OT: What's the deal with Ubuntu?

[Les Mikesell]

On Fri, 2005-05-20 at 16:53, Emmanuel Seyman wrote:
> On Fri, May 20, 2005 at 12:34:38PM -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
> > 
> > Why is this question any harder to answer for fedora than for ubuntu?
> 
> Well, for one thing, Fedora started off as a 4-CD set while Ubuntu
> had the advantage of starting fresh.

Ubuntu started with debian packages - I'd argue that Fedora is a
better starting point.

> Making Fedora fit on one CD means removing packages and not everyone
> agrees on which packages should be moved to Fedora Extras.

Moving, not removing.  The idea is to re-arrange things so most
installs only need one CD, but all the other packages are still
available.  Rather than argue over what should be on that one
CD, I'd suggest that ubuntu has the right idea in making more
than one version.  You install one version if you want a 
Gnome desktop and a different CD (kbuntu) if you want KDE.  Add
a few more of these and you'd save thousands of people the trouble
of downloading and sorting through all those extra packages (that
they probably don't know anything about yet) to get a machine tuned
to do what they want.

> > And why, since it has been answered already, shouldn't approximately
> > the same answer be shared?
> 
> If you're suggesting that Fedora Core ship with everything Ubuntu
> includes and that everything else should be put in Extras, I'm not
> sure that everyone will agree.

What's called Core and what's called Extras doesn't seem to me to
map very well to the way computers are used.  Regardless of what
you put in each of these categories, you won't be able to do anything
useful without installing some things from both.  I'm suggesting
bundling things according to the planned use of the machine and
making several versions to match different uses and preferences.
That way you have a fair chance of getting exactly what you need
both on one CD and installed correctly on a machine by someone who
hasn't tried all those programs yet.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
   lesmikesell at gmail.com