The answers to these "Death of RedHat threads"..

From: WipeOut (wipe_out_at_go.com)
Date: 11/05/03 

Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2003 09:07:10 +0000

I am writing this so that people can stop freaking out about rehat and
asking the same things over and over again.. This is so the newsgroup
can get back to normal and stop talking in circles..

(NOTE: Some of the answers express my opinions and are not intended to
start a flame war, If you don't like my answers feel free to reply in a
civil manner so that others may hear your opinions.)

Here goes..

Q. Is RedHat Linux Dead?

A. Yes and No, The product named "Redhat Linux" is no longer around as
"RedHat Linux", it is now called "Fedora Project" (General Info: The red
hat that is worn in the ReHat Shadowman logo is actually called a Fedora).

Q. What is the difference between "RedHat Linux" and "Fedora Project"?

A. Well apart from the name, it now includes community development. what
this means is that "RedHat Linux" was developed in house at RedHat, now
"Fedora Project" will still be developed by RedHat byt will also be
developed by the comminity..

Q. Will Fedora support "up2date"? or How will I stay updated with patches?

A. Fedora will not support up2date.. This is now a commercial offering
by RedHat for its enterprise linux product range.. Fedora comes with a
system called YUM.. YUM is (In my opinion) far better than up2date.. a
simple command "yum update" will check what needed on your system
download and install updated packages for you, if you want to install
something new run "yum install <pkgname>" which will go out and get the
package and any required dependencies and install them.. To remove a
package run "yum remove <packagename>" which will uninstall the package
and remove any packaged thet were dependent on it that are no longer
required by any other packages.. All in all a pretty good system I would
say..

Q. Will the updates be released quickly?

A. seeing as Fedora is still overseen by RedHat I am sure the updates
will be out just as quickly as before, in fact because of the community
involvement the patches may be released even quicker than they used to..

Q. Is Fedora the only system developed like this?

A. No, In fact Debian is a community driven linux.. Unfortunately it is
a little tricky to install compared to RedHat linux..

Q. I Like RPM's so do I have to stay with RedHat?

A. No, many others use RPM's.. SeSE, Mandrake, Tawie(was Trustix) and
many others make use of RPM's.. Some of these other distro's are in fact
forks of RedHat Linux.. Mandrake for example was started as a fork from
RedHat a number of years ago, what this means is that the mandrake
developers downloaded RedHat source code and started developing it in
their own way..

Q. I am still not happy with the thought of Fedora, what will happen if
I change to another distro?

A. Probably nothing.. You will have to learn the utilities and tricks of
that system but other than that what you will find is that most of the
packages you are used to are common accross all the disrto's.. So no
matter which you use Apache, PHP, MySQL, Postgresql, Gnome, KDE and many
others are the same ones you were used to.. There are exceptions, Look
out for systems like Lindows where all users (I have been told) run as
root to make package installs easier, the security of this is a serious
concern..

Take a look at these websites ffor far more detail than I have gone into
here..

Fedora Website
http://fedora.redhat.com/
Fedora FAQ's
http://fedora.redhat.com/about/faq/

I hope this is usefull to the people who seem to be getting paniced
about the future of RedHat and the idea that Fedora will fail even
though it has not been released yet..

Later..

Relevant Pages

  • Re: The answers to these "Death of RedHat threads"..
    ... > hat that is worn in the ReHat Shadowman logo is actually called a Fedora). ... > RedHat for its enterprise linux product range.. ... > little tricky to install compared to RedHat linux.. ... > packages you are used to are common accross all the disrto's.. ...
    (linux.redhat)
  • Re: how can I get the source tree from kernel.version.rpm
    ... the package would be called, and where it would be found. ... the RELEASE-NOTES file from Fedora Core 7 reads ... Fedora may include additional patches to the kernel for improvements, ... Thank you moe,now I have a better understanding of redhat packages. ...
    (linux.redhat)
  • Re: FC2 doubtful quality?
    ... seems to be a large source of frustration for Fedora contributors. ... the same processes RedHat 9 did (user reports bugs, ... developer fixes bugs, releases a new package). ...
    (Fedora)
  • fedora security alerts via e-mail
    ... we have several linux servers that are subscribed to the ... package that is installed on our servers, we receive a mail informing us ... Is the same possible for fedora as well? ... new fedora server to the redhat website, ...
    (comp.os.linux.misc)
  • Re: Redhat vs Fedora??
    ... Dano wrote: ... > I've noticed that most programs for RedHat linux come in easy to ... > information about Fedora to see if it's quite what I'm looking for. ...
    (comp.os.linux.misc)