Red Hat released Fedora 7 today, a new version of their Linux operating system developed in partnership with the open source community and Red Hat engineers. This is Fedora's first release to merge the Fedora Core and Fedora Extras package repositories under one set of packaging policies. Another first for Fedora 7 is all the software used is released under a free license, and all decision-making is made in public.
The big innovations touted for this release are:
Revisor tool - a graphical appliation built on top of Fedora's other build tools that gives flexibility to build an ISO, a live CD, etc. Mike Spevack, Fedora's project leader, feels this is Fedora's crown jewel. Customized versions of Fedora are now possible to an extent that was not available previously.
Live CD - first time for Fedora, (however not an industry shake-up here).
Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) technology has been integrated with the Fedora graphical virtualization manager tool. KVM provides a full virtualization solution, and users have a choice between KVM and Xen, along with Qemu, in this release.
You can pick up a copy of this new version at the Fedora Project. Thanks FF!
After thirteen years of not-so marital bliss, Eric S. Raymond, co-founder of the Open Source Initiative, is calling it quits on his partnership with Red Hat/Fedora. The final straw came after he spent 4 hours working on what should have been a routine upgrade only to have his entire system rendered unusable. In a scathing open letter posted on various Linux websites and mailing lists, Raymond lays bare his anger and frustration with what he claims is Fedora's "failure of vision which will condemn Fedora to a shrinking niche in the future."
As if that wasn't enough, Raymond goes one step farther by quickly rebounding with Ubuntu, an open source OS which he indicates has risen and addressed the challenges which Fedora never was able to.
As announced on Friday by David Eisenstein, the Fedora Legacy project is shutting down. As of his announcement (or maybe even earlier) Fedora Core 4 and earlier distributions are no longer being maintained or supported. He said that their current model of maintaining older distributions of Fedora Core are being examined, but right now everything is on (seemingly indefinite) hold. Jesse Keating later followed up and put it on record that the lack of contributors, and zero response to their call for help with the project, lead to the demise. I can't imagine anyone who would be absolutely dependent on Fedora Core 4, except maybe for older servers. If you're a dedicated Desktop Linux user, you're likely running Fedora Core 6, or another distribution like Ubuntu or SuSE.
The real question this leaves in my mind (an no doubtedly others) - is this just another case, in what has seemed like a recurring theme, of a concerted group of people being unable to provide support for Linux over the long term? Will Ubuntu LTS succeed where Fedora Legacy could not? With the rapid pace of Linux development, is long term support just a pipe dream, or a realistic goal?
Reader Sergio wrote in to tell us that, hot on the heels of last just in time for this week's Ubuntu Edgy release, the final release of Fedora Core 6 is now available. There's lots of new stuff in the latest release of the Red Hat-sponsored, community-driven Linux distribution including an improved installation system, support for Intel-based Macs, improved Xen virtualization support and a new GUI virtualization manager, the Yum update system in place of Up2date, and major performance improvements. As always, the best way to get your hands on Fedora Core is via BitTorrent.
The answer is on Debian. The OS isn't happy with Mozilla's recent hardened stance on their trademark, and doesn't even want to use the Mozilla logos in their distributions. Debian plans to change the name of Firefox in their distros and think it will only take a week to complete. Mozilla doesn't want Firefox to be marketed inside Debian without the logo. It seems that the Debian folks don't like the idea of patches and updates going through Mozilla first. Red Hat and Novell are already doing it. So if you Linux buddies told you to jump off a cliff, would you do it? Well, Debian wouldn't, or so it looks right now. I'm taking bets on names, how about Fiber-fox, or Firbuntu? No? Fine, I give up. Any other clever names for what to actually call Firefox in its altered form from brilliant minds out there?
