On Thu, Apr 15, 2004 at 07:57:55AM +1000, Nathan Robertson wrote:
<SNIP stuff I agree with>
FWIW, I believe that we're just "completing" the support for PowerPC, not adding a new platform, because it pre-existed in devel. A community driven release of a platform previously unsupported in any way by Red Hat would certainly be send a really good signal to the doubters out there that Fedora Core isn't just Red Hat, just like Mozilla wasn't just Netscape (and they had their doubters too).
There is more to it than just completing support for an existing arch. even the PPC stuff is aimed at IBM P-Series, and not necessarily listed as a Fedora supported arch.
Indeed, but in this case, the two architectures are similar enough for me to make the above statement. I have FC/devel booting, with Gnome and all the apps I use running on two of my Apple powermac machines. As in, straight out of devel, not some largely hacked thing.
That said, there is certainly effort underway, as I know the Yellowdog folks have been working with Fedora as have Paul Nasrat and others to make it a supported platform. Submitting new packages to bugzilla as RFEs is certainly the right thing to do provided you have looked over the licensing, packaging, etc. But do not expect them to be blindly accepted. Red Hat has been very supportive of comminity work for alternative architectures, but it does tread new ground, and patience is required.
Indeed. Don't think that I'm beating Red Hat up here. I'm just asking for clarification on their policy / vision.
Considering where we are in the release calendar, and the amount of pain we went through with the x86_64 release, I would not expect a PPC/PPC64 Mac release until FC3.
Which is what I had in mind.
In the meantime, building working trees, and showing that it can be supported without a ton of effort can go a long way towards getting things ready for the FC3 release cycle. I will be working with PPC64 myself, joining the efforts of those listed above. But then again, I am not a RH employee.
The thing that differentiates the Apple powerpc port from the x86-64 port is that Red Hat are actually shipping a x86-64 product, and IMO are unlikely to ship a RHEL/apple-powerpc, despite it being the second largest Linux architecture according to http://popcon.debian.org/ (third actually, but #2 is "unknown").
Which is really the point of the original email - to what extent are Red Hat going to let the Fedora project follow the needs and wants of users who are willing to contribute vs. what they're shipping / going to ship in RHEL? My email was not a criticism, just one asking for clarification on Red Hat's vision for Fedora.
Nathan.
