MESSAGE
| DATE | 2003-10-01 |
| FROM | From: "Inker, Evan"
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] Fedora and Red Hat to Merge
|
Fedora and Red Hat to Merge
Date: Tuesday, September 30, 2003
Topic: Linux Market
Charles Curley
New project takes over maintenance and support of RH Linux products; RH
Enterprise Linux unaffected.
On Monday, September 22, Red Hat sent out an announcement about the future
direction of Red Hat Linux: it will be merged with Fedora Linux. This is not
a corporate merger; instead, it is a change in how Red Hat Linux is
maintained and supported. The result is the Fedora Project. Red Hat
Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is unaffected by this merger and will continue to be
a Red Hat product.
The main reason for the Red Hat/Fedora merger is straight-forward: Red Hat
is a for-profit company, not a charity. In short, Red Hat loses money on Red
Hat Linux. Turning it over to Fedora will help keep the company profitable.
One bit of fallout is the boxed sets will no longer be available in stores.
However, third parties may distribute Fedora, provided they follow Red Hat's
trademark guidelines.
Although a lot of details are yet to be sorted out, the outlines of the new
project are clear: Red Hat will no longer make, maintain or support new
releases of its former low end product, Red Hat Linux. Existing Red Hat
Linux products will be supported until the end of their product lives, as
previously announced.
What is new is the fact that there will be no Red Hat Linux 10, aka severn.
Instead, severn has been take over by the Fedora Project. You may continue
to download severn betas at the usual places. As I write this, severn beta 2
(dated September 24) is trickling in to my computer.
Fedora users also will see several major changes from Red Hat Linux. The
first is more frequent, faster and more bleeding edge releases. Releases now
will occur two to three time a year, instead of the old six-month plus
release schedule Red Hat followed (see "History of Linux at Red Hat". As a
result, Fedora will be more bleeding edge, but it also may be a little less
stable. Product life also will be shorter; each Fedora release will have a
product lifetime of about two or three months past the next release.
This does not mean that Red Hat is disengaging from low-end Linux
development. On the contrary: although Red Hat will maintain what they call
"editorial control" over Fedora, they are seeking community involvement with
Fedora for software development, integration, testing and documentation. In
addition, many of the folks at Red Hat who have contributed to Red Hat Linux
will continue to contribute to Fedora, with Red Hat's blessing. This is
already clear from observing the traffic on the Fedora list. Red Hat, in
fact, has considerable reasons to continue involvement in Fedora: Fedora
will be a major source of new products to include in Red Hat Enterprise
Linux, Red Hat's bread and butter. Red Hat is, however, disengaging from the
day-to-day support and maintenance of Fedora. Both of those items will be
handled by the Fedora community.
For those accustomed to using Red Hat, Fedora offers several changes,
including support for Debian apt style dependency checking. yum (Yellow dog
Updater, Modified) also is included in beta 2. An apt-enabled version of RPM
will be folded into severn. Indeed, the Red Hat Update Agent, up2date, now
supports installing packages from your choice of apt and yum repositories as
well as local directories. up2date now will handle dependencies and package
obsolescence in the same way apt does. In addition, some packages previously
offered that may have licensing issues have been removed from Fedora. Some
of these are stored at apt/yum-enabled repositories outside the US.
For those concerned with how the Fedora merger will affect Red Hat
Enterprise Linux, Red Hat has put together a table comparing it with the
Fedora Project.
Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) and Red Hat Certified Technician (RHCT)
training and certification will be affected by the Red Hat/Fedora merger,
but the details of those effects are not settled yet. Fedora should be a
useful learning tool for RHCE and RHCT candidates, although RHCE training
may include RHEL-specific knowledge. RHCEs and RHCE candidates should
monitor for details.
Conclusion
Fedora will be more bleeding edge and, therefore, possibly less stable and
less secure than Red Hat Linux. That, plus the shorter product lifespan of
releases almost mandate a user policy of "upgrade early and update often",
to paraphrase W.C. Fields. Fortunately, the inclusion of apt, yum and other
software to handle package dependencies will make such a policy easy for the
Fedora user to implement.
One thing I will do when using Fedora is develop kickstart files for my
critical computers to allow fast and fairly painless new installations.
Kickstart's post-installation script offers a great deal of flexibility when
bringing configuration files over from previous installations.
Red Hat is searching actively for community participation in the Fedora
Project. This is your chance to give back to Red Hat some of the delightful
contributions they have made to Linux and open source over the years.
Charles Curley (www.charlescurley.com) has sagebrush, buffalo, hot springs,
deer and archaeologists for neighbors.
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