From the way it is discussed on the site, it seems like the fedora project
will be one constant beta test for Redhat to decide what to put into there enterprise edition. This does not seem to be a bad idea for them but for users that were using Redhat 7.3, 8.0, or even 9 will not be able to be sure that it is stable enough to run in production.. This seems like Redhat just lost there ownership of the project enough that it will never be the good product that we have all come to love. I hope I am wrong because I love what Redhat started to do with 8 and 9. This was a very big disappointment for me.
On Oct 8, 2003, David.Grudek@anixter.com wrote:
From the way it is discussed on the site, it seems like the fedora project will be one constant beta test for Redhat to decide what to put into there enterprise edition.
Where was it that you got this impression? There will be both stable and test releases of Fedora Core, just like there used to be both stable and beta releases of Red Hat Linux. If there's any point of the site that misled you, please file a bug report in bugzilla so that others don't fall prey of the same wrong impression.
On Wed, 2003-10-08 at 17:46, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
On Oct 8, 2003, David.Grudek@anixter.com wrote:
From the way it is discussed on the site, it seems like the fedora project will be one constant beta test for Redhat to decide what to put into there enterprise edition.
Where was it that you got this impression? There will be both stable and test releases of Fedora Core, just like there used to be both stable and beta releases of Red Hat Linux. If there's any point of the site that misled you, please file a bug report in bugzilla so that others don't fall prey of the same wrong impression.
Seems like this is the line that may cause that impression:
"It is also a proving ground for new technology that may eventually make its way into Red Hat products. It is not a supported product of Red Hat, Inc."
--jesse
On Wed, 2003-10-08 at 21:02, Jesse wrote:
Seems like this is the line that may cause that impression:
"It is also a proving ground for new technology that may eventually make its way into Red Hat products. It is not a supported product of Red Hat, Inc."
What that means is that RHEL is 2x-3x slower to release than RHL7/8/9 were, rather than that Fedora Core is faster. I do see that it's kind of a misleading sentence.
Havoc
On Wed, 8 Oct 2003, Jesse wrote:
From the way it is discussed on the site, it seems like the fedora project will be one constant beta test for Redhat to decide what to put into there enterprise edition.
Where was it that you got this impression? There will be both stable and test releases of Fedora Core, just like there used to be both stable and beta releases of Red Hat Linux. If there's any point of the site that misled you, please file a bug report in bugzilla so that others don't fall prey of the same wrong impression.
Seems like this is the line that may cause that impression:
"It is also a proving ground for new technology that may eventually make its way into Red Hat products.
Which is no different from Red Hat Linux. Red Hat Linux was itself a proving ground for new technology which later got included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Fedora is no different in this regard. Some examples of this include major new releases of core portions of the OS such as the kernel, glibc, XFree86, GNOME, KDE, and individual features such as NPTL, exec-shield, LVM, ext3, and many many other features.
New technology will continue to be included in the base operating system releases used by the community, as that is the best way to reach the largest number of people to test the software and report bugs so they can be fixed. Wether it is "Red Hat Linux" or "Fedora Core" doesn't really matter much, as all that has changed in this sense is the name (as far as new features (some possibly experimental) go).
It is not a supported product of Red Hat, Inc."
Correct, it's not supported in the sense you can pick up the telephone and call Red Hat, and pay for a telephone/web/etc. support contract for the OS. It is supported in the sense that users can report bugs in bugzilla, and they will be investigated to be fixed in future OS releases, or in erratum releases as deemed appropriate.
So there are definitely some changes in the way the OS is developed, and supported, but they are not massive changes in the way things are done, nor are they changes that are going to throw quality out the window and leave users with a permanent beta-test OS. Far from it.
