On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 04:19:05PM +0100, lee wrote: > > Because really, even though many people think the base OS is now > > boring, it’s far from done, and there is a lot of innovation going on > > at that level as well. > What do you consider as "base OS"? It's somewhat nebulous, but, as a general working definition, the system stuff below the applications layer. (Not in the OSI sense.) > And on top of that, what is the Fedora-way of replacing gnome --- which > I find totally useless --- with fvwm, which perfectly does what I want? It sounds like you want to do a minimal install and then add up from that. I think you will benefit from this effort in that the minimal install will be better defined and curated. > It`s only one example, and you can figure out how to do it. But the > point with this is that Fedora lacks flexibility. You get what you get > and then have to go through a lengthy process of getting rid of stuff > and of somehow getting to work what you need, like fvwm. Sure, I would agree that this isn't a strong suit, particularly with the all-or-nothing way RPM dependencies currently work. But on the other hand, I'm not sold on it being a huge problem. If you know what you are doing, it's not that big of a burden, and I'm pretty sure that the intersection of people who want this and people for whom it is easy with Fedora as it stands is quite large. > On a side note: The installer sucks, just try to do one of the most > basic and important things with it: Partitioning. Saying something "sucks" isn't very helpful. Not only is it needlessly negative, it is intangible. Name a real problem and we can talk about it. On the specific you do give, I'm pretty confident in saying that you're actually wrong. Storage is hard, and the new anaconda contains the most sophisticated and powerful GUI partitioning tool ever made. It's just a really difficult area to get perfect. Expect this to continue to improve with each Fedora release as the design is refined and bugs are shaken out. > And when you managed that, you can`t start with a minimal install and > install just what you need. You can start with a pretty basic install in the GUI. If you need more than that, you really should be looking at kickstart, and maybe even producing your own spin. > > I was at a large cloud conference a while ago, and almost nobody was > > using Fedora, and so I asked people why they chose the distribution > > they are building their stuff on, and why they didn’t choose > > Fedora. Almost universally, the response wasn’t “What I am using is > > great!” — it was “Oh, I don’t care. I just picked this, and that’s > > what I’m using and it’s fine.” > I`m not one of these people. Thinking like that, they don`t need a > Linux distribution; they can as well use Windoze or Macos. Yet these people were absolutely running Linux. Just not ours. > One thing Fedora shines with (so far) is reliability, and reliability is > one of the requirements I have. I have been using Debian for almost > twenty years until they messed up badly with their brokenarch. Doing > that put Debian out of the question once and for all because they failed > that requirement miserably beyond believe. > Please do not make the same mistake with Fedora. Switching to another > distribution is a painful process. I don't know what that specific problem was with Debian, but we are certainly working at increasing reliability, particularly through automated testing. > But I find the reliability I`ve seen so far with Fedora very exciting > and I am very thankful for it. It is a great accomplishment of Fedora. As I started with: Fedora is awesome.:) > > Also: the base OS has developed to the point where it has become > > uninteresting. > Perhaps not: It is possible that the expectations have > changed. > Ten years ago people were probably much more willing to accept that > their soft- or hardware doesn`t work and that their computer crashes or > freezes every now and then than they are willing to accept this > nowadays. Some people still don`t care. Actually, the change is the opposite, at least in the context I am talking about. Check this out: https://www.usenix.org/conference/lisa13/how-netflix-embraces-failure-improve-resilience-maximize-availability [snip] > I have always wondered how people manage to create packages, for Debian > or Fedora. I looked into it because I would like to provide packages, > and I found it requires an insurmountable effort. You start with "I > have written this software" and get to "I would like that ppl use it, > and to make that easy, I`d like to make a package". Then you try to > find out how to do that and that`s where it ends: It`s just too > difficult. > Instead, you put your software on github. Absolutely. We need to make that easier. > That decision came across as "removing an MTA from the default > install". I don`t know if you`re saying that something is now replacing > sendmail or that there is no MTA when you do a default install. > If it`s the latter, no MTA at all, then it was a very bad decision. A > system without MTA is not functional. Sure it is. Again, hyperbole doesn't really help. In fact, in many situations, an MTA doesn't do you any good, as your network won't allow it to do anything useful remotely (true now at most big companies and on most big ISPs) and local delivery goes into the black hole of root's mailbox unless you configure it. And if you're going to configure one, installing one isn't a significant extra step. Plus, since there are multiple different MTAs, this is back to your choice of fvwm vs. gnome -- if we have a default you don't want, you're going have to remove it to put in your choice. > > So that’s part of what Fedora.next is: to look at our mission and > > decide what more we need to do to make it happen. > Let me simply ask what "community" is supposed to mean in the mission > statement (which I can`t quote here because it`s an image). https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Overview#Our_Mission "The Fedora Project's mission is to lead the advancement of free and open source software and content as a collaborative community." > I am asking this because nowadays, everything is a "community", to the > point where that word doesn`t mean anything anymore. What, who and > where is this "community" in this case, who are the members of it and > how does one become a member? "Collaborative community". That means it is all the people who work together on the project. You can become a member by saying you are and doing something. That's all there is to it. (Although, practically speaking, you will also want a Fedora account if you don't have one.) See <https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Join> for a lot more starting material. > Listen to the users, if you want to make a better distribution. Sure. Continue speaking up -- we are listening. > > No one has really been able to successfully make software which goes > > on top of Fedora and keeps up. Can we make that easier in some way? > Well, I have. It`s running here right now, since F17. I`d make a > package if it was easy to make one ... > > Maybe we could do a better job by letting people put their packages in > Assuming that they can make packages ... Excellent point. Not requiring packages is the next level. > Hm. After reading the article, I still don`t really understand what > Fedora.next is about. It seems to try to somehow put together some Stay tuned for the next section -- it might clear some of these things up. > questions like "How can FOSS be advanced more efficiently?", "What can > be done to make Fedora a better distribution for everyone?", "Do we want > more people to use Fedora?", "How do we get more software into Fedora?", > "How do we get more people to contribute?", "How can we decide what we > want?" and "How can we struggle less to get what we want?". I agree -- excellent questions. > I think I`d like to see an article with questions like this which lays > out what answers to these questions are currently in place. There > probably aren`t very many people who know the current answers. Such an > article would also need to explain for each question why it is necessary > to ask it now. I'll think about it. :) -- Matthew Miller -- Fedora Project -- <mattdm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines Have a question? Ask away: http://ask.fedoraproject.org
