Distro comparison

[David Kramer]

On Tuesday 21 October 2003 02:37, Derek Martin wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 20, 2003 at 04:22:18PM -0400, David Kramer wrote:
> > > Can I ask what exactly you dislike about Red Hat? The most common
> > > complaint I hear is dependency issues, but up2date and apt4rpm have
> > > all but eliminated that concern.
> >
> > - The mangling of KDE and Gnome to the point that the two companies are
> > now on fighting terms.
>
> Which two companies are you referring to?

Sorry.  KDE and RH.

> As for "mangling" Gnome and KDE, about all they did was change the
> default themes and some settings.  So?  Change 'em back.  Have they
> actually changed anything which prevents either desktop system from
> working as it does with KDE or Gnome defaults?  (This is not just a
> rhetorical question.)

I found on my RH9 install that even going to the default theme left some 
images redhatized.

And I believe they did change some programs slighly too, but I can't 
remember the details.

> Realistically, the KDE and Gnome people have no legitimate gripe here.
> KDE and Gnome are both GPL software packages, and Red Hat has the
> right to do whatever they want to it, guaranteed to them by the
> projects' own licenses, so long as they release the source code to
> their changes.  If a project doesn't want that, they should change
> their license.

Whether KDE and Trolltech have legitemate gripes or not I don't know, but I 
know that I do.  The icons are childish and too similar to each other to 
instantly indicate what they represent.

> This happens all the time, unfortunately, due to dependency issues.
> But the point there is that 7.3 is vastly out of date.  You should not
> expect to be able to run new software on such old systems, at least

Well, I don't know that a year and a half is "vastly out of date", but I 
_am_ installing a newer OS, so I've admitted defeat there.

However, third parties have successfully created a way to upgrade 7.3 to the 
latest KDE, so there are no library restrictions, just two companies not 
playing nice anymore.

> > - Their refusal to put programs on their distro that MPAA/RIAA might
> > maybe kinda sorta say is a bad thing one day
>
> Can you name one?  (This is also not just a rhetorical question...  If
> there's a legitimate issue here, I may rethink my own ideas about
> distros.)
>
> The mp3 player issue has nothing to do with the MPAA or RIAA.  It has
> everything to do with the fact that the MP3 coding/decoding algorithm is
> patented, and distributing it or using it requires a (paid) licence.
> Red Hat does not want to pay, and does not want to put its customers
> at legal risk.  This may be inconvenient, but frankly it's the right
> decision.  For now, the patent holders have said they won't pursue
> those who use mp3-related technology in free players, but there's
> nothing to stop them from changing their mind tomorrow...

... and retroactively suing for past distribution?

> > - The new Fedora Project model scares me.  I don't know what it will do
> > to the quality and consistency of the releases.
>
> Out of everything you've listed, this seems to be the only legitimate
> gripe.  But I'll point out that you're still running 7.3, and RH9 is
> available, and will be supported for some time yet.  In that time, you
> should have plenty of time to determine the usability of future
> releases of Fedora.  There's no point in complaining about the quality
> of software that doesn't even exist yet...

Yes, RH9 is out there, and suffers from the aforementioned problems, whether 
you think of them as legitimate or not.  But Red Hat's decision to move to 
a model where releases become unsupported so soon means that before long I 
will be in the same boat.

> > - The demotion of the personal user from their lifeblood to a vast
> > fleet of testers for their *real* release, as a side effect of the
> > above
>
> Red Hat is a company in business to make money.  They MUST make
> decisions on that basis, or there will cease to be a Red Hat.  You may
> not agree with their changes, but I'd rather have Red Hat around than
> not.  They've done much for the community, and I've no reason to
> think that won't continue.

I couldn't agree more. But I think abandoning the personal user is bad 
business for them, because it's the geeks getting hired at companies that 
are bringing Red Hat into corporate America.  You just aren't going to see 
a huge percentage of CEO's saying "We need Red Hat Linux here" without the 
geeks pushing for it and making a case for it.  And if they don't have 
familiarity with it, they're not going to do that.

> You seem to be suggesting that this is a shift in philosophies which
> you find personally offensive, where in reality it is nothing but a
> business decision, made to help ensure their continued existence.

Not offensive, I'm just not sure that the release will have the same 
consistency and quality without paid Red Hat employees organizing and 
testing.

> > - Their graphical tools to maintain your box are largely undocumented
>
> Well, this might be an issue, but as a long-time professional
> sysadmin, my opinion (prejudice) is that you shouldn't rely on them
> anyway.  If you want that, run Windows.

99 percent of the time, I would much rather edit a text file.  But some of 
them, like X11 config, are very hard to do and can cause hardware problems 
if done incorrectly.  I agree this is not a showstopper though.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
DDDD   David Kramer         david at thekramers.net       http://thekramers.net
DK KD  
DKK D  "I've already explained this once, but repetition is
DK KD  the very soul of the net."             
DDDD                                         (from the alt.config newsgroup)