In my personal opinion, I fully expect to see our Fedora Core releases be as high if not higher quality as Red Hat Linux was. It has the same Red Hat people working on it as it always has afterall, only now we're working more closely with the community to improve the OS all that much more. And with the community participating in the future, both with suggestions for improvement, as well as making some of those improvements and contributing them, and once the infrastructure is in place to allow externally maintained packages, I believe that a high quality OS will not only continue to be produced, but it will be higher quality as the more skilled people get involved with the project.
I also look forward to seeing things like Fedora/AMD64 and Fedora/Alpha ports be available, and both several Red Hat employees, as well as many in the community would like to see this occur too. While nothing official has happened yet WRT such, there are definitely enough people interested that it's only a matter of time until everything is in place to make it a reality.
Hello,
I also look forward to seeing things like Fedora/AMD64 and Fedora/Alpha ports be available, and both several Red Hat employees, as well as many in the community would like to see this occur too. While nothing official has happened yet WRT such, there are definitely enough people interested that it's only a matter of time until everything is in place to make it a reality.
While on the topic of different platforms do you see a port to SPARC as well ? Or will it be something that Aurora will do ...
Cheers,
Aly.
On Thu, 2003-10-09 at 09:58, Aly Dharshi wrote:
While on the topic of different platforms do you see a port to SPARC as well ? Or will it be something that Aurora will do ...
Aurora will more than likely fill in the void here. Now, the specifics of that are quite up in the air (like most of Fedora) at the moment.
~spot --- Tom "spot" Callaway <tcallawa(a)redhat*com> LCA, RHCE Red Hat Sales Engineer || Aurora SPARC Linux Project Leader
"The author's mathematical treatment of the conception of purpose is novel and highly ingenious, but heretical and, so far as the present social order is concerned, dangerous and potentially subversive. Not to be published." -- Aldous Huxley
On Thu, 2003-10-09 at 00:54, Mike A. Harris wrote:
In my personal opinion, I fully expect to see our Fedora Core releases be as high if not higher quality as Red Hat Linux was. It has the same Red Hat people working on it as it always has afterall, only now we're working more closely with the community to improve the OS all that much more. And with the community participating in the future, both with suggestions for improvement, as well as making some of those improvements and contributing them, and once the infrastructure is in place to allow externally maintained packages, I believe that a high quality OS will not only continue to be produced, but it will be higher quality as the more skilled people get involved with the project.
Back in the spring, I raised a big stink (along with a few others) about what Red Hat was doing with their product strategy. Not only that, but it felt to me like the quality of the product was slipping. So, after playing around with Gentoo and Debian, I settled down with SuSE 8.2. And it's been great; I am very happy with it. On the other hand, their user community is BORING. This sort of post would be unwelcome on their list. (It's "advocacy," by their definition, and that is seriously frowned upon.) So their (high-volume) list ends up being nothing but a litany of easy questions on how to do things. I guess that's fine, but it does nothing for those of us who know how to use Google, and who aren't afraid of reading a HOWTO.
So I subscribed to this list to see what was happening in the Red Hat world again. I must confess that even after my bad attitude as to what happened (with the change of direction for RHL), I find myself intrigued with Fedora. I think it could be great, and fix the problems that I felt the product had.
1) Community influence. The community on the Red Hat lists are the best I've seen. There is actual discussion about the issues, and Red Hat employees aren't afraid to jump into the fray. (SuSE has an official "liason" to the list. I assume this because he's the only one who posts.) The officially-stated policy that Fedora's direction will be guided by this community is a HUGE. DEAL. At least to me. You put this mindshare (Red Hat is still always at the top of everyone's supported list) and combine it with the crack shots that hang around here (or at least used to), and you've got a winner. I submitted a bug on 9 that still isn't fixed, but I've always felt like it would be a fairly simple fix if there were just enough hands to get around to it.
