Couldn’t stop myself from trying the new Fedora 2-test1 release, even if it is an alpha! The 2.6 kernel, KDE 3.2 and Gnome 2.5 all in the same release was just to much candy to turn away from; too bad it’s more sour rather than sweet at this (beta) point than I would have expected.After reading the release notes, I decided to give Fedora Core 2 a test run, as I was pretty pleased with Fedora Core 1 and actively follow the development mail list activities for Fedora Core 2. So here we go, short and sweet:
Installation
The install was typical Fedora/Red Hat and went off without a hitch. I chose a new install rather than an upgrade as an upgrade was not recommended for this release. All hardware was detected properly except but problem persued after the install.
Post Installation
My test system is a Athlon XP2200 system with an ECS motherboard and Nvidia Geforce4MX440 Video Card. My X, XFS and fonts were fine but still no Nvidia drivers being used. If your going to bleeding edge, then let’s start using the right drivers for the job. If SUSE, Lindows and Xandros can do this, then it time for Fedora to step up.
No sound, no how! Played with this till I got sick of trying to fix what should have been easily installed and working. I couldn’t even run the redhat-services configuration tool in KDE or Gnome.
Many basic things are not working that should be, even for an test release, but I’d like to give some praise to the many things I did like.
The 2.6 Kernel
There are very noticable improvements in speed. Rewriting the Disk I/O structure was a good thing and has made a huge difference in application launching and overall performance.
KDE 3.2
The only word is awesome! The new Kontact application is pretty strong and the look and feel polish to the desktop is the best I’ve seen. A new wireless app configurator let’s you choose between profiles and Desktop icons and menus now have drop shadows for a cleaner look. KDE 3.2 is noticably faster than earlier versions and should convert some Gnome users like myself who have appeciated the more polished feel of Gnome, (that’s my 2 cents anyway.)
Gnome 2.5
Not much new here besides newer versions of Evolution and more desktop tools. By default the file manager navigation toolbar is missing and opens a new window every time you open a folder; annoying! Still, better speed but many things are broken here and everytime I exit Gnome I get a fatal error message.
Conclusion
Great effort guys, but it still has a long way to go. I used it less then 2 days because of many issues with just trying to do basic things. Very unusable at this time. If you have a free machine that you don’t need for everyday use, then give it a spin. It was definitly fun getting a sneek peek at all these new versions in one place, but they are far from ready.
Suggestions
As a one who uses Linux for fun and development, like most of us here that read OSNews.com, may I suggest a few additions to Fedora Core 2:
1) Get rid of Up-to-date/Yum and use something like Apt/Synaptic. Out of the distros I’ve used, apt/synaptic has been the most reliable for an RPM-based distro. The first thing many of us who use Fedora/Red Hat do is go to freshrpms.net, download apt & synaptic and use it to tune our distro the way we want. Up-to-date freezes consistantly and causes me to rerun it many times to get updates, even in Core 1.
2)Let’s start including a good media player like xine or mplayer.
3)Java with browser plugin preconfigured would be great.
4)The common browser plugins like flash, java and mplayer/xine for media.
5)Gimp 1.3 DE
6)MySQL 4 and MySQL CC
7)Native ATI and Nvidia drivers for X preconfigured.
Just a few suggestions I hope will heard and I’m sure many of you will voice yourwish lists too. I hope a few of the guys at Fedora/Red Hat are listening.
And Kudos to the Fedora/Red Hat guys for putting out a preview of all these new technologies. Thanks!
Test System
Athlon XP2200 / ECS motherboard
Nvidia GeForce4 MX440 AGP graphics card
Integrated AC97 sound and NIC
60GB WD IDE HD
DVD/CD-RW Combo drive
256MB RAM
About the Author:
I am currently VP of Technical Development at IT4Texas, LLC, a Houston-based IT managed services and application development firm. I have 14 years experience as a Windows/Linux Sys Admin, software development, systems integration specialist and have 4 years experience specifically in the Linux/PHP/Apache/MySQL/R environment. I currently use Linux for both server and desktop applications and have installed and worked with 12 different distributions in a production environment including clustering and parrellel computing solutions. Sometime I write for fun, just to kick up the dust!
“2)Let’s start including a good media player like xine or mplayer.
