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Resisting the binary blobResisting the binary blobPosted Nov 16, 2006 4:49 UTC (Thu) by ssavitzky (guest, #2855)Parent article: Resisting the binary blob
I have a completely different gripe with Fedora -- it simply doesn't include the (free) software that I've been using for fifteen years. Debian does. This includes ctwm and xtoolwait, among others. The problem is that RedHat picks a handful of applications that they think people should be using, and those are the ones they package. Every once in a while they decide that people should be using something else, so the Gnome window manager changes yet again.
Debian is more inclusive.
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Resisting the binary blob Posted Nov 16, 2006 14:01 UTC (Thu) by liljencrantz (subscriber, #28458) [Link] It seems to me that Fedora Core tries to pick one tool (or a small number of tools) for each task. If you want one of the other gazillion window managers, text editors or scripting languages, use Fedora Extras. If your pet tool is not available in Extras, become a contributor. (I did. Aside from getting my butt handed for being a lousy RPM .spec writer, it was mostly painless)
I think the Fedora model with a small core of suggested components is the right one. And even better, every Fedora release seems to integrate Extras and Core more than the last one. In FC6, you can install packages from Extras during the system install, which is pretty cool. If I understand things correctly, the plan is that in FC7, doing so won't crash the installer most of the time, which is even cooler. ;-)
Resisting the binary blob Posted Nov 16, 2006 18:08 UTC (Thu) by davej (guest, #354) [Link] Those two apps got into debian because someone cared for them, and did the necessary work to make it happen. No-one has done the same for Fedora extras because, well, no-one cared enough I guess.
There's no reason that anything in debian couldn't also be packaged for Fedora extras. Like Debian, if someone does the work, and it isn't horribly broken in some way, then it gets in.
I think there's a disconnect where a lot of people are still of the opinion that only Red Hat employees can contribute to Fedora. This isn't the case, and it's becoming even less so with every release.
Resisting the binary blob Posted Nov 17, 2006 21:46 UTC (Fri) by leoc (subscriber, #39773) [Link] CTWM - best window manager evar! :)
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