[Fedora-ambassadors-list] Report from Linuxfest Northwest

[Alex Maier]

Great report Jesse! Please make sure it is posted on the wiki, if it
isn't already--it is too good to be hiding in the mailing list
archives :)
a
On 5/1/06, Jesse Keating <jkeating at redhat.com> wrote:
> Greg and I had a good time at Linuxfest.  We met lots of neat people,
> had some good discussions, got some good information out to the people,
> and got some really good feedback from those in the trenches.
>
> The event was fun as usual, this was my fourth year there.  There was
> room for probably 35 "booth" type things, and as usual the majority of
> these are for local user groups, distribution groups, special interest
> groups and the like.  There was a few commercial folks there too,
> Google, Pogo Linux, Wirepath, Fibrecloud, Mysql AB, Oracle, and a few
> others.
>
> The talk I was most interested in was the K12LTSP talk.  This project
> takes what the LTSP project does, modifies it slightly, rebuilds the FC
> installer (and CentOS installer) to add a high level option to either
> install stock FC or to install K12LTSP.  Depending on the choice some
> things get automagicaly done, such as networking, package sets, etc..
> They've done a great job with it, and Greg and I both think we need to
> find some way to help out and to bring K12LTSP into the Fedora fold.
> They provide a great testcase for variant Fedora releases.
>
> Greg's talk went very well, it was fun, it was informative, and it
> answered a lot of questions that people had, while paving the way to
> more questions.  His talk brought up the subject of opening Core for
> outside contribution and outlined a couple possible ways of doing this.
> Either allowing some folks to contribute to the Core CVS, or moving all
> things Fedora outside into a big pile of packages that is Fedora,
> bluring the lines between Core and Extras, and allowing any distribution
> that is comprised of packages in this pile could be called Fedora.  I
> personally like this idea, but there is a long road to get there.  Greg
> outlined some of the things in process to get to that point, such as yum
> in Anaconda, external repos in anaconda, and finally variant spun
> distros.
>
> Some good questions that came up were:
>
> - When are you going to clean up the crap that is the current spec files
> in Fedora?  Valid question, and I explained that all new packages into
> Fedora have to go through the review process that Extras created.  This
> means that new packages should be clean.  I also explained that we're
> moving to a new build system internally and that would require some
> clean up of existing packages, which makes it easier to make further
> clean ups.
>
> - What the hell is up with the Fedora Directory Server?  This question
> came up at least 3 times.  First when Greg and I were visiting Gamehouse
> (Real Networks) in Seattle on our way to the show.  An IT architect
> complained that he's fighting a battle currently with other IT
> departments on rolling out Active Directory to solve their centralized
> authentication system.  And without Fedora doing something with FDS, it
> is really hard for him to show a projected plan to having FDS in a
> supported product.  It was also brought up during Greg's talk, and
> finally at the bar across the street from our Hotel where we spent the
> evening of the show talking with various other folks that were staying
> at the hotel for the show as well.  The folks that asked the question
> all seemed to be trying to solve the centralized authentication
> question, and really didn't want to go the LDAP route, nor the AD route,
> but had to make decisions soon.  What is up with FDS?  Other than the
> name, what does it have to do with Fedora?  They don't use our wiki,
> they don't use our mailing lists, they don't use our IRC channels, they
> don't have packages in Extras or Core, they don't use our build system,
> nor our CVS system.  What are they doing?  How can we bring them into
> the fold, and start getting their software into the hands of early
> adopters and folks trying to make a decision?  This is a question I
> think we really need to bring up again and again until it gets done.
>
> - When doing variant Fedoras, what about alternative kernels?  Or
> alternative kernel modules?  This is a good and tough question.  If we
> really want to embrace more Fedora variants, more corner user bases
> solving their problems and helping the project at large, we need to be
> flexible.  We already have something of an alternative kernel in the
> form of Xen.  If you want to run Xen instances, you have to run the base
> xen kernel.  However we don't have an installer that runs this kernel,
> it isn't necessary.  But lets say you need to install to new funky
> hardware, and the upstream and stock Fedora kernels don't have a driver
> for say your disk subsystem.  The hardware vendor has an open source
> kernel module available, it just isn't upstream.  Following Extras
> guidelines you package up the module for Extras and get it approved.
> How can you then use this module with the installer to be able to spin a
> variant Fedora that will install to your hardware?  Even harder, what if
> its a newer version of an existing module?  These are some of the
> questions we'll have to think about and solve as we move closer to the
> reality of user spun variant Fedoras.
>
> - While on the subject of variants, we got asked if we'll be using
> rpath's rbuilder to do the variants.  This is an interesting question
> that neither Greg nor I could really answer.  Rbuilder is very neat
> technology, and whether or not it makes sense to use it should be
> investigated.  Neither Greg nor I had enough information to expand
> beyond that.
>
> - Whats the status of Stateless, and what is Stateless?  Another great
> question.  Havoc mentioned something about Stateless at last year's
> Boston FUDCon, but nothing has really happened since then.  Bill
> Nottingham just submitted some updates to inittools for stateless
> purposes, but no real roadmap has been put out, nor has any discussion
> happened as to how this would effect things like LTSP.  I hope to speak
> with Bill this week to maybe get something out there.
>
> All in all I think it was a good show.  I'd like to continue having a
> Fedora presence there and continue doing talks such as this that explain
> where we're coming from and where we're going.  Folks travel to this
> show from all over the area, Canada, Oregon, and into the East as well.
> For those that can't make it to California for LWCE or some of the other
> shows, this is another chance to touch base with the community at large.
> --
> Jesse Keating
> Release Engineer: Fedora
>
>
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