3)Java with browser plugin preconfigured would be great.
4)The common browser plugins like flash, java and mplayer/xine for media.
7)Native ATI and Nvidia drivers for X preconfigured.”
There are issues of freedom with all of these. They will NOT be included in Fedora anytime soon and hopefully anytime ever.
The reason it was opening new windows all the time because it’s the new spatial nautilus.
There are issues of freedom with all of these. They will NOT be included in Fedora anytime soon and hopefully anytime ever.
Who is hurt by not including these items … certianly not the companies who make them.
Every mailing list out there would recommend mplayer as the media player … and would recommend the binary drivers from NVidia and ATI …
The only group hurt by not including what everyone is going to use anyway is the end user …
Now, certianly someone should be working on a replacement that is better … but telling people to install it themselves is silly and not in any way addressing the problem.
I hate Gnome on Fedora (at least this version). The RedHat team has basically crippled Gnome and Nautilus, stripping away almost all of the menus, features, and configuration options. I wouldn’t even call it Gnome. I don’t know what you’d call it after RedHat got finished f*cking it all up. I’ve been a RedHat user for years and unless you want to manually download “real” Gnome+Nautilus, or use KDE, than don’t bother with this distro.
or use KDE, than don’t bother with this distro.
oh KDE is usually even worse. I was a fan but really using KDE on a GNOME-centric distro is like using a pair of left-handed scissors in your right hand. Unless you like to tweak your distro a lot the most important consideration for which distro to use is whether it’s favoured DE is the one you like or the other one.
“Who is hurt by not including these items … certianly not the companies who make them.”
Red Hat is not trying to punish companies for creating proprietary software, nor are they trying to prevent users from using it. They just don’t want to distribute it. They think they will not make enough money off of it to pay the licensing fees, or will open themselves up to litigation for redistributing it otherwise. For example, they can’t control how many people download Fedora and don’t want to have to someday pay a fee for some hypothetical number of MP3 “customers.” Other companies manage their profits and risks differently – many have a lot less to lose.
Fedora solves the problem anyway by making it easy to use third party repositories. It’s easier and cheaper than going to the store and buying equivilent software for Windows.
Furthermore Red Hat encourages the development of Free software alternatives, with money and talent as well as rhetoric. The more Linux users stick to (and create demand for) Free alternatives, when we can, the more Free alternatives will come to be and be developed.
I’m sorry I was out of line here:) Really sorry about this. And yes, in fact I’m working on a review about KDE 3.2 on slackware 9.1. Might be interesting to write about slackware and KDE 3.2 in a single review. I can tell you that much, speed is amazing, and it was worth to backport KDE 3.2 from the -current branch.
Well, it might be while since you hosted a fedora review, but you’ve linked to allot of them:) To be honest, I want to see more in depth stuff, not just reviewers who scratch the surface, stuff like:”I’ve double a rpm file in nautilus and it didn’t install, so Fedora sucks” or “After my attempt to install the 2.6 kernel rpm on FC1 failed, I concluded that the distro is buggy” or god knows what. It’s Linux after all, and it’ll never be Windows…
Sorry again:) Please accept my apologies.
Hi
“he RedHat team has basically crippled Gnome and Nautilus, stripping away almost all of the menus, features, and configuration options. I wouldn’t even call it Gnome. I don’t know what you’d call it after RedHat got finished f*cking it all up”
Redhat is pretty much a gnome based distro. what do you mean by crippled everything.
The new nautilus has a spatial interface which isnt meant for hierarchial navigation. you can switch to the old interface by right clicking and choosing browse. They havent made any drastic changes other than applying a few upstream patches from cvs and remember this is a unstable build of gnome. gnome 2.6 will be included with the final version. if you have other SPECIFIC complains lets hear you voice that
regards
Jess
If you are an experienced Linux user, just avoid distros that come preinstalled with hacked versions of vanilla desktop environments, or any software for that matter. Believe me, stock versions are less buggier. You might up having to configure most things manually, but you do it once and forget it.
I hate it when distros add their own hack to stock versions of DEs. They end up causing more problems than they think they solve. In fact, I left debian because their GNOME was just annoyingly different from Stock GNOME.
