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Some Fedora 9 and Ubuntu 8.04 Perspective
Mon, 2008-04-07 23:19 — dgoodwin
As usual I got anxious and upgraded to Fedora 9 (beta) a couple weeks ago. This normally causes a few headaches, almost always involving the nvidia binary graphics drivers. (as the kernels seem to come too fast for the Livna repositories to keep up, although there appears to be some neat things in the works for auto-compiling kernel modules in F9) However I should have done some reading beforehand this time around because as it turns out Fedora 9 is currently using a pre-release of xorg 1.5 with some incompatible changes, and nvidia doesn't release drivers for un-released versions of xorg. From everything I've read it appears it just won't work unless you're willing to downgrade xorg and everything that comes with it.
The nv driver looks like rubbish with my hardware and won't get me up to the 1600x1200 resolution I'm used to so I did some experimenting with the nouveau. With a slight xorg.conf tweak I was able to get my full resolution but no 3d effects. Not a huge problem as I don't even use them normally, but I noticed a pretty brutal performance bug creeping up after a few hours of heavy X use. (6 second workspace changes, huge cpu spikes, etc) Filed a bug on the problem and got some good debugging suggestions, one of which actually clears the problem up (for awhile) without forcing you to restart X. (switching VT's and back)
Regardless I was missing that binary driver's performance and decided to install the Ubuntu Hardy Heron beta on my spare partition to see what they've been up too. I was a pretty happy Ubuntu user before getting hired at Red Hat almost a year and a half ago, but I switched to Fedora to get a feel for RPM based systems once the job began to look promising. Having run Debian/Ubuntu for about 8 years I was a bit of a reluctant convert and griped about the usual yum/rpm things, but quite simply I have been anything but lacking on my Fedora desktop this past year.
So having spent a good deal of time in Ubuntu the past few weeks, the thing I'm most surprised by is how little I have to say about it. Yes the install was easy and yes I had support for the binary nvidia driver and proprietary audio/video formats with very nice and informative prompts, but we're seriously talking about behavior you can replicate with Fedora without even hitting the command line in about 5 minutes. It seems to boot up a little quicker but regular desktop performance with both distros is just awesome. apt still rocks but I've come to realize that yum does a fine job, and slightly slower software installs really don't phase me in the least. Synaptic was always nice in Debian but I believe Fedora 9 has introduced PackageKit as the default graphical package manager and I really quite like this, both for what it is now and what I expect it will be. (very vibrant project) Ubuntu continues to look pretty good although largely the same, I'd give the clear edge for appearance to Fedora but everything's themed so in the end who really cares. The Ubuntu beta was drastically more crash happy on x86_64 than F9 was but I can't really blame either side for this in the beta stage.
That's really all that came to mind. Mostly the experiment just taught me that technically speaking, I can do everything I want to *very* easily with both distros, but I've gradually become more comfortable with Fedora. Over the last year I've gotten a glimpse into the people, infrastructure, and company that makes Fedora tick and I like what I see. I enjoyed this Fedora is the New Ubuntu post today and it sums things up pretty good. Things are happening in Fedora, big things that appear there first and elsewhere much later. Even with such aggressive development and integration, it's still all delivered on a platform that's remarkably stable and user friendly. Granted Canonical has nowhere near the resources Red Hat does to throw back into community contributions, and perhaps their contribution is just bringing Linux to so many people in such a well polished package. Red Hat however does have those resources, and they're putting them to good use. I have to agree that while Ubuntu is an excellent distribution, there is something to be said for Fedora's fostering a community of contributors rather than consumers.
Maybe it's Fedora and maybe it's just the influence of the people I work with, but it's the first distribution I felt inclined to get involved with and it wasn't hard to do. I always assumed that if I stopped working for Red Hat I'd be a Ubuntu user again within a week. I no longer think that's the case.
Comments
Devan, I'm glad to see people
Devan,
I'm glad to see people picking up on this message. I think people who see other Linux distributions as successful at Fedora's expense are missing the point. The whole point of open source is to allow exactly that sort of reuse of the cool technologies Fedora and Red Hat invest in and work on. (Dangling prepositions aside.) The fact that these technologies are getting so much action throughout free and open source software communities is all the better for Fedora. When people want to get involved working on those innovations and coming up with new ones, they're invariably going to find that they can most effectively do that in a way that promotes and strengthens upstream communities, and using 100% free and open source solutions, the way we do in Fedora. So I'm thrilled to see these innovations making their way out to a huge audience.
And thanks for being a part of it!
I tried Fedora 8 on my new
I tried Fedora 8 on my new Dell 720 w/Nvidia GeForce 8800. It was seriously painful getting that to work. I downloaded the latest driver from Nvidia and it worked fine, as I recall. Here are some random comments.
I was mightily impressed that F8 recognized the Raid0 dual drive and, after install, presented me with just shy of 500GB. All this via the default (Guided?) install.
KVM didn't work at all. Hopefully it will in F9.
I put F8(64) on the new Dell because I couldn't get U7.10(64) to even boot on it. Having said that on my Dell 8300 I have U7.10 (32) which was preceded by U7.04(32). Why did I go to Ubuntu at all? On the advice of the Linux kernel guy where I used to work. I think it was FC5 I had at the time (early 07) and, frankly, it required too much 'labor of love' to keep it running reliably. That's the whole Ubuntu thiing, "It just works"...right? Whether it is as bleeding edge as Fedora isn't the point for most. As much as "It's the economy stupid", "It just works, stupid". That's not to say there aren't those that enjoy life on the bleeding edge. There are more of us, people paid to write software that runs on Linux, then there are people who are paid to write Linux. I, for one, resent any Linux distro that makes my job harder. I am not paid to debug Fedora or Ubuntu. I write software people pay to use that happens to run on Linux, and, at the end of the day, are those the users you want? Whether Yum is faster than RPM or apt-get is a conversation only those that don't get it could love.
