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The new Fedora ProjectThe new Fedora ProjectPosted Sep 24, 2003 21:04 UTC (Wed) by brouhaha (subscriber, #1698)Parent article: The new Fedora Project
Letting go could be hard for Red Hat to do; almost anybody who has done business with that company will attest that Red Hat, while well-intentioned, very much likes to retain control over the projects it works on.I'm not convinced that Red Hat "letting go" is a good idea. If you want to see what it's likely to turn into if Red Hat "lets go", just look at the Debian distribution. The Debian people have done some great things, and I approve of their philosophy, but their distribution is all but impossible for anyone who is not a Linux expert to install or maintain. A friend and I, both of whom are moderately expert with Linux, recently tried doing an install and were completely amazed and dumbfounded at the ridiculous questions the installer asks. And when I brought this up with a long-time Debian user, he said that this was the new, simpler installer! If Red Hat maintains some degree of control over the project, I think that will help keep the focus on providing a good user experience, rather than having 42 bazillion install options.
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The new Fedora Project Posted Sep 24, 2003 21:26 UTC (Wed) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] RPM packages don't ask questions. The RealPlayer package is a single evil exception, but it's not free software anyways.Fedora doesn't replace Red Hat installer. Debian did not become harder to install and maintain than it had ever been. It's just they didn't pay enough attention to improving their tools, whereas users' expectations have changed.
The new Fedora Project Posted Sep 24, 2003 22:14 UTC (Wed) by Strike (guest, #861) [Link] The Debian people have done some great things, and I approve of their philosophy, but their distribution is all but impossible for anyone who is not a Linux expert to install or maintain. Install? Yes. Maintain? No. Debian is super-easy to maintain. Easier than anything else I've ever used (including all the RedHat's since back in the 6.x days), that's for certain. Though getting it there is indeed a bit of a chore. However, the issue has been recognized and is being worked on. Debian is a bit behind the game in terms of user-friendliness, but that's okay as they don't have a profit margin to fill and they are focusing on getting the core to be a lot better instead (which is why it's so easy to maintain). I do have to hand it to the people who have coded up RedHat's installer though ... top notch stuff.
The new Fedora Project Posted Sep 25, 2003 19:01 UTC (Thu) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] Install? Yes. Maintain? No. Debian is super-easy to maintain.I agree, 99 percent. The dissenting 1 percent comes into play when I run into a broken package and have to start messing around with post-install scripts in /var/lib/dpkg/info to try and figure out what's broken. It could be argued that most users should be using the stable release, but stable is so out of date that most desktop users would rather use Red Hat or SuSE and go through RPM hell. My solution is to use unstable for my workstation, but I keep a stable partition around just in case unstable blows up.
The new Fedora Project Posted Sep 25, 2003 3:06 UTC (Thu) by hazelsct (subscriber, #3659) [Link] You ran into debconf, which lets you choose configuration options and have them preserved across upgrades regardless of file format changes. Next time, just set your threshold priority to "critical" and the defaults will be used for 95% of the questions (or thereabouts, I haven't actually measured but it's about this). Then just run "dpkg-reconfigure --priority=low <packagename>" to adjust any individual package.The RPM alternative is to live in config file hell, where you use emacs/vi and manpages to configure each package by hand, only to have every single one of your configs borked on the next upgrade! Manually updating several dozen config files to new formats is a real PITA... Given the choice, I'll take Debian any time!
The new Fedora Project Posted Sep 25, 2003 15:31 UTC (Thu) by heinlein (guest, #1029) [Link]
That's less true with each Red Hat release. The /etc/sysconfig directory is becoming home to localizations that can be kept through an update or maintained with a tool like cfengine. Plus, rpm package maintainers are paying more attention to marking configuration files as such so that new packages don't stomp on customized config files.
The new Fedora Project Posted Sep 25, 2003 4:41 UTC (Thu) by kbob (subscriber, #1770) [Link] The Debian people have done some great things, and I approve of their philosophy, but their distribution is all but impossible for anyone who is not a Linux expert to install or maintain.Apparently you didn't get the word. The Debian installer is called KNOPPIX. Yeah, I know. It's not obvious. But KNOPPIX makes installing Debian as trivial as keeping Debian up to date, if (and only if) you want a desktop install.
The new Fedora Project Posted Sep 25, 2003 14:09 UTC (Thu) by haraldt (guest, #961) [Link] It has to be noted: The new debian-installer is still not finished. It's been made useable for x86-based computers plus, perhaps, some other platforms but it's not all the way there. Not by far. The thing about debian-installer is, it's a better base for making simple install routines. The user shells may not be all that simple yet, but that's what comes when the base is in shape.
Debian *is* easy to install Posted Sep 25, 2003 15:09 UTC (Thu) by stuart (subscriber, #623) [Link] Dude, get a clue!!I installed Debian GNU/Linux years ago and was pleased to see it's still much the same process today. It asks you lots (or little as mentioned in another reply) of well explained questions so you get what you want just about straight out of the box. And that's it. No really that's it. Ocasionnally I run apt-get update && apt-get upgrade, if e.g. there's been a new stable release or a security release of a package. The installer is not difficult, it just asks you questions which are being asked because there is often no resonable default. I find installing Debian (old installer -- haven't tried this new fangled one) easier than Windows XP and 2000. FACT. So, much as the install process is a favourite drum of non-Debian GNU/Linux users to bang, I ask you does filling it with eye candy make an installer any better? Stu.
Debian *is* easy to install Posted Sep 25, 2003 20:47 UTC (Thu) by zonker (subscriber, #7867) [Link] I find installing Debian (old installer -- haven't tried this new fangled one) easier than Windows XP and 2000. FACT.Er, no. Opinion. You find it easier, many users (obviously) do not. This is not a factual debate, it's one of opinion. I don't find the Debian installation routine to be that difficult, but I cut my Linux teeth on Slackware about seven years ago. However, almost any user who is installing Linux for the first time (assuming they're not crossing over from a proprietary UNIX or *BSD) is going to have problems with it. Conversely, I think many newbies could easily install Mandrake or SuSE so long as they're at least casually familiar with terms like DNS and so on. I also think "well explained" is a bit of a reach. That entirely depends on the point of view of the user. The uninitiated will have a bit of trouble parsing questions about whether SSH should have priviledge separation or not, and so on. And, IIRC, Debian doesn't assist the user in configuring their sound card or video card. It doesn't auto-detect the network card, leaving the user to guess which kernel module a particular NIC will need.
The new Fedora Project Posted Sep 25, 2003 15:12 UTC (Thu) by southey (subscriber, #9466) [Link] Red Hat doesn't seem to be 'letting go'. They are trying to get a user base as a beta test for their enterprise versions so it will not stray. In return, users are able to get cutting edge versions which are often impossible to obtain from Red Hat (especially major updates in Kde, Gnome and XFree86 - doing these yourself usually means problems down the line).
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