Comments on: The Philosophy of Computer Science (part two of a series) http://reallylongword.org/2008/11/the-philosophy-of-computer-science-part-two-of-a-series/ Difference Engine Diary Mon, 17 Jan 2011 10:52:26 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: David Cantrell http://reallylongword.org/2008/11/the-philosophy-of-computer-science-part-two-of-a-series/comment-page-1/#comment-137 David Cantrell Wed, 19 Nov 2008 15:32:35 +0000 http://www.reallylongword.org/?p=680#comment-137 <p>One thing that has irritated me with Fedora is what happened when we merged Core and Extras. Core was what used to be Red Hat Linux. A distribution more or less developed in house at RH and released with some kind of schedule. Extras was the community component. Lots of addon stuff.</p><p>After Fedora Core 6, we merged Core and Extras. It took a long time for that change to shake out and I, personally, never liked the Fedora 7 or Fedora 8 releases. Fedora 9 is a much better improvement and I can say that Fedora 10 is also getting a lot closer at what I remember from the Core/Extra releases. But there are still issues.</p><p>For one, I think the Fedora release cycle is too quick. It doesn't give developers enough time to code. You get a really short window and the main push is to take whatever popular new things are out there and shove them in to the distribution and hope for the best. I think, but don't know for sure, that there is a move to extend the release cycle for Fedora. It simply moves too fast for people to rely on.</p><p>Back in the Core/Extras days, there was also the Fedora Legacy project. These people made security and critical updates for all existing Fedora Core releases until such time as they deemed it was not worth supporting anymore. Usually on the order of years. That was a fantastic service. People could install Fedora Core 4, for example, and get comfortable with it and know updates would be available. The standard line these days is "well, you should upgrade." With such short release cycles, some people don't even get a chance to try the current release before the next one is out.</p><p>For these reasons, if someone who wants Linux asks me for a distribution recommendation, I say CentOS. That is, for the user who is thinking about Fedora, but just wants it for web browsing, playing music and movies, and word processing, I recommend CentOS. They want Linux probably because it's free, so suggesting RHEL doesn't make sense. But they don't want to be told that three weeks after they get everything working on their Fedora system, it's time to upgrade. They don't care that the sound subsystem changes from alsa to pulseaudio because the end result to them is that sound still works.</p><p>CentOS is a great service for those who like Fedora, but want a less rapid distribution. Since it's a RHEL rebuild, it gets all the RHEL updates. And it's supported for as long as we support RHEL releases.</p><p>There is the EPEL project in Fedora to provide an Extras-like collection for RHEL. And you can also get Livna and other such things for CentOS (or RHEL).</p><p>Personally, I'm enjoying MacOS X on my workstation with Linux in a VM. At the end of my work day, I can turn off Linux and stop tinkering and just use the computer.</p> One thing that has irritated me with Fedora is what happened when we merged Core and Extras. Core was what used to be Red Hat Linux. A distribution more or less developed in house at RH and released with some kind of schedule. Extras was the community component. Lots of addon stuff.

After Fedora Core 6, we merged Core and Extras. It took a long time for that change to shake out and I, personally, never liked the Fedora 7 or Fedora 8 releases. Fedora 9 is a much better improvement and I can say that Fedora 10 is also getting a lot closer at what I remember from the Core/Extra releases. But there are still issues.

For one, I think the Fedora release cycle is too quick. It doesn’t give developers enough time to code. You get a really short window and the main push is to take whatever popular new things are out there and shove them in to the distribution and hope for the best. I think, but don’t know for sure, that there is a move to extend the release cycle for Fedora. It simply moves too fast for people to rely on.

Back in the Core/Extras days, there was also the Fedora Legacy project. These people made security and critical updates for all existing Fedora Core releases until such time as they deemed it was not worth supporting anymore. Usually on the order of years. That was a fantastic service. People could install Fedora Core 4, for example, and get comfortable with it and know updates would be available. The standard line these days is “well, you should upgrade.” With such short release cycles, some people don’t even get a chance to try the current release before the next one is out.

For these reasons, if someone who wants Linux asks me for a distribution recommendation, I say CentOS. That is, for the user who is thinking about Fedora, but just wants it for web browsing, playing music and movies, and word processing, I recommend CentOS. They want Linux probably because it’s free, so suggesting RHEL doesn’t make sense. But they don’t want to be told that three weeks after they get everything working on their Fedora system, it’s time to upgrade. They don’t care that the sound subsystem changes from alsa to pulseaudio because the end result to them is that sound still works.

CentOS is a great service for those who like Fedora, but want a less rapid distribution. Since it’s a RHEL rebuild, it gets all the RHEL updates. And it’s supported for as long as we support RHEL releases.

There is the EPEL project in Fedora to provide an Extras-like collection for RHEL. And you can also get Livna and other such things for CentOS (or RHEL).

Personally, I’m enjoying MacOS X on my workstation with Linux in a VM. At the end of my work day, I can turn off Linux and stop tinkering and just use the computer.

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