I mean, there are things distros can hack like themes, wallpapers, filesystem structures. But when they start hacking interfaces, menus, or compiling binaries with intentionally crippled features, it gets on my nerves.
Okay, I’m done ranting.
Do either one of these yet incorporate the ‘List’ view? Last I recall, neither one of them had this. I recall they each had something similar, but none really to my liking.
Hi
They both have list view though the new nautilus has switched to a completely spatial interface where a list view doesnt make any sense
you can check out screenshots on kde wiki and gnome community websites
regards
Jess
“Who is hurt by not including these items … certianly not the companies who make them.”
Certainly not. But Flash, Sun’s Java and the Nvidia and ATi drivers are proprietary software. Do I really need to explain the problems these create, especially in these particular cases?
The end user may not like it, but including these compromises the freedom of said user. As GNU/Linux becomes the dominant platform and suitable free alternatives become available, the user will appreciate their freedom.
I decided to try it on my HP Pavilion and it works very well out of the box. It detected and installed correctly the drivers for all of my hardware – CDRW, sound card, NIC, wireless NIC, and firewire (which seems to lock up most distributions on this laptop without a custom kernel). I really like the new ‘kontact’ groupware client!
“If you are an experienced Linux user, just avoid distros that come preinstalled with hacked versions of vanilla desktop environments, or any software for that matter. Believe me, stock versions are less buggier.”
Not to mention faster. It seems that when these distros do end up doing custom hacks, especially on KDE or GNOME, not only does it make the apps buggier, but also slower. Redhat is not the only distro affected by this either.
Also, I want the real thing. KDE and GNOME are perfect as they are. Why lessen a great thing? I was done with Redhat when they first modded KDE and still am.
I’m sorry these goofs who keep saying oh the user can deal with this and deal with that and so on and so forth…
It would be issue for Fedora to include proprietary software, perhaps someone could have a site that explains verbosely for the end user how to ‘deal with it’.
The point is to make things easier for the user. What new user even knows what a JRE is, knows where to get it and what file they need to put in the $MOZILLA_HOME/plugins/ dir (for example)?
You have got to be really ignorant if you cant face the fact that many of these newer users have problems doing this. That is why people run windows because it just works (until it crashes, is compromised, breaks …)
Redhat Strips gnome, Lindows strips debian, these are very functional based distributions. If you dont like it run Gentoo or Slackware or something… stop complaining you are wasting bandwidth and CPU cycles.
Brilliant plan dude. Open yourself up to lawsuits. Good plan. Breaking the law for convenience is not an option! The last thing the Linux world needs is another lawsuit…
And users might not know what a license is, but that doesn’t stop Microsoft from sending their BSA attack dogs to their door! We live in a litigious society, and not knowing is never an excuse for breaking the law…
The SuSE distro CD/DVD includes all in your list except the graphics drivers as far as I remember. Xine does not include DeCSS (of course not),SuSE does not tell you where to get it but does mention that it exists.
SuSE has chosen a middle ground for the graphics drivers (and the MS Web fonts – that we now no longer need because those of Linux are just as good). You can download these items from SuSE’s website. That beats having to hunt the web for them – especially for a newbie. And with this approach SuSE did not taint Linux. You did, when you downloaded. Redhat could do the same.
Hi
“And with this approach SuSE did not taint Linux. You did, when you downloaded. Redhat could do the same.”
No. The fonts are legally downloadable but not redistributable so the user would be in no way tained if he chooses to use ms fonts. the quality of the fonts are not embedded into themselves. its the engine that makes the difference. you can still make out differences between the fonts when used in windows and when used under linux.
we need something thats redistributable and also metric compatible with ms fonts so that linux fonts would look better out of the box and ms word documents would look just the same.
the situtation has far improved and its not as much relevant as it used to be thou
regards
Jess
Hi
“Morons. What is this thing about licensing…. Lindows, Xandros and Slackware to name a few all include proprietary software in one from or the other- Nvidia drivers/ Java etc. All distros except RedHat and Fedora include mp3 playback capabilities out of the box. ”
Fedora is a us based distribution backed by a public company called redhat which will get sued for using mp3. the goal of fedora is to be completely redistributable. they cant simply go ahead and distribute all these stuff and imagine that no one would sue them. they cant even like to such mp3 files due to DMCA
Lindows is a paid product and they get licenses for these. if you want that go buy that. whats your problem.