A comment made to the blog you referenced made the following point; If one has to go to a hardware vendor to get a Linux drive that works only indicates your free one doesn't. And if your free one doesn't you should make it easy for that user to get the commercial version, not denigrate Ubuntu for doing just that.
I hope that F9, when it goes GA does properly support the GeForce 8800. I hope it has a solid version of Xen, KVM, and virt-manager.
I want to leave you fine folks with one thought. Why is WinXP so popular? It doesn't matter what Intel or AMD cpu you have, it doesn't matter what video card, network card, printer, wireless, or USB device you have, "It just works". The first person to get a Linux distro there wins! The other conversations are subordinate.
Fedora has perhaps made more
Fedora has perhaps made more of an impact on the state of Linux than any other single entity.
With every release Fedora has expanded technological borders and brought cutting edge technologies into the hands of the general public. New developments have quickly found their way into most other distributions.
Fedora is just now beginning to really get the attention and accolades it deserves. In fact it was an immediate selection of the Public Software Foundation (http://publicsoftwarefoundation.org) for inclusion to public library offerings.
"With every release Fedora
"With every release Fedora has expanded technological borders and brought cutting edge technologies into the hands of the general public. "
Sorry, I must take issue with that comment. Isn't that the problem, that Linux is not making it's way into the general public because, rightly, it doesn't "just work". Didn't Red Hat just finish saying they were bagging the consumer market? Now, what constitutes 'consumer' I guess is debatable. I took that to mean Fedora was no longer to be the incubator for RHEL. Throughout my career in software I have come to realize there is a huge difference, as far as market place goes, between technology at the threshold of commercial viability (commercially viable but not adopted yet) and that 'cutting' (read bleeding) edge technology that is not commercially viable yet. I believe the RH spokesperson said commercial viability was in their mind 5 years out.
It is my belief that what is required to make Linux something other than a footnote is to focus on software that is commercially viable as well as commercially valuable.
I believe the recent
I believe the recent announcement was in relation to Red Hat Global Desktop, which is having issues due to acquiring the rights to the proprietary codecs people demand to have things "just work". I can't remember if the project is just delayed or cancelled altogether.
In any case it doesn't have anything to do with Fedora being the incubator for RHEL. Fedora's still going strong, has a vibrant community, Red Hat resources and funding, and afaik future RHEL features are still plenty likely to appear there first.
"Why is WinXP so popular? It
"Why is WinXP so popular? It doesn't matter what Intel or AMD cpu you have, it doesn't matter what video card, network card, printer, wireless, or USB device you have, "It just works". The first person to get a Linux distro there wins!"
I have to disagree with this point. If I had the choice between installing a fresh install of say, Ubuntu or Windows XP, I would choose Ubuntu (or pretty much any newer Linux distro). Windows XP is so bloody out of date, and this is what usually happens when you do install WinXP:
1-Newer PC with SATA drives? Oops sorry, Windows XP doesn't recognize SATA... you need to load those SATA drivers on a floppy disk. No floppy drive? Uh oh, gotta open up the computer, find a floppy drive, and install it temporarily to get those drivers installed.
2-Ok, Windows is installed. But my screen resolution is at 640x480, network card and sound card aren't recognized. Where was that driver CD again?
3-Ok drivers installed off CD, but now I have to go to the manufacturer's site and download the newest versions.
4-Windows update just popped up, there's 84 new updates to install.
With the newest distro releases, we can skip step 1 and step 2. Step 3 doesn't take too long, especially in Ubuntu where a recent (but not necessarily newest) version of hardware drivers can be downloaded straight from the package manager. And step 4 usually isn't going to take nearly as long (or require as many reboots) as Windows. Not to mention the fact that I can install Firefox (the only browser I use), OpenOffice, my choice of instant messenger, etc... all from the same place.
In fairness Windows XP
In fairness Windows XP handles SATA just fine, no floppy or installation cd necessary. Windows XP handles ATI Radeon 9800 Pro and NVidia GEForce 8800 just fine, no special installation required. Most of all Windows XP handles the Broadcom AirForce One wifi card on my laptop just fine. While one could likely come up with some combination of new hardware that doesn't 'just work' on Windows XP, they would be hard pressed. NOW, having said that Windows Vista is a completely different matter. Vista appears to be just crap and even Window's Weenies where I work concur Vista is garbage. Well, there is one guy that says Vista Home does what he needs to do but there seems to be unanimity that Vista Ultimate is awful.
However, I felt it necessary to come back here and to follow up on my previous entry. I just today downloaded Fedora 9-64 LiveCD and I must say, I am mightily impressed! This after reading a review that panned the installation of F9 as something only a total Unix-head geek could tolerate. So F9, out of the box, can deal with my NVidia GeForce 8800 perfectly, except I can do the special effects but that's not my issue now. I have a Dell XPS 720 with firmware RAID and 2 SATA 250GB drives I have yet to get Ubuntu 8.04 to honor. F8 handled that flawlessly and I expect the same with f9.
So, to the developers, sustaining, QA, and doc folks responsible for Fedora 9, a tip of the hat goes out to all of you. Hip hip!
"...while Ubuntu is an
"...while Ubuntu is an excellent distribution, there is something to be said for Fedora's fostering a community of contributors rather than consumers."
Personally I don't use fedora (I'm a contributor to a debian based project instead), but I have always been very impressed with RedHat's behaviour as a corporation (I just found out about satellite/spacewalk being open sourced!) and fedora as a community project that pushes the boundaries.
Canonical on the other hand, have never made me anything but suspicious of their motives -
I think the sum of my suspicion is contained in that quote, so thankyou for putting it so eloquently :)
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