Dear Carla, I am writing to you in response to you article on Fedora Core 3 on LinuxPlanet. While reading your article I found a number of fallacies an inconsistencies that may have resulted from lack of knowledge and/or research which are just plain untrue. I would like to provide some insight on some of these in hope that these inconsistencies can be corrected in the article. I mean no harm or harsh criticism in this. I just feel that some facts are just plain incorrect and should be corrected. They are as follows on: Page 1: In your first sentence you state that Fedora is not a safe, sane distribution and that it's not meant to be one. You also call Fedora a playground for engineers to go nuts and try out new things. This is just plain wrong. Fedora's mission statement is "The goal of The Fedora Project is to work with the Linux community to build a complete, general purpose operating system exclusively from free software." The distribution is not meant as a laboratory test. It is meant to be a proving ground for stable code that will make its way into every other linux distro eventually. In fact, much of the work done on the distro is a great service to the community since other distros wont touch code we play with for up to six months after we do. In addition, there is no beta or developmental code that goes into the release. All that cutting edge means is that it is the latest code base off the stable trees of various projects. Due to these facts, the distro IS very safe and sane as attested to by the myriad users. You also state that users should use up2date as soon as they are done installing. While your intentions are good, I would like to let you know that up2date is no longer the preferred method of obtaining and installing updates. The new update tool is a command line application called Yum. Yum has been used since Core 1 and is the preferred update application. A graphical frontend called gYum is available and instructions on how to use it are provided by Thomas Chung on FedoraNews.org. The last paragraph on the page is solid except that Fedora is suitable for both non programmers and programmers alike and includes an array of languages and development tools to accommodate them. Page 2: I don't know how you are arriving at this mediacheck bug. I personally as well as numerous other developers and users have no problems validating their downloaded images. Users can also check their images before burning to disc using the md5sum utility and comparing the output to the media checksums posted on the Fedora website. Page 3: I would like to thank you at this point for understanding our stance on building a distribution out of purely free software. It is sometimes difficult to deal with the number of users complaining about the lack of multimedia support. However, I would like to point out that users can use a number of Yum repositories such as rpm.livna.org and macromedia.mplug.org to acquire and install multimedia playback packages. Additionally, RealPlayer can be downloaded and installed from Real's helixcommunity.org in rpm format for an easy install which includes firefox/mozilla plugins and integration. For instructions on how to use Yum repositories please see Maxwell Kanat-Alexander's faq on FedoraFaq.org. Page 4: as far as the services go, they are there for a reason. nifd and mDNSresponder are used to detect dhcp and network settings for roaming, wireless and dynamic clients. I do not want to get into a whole explanation but they do server a purpose. As far as the nfs, netfs, samba etc.. These packages are installed because most users deal with heterogeneous network environments and would like to be able to use their machines on these networks without much configuration and confusion and need to install additional packages. If a user is advanced enough to know that they don't need these services we always urge them to install using a custom installation method or kickstart. Thank you for updating the inconsistency about alternative file systems and our support for them. In fact, there are a number of options available to the user at installation time, such as the ability run memtest86. For a complete list of these please see the release notes and install documentation. Thank you for your time and I hope that you are not offended by anything I have said. I just feel that the article portrays the distribution in a very negative light and as a member of the community I feel the need to dispel the FUD that is propagated in many channels of media. Journalism is a very dangerous profession as even a slight mistake can often result in the gravest of consequences. Sometimes, just a little research prior to publication time can help trim a lot of the hedges and bring out the truth in a topic. If you ever have any questions about the distribution, any comments or any facts you need rectified, please feel free to email me and I will attempt to respond as swiftly as possible. Thank You, Jack Aboutboul Fedora Community Member and Co-director, Fedora Marketing Project
