[Leaplist] Fedora 9 impressions so far...

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Thu, 2008-05-22 at 12:43 -0400, Dan Cherry wrote:
> But I think some distro hoppers are not looking for a better 'linux', but are 
> searching for a set of admin tools that fits their environment, and how they 
> work, a little better.  

Yawn.  You can bring in many tools for most operations on any distro.

The "out of box experience" is what you do for what?  A couple of days?
For people that actually use Linux, that's less than 5%.  Of course, for
those that constantly re-install different ones ... well ... you can see
the circular, self-supporting issue there, eh?  ;)

> After running Debian, Kubuntu and Knoppix for years, I took a stab at Fedora 
> last year, just to see what the tool set was like.  Couldn't get it to 
> install without some config digging, and lo' and behold, very few of the 
> config files were where I expected them to be (from a Debian perspective) - 
> so, like Fred says, persuing that would have been a huge waste of time, since 
> even if I succeeded, I was still going to be running 'Linux'!  Chalk that up 
> to an hour of curiosity, and move on.

For consumers, I agree.

For IT professionals, let's just say there's a reason why the Linux
Professional Institute (LPI) no longer offers separate Debian and
Fedora-centric 101 exams.  You should know both.  So if you're an IT
professional, understanding the difference between Debian-Ubuntu and
Fedora-OpenSuSE config layout is recommended.  LPI also adheres to Linux
Standards Base (LSB) more and more, so read up on LSB.

> I only mentioned 'admin tools', because unlike most applications, they are 
> specific to the distro they come with, and can make a big difference in your 
> Linux experience, depending on how much (or more important, how little) Linux 
> background you have.  

Actually, there are great efforts to change this.  Not only at the GUI
frameworks, but the provisioning and configuration management level.
LSB also addresses much.



-- 
Bryan J  Smith              Professional, Technical Annoyance
mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org  http://www.linkedin.com/in/bjsmith
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           Fission Power:  An Inconvenient Solution