On Wed, 2004-11-24 at 23:01, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
> Despite the name change and endless commentary, there is a 1:1
> correspondence from Fedora Core (FC) to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL),
> just like there was with Red Hat Linux (RHL) before the name change.
> ... cut ...
> I see cAos uses YUM (like Fedora) for community distribution, so does
> it also leverage YUM?
I'm glad I took the time to look more into cAos.
I heard many people talk about CentOS before.
I've been disappointed with the turn-around time of White Box. Which
leads me back into the viewpoint that sticking with Fedora is just
better if you want a community distributed version. Michael Tiemman's
recent interview on LinuxQuestions (was it?) had answers that I was
expecting. In a nutshell, Tiemman stated everything I had believed, and
others I've worked with saw as well -- especially those of us who do
have Oracle, PeopleSoft and other applications running on Linux. Fedora
is the distribution for users of Red Hat that do not need SLAs (which
RHL didn't offer before it either -- with exception of 6.2"E"), because
it still offers all the work of Red Hat in far better turn around time
than others who rebuilt their own. I'll close on that point again at
the end of this e-mail.
For now, I want to focus on cAos.
Beyond CentOS being a rebuilt RHEL, it appears that cAos Linux is just a
lighter spin of Fedora -- both Core (cAos Core) and Extras (cAos Ext).
The packages are the same, and when they are not, "caos" is appended in
the version. I need to become more familiar on what they are offering
before I comment more. I'm sure they are offering some value, and that
only benefits the community as a whole.
Because cAos is not the only one doing this.
Cobind ( http://www.cobind.org ) is another Fedora off-shoot that
actually predates the name change, but worked out perfectly for it.
They are really focusing on the desktop. In fact, after standardizing
on XFCE as their session, window and file manager in their Fedora Core
1-based release, Red Hat added XFCE as a standard option in Fedora Core
2. It would not surprise me if they leveraged some of the Cobind work.
I now see that Cobind has introduced a GUI for YUM (
http://cobind.com/yumgui.html ), and it works on all Red Hat CL3/4
distros (Red Hat Linux 9, Fedora Core 1, 2, 3, ec...). It's written in
Python, so you know Red Hat's going to love that. If it's Newt
library-based, then that means it can leverage both console (slang) and
GUI (GTK+) frameworks. Red Hat and the Fedora teams are hard at work on
an YUM unified set of installer (YUM-based Anaconda) and run-time
tools. So it wouldn't surprise me if Cobind's copyright is all over it
at points.
The great thing about Fedora is the lack of trademark issues. No other,
major commercial Linux vendor will dare allow free redistribution of
their trademark in a modified distro. Smaller ones that currently do
will run into the same issues Red Hat did if they get bigger. Red Hat
never really had a problem with Cheapbytes.COM or anyone else verbatim
redistributing copies, but did with commercial OEMs like Sun who left
the Red Hat trademarks and support references wholly intact in their
modified variants (without any license at the time).
Failure to enforce massive distribution of major variants, Sun's in
particular, was not something the USPTO was not siding with Red Hat on.
Almost everything else about Fedora was already "set" the second Red Hat
started to offer in the "Enterprise" Linux years before Fedora.
So it's good to see people leveraging the Fedora model. Why would I say
this? There are many reasons, but one big one.
Red Hat won't veer from the "bloat" of Fedora Core. They have
repeatedly stated it isn't up for discussion because it is the direct
upgrade path from Red Hat Linux (right down to the same model and Red
Hat investment). So this leaves a lot of room for distros like Cobind,
cAos Linux and the like. And the creation of Fedora lets them leverage
Red Hat's work, without any trademark issues in cAos Linux, which will
prevent the "forks" that Red Hat Linux had prior.
So I'm definitely going to explore cAos more. Especially as YUM becomes
not only the preferred distribution model, but as it is how you install
and upgrade Fedora and Fedora-offshoots as well. I mean, at what point
do Fedora-offshoots just leverage the Red Hat repositories after their
few, modified packages? That certainly seems to be what many are moving
too.
In any case, we all win. With Fedora, "forks" will be less. Although
Red Hat was already trying to do this the second they introduced
Advanced Server 2.1, the entire strategy came to full completion in 2003
with Fedora -- including that nasty trademark issue that Red Hat kept
acting like didn't existed until the USPTO finally forced the issue.
But back to CentOS.
I'll have to track how CentOS is on the turn-around compared to RHEL.
So far, White Box has disappointed. But it's not their fault. I think
Tiemman's commentary hit the nail on the head. RHEL isn't for community
distribution, it's designed specifically for what I call the "shrink
wrapped mindset." That same mindset at those customers who said Red Hat
Linux 6.2"E" = bad, SuSE Enterprise Linux Server = good, which resulted
in Red Hat introducing Enterprise Server 2.1 (based on RHL 7.1), and the
subsequent Enterprise Linux line.
-- Bryan J. Smith b.j.smith@ieee.org -------------------------------------------------------------------- Subtotal Cost of Ownership (SCO) for Windows being less than Linux Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) assumes experts for the former, costly retraining for the latter, omitted "software assurance" costs in compatible desktop OS/apps for the former, no free/legacy reuse for latter, and no basic security, patch or downtime comparison at all.----------------------------------------------------------------------- This list is provided as an unmoderated internet service by Networked Knowledge Systems (NKS). Views and opinions expressed in messages posted are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of NKS or any of its employees.
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