Les Mikesell wrote:
On Sun, 2006-01-22 at 15:28, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
The free availability of the VMware vmplayer really changes
the picture for test-drive releases. I'd say the single most
dramatic thing that could be done now for new-user, new-version
rollout would be to maintain up to date virtual machine images
for full and minimal installations and promote them on
the main download site.
It could be but it isnt within the project scope to support any
proprietary software.
Please explain how making an image available that runs under
the free vmplayer 'supports' proprietary software any more
than making an iso image available 'supports' CD and
media manufacturers.
Pretty simple. Vmware is proprietary software. ISO images and hardware
that use them are not. The CD and media manufactures deal with open
interfaces to the hardware supported natively in Linux kernel. Fedora
does not provide proprietary drives for some hardware either.
And more to the point, how does
this relate to being community oriented, which I thought
was the topic at hand? Was it a community choice to not support any proprietary software (in whatever way you see
this as support)? I don't see how this choice helps anyone.
It is not but the project also serves other goals. No matter how many
people ask for it, Fedora project will continue to support only legally
unencumbered Free and open source software. This goal cannot be changed
by the community just like you cannot ask Linux kernel developers to
include non-GPL'ed software. Fortunately the community is generally
supportive of this goal.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing/Fedora
Red Hat has a nice team of developers working on
Xen instead which could serve similar purposes. FC5 will likely have a
pretty good implementation of Xen.
When Xen provides the same functionality, including the
ability to test-drive a linux distribution under a running
Windows installation, it would be reasonable to discuss
whether it is worth maintaining both.
Xen can very well support Windows. In fact Xen did support a modified
version of Windows before MS decided to pull off the project. Now it can
be supported through hardware virtualisation. Intel and AMD will start
supporting it in their next generation processors. Xen will be able to
run more operating systems and support more architectures with better
security through fine tuned isolation of processes and near native
performance for guest operating systems. See
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Tools/xen and related references for more
information.
Right now, there's
only one choice and using it would help get the product you
do have some better exposure.
Sure. There are already VMWare images for FC5 test versions. You can
google them. I merely said that the project by itself wouldnt support it.
--
Rahul
Fedora Bug Triaging - http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers
