June saw new releases of two of the world’s most significant Linux distributions—Red Hat Inc.’s Fedora Core and Software in the Public Interest Inc.’s Debian—both of which are popular, freely available and capable of serving well in roles from the server room to the desktop.
Fedora Core 4, which undergoes a version upgrade two to three times a year
so far every release has been 6-7 months.
Also you don’t need to upgrade every year. Im pretty sure with fedora legacy you’re good for atleast a couple years.
How long ago was the last stable debian release? They’re staying sharp? Debian is about as sharp as a butter knife.
Stable means *stable* in Debian, You can however get *sharp* by using SID, which is usually pretty up2date (and it’s very easy to stay up2date).
pretty good read
biggest thing I notice was 15k packages compared to 2k in fedora.
Ad in the non free repo’s and Fedora’s number will jump but I doubt to more than 3k.
Question is those 12k more apps.. what are they just perl scripts and old unix code ported to linux 9 years ago? As a fedora user there isnt a whole lot of things I find I need that aren’t in repo’s. Are they all themes and stuff like that? Source forge stuff no longer under active development yet still usefull to some?
Do you understand that some people use Linux to support large organizations with large and complex needs that require serious thinking and that when infrastructure is built it cannot be replaced every six months?
Most places where I do work want a 3-5 year commitment that a server will not undergo huge changes after being brought into production.
They are sharp in terms of release cycle and adopting and implementing the new releases of Window managers. I wonder if any open source will focus on the stuff like a good stable media player that can run on every computer in linux just like how Windows media player runs on any dam machine and plays movies!
I’ve upgraded my Linux from Redhat 7.1 to Redhat 8 then Redhat 9 and then to Fedora core 1 – 2 – 3…! Well honestly the look and feel has changed yet Linux lacks in the area like Good font rendering, showing movies in mplayer without a single crash!
Guys we have to work hard to take Linux to the next level… we are way behind! Debain and Fedora are updating them self fast but they need to find a bridge that will help desktop users confidance of stablity.
Not a bad article at all. In general, I like to read these distro comparison articles. However, I’d like to point out one factual mistake:
Debian is also available in Testing and Unstable branches, but these versions gain up-to-date software at the expense of the security update coverage that the Stable branch enjoys.
This is out-of-date information. There is now a special Debian testing security team that works actively to provide security updates to Debian testing.
http://secure-testing.alioth.debian.org/
http://security.debian.org/dists/
Here’s a real gem from the article:
Although the text-based application isn’t as attractive-looking as Fedora’s Anaconda installer program, we found Debian 3.1’s installer at least as easy to use.
This is very true. Debian’s installer is not as pretty as Fedora’s Anaconda, but it is “at least as easy to use” and it gives much more power (=choices) to users. And in the future all Debian’s update releases will sport also an updated version of the Debian-Installer with newer kernels (=updated hardware support).
@Anonymous from Finland:
At this time there aren’t any security updates at all, not even for Debian-Stable (Sarge) since June 3. The Debian project seems to have some serious problems…
cu,
kaasboer
sorry, only german web sites:
http://www.pro-linux.de/news/2005/8322.html
http://www.heise.de/security/news/meldung/61076
Yes, I know. It’s not really a problem with security updates, as such. Rather, it’s a problem with the security.debian.org website. Once that gets fixed, there will be security updates also for Debian testing.
http://www.infodrom.org/~joey/log/?200506142140
It is not a problem.
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/06/msg01803.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/06/msg02267.html
Thanks for keeping us up-to-date on this issue. It’s too bad that although the IT news sites are quick to report any known problems, they seldom bother to tell us when the problems have been fixed. 😉
Well honestly the look and feel has changed yet Linux lacks in the area like Good font rendering, showing movies in mplayer without a single crash!
I have the opposite view. It seems like a monitor issue or a lack of proper settings. I use LCD monitor, font on Linux(Fedora) is crisp.
Concerning mplayer, try other alternative such as Totem, Kaffeine or Xine.
@martink: it still is a problem, because the reason for the lack of updates is not a broken infrastructure (this is fixed, indeed) but a personal problem, please read:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-security/2005/06/msg00142.html
cu,
kaasboer
The most frustrating thing about Debian:
It’s terrible support of KDE & KOffice. Last I checked, they were still on version 3.3.2, even in unstable!!
“The most frustrating thing about Debian:
It’s terrible support of KDE & KOffice. Last I checked, they were still on version 3.3.2, even in unstable!!”
Try Kanotix 2005-03…. it is Debian based and has KDE 3.4.1
I dont see too many
“just perl scripts and old unix code”
or
“themes and stuff”
ok, some themes and maybe a spot of perl
hey some of us like those themes 
http://packages.debian.org/stable/allpackages
and what features do you see as revolutionary in 3.4.1 as oppossed to 3.3.2? and if there are stability/security issues then is it still worth it? just wondering..
“The most frustrating thing about Debian:
It’s terrible support of KDE & KOffice. Last I checked, they were still on version 3.3.2, even in unstable!!”
You’re apparently unaware of the existence of Experimental, which contains KDE 3.4.1. One can also always grab the Debian KDE team’s latest packaging endeavours straight from their Alioth project at http://pkg-kde.alioth.debian.org/.
KOffice 1.4 doesn’t seem to have been packaged yet, but that was released only a week ago on June 21st.
If I’m not completely mistaken, Debian is in the process of moving to GCC 4.0 in its unstable branch, which has caused delays in updating some large packages like KDE.
I just installed 3.4.1 from http://pkg-kde.alioth.debian.org/ yesterday and everything is working nicely.
“Im pretty sure with fedora legacy you’re good for atleast a couple years.”
At the moment it looks like Fedora Legacy’s in a pretty sorry state. Due to manpower issues they only aim to cover the x86 architecture and only Fedora Core itself, not Extras. Even then it looks like they’ve bitten off more than they can chew:
It looks like their lack of manpower has led to them having to break their own policy of backporting all fixes (e.g. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-legacy-list/2005-June/msg0010… – “And there is no good reason not to upgrade gaim’s version. Nothing depends on gaim, and especially not server functionality. Just do it for gaim. Save time for other more important backports.”) Additionally, their TODO buglist (http://www.netcore.fi/pekkas/buglist.html) shows a whole slew of unfixed vulnerabilities, some of which were reported as far back as 2003.