10 July 2008
Sometimes I forget that this blog is syndicated…
Posted by Christopher under: Linux & Open Source .
My last posting about my linux-hater love sparked some good comments and mails. Though of course its a bit of hot potato so I’m not _that_ surprised. I was surprised by the amount of negativity that was generated - basically poor user experiences. In the vein of current feather-ruffling, perhaps the whole marketing aspect needs a re-think. Perhaps I should just subscribe to the fedora-marketing list.
Max Spevack declared about a year ago that he wanted to make sure that Fedora was never again accused of being a beta for Red Hat. Unfortunately I’m not sure that it will ever entirely shake off this moniker. I’ve read various blog posts regarding poor Fedora 9 install experience (mine has been nothing but exemplary) however these tend towards the “My $PROPRIETARY_APP/DRIVER failed” which I really couldn’t care less about. Fedora quite rightly sticks to its guns on not kow-towing to these vendors.
I think Fedora still has an identity crisis - one that started when Fedora Legacy closed its doors. It does what I want but what does it want to be?
4 Comments so far...
nicu Says:
11 July 2008 at 6:45 am.
I don’t think *that* is Fedora’s identity crisis, the part about Legacy closing was, I think, solved quite nicely by embracing (maybe a bit later) CentOS. You’ll hear very often people in Fedora land saying: “Fedora is too bleeding edge for you, with too short release cycles? Maybe CentOS is a better option for you”. And you may hear that even from people working at Red Hat (which wasn’t happening a few years ago).
Bucky Says:
11 July 2008 at 6:33 pm.
As long as RedHat sponsors a cutting-edge distribution as well as a stable distribution, the cutting-edge one will be perceived as a beta for the stabler one. There’s no real way around that.
I’m always just a little puzzled when people compare Fedora and RHEL, and come up negative. How is Fedora’s being just THAT far away from being an Enterprise-grade environment a negative thing? How is Fedora’s having the newest software that I can reasonably expect to actually run a negative thing?
These are the reasons I run Fedora in the first place. They’ve always been true. If there’s an identity crisis among developers, let me just declare, as nothing but an end-user, that I don’t really have a problem with Fedora, its history, or its direction (though I do resolve the right to bitch like the world is ending from time to time).
Clifton Says:
11 July 2008 at 8:14 pm.
pecker
Christopher Says:
11 July 2008 at 9:14 pm.
@nicu - Yes, you’re right. Red Hat naturally seemed a little frosty towards CentOS In The Beginning but have now warmed to the extent they run fedorapeople spaces on it!
@Bucky - Personally I’d never compare RHEL and Fedora. I think my frustration at time stems from extensive changes (e.g. recent Perl upgrade) where I’d like to see it instead left to the next version to stand out as a a feature - Look, Fedora x has the latest Perl! I think the stability pendulum has swung too far towards bleeding edge stuff.
@Clifton - You are vanquished.