Wow, I am pretty blown away. Almost unanimously everyone said that Ubuntu is the best Linux distro for almost everything you would want to do. I am already a Ubuntu fan, and I thought there would be a huge list of distros because there are so many out there. Ubuntu is the distro I used at work to recover old PC data, and fix PCs when even windows was trashed. It is definitely a killer build and deserves all the recognition it gets. If anyone out there is wondering which Linux distro is good for your uses, this should be proof enough. Other distros that made the list, but were all soundly spanked by Ubuntu are:
Thanks to everyone for your comments and thoughts on your favorite Linux flavor. I will be awarding stars as soon as I can, but I believe that feature is down at the moment.
Google recently joined the Open Document Alliance. Google recently launched Google Spreadsheets, and purchased the online word processor, Writely, made the move to support the alliance in the development of the open document industry.
The Open Document Alliance is a relatively new organization that launched March of 2006. Its goal is to help the move from paper to electronic. Promoting and enhancing the use of the OpenDocument Format (ODF).
The Alliance's current members include:
Corel
Google Inc
IBM
Novell
Oracle
Red Hat Inc
Sun Microsystems Inc
In another move in the Open Doc world, Microsoft announced support for the ODF extension with plug-in translators with their office applications.
Social networking isn't exactly a sector I'd have expected Linux developer Red Hat to jump into (insert joke about geeks socializing here), but that's what they've done with Mugshot. Mugshot's stated purpose is "to create a live social experience around entertainment," and perhaps what's most notable about Mugshot is that it's open source, i.e. if you want you can download the source code to the Mugshot server and set up your own social networking site, and you can contribute code to the project as well. That's something you'll probably never see News Corp., Six Apart, or even AOL allow. Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow praises a demo of Mugshot he saw at the Red Hat Summit this week, saying, "it was pretty hot; they nicked the best stuff out of all the social networking sites and put them together in an open codebase."
Correction: Six Apart VP Anil Dash wrote in to remind us that LiveJournal, owned by Six Apart and one of the first social networking apps, is totally open source and has spawned many clones with millions of users, and that many of the web's most popular sites rely on its components (in particular memcached). Thanks, Anil!
It's not exhaustive, but
informative. Joshua Drake has been using Linux professionally for over 10 years, and he shares his opinions and
comparisons in an admittedly subjective but thorough comparison
of the five major Linux distros for "non geeks." The comparisons are between Red Hat ES, Novell SLES,
Fedora FC4, OpenSuSE 10, and Ubuntu Breezy Badger. Notice Linspire isn't in there? Again, this isn't exhaustive, but
it's a quick read, especially if you know someone considering Linux, but they don't know which "Linux" to
pick. I've been playing with Ubuntu myself lately, and will post some thoughts on it soon.
Microsoft has taken the wraps off their new pricing
scheme for Virtual Server 2005 R2 Enterprise Edition, and the new price is a surprise coming out of Redmond: Free! The Standard Edition
of the same product has been terminated, and moving forward there will only be the Enterprise Edition.
This move
is being done due to pressure from Novell and Red Hat flavors of Linux which are both shipping with virtualization
built in to the operating system. The Longhorn server class operating systems will ship with Windows hypervisor
technology, which is a similar form of virtualization that will be based on the same virtual hard disk file format
that Virtual Server uses, giving users an upgrade path.
The
latest edition of Red Hat's community-supported Linux distribution is now available for download. If you're a Linux geek,
it doesn't get much better than this. Slashdot is linking to a video describing the improvements over Fedora
Core 4. What's one to do with Fedora Core Linux, you ask? Well, why not build a bicycle-powered telephone system? Or do
some wicked pagination? Or, perhaps coolest of all, build your own Tivo-killer!
It's not exhaustive, but
informative. Joshua Drake has been using Linux professionally for over 10 years, and he shares his opinions and
comparisons in an admittedly subjective but thorough 
Microsoft has taken the wraps off their new pricing
scheme for Virtual Server 2005 R2 Enterprise Edition, and the new price is a surprise coming out of Redmond: 
