Interesting, but maybe too late

Interesting, but maybe too late

Freshrpms, Dag, and a few others have got together to form something called RPMForge, which appears to be a collection of RPM collections which are known to be interoperable and reasonably open to additions.

As far as I can tell, Fedora Extras does a similar job, but apparently there has been some "political" debate in the past over "mixing repositories", with Fedora Extra folks apparently trying to push people into using their own repository by means of FUD.

The technical side doesn't change, even if the political front looks a little dubious, but I'd strongly recommend applying the necessary patches to attitudes before Holy War breaks out. The last thing F/OSS needs is for closed-source vendors to use images of repository archivists punching each other out at a convention...

However, there is one technical side that does need to be addressed. ALL Fedora (and related) repositories use the 80386 and AMD's 64-bit architecture as the sole two systems supported. Even Mandrake doesn't go beyond the 586. Errr, now I can understand people wanting generic distros. That's good. That's sensible. But about the only ones using 386s, 486s and Pentium Is these days are people needing systems for use in space or medical facilities. In either case, they are probably not going to use a heavyweight server/desktop environment.

The people wanting something like Fedora are going to be using Pentium IIs at least, most likely Pentium III or IV. Those with a laptop are probably using something from the Pentium M family. Either that, or they're using Athlons. However, if you want something tuned for ANY of those systems, you've got to compile the entire distribution yourself. That is, frankly, stupid. Not one of these processors is supported as standard, even though ALL of them have a far wider userbase than the 80386.

64-bit AMD is OK. It's a start. But where's the Itanium? With Microsoft out of the picture, a Linux distro tuned to Intel's pure 64-bit offering would seem to be guaranteed an open-house on the market.

As for packages... There are probably many more high quality programs listed on Freshmeat in a month than there are in the whole of Fedora Core and Fedora Extra combined. Instead of working to do exactly the same as the RPMForge group, I'd argue that everybody would be better served if Fedora Extras joined forces with the other vendors, dropped the dupes and served packages of all the exciting new software NOBODY ELSE COVERS.

This would massively increase the level of interest in Fedora, as well as increase the exposure of the software on offer, thus benefiting everybody. Doesn't it make more sense to cooperate, rather than compete unnecessarily?

Last, but by no means least, Freshrpms had a bright idea, putting the Yum information in an RPM file. I've dummied up similar RPMs for the other repositories I use, so that I can more easily track what I'm tracking. Fedora Extras would benefit, I think, from doing the same.