Andy Hudson wrote:
Ubuntu will resize NTFS partitions to make room - this is correct, and
in my view something that is extremely handy if you are trying to
persuade a friend/colleague/total stranger to give Linux a go.
I can see the advantages (if it worked ;-) ) but I guess we can't expect
it from Fedora, since AIUI Redhat won't deal with NTFS on patent
concerns. But of course it makes your original point quite valid.
Still the way things are headed with MSFT patents Canonical may find
they will need to take on some of RHAT's caution on these things.
There is actually a project for Fedora live CDs
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Kadischi
I'm aware of Kadischi, and am broadly familiar with their objectives,
but the fact is that Ubuntu comes delivered on one CD, which just so
happens to be a live CD that allows you to test the distro out before
you install it, again with that one CD.
I see, that would have advantages in terms of assessing what the exact
driver situation is going to be like before disturbing, say, a Windows
install that is proposed to be moved to Linux and is simpler than
getting the same thing with a separate Live CD or doing an install on a
fresh HDD keeping the Windows one aside. I guess the live CD part
doubles as the bootable rescue CD functionality that Fedora has.
Do you have an opinion on why Ubuntu has a higher profile at the moment
than Fedora, if you even agree that is the case?
I do agree that this is the case. From my viewpoint I see a phenomenal
marketing campaign being waged by the Ubuntu community, not to mention
the great geek idol they have in Mark Shuttleworth. With this alone,
it is no surprise that they have so many converts. You also have to
Well I see it happening too on places like Digg, but it's surprising to
see such different outcomes because Ubuntu also has a commercial outfit
behind it, basically they contain the same core stuff, Xorg, Gnome,
OpenOffice. Maybe its a cultural thing that Fedora users on average
have one eye on RHEL/CentOS, and are somehow more buttoned down? There
seems to be a lot of internal help in the Fedora user communities but
there is much less external evangelism than I see going on with Ubuntu.
I don't know quite where the difference crept in that there is no
shortage of people strongly associating themselves with the Ubuntu brand
as it were, like people with Apple iPods, and somehow Fedora is not
inspiring people to want to plaster it all over themselves (or get girls
to squish themselves together to make the logo, for example).
consider that they have no back story to Ubuntu, other than building
on Debian so they are starting with a clean slate. Fedora, however,
will always be tied to Red Hat (whether people like it or not this is
the case) and can suffer from any negative community feelings.
Hum well I see the large amount of work that RHAT put into Fedora itself
when I have a box on the development branch, and I also see @redhat.com
addresses contributing to all kinds of upstream projects, so I didn't
find any negative feelings to feel about Redhat yet. Sometimes
decisions get made that are not liked by the users, but the bulk of the
time there is very little conflict and huge benefits arrive to the
Fedora and other contributed upstream users.
Something else that I've been thinking about for some time, but have
kept to myself, is the fact that Fedora seems to be creating so many
different teams - at the moment there are 15 distinct projects all
falling under the Fedora banner. That seems like a lot to me, and
without knowing how active each project is, I'd argue that perhaps
Fedora is spreading itself a little thin. Of course, each group might
be a hive of activity, in which case I apologise now.
I don't know much about it, I'm afraid.
Also what Chris Jones says in his post should be taken on board.
Ubuntu wants to just work (within the framework of a free as in beer
distro), Fedora wants to be totally free (as in beer and as in
speech). However I think that this approach, while admirable and one
that I agree with, may not be what the majority of potential users
would either understand or benefit from.
Benefit can be a bit hard to pin down, if nobody had done anything about
saying no to proprietary, there would be none of the benefits from FOSS.
Without open-only systems we might not have ended up with the great
open video driver stuff from Intel, for example, that I am enjoying on
this laptop. Canonical are going in the opposite direction, bundling
ATI and nVidia binary drivers on the next version, I read, that is
really going to validate and perpetuate the binary-only situation there
and is that really a benefit in the end?
-Andy