If you want to install these stuff in fedora a detailed tutorial is available from fedoranews.org. just search for fedora unofficial faq and you can find all stuff. fedora multimedia howto is available from tldp.org written by eric s raymond with detailed instructions so you get all the help that can be possibly provided while remaining legal and redistributable
regards
Jess
yum install flash-plugin j2re xmms-mp3 mozilla-acroread libdvdread acroread divx4linux
Finding updated packages
Downloading needed headers
flash-plugin is installed and is the latest version.
j2re is installed and is the latest version.
xmms-mp3 is installed and is the latest version.
mozilla-acroread is installed and is the latest version.
libdvdread is installed and is the latest version.
acroread is installed and is the latest version.
divx4linux is installed and is the latest version.
No actions to take
Oh my god its soooo hard what will the users do! *cry*
I have helped many newbies with this, And I tell them 3 things put this yum.conf in etc, then type ‘yum update’ and the command you just saw. Infact I posted the yum.conf in an earlier thread and people think this is too hard? but its easy to search the web for divx, java, flash, winamp, photoshop, firewall, antivirus, etc, etc, etc. then they ask you for cracks, and pop up blockers, etc, etc would you people stop trolling already. Now all you tell them to do is
‘yum -C info “*”|more’ and go through installing anything they think might be neat. this is easier than setting a wrist watch.
What a bunch of friendly Linux users. I thought maybe the reputation given to them was somehow biased. But, complain about one (valid) problem, and they attack like rabid, smelly dogs.
I suggest you read this article, and chill out.
http://www.forbes.com/home_europe/2003/12/16/cx_dl_1216linux.html
Hi
whats your point about posting that article in a fedora test release comment discussion. i believe anyone could have done better than that.
be relevant
jess
“If your going to bleeding edge, then let’s start using the right drivers for the job. If SUSE, Lindows and Xandros can do this, then it time for Fedora to step up.”
Have you ever heard something about licenses ? Redhat/fedora doesn’t even include a mp3 decoder for that reason. The Nvidia driver is not opensource and thus it is not included.
I also tried out Fedora Core 2 (really 1.90) over the weekend. Here’s what I think:
– KDE 3.2 rocks. No, seriously. Big time. This is easier to use than Windows. Most of my test subjects liked Keramik over WinXP/Luna. (Personally I like Plastik better.) Bluecurve was rendered “dull” (they are a couple of my customers, typical office workers).
– Notably missing are KDE/GNOME enhancements to Mozilla and OpenOffice.
– Linux 2.6 is an improvement even in the desktop space, as it has noticeably less disturbing ‘lags’.
– Evolution crashes in a multitude of ways.
– FC2 is unstable. Not ready for use yet. It messes up some files. The wireless setup had trouble. I think Fedora should give up their Red Hat-centric setup programs and roll them into GNOME/KDE instead. Fedora boots very slowly. It has problems autodetecting more than one NIC.
Conclusion: A fine heir to Red Hat. Use if you like Bluecurve, but wait for it to mature first. If you want Linux on the desktop, go KDE 3.2.
Bitterman wrote:
Oh my god its soooo hard what will the users do! *cry*
———-
Please don’t insult the newbies in this forum. Of course it’s easy when you now what to do!
It really isn’t that intuitive to have to type long commands and edit configs. It isn’t obvious how to do it. It is something you will have to learn.
You bring up a good point. The config of system related stuff. Linux does not have a coherent native OSS GUI for that purpose. Something similar to YaST (or the Control Panel in W2K) would be great. But it’s an area that belongs nowhere and everywhere which is probably why none exist. Webmin is another one. But it is non native allthough excellent. But if someone started this project what would Redhat and SuSE then compete on on the desktop?
Another thing is that all such config should be in a database – preferable a little more approachable than the Windows registry if not as easy as editing a text file.
