Fedora Core 3 Review

[Jack Aboutboul]

Dear Carla,

I am writing to you in response to you article on Fedora Core 3 on
LinuxPlanet.  While reading your article I found a number of fallacies
an inconsistencies that may have resulted from lack of knowledge and/or
research which are just plain untrue.  I would like to provide some
insight on some of these in hope that these inconsistencies can be
corrected in the article.  I mean no harm or harsh criticism in this. I
just feel that some facts are just plain incorrect and should be
corrected. They are as follows on:

Page 1:
In your first sentence you state that Fedora is not a safe, sane
distribution and that it's not meant to be one. You also call Fedora a
playground for engineers to go nuts and try out new things.  This is
just plain wrong. Fedora's mission statement is "The goal of The Fedora
Project is to work with the Linux community to build a complete, general
purpose operating system exclusively from free software."  The
distribution is not meant as a laboratory test. It is meant to be a
proving ground for stable code that will make its way into every other
linux distro eventually.  
In fact, much of the work done on the distro is a great service to the
community since other distros wont touch code we play with for up to six
months after we do.  In addition, there is no beta or developmental code
that goes into the release.  All that cutting edge means is that it is
the latest code base off the stable trees of various projects.  Due to
these facts, the distro IS very safe and sane as attested to by the
myriad users.
You also state that users should use up2date as soon as they are done
installing.  While your intentions are good, I would like to let you
know that up2date is no longer the preferred method of obtaining and
installing updates. The new update tool is a command line application
called Yum.  Yum has been used since Core 1 and is the preferred update
application. A graphical frontend called gYum is available and
instructions on how to use it are provided by Thomas Chung on
FedoraNews.org.
The last paragraph on the page is solid except that Fedora is suitable
for both non programmers and programmers alike and includes an array of
languages and development tools to accommodate them.

Page 2:
I don't know how you are arriving at this mediacheck bug. I personally
as well as numerous other developers and users have no problems
validating their downloaded images. Users can also check their images
before burning to disc using the md5sum utility and comparing the output
to the media checksums posted on the Fedora website.

Page 3:
I would like to thank you at this point for understanding our stance on
building a distribution out of purely free software.  It is sometimes
difficult to deal with the number of users complaining about the lack of
multimedia support. However, I would like to point out that users can
use a number of Yum repositories such as rpm.livna.org and
macromedia.mplug.org to acquire and install multimedia playback
packages.  Additionally, RealPlayer can be downloaded and installed from
Real's helixcommunity.org in rpm format for an easy install which
includes firefox/mozilla plugins and integration.  For instructions on
how to use Yum repositories please see Maxwell Kanat-Alexander's faq on
FedoraFaq.org.

Page 4:
as far as the services go, they are there for a reason.  nifd and
mDNSresponder are used to detect dhcp and network settings for roaming,
wireless and dynamic clients.  I do not want to get into a whole
explanation but they do server a purpose.  As far as the nfs, netfs,
samba etc.. These packages are installed because most users deal with
heterogeneous network environments and would like to be able to use
their machines on these networks without much configuration and
confusion and need to install additional packages.  If a user is
advanced enough to know that they don't need these services we always
urge them to install using a custom installation method or kickstart.
Thank you for updating the inconsistency about alternative file systems
and our support for them.  In fact, there are a number of options
available to the user at installation time, such as the ability run
memtest86.  For a complete list of these please see the release notes
and install documentation.

Thank you for your time and I hope that you are not offended by anything
I have said.  I just feel that the article portrays the distribution in
a very negative light and as a member of the community I feel the need
to dispel the FUD that is propagated in many channels of media.
Journalism is a very dangerous profession as even a slight mistake can
often result in the gravest of consequences.  Sometimes, just a little
research prior to publication time can help trim a lot of the hedges and
bring out the truth in a topic.
If you ever have any questions about the distribution, any comments or
any facts you need rectified, please feel free to email me and I will
attempt to respond as swiftly as possible.

Thank You,
Jack Aboutboul
Fedora Community Member and
Co-director, Fedora Marketing Project