2) Stable and Test versions. I just heard about this now, on this thread, and I suspected that this would happen when I first heard about the project. I think this needs to happen, like in the Debian world. (I hear that Gentoo has picked up this concept too.) Having a version for the leading edge, and one for the bleeding edge would go a long way to satisfying the majority of users of Linux. I mean, you're not going to pick up the Debian users. If they're happy running software that's 2-3 years behind in features (though, admittedly, not in securty fixes), then that's fine. But a featureful distro that can be run "safely" or "experimentally" -- directed primary from a community -- without needing to be compiled -- would satisfy a lot of the Gentoo people. I went a couple rounds with (I think) Mike about optimization improvements, and he was right. After I setup prelinking on my RHL9 system, I did indeed see a speedup, and the subjective differences between my "optimized" Gentoo setup and RHL9 were minimal, if any. I think people are waking up to the fact that it's just not worth the time and hassle to compile your own system from source. (Though I can see a real use for it on old hardware, Debian's got that handled pretty well.)
Anyway, just a couple thoughts on where this is going. I am very intrigued... dare I say excisted?... about this recent announcement. I downloaded severn in order to try out on a test box (upon which I will try to run Freevo), but I very much look forward to Red Hat's transition to put the majority of the ownership and direction in the hands of the community. Once it hits full release, I will very likely drop it in alongside my preordered SuSE 9, and do another runoff.
Bottom line? I just wanted to say that these moves may open "Red Hat" Linux back up to a portion of the community that had moved away, but Red Hat has to make good on the idea of true community involvement in the distro's direction.
Regards, dk
On Wed, 8 Oct 2003, Jesse wrote:
On Wed, 2003-10-08 at 17:46, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
On Oct 8, 2003, David.Grudek@anixter.com wrote:
From the way it is discussed on the site, it seems like the fedora project will be one constant beta test for Redhat to decide what to put into there enterprise edition.
Where was it that you got this impression? There will be both stable and test releases of Fedora Core, just like there used to be both stable and beta releases of Red Hat Linux. If there's any point of the site that misled you, please file a bug report in bugzilla so that others don't fall prey of the same wrong impression.
Seems like this is the line that may cause that impression:
"It is also a proving ground for new technology that may eventually make its way into Red Hat products. It is not a supported product of Red Hat, Inc."
--jesse
there's also the fact that bugzilla allows you to submit bugs only against "fedora core", not "fedora core test". granted, at the moment, there *is* only one release of fedora, but technically, that's a test version so, strictly speaking, bugzilla doesn't even have a category for the current version.
someone should really clarify this.
rday
On Thu, Oct 09, 2003 at 03:21:13AM -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
there's also the fact that bugzilla allows you to submit bugs only against "fedora core", not "fedora core test". granted, at the moment, there *is* only one release of fedora, but technically, that's a test version so, strictly speaking, bugzilla doesn't even have a category for the current version.
someone should really clarify this.
This isn't true at all . . . quoted from the text describing the "Fedora Core" product:
"Fedora Core - Bugs related to the Core components of the Fedora Product distribution. If reporting against a 'test release' then please choose 'test1' as the version. If reporting against a stable release then choose the release number you are using as the version."
We're keeping all of the stuff grouped under the same product, as that will make it far easier for querying bugs and the like, and it's easier to understand, from the user prospective, where bugs should go.
- jkt
On Thu, 9 Oct 2003, Jay Turner wrote:
On Thu, Oct 09, 2003 at 03:21:13AM -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
there's also the fact that bugzilla allows you to submit bugs only against "fedora core", not "fedora core test". granted, at the moment, there *is* only one release of fedora, but technically, that's a test version so, strictly speaking, bugzilla doesn't even have a category for the current version.
someone should really clarify this.
This isn't true at all . . . quoted from the text describing the "Fedora Core" product:
"Fedora Core - Bugs related to the Core components of the Fedora Product distribution. If reporting against a 'test release' then please choose 'test1' as the version. If reporting against a stable release then choose the release number you are using as the version."
you're right, mea culpa. although (just to be doggedly difficult), there might be some confusion in that this would have been severn test 2, while that page refers to fedora core test 1. just more potential for confusion. all in all, it might have been easier had this changeover not been done in the middle of a beta test cycle. oh well.
rday
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On Thu, 9 Oct 2003 03:21:13 -0400 (EDT), Robert P. J. Day wrote:
there's also the fact that bugzilla allows you to submit bugs only against "fedora core", not "fedora core test". there *is* only one release of fedora, but technically, that's a test version so, strictly speaking, bugzilla doesn't even have a category for the current version.