I’m not insulting newbies, I have more faith in them than you do apparently. Microsoft got sued for bundling sun and will not bundle it with longhorn, will Newbies not be able to install java? They seem to find winamp, nero, zonealarm and flash just fine. So again. Newbies are more than capible of fixing problems. This is just an inconvience not a show stopper. Just like on windows they have a problem they ask thier friend who knows this stuff. Or read how to fix it depending on the individual.
if a newbie can not download a .conf file, copy it over the old one, and paste two commands. They are in for MUCH bigger problems than yum install java. There are distro’s out there for people like that, Fedora is directed at a different group, people who enjoy playing with linux not people who think iexplorer is the internet. How come Debian doesn’t get flamed for this stuff? It has the same ‘free over closed’ law.
sorry, but are people thick or what? how many frickin’ times does the NO non gpl software (nvidia, java, etc) issue have to be explained! they are not allowed to do it! it has been written a million times!
“The end user may not like it, but including these compromises the freedom of said user. As GNU/Linux becomes the dominant platform and suitable free alternatives become available, the user will appreciate their freedom.”
That’s really funny. Debian includes many (Xine and Mplayer) of these things and it is free as the air we breath. This only demonstrates that Fedora IS NOT really free. It is merely a alpha test for Red Hat Enterprise. Even the stable release is buggy. This is because you will never use an actual “final” release unless you shellout a 100 bucks to RedHat. They are smart to dupe the open source community in programming their commercial app for them. That way they sit back and get fat without working. Microsoft is even more straight forward about thier product than this. These items are not included because RedHat Inc. doesn’t want to be sued by the motion picture industry and the RIAA. You guys that want freedom should migrate to Debian or Gentoo.
“How come Debian doesn’t get flamed for this stuff? It has the same ‘free over closed’ law.”
The Non-Free section is available for software that doesn’t meet the Debian Free Software Guidelines (http://www.debian.org/social_contract.html). The only prerequisite for software in there is that it be legally distributable by Debian in the first place. Even when this isn’t the case, this can often be worked around by providing an installer package that downloads the software from the vendor’s own site (the flashplugin-nonfree package works this way).
[Note: unfortunately, the BlackDown JRE can’t be distributed even in Non-Free due to Sun’s non-compete clause (“you do not distribute additional software intended to replace any component(s) of the Software”) which Debian violates by distributing Kaffe.]
Debian also has a much saner (IMO) patents policy, namely that as a rule they’ll only worry about patents that are being actively enforced. Thus, mp3 players and mono (to name but two examples) can be found in Debian but not in Fedora.
I agree with you that it’s not a terribly big deal for users to download the affected packages from third-party repositories as opposed to Fedora itself, but it’s still inconvenient. I think Debian’s better in this regard.
“What a bunch of friendly Linux users. I thought maybe the reputation given to them was somehow biased. But, complain about one (valid) problem, and they attack like rabid, smelly dogs.”
This only makes us stronger. Out of conflict comes revolution.
“Microsoft got sued for bundling sun”
Microsoft got sued for missapropriating Java, someone else’s property. Ever hear of Visual Java…embrace and extend. Sun sued them to make them include the proper version.
I’m confused…Please connect the dots:
“KDE 3.2 is noticably faster than earlier versions and should convert some Gnome users like myself who have appeciated the more polished feel of Gnome, (that’s my 2 cents anyway.)”
Polished and speed?
It amazes me that when an author just wants to share his/her experience with a release and asks for others to contribute their opinion based on they experience with the release, we end up with flame-wars over licensing.
As for licensing, it simply is a choice by a company to include or not include a piece of software. Gentoo, Debian, SuSe and many others give their software away but include what I feel is software needed for this distribution to become mainstream on the desktop. Is it right? Don’t know. But according to the people and companies we service, unless it become simpler to update, contains the software people need and use everyday, and is user-friendly and stable, it won’t get adapted by the mainstream user.
Ever hear of Visual Java…embrace and extend.
Not to nitpick, but the product was actually called Visual J++.
Otherwise what you said was correct.
My fedora 2 test installation did’nt go anywhere.
BT with bittorrent screwed up completely. The BT tracker did’nt seem to like my port @6882 instead of 6881, and upload were’nt good as a result. After 3 days of downloading the files wemt 300% the release size. Still the fsck-up tracker still didn’t want to let me go, and the downaload never finish. I designed to plug the plug. FTP from a jap mirror was horrorbily slow. I finally go with kernel.org mirror and get the image.
