OT: What's the deal with Ubuntu?

[Les Mikesell]

On Fri, 2005-05-20 at 12:52, Rahul Sundaram wrote:

> >Why is this question any harder to answer for fedora than for ubuntu?
> >And why, since it has been answered already, shouldn't approximately
> >the same answer be shared?
> >  
> >
> 
> Not necessarily.  Fedora isnt Ubuntu or viceversa though these two 
> platforms have some similarities. If we are building exactly the same 
> thing we might as well as toss out either of them.

They are (and should be) basically the same things packaged and
installed differently.  What's the point of being free and open
if you don't use the best available even if you didn't invent it
yourself?  That is, if can quantify something as 'better', then
everyone might as well be using it.

> I have a draft 
> document of what I consider new/unique features in the future FC4 
> release just to give you an idea
> 
> http://people.redhat.com/sundaram/fedora_notes.html

This is a moving target for all distributions.

> >People building servers probably know what they are doing and will
> >want a custom setup anyway.
> >
> 
> I dont agree with you on this. Servers are usually consolidated. If you 
> customise (I assume you mean rebuild RPMs here) you end up having to do 
> it everytime a bug fix or security fix comes out

I didn't mean to the point of rebuilding many RPM's, but just selecting
them, although given the lack of a bundled spam/virus scanner like
MimeDefang, there is probably a lot of hand-built stuff out there.
A server is likely to busy doing one service or a select few. Most
wouldn't need a drawing package or lots of fonts and clipart installed
just in case the user feels artistic one day.

> Desktop numbers are far less than servers currently for Linux.

Maybe, but I'd guess that new installs from downloaded CD's are
greater for desktops. That is, the bulk of server installs are for
farms where the drives are cloned, or at least it's a network install
and the operator isn't swapping CDs in and out.  And in the context
of fedora, the servers most likely aren't re-installed from scratch
every 6 months.

> >I've always thought that if there were somewhere around 20 expertly
> >chosen (and maintained) complete sets of programs already bundled
> >with descriptions of why you might want one set vs. another everyone
> >would be a lot better off than having to sort through 10,000 choices
> >at are just there because they are free.
> >  
> >
> sure. question is which 20. you got answers?. write them down in detail 
> and post to fedora-devel. It would interesting to see the discusions 
> evolving around that

I don't think it is something that should be answered in theory.  It
should be done by cloning systems that people actually run to do
specific jobs. (Cloning in the sense of bundling RPMs that install
the same packages but without the years of experimenting that it
took to get the first one right...).  The systems could take on
some of the personalities of the people who maintain the masters and
everyone else could just pick one that matches the job they have planned
or a personality they like. There could be many more than 20 when
you get into stylistic preferences, but 20 might cover 90% of typical
uses.  It's probably rare for the same desktop to need both eclipse and
scribus - and with access to repositories, omitting a few things isn't
fatal anyway.  

> That would help determine whats popular but would it be the only measure 
> of what to bundle in Fedora Core. For example, FC4 will have Evince, a 
> document viewer which is replacing gpdf.  There is no way Fedora would 
> have adopted SELinux or moved XMMS to Fedora extras based on  stats.

Ummm, yes, most people would probably wait for Linus to accept SELinux
before trying it on their own, and the reason no one wants the
Fedora-supplied XMMS is kind of obvious.

> I 
> could provide more examples if you want me to but I think you understand 
> the other factors now

I'm not sure I understand the concept of a 'core' that is right for
both a desktop and a server install.  Historically, unix has needed
an experienced administrator to install and tune it - a concept that
doesn't mesh well with personal computing.  A set of 'pre-tuned'
bundled installations for several different purposes would take care
of that problem.  Can you imagine a typical Mac user having to pick
what should be installed on his desktop - or even dealing with the
option of more than one application that could access any particular
file?

-- 
  Les Mikesell
   lesmikesell at gmail.com