 at 09:49 -0400, Erik Hemdal wrote:
> I don't think Red Hat ever hid the Fedora Project. I got the EOL email
> and it pointed me to the Red Hat site with the big RHEL vs. Fedora
> links. The choices were pretty obvious to me.
I couldn't find the mail, but my vague memory says that this
(hiding) happend when Red Hat Linux was abandoned, in Summer
2003, not the EOL in April 2004. I may be wrong though. In
EOL, yes, they were pointing to Fedora.
--behdad
6933
days inactive
6936
days old
marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org
13 comments
5 participants
participants (5)
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Behdad Esfahbod -
Erik Hemdal -
Jesse Keating -
Karsten Wade -
Rahul Sundaram