I assembled an old computer for testing fedora 2. Booting from cd seemed fine at the besigning. As usual anacorda showed up and asked for GUI install or text mode install. After I choosen GUI mode kernel loaded, then the initrd. Doh! system went reboot. I suspected that might be my old HDD that was faulty. A few more reconfigurations gave the same result.
I took the CD out, read the release issues on it on my winblows box, and found that this test release only supports i686 or later…….. I am completely fsck with my old k6-2 shitbox then.
Some people use the http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/apt/“>DAG which includes Redhat/Fedora updates and the Freshrpms repository.
I’ve personally used it and have been quite satisfied with it.
Have you noticed that most (not all, but most) of the distributions that include things like the Nvidia drivers “out of the box” are distros that you have to pay for? Mandrake even includes this stuff, but only in their boxed sets…if you download the ISO’s then you have to look for RPMs.
Now, back to Fedora. I think I may just give FC2 a try on one of my boxes when it’s final, but my home machine is going to stay Debian for a while. I’m also looking forward to trying out Mandrake 10. Kernel 2.6.x has so far been pretty good to me: it’s nice and fast, and you no longer need to use ide-scsi emulation for cd burning (which I always thought was an ugly hack). KDE 3.2 is VERY nice (I wish Debian would release some packages for Sid and get it over with, already!), and I would like to give Gnome 2.6 a try; I’ve heard about Nautilus’ new layout, but I haven’t seen it in action.
As far as being buggy is concerned, well, it’s a test release. If you are having trouble with bugs, then by all means create a detailed bug report and submit it; that’s what this release is for (well, that and keeping people interested).
Debian also has a much saner (IMO) patents policy, namely that as a rule they’ll only worry about patents that are being actively enforced. Thus, mp3 players and mono (to name but two examples) can be found in Debian but not in Fedora.
This might be ‘saner’ for Debian but Red Hat has millions in the bank and that makes them a target for the gif, mp3, sco, and stories like this:
In August, Microsoft lost a patent infringement lawsuit filed by Eolas Technologies Inc., a spinoff of the University of California. The jury in the case decided that Microsoft’s support for ActiveX controls, plug-ins and Java applets in its Internet Explorer browser infringes on United States Patent 5,838,906, owned by the University of California and licensed to Eolas in 1994. Microsoft was ordered to pay $521 million to Eolas and the University and also change the way Internet Explorer works. The software giant is appealing.
Shit happens and Red Hat is watching where they step since they are out front for linux, If you could sue any distro, which would you pick? The one with $500,000,000 and is hit by US patents. or the one based in the EU that has yet to profit?
I want Red Hat to be around for a while they have proved they act honorably for a company with a decent foothold in a market. If I’m going to pay money for linux I want it to be someone who releases ALL software they develop under the GPL when they buy out companys like red hat did sistina they release that propriatry code as GPL, They allow easy forks (SRPMs) of thier distro (whitebox,mandrake, etc) So a monopoly is out of the question. If they ever pulled any crap people will just fork or switch there is no worry about investing time/money in them you will always have a product no matter what they do since you pay for ALL the code they write.
crap i’m late for work. have a good day.
A very common problem with the sound is that ALSA defaults everything to 0 volume. Perhaps you tried that, but it’s definitely a gotcha.
>1) Get rid of Up-to-date/Yum and use something like
>Apt/Synaptic. Out of the distros I’ve used, apt/synaptic
>has been the most reliable for an RPM-based distro. The
>first thing many of us who use Fedora/Red Hat do is go to
>freshrpms.net, download apt & synaptic and use it to tune
>our distro the way we want. Up-to-date freezes consistantly
>and causes me to rerun it many times to get updates, even >
>in Core 1.
Very much agreed. yum/up2date is annoying. I’d advocate RedCarpet.
>2)Let’s start including a good media player like xine or
mplayer.
Patent issues, atleast in the US, and RedHat is based there.
>3)Java with browser plugin preconfigured would be great.
Fedora is an OpenSource distro, built on OpenSource components
the Java runtime doesn’t fit into that, while I’d also like to see it, it won’t happen.
>4)The common browser plugins like flash, java and >mplayer/xine for media.
See 2 and 3.
>5)Gimp 1.3 DE
Beats me why it isn’t included.. its beta though.
