[Fedora-marketing-list] re: Info

["Dustin Ratliffe" <dustin ratliffe gmail com>]

Sam Folk-Williams wrote:
> Christoph Strobel wrote:
> > Hello Gabriel!
> >
> >   Question: since I intend, when the company will be in
> >   "steady-state", to work on a free Linux distro, while
> >   supporting it, would you please let me know what would be the
> >   connection points, from the practical standpoint, between RHEL
> >   and Fedora, compared to other free distros? I'd like to use on
> >   some servers the RH supported licenses, and on others a free
> >   distro, the "closest" possible to RH. Would be Fedora this one
> >   (and why)?
> >
> > Fedora is still widely known as the "Linux made by RedHat", this
> > fact in one hand and the option to "upgrade" to RHEL without big
> > differences in using and maintaining the system in the other hand is
> > a good equipment for talking to your customers.
>
>
> This is something I'd be careful with. Fedora and RHEL are only
> similar in the sense that they are both Red Hat-based distributions.
> But there is *no* upgrade path from Fedora to RHEL. In other words,
> to upgrade from Fedora to RHEL you have to do a clean reinstall.
> That's not to say I wouldn't recommend Fedora (of course), but you
> don't want to imply that there is an easy in-place upgrade from
> Fedora to RHEL.
>
> Generally speaking, we also want to move away from fedora being the
> "Linux made by Red Hat". Fedora is community based and many of the
> important contributions come from non-Red Hat folks. That said, I
> understand that the impression is out there. This is the elevator
> pitch: "What is Fedora? Fedora is a set of projects sponsored by Red
> Hat and guided by the contributors. These projects are developed by
> a large community of people who strive to provide and maintain the
> very best in free, open source software and standards."

I chose Fedora as my linux distribution after reading this:

"If you want to learn about Linux, and then get a job working with
it, Red Hat's community distribution, Fedora is the desktop, not to
mention server, for you. Red Hat Linux is, without question, the
single most important business Linux. As fond as I am of some of the
other distributions, if I had to make a living working on Linux
tomorrow, I'd be working toward my RHCE (Red Hat Certified Engineer)
certification as soon as possible."
http://fedoranews.org/wiki/Fedora_Weekly_News_Issue_31#Choosing_a_desktop_Linux_distro
http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT3269115798.html

I closely follow news regarding the relationship between RHEL and
Fedora releases, such as this back in June:

"Beta 1 of [Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5] is slated to be available
in late July and Beta 2 - which will incorporate the Fedora Core 6
build - is planned for release in mid September"
http://www.itnews.com.au/newsstory.aspx?CIaNID=33276

As much as I enjoy learning about and using linux, I really could
not justify my time investment if the experience I gained was not
tranferable to my IT career all the way up to the enterprise level.
This is what distinguishes Fedora from all the hobbiest
distributions and I consider it to be Fedora's most disinguishing
aspect. Let's not undervalue it.

Dustin Ratliffe

(Sorry to reply out of the context of the thread. I just joined this
mailing-list.)