Views from an Red Hat -> Ubuntu -> Fedora migrator

[Digimer]

On 10/19/2012 10:51 AM, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 07:57:41PM -0400, Digimer wrote:
>> I'm seeing a lot of consternation with Ubuntu surrounding the 12.10
>> release. I thought I'd throw my $0.02 out there for people to read or
>> discard as they see fit.
>>
>> I started as a Red Hat user (pre-RHEL/FC split). I didn't like where Red
>> Hat was going around the RH8 ~ RH9 days, so I switched to Debian. Of
>> course, Debian and and always has been a server distro, so when Ubuntu
>> came along in '05, I decided to give it a go.
> 
> Debian is 'the universal operating system'.  I have run it as a desktop
> OS for 14 years now after I got fed up with the bugs in redhat.  It is
> not just a server OS (although it is very popular for server use).
> 
>> Like many, many others, I was converted. I was a die-hard Ubuntu user
>> for a long time and many non-geek friends and family still use the
>> Ubuntu machines I built for them.
> 
> To me the release policy of Ubuntu was fundamentally wrong, and as far
> as I am concerned the quality problems I have seen in Ubuntu have proved
> me right.
> 
>> When I started going down the clustering road, I spend countless hours
>> trying to make it work on Debian and Ubuntu. First I switched to CentOS
>> on the servers, but stuck to Ubuntu for my desktop. I still had bad
>> memories of my former Red Hat end-days and was extremely reluctant to
>> try Fedora.
>>
>> In the end, I switched back around Fedora 13. There were the usual
>> growing pains of getting used to the way Red Hat / Fedora did things,
>> but I got used to it quickly enough. Now, after about two years of solid
>> Fedora use, I am a pretty big fan again.
>>
>> Fedora is *far* from perfect. It's got plenty of sharp corners and more
>> than a few grumpy community members, but when I go back to Ubuntu for
>> one reason or another, I remember why I love it. For all it's wrinkles,
>> it strikes me as a real open source community.
> 
> As long as redhat is deciding where it is going it will never be such
> a community to me.  Debian on the other hand clearly is community
> developed.
> 
> I also know I will never go back to an RPM based distribution after
> having used Debian.  RPM is just way too painful to make packages for
> (and I find the rpm/yum interface too clumsy too).  It was a vast
> improvement over slackware's patchetic concept of a package, but that
> was a long time ago.
> 
>> In a way, I feel bad for Canonical. They need to pay the bills and I can
>> only imagine how big their bills are. However, they've gone about it in
>> a way that is, I think, something of a slap in the face of open source.
>> To default-bundle ads, to put up a skull (cute as they may have tried to
>> make it) when you don't offer them money is offensive. Yes, they have
>> invested in a tremendous amount of overhead, but there are countless
>> contributors on top of whom's work they build their OS.
> 
> Debian manages fine without asking for funding.  They get plenty of
> services and hardware donated just by being who they are and doing what
> they do.
> 
>> Anyway, my purpose was to say; If you are unhappy with Ubuntu, give
>> Fedora a try. If you are happy with Ubuntu, and if you want to support
>> Canonical, that's totally understandable, too. There is no denying that
>> they've been wonderful for open source adoption.
> 
> Or go back to Debian and get something truly open in every way and enjoy
> your stable system (or use testing or unstable if you want, they almost
> always work great too).

I would never fault someone for using Debian. I would like to comment on
a couple of things though;

I'm active in the Fedora community and from everything I've seen in the
last two years, Red Hat is very hands-off Fedora. If anything, I've seen
more stress from RHEL developers trying to meet Fedora people's
expectations than the other way around.

I think what people see is that Red Hat employees *many* people who
contribute the Red Hat. This can be seen as a form of control. It's not
a fair terms though... There is guidance though. For example, Red Hat
will say to their devs; "There is a duplication of effort in these two
projects", arrange meetings between the devs of the different projects
and see if they can find a way to work together.

I see this as providing resources and guidance, more than control, but I
could also understand why people might see this as control. I'd only ask
people interested in this to take the time to look at some fedora-hosted
projects and see how the community works, then make up their mind.

Again though; This is not to take away from the viability of Debian as a
distro. I still stand by my argument that it is a server distro first,
given it's dedication to stability over features (the same view I have
for CentOS/RHEL), but of course people can use server distros as their
workstation OS just fine.

-- 
Digimer
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