>6)MySQL 4 and MySQL CC
Horrible license issues.(it’s not the MySQL issues, it’s
other packages that links with mysql libraries. Search the fedora-devel list.. ) Bah, people should use PostgreSQL anyway, they don’t know what they’re missing
>7)Native ATI and Nvidia drivers for X preconfigured.
See 3.
“This might be ‘saner’ for Debian but Red Hat has millions in the bank and that makes them a target for the gif, mp3, sco, and stories like this”
Your chosen example (Eolas versus Microsoft) actually undermines your argument rather than backing it up.
The Eolas patent came out of nowhere; Microsoft knew nothing about it until they were being sued over it. There is no similarity between this and RedHat’s pre-emptively dropping software they *already* know to be patent-encumbered. Their actions in no way lessen the likelihood of their being torpedoed by an unknown submarine patent ala Eolas.
“If you could sue any distro, which would you pick? The one with $500,000,000 and is hit by US patents. or the one based in the EU that has yet to profit?”
Logical disconnect here. “Yet to profit” != “has no money”. For instance, SuSE is owned by Novell, who have a revenue of around $1,000,000,000 dollars a year (http://www.novell.com/offices/americas/canada/pressroom/q3_2003_res…). They’re a far juicier plum than RedHat, and yet Fraunhofer hasn’t sued them.
Besides, which EU-based distribution are you referring to? It can’t be SuSE, since it’s now just a subsidiary of Novell, an American company. The only other one that comes to mind is Mandrake, and they’re already profitable (http://mozillaquest.com/Linux_News04/Mandrake_Profit_Story01.html).
As for refusing to accept Mono on grounds of patent fears, I fail to see how they can hold this view whilst continuing to distribute Wine.
“If I’m going to pay money for linux I want it to be someone who releases ALL software they develop under the GPL”
Mandrake does this, too (http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/flicensing.php3).
Whilst I disagree with pretty much all of the rationale you posted above, I *do* agree that it’s their right to decide how cagey they want to be around legal issues. I personally think they’re being over paranoid, but then, I’m not the one potentially opening myself up for a lawsuit.
Nonetheless, the main thrust of my last post still stands: that they’re disadvantaging both themselves and their users by following this path. It’s not a big deal, but it’s still an inconvenience particular only to their distro.
the proprietary drivers from ati and nvidia will not ever
be part of fedora core. Fedora Core is completely open-source.
That means you will never see nvidia proprietary drivers
you will not see sun’s binary only java implementation
you will not see macromedia’s flash plugin
in fedora core…..not unless they open source these things.
Please if you are going to comment on the absent of these sorts of things from the distro…please make sure you take the time to comment on the fact that Fedora Core’s objectives is to create a COMPLETELY open source operating system. Whether you value that as the primary objective of Fedora Core or not, is another debate…but its worth debating. It is important for everyone to understand that Fedora Core is going to be completely open source (and only include open source software Red Hat can legally distribute inside the United States without running afoul of the DMCA or software patents).
If you read the fedora.redhat.com
website, and list of objectives in the about section.
http://fedora.redhat.com/about/objectives.html
you will see that Fedora Core makes being open source the #2 objective…if you are going to ask for proprietary pieces of technology be included, please inform the readers about the fedora objectives, so each person can evaulate for themselves if the effort to create a complete open source solution is worth the extra hassle.
Forget for just a minute that things like Sun’s java and Macromedia’s flash plugin have licenses that do not allow for redistribution by 3rd parties….and as far as anyone can tell Java and Macromedia really aren’t interested in giving permission to the Fedora Core community repackage things to be mirrored widely. Warren Togami, has somehow convinced Macromedia to allow him to repackage and distribute the flash plugin, but you and I and everyone else are not allow to mirror the packages, becuase Macromedia will not allow that…not without special permission.
http://macromedia.mplug.org/ :
“Macromedia’s EULA forbids repackaging and/or redistribution of their software so please do not mirror this repository. Please point your apt-get or urpmi to one of these official
mirrors of this site, as they will be permanent.”
And let’s be honest about what the extra hassle actually means. It means going to some place like rpm.livna.org or macromedia.mplug.org or freshrpms.net and downloading the proprietary add-ons that you want AFTER a base install. Is that really too much to ask? Is it really too much to ask considering that Fedora Core is an attempting to create a completely open source general purpose operating system?
