Fedora - by RedHat

[Cobra]

Just got my hands on a copy of Fedora Core 1 and Source today. Going to be installing it in the next while. But what is everyones thoughts on what Redhat are doing?

I personally think it is fantastic. Okay they still have there Enterprise product which will be sold. But then there is Fedora which is a community project.
Redhat did say that they will be using features that appear in Fedora in there Enterprise products.  So i suppose the purpose is 2 fold. On one hand they have a playground for developers to develop decent applications for linux, which can then be used by redhat in there enterprise release. Also on the other hand you just have a strong open source release of linux for the community.

Anyones thoughts?

I started this posted on the intention of making it alot more detailed. But got lazy.

Bad One!

[godaigo]

Hey Cobby! First of all it's nice to see some new posts   As far as the Redhat plan goes I have to agree with you. Overall I think it is a great idea. It gives them a kind of evolutionary diversity, keeps the gene pool strong so to speak. At the same time it allows them to both get more money out of their corporate clients while serving them more effieciently, and keep their broad based support among the open source community. Basically they get to have their cake and eat it too. I have to confess though before I looked at what they were doing I felt a little betrayed and that would be what I would worry about if I were them. Basically that the rumor mill will slam their commercialization and so people won't actually evaluate what's going on but (not unlike sheep) flee en masse. Hopefully that won't happen though. Cheers....

[Tazinator]

Well, im a little torn on the plan really. Personally ive not been too fond of Red Hat as they seem to be the flavor that has the most holes and bugs. They try too hard to compete with MS and thats just not the way to go. Linux is different from MS Windows and will always be. Thats what gives it its own appeal and following and the normal users of the world are not going to ever be 100% converted. Its just not going to happen.

Personally I like SuSE. They have done the right thing. On the one hand, they have the enterprise / business level products they charge for, but they still have the home and even small business oriented products availible for free. They concentrate more on improving the product then converting MS users and I think that because of that, they gain following and support. Even SUN has used thier base for Java Desktop. Plus, to my knowedge, SuSE is the only Linux distro with something that comes close to competing with MS Exchange as a message collaboration solution with thier Open Exchange server.

http://www.suse.com/us/business/products/openexchange/index.html

While I think its a semi-good idea for Red Hat to break off Fedora so they still have a free solution available, I think the fact that they are dropping support for thier previous versions completely and basically pulling the Las Vegas Casino Card Dealer Changeup routine by walking away with hands off is a bad idea.

[godaigo]

Taz, I think I know what you mean, but as far as dropping support for earlier versions I think that may go along with the overall independence of the open source community (ie they don't need no stinking support!) Still it definately could put a crimp in the plans of business's that have already switched but can't successfully deploy or afford the new versions. Hmmm... it's really a hard call as to what this will turn out as. Does anyone know whether or not they've released a press statement that actually addresses this issue? (I've been too busy working with CSS to care enough to look, oh well...) Cheers....

[Spirit]

Is Fedora still working on that POS Xinted core? God that is terrible if they are.

As far as I know Redhat (not Fedora) is still moving in the Entrepoiner direction for business and orginizations to provide stable Workstations and Servers for orginizations that are on high demand, hence the recent stop of most of Redhat's development for workstations.