There's:
Fedora Core => test1 => test2
where "test1" and "test2" are in the version field.
- -- Michael, who doesn't reply to top posts and complete quotes anymore.
Robert P. J. Day said:
there's also the fact that bugzilla allows you to submit bugs only against "fedora core", not "fedora core test". granted, at the moment, there *is* only one release of fedora, but technically, that's a test version so, strictly speaking, bugzilla doesn't even have a category for the current version.
someone should really clarify this.
rday
What is there to clarify? Product: Fedora Core Version: Test1 or Test2.
What version of Fedora Core is not represented?
On Wed, 8 Oct 2003 David.Grudek@anixter.com wrote:
From the way it is discussed on the site, it seems like the fedora project will be one constant beta test for Redhat to decide what to put into there enterprise edition. This does not seem to be a bad idea for them but for users that were using Redhat 7.3, 8.0, or even 9 will not be able to be sure that it is stable enough to run in production.. This seems like Redhat just lost there ownership of the project enough that it will never be the good product that we have all come to love. I hope I am wrong because I love what Redhat started to do with 8 and 9. This was a very big disappointment for me.
Considering the fact that every single package in rawhide is currently maintained by Red Hat employees, and we are diligently working every day to improve the Fedora Core release and fix as many bugs as possible, I'm not sure exactly how "Redhat just lost there ownership of the project" as you state above. While we have opened up the project to the community, the infrastructure is not yet in place to allow external developers to maintain or contribute packages, and so for all intents and purposes, Fedora Core 1, is very much a distribution developed by Red Hat not much differently than Red Hat Linux 9, or Red Hat Linux 8.0, 7.x, etc.
What has changed, is our plans for the future. We just have not implemented the ability yet for people to get more directly involved. So contrary to what some people out there think, Fedora Core 1, is not "developed by the community" with zero Red Hat involvement. In fact, the opposite is closer to the truth, it is so far developed by Red Hat as far as package maintenance, distribution integration and testing, release engineering, etc. are concerned, however some of the development has been "influenced" by the community of users interested in the project and on these lists, because we are all now communicating much more closely together in these open forums.
We hope to see more and more people become interested in communicating ideas, providing feedback, suggestions, improvements, patches, etc. and as that happens, the "development community" will increase in size and function. Until we have the necessary infrastructure in place to allow external developers and contributors to directly contribute and/or maintain packages however, Red Hat engineers are currently maintaining everything still, and will be until the necessary infrastructure is in place.
Once the infrastructure is in place, it wont be a freeforall however for totally random people to stuff totally random packages into the distribution. The Fedora website contains documentaiton on how the project will be ran, and what things Red Hat retains control over under the Fedora project.
The Fedora project is very much not a continuous beta test, and in a small way, as a contributor to this project, I'm kindof offended that some people seem to think it is such.
In a way, "Rawhide" is somewhat of a continuous beta test, but in the sense of individual packages, and not a timestamped collection of an entire distribution of packages. But "Rawhide" is not "Fedora Core 1" (the final OS) any more than Rawhide was "Red Hat Linux 9".
Some people in the community seem to be quite confused it seems. Where that confusion stems from, I'm not sure, however I would definitely like to clarify anything if possible.
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Alexandre Oliva -
Aly Dharshi -
David Krider -
David.Grudekï¼ anixter.com -
Havoc Pennington -
Jay Turner -
Jesse -
Michael Schwendt -
Mike A. Harris -
Robert P. J. Day -
Tom Callaway -
William Hooper