Let me answer that for you…no. No it’s not too much hassle…if you value open source, beyond its ‘free as in beer’ aspect.
And FYI, completely open source implementation of java is not that far away….gcc cvs is a strange magical land.
http://sources.redhat.com/rhug/
http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/gcjwebplugin/
From what I’ve gleaned from the discussion, Red Hat will not distribute any package that does not provide source code under a GPL-compatible license and may have any possible patent infringement issues. This just makes sense. They are probably the most highly visible champion of the open source model. They just want to reduce their exposure exposure to lawsuits, frivolous or otherwise.
In the case of proprietary graphics drivers, distros that are targeted at non-technical users can redistribute, at least the nvidia drivers. From nvidias license:
2.1.2 Linux Exception. Notwithstanding the foregoing terms of Section 2.1.1, SOFTWARE designed exclusively for use on the Linux operating system may be copied and redistributed, provided that the binary files thereof are not modified in any way (except for unzipping of compressed files).
So there you go. It’s all a matter of Red Hat’s political stance and a little pragmatism. If this doesn’t fit your willingness or ability to do it yourself, there are other distros out there, as others have pointed out. I think it’s safe to say that you will never see ati or nvidia drivers in a Red Hat/Fedora distro. Unless Red Hat could buy one of them and open source the chip design. A chip design is software, isn’t it?
“Red Hat will not distribute any package that does not provide source code under a GPL-compatible license”
The license doesn’t have to be GPL-compatible, merely OSI-approved (http://opensource.org/licenses/).
On some of the posts (and on the review) , people have complained about some bugs .. Have you guys ever thought about doing an update? Two days after the release of FC2t1 (when I installed it here) , I had to download about 200 updated rpms … most of the bugs mentioned here are fixed on the very first errata packages.. if it’s not fixed , fill a bug report on https://bugzilla.redhat.com . I’ve filled a bug there and the fix is already prepared and will be tested on the next test release (it was a anaconda related request for enhancement — alsa-utils not being installed when sound tools were installed)..
About yum and apt: the guys behind yum and apt are working together to them together. This basically means working on a new metadata standard (already defined) and making tests. Soon , all yum repositories will be apt-compatible (and vice-versa). So , you’ll be free to choose what tool to use. It’s only a matter of time…
Well, the bad news for those about the new Nautilus is that the awful rumors are true. The “opening-in-a-new-window” and lack of toolbar controls is entirely intended, and the maintainers of the project intend to force users in this new “spatial nautilus” direction by not giving them a visible option to change it. True, “Browse this folder” will bring back the old interface, but is it so hard to put this in Preferences, seeing as how EVERY SINGLE NAUTILUS USER up til now expects this behavior? I want to click once on a folder to browse it, not right-click as an extra step every single time.
Check out the discussion on fedora-test-list, where Alexander (apologies for misspelling) makes a rather stubborn and defiant case for his new spatial version, and intentions of forcing users to use this over (for some) the preferred older style.
And what a disaster the new GTKFileChooser is! An improvement is desperately needed, but an improvement this is not. Eugenia has displayed some prototypes of her own that I pray are taken into deep consideration.
I came back to Gnome with 2.0, but am horrified with what’s going on. Ximian, save us! Otherwise, I may have to take a hard look at KDE 3.2.
Hi
:
I came back to Gnome with 2.0, but am horrified with what’s going on. Ximian, save us! Otherwise, I may have to take a hard look at KDE 3.2.
:
Why dont you dont that rightaway then
Rahul
Please do some research before you post articles that are supposed to be read by others than yourself.
You list a lot of components you want included in the distro, do some reading about why these aren’t included. Its not because the makers of Fedora love to make life difficult for its users you know.
Hey guys, can anyone tell me why Gnome is so awful in the new release? I have a business thecybersource.com and we heavily favor gnome with our pcs. I haven’t tried the new Fedora test but i work on Core1, and Gnome seems fine. From what I’ve always gathered, heavy Linux user prefer Gnome, as I do, as it is cleaner and slicker looking, IMHO. Can you guys E-mail me with what’s so wrong about the new Gnome, and why you like KDE so much? Thanks