Hi
Ever since reading http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20050711#1 I
have been curious to see this review and thanks to Andy Hudson for
sending me a copy of this article. This review which awards 4/10 points
for the Fedora Core 4 release runs into a couple of pages and is a nice
change from the usual ill informed MP3 rants and cursory looks. Time for
feedback now!
The reviews goes into a general introduction that notes the change in
the default GNOME desktop theme from Bluecurve to Clearlooks, switch to
GCC 4.0 and stresses the movement of packages from core to extras as a
controversy that has alarmed Fedora users and notes that PPC is now a
supported architecture. The controversy over extras has been compared
to the refusal of Red Hat to include 2.6 kernel in RHEL3. RHEL 3 was
released on October 2003, a few months before the first release of 2.6
version of the Linux kernel, providing such a major version bump during
errata updates is something which no distribution has done in my
knowledge. In both cases, the "annoyances" for any users are seemingly
irrational to me. The review has several sections covering different
aspects of the changes in this release.
Software shelved:
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20050711#1
It has been that mentioned many packages like Abiword, Exim, XEmacs and
XFCE has moved into extras as a effort to reduce bloat and this would be
a problem for users who want to retrieve such packages over a dial up
connection. I dont buy this argument. Lets assume for a moment that
Fedora Core 4 included all of these packages in a 5 CD collection
without moving anything to the extras repository, would users with a
dial up connection be able to download it then?. At any case, Fedora
Core wouldnt ever serve as a set of all the software that any user could
ever want. As Fedora Core gets trimmed to a more manageable collection
of default applications, integration with Fedora Extras and potentially
other third party repositories should be transparent enough that the
users wouldnt have to care which repository their favorite application
is in . As a first step, FC4 ships with the extras repository enabled by
default as mentioned in the review. Now further being work in Anaconda
in using a yum backend would enable users to mix and match their
applications from various repositories during installation time. If
there is sufficient interests, anyone could spin off the other Fedora
compatible repositories into ISO images for redistribution.
GUI Limbo:
GCC 4.0 has been described as a gamble here. Red Hat developers have
significant stake in the development of GCC with in depth knowledge that
enabled them to rebuild nearly all of Fedora Core with this compiler
including fixes to packages and even to the compiler when necessary. A
previous version has been shipped for compatibility reasons. While
pushing new technology always has risks, it also has its benefits and
this is what Fedora is meant to be. The focus on whether GCC 4 would
yield any performance benefits, in my opinion misses a important point.
GCC 4 includes a significantly improved version of GCJ which has enabled
the inclusion of Eclipse, Openoffice.org 2.0 milestone release including
the Java parts, Apache Jakarta among several natively compiled Java
components. This is a significant advancement of a completely Free Java
stack which includes extensive work done over many years, the
importance of this and the relationship with the new compiler seemed to
have gone unnoticed in the review.
The criticism of the lack of improvements in the system configuration
tools (system-config*) especially system-config-package's lack of
understanding of the yum repositories is indeed valid and significant
work is being done during the FC5 timeframe to address this.
Comfortably yum:
This short section has a well deserved praise in this section for
improvements in speed using XML headers and SQLite backend. Kudos to the
yum developers on this.
Core Proposition:
The review mentions that this release is just a standard update despite
the inclusion of Xen and trimming down a few packages in comparison
with SUSE 9.3 Pro which includes Mono and Beagle. Setting aside the Mono
factor*, Fedora Core 4's inclusion of GFS cluster filesystem, Evince,
Apache Jakarta along with the improvements in the SELinux policies have
gone unnoticed in the review
http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/release-notes/fc4/#sn-new-in-fc
Taking into consideration, the only major criticism, "GUI limbo" as
mentioned in the review, the overall score seems unfair to me even after
reading the comments in the forum from the site admin, who mentions that
the scores have been readjusted in such a way that 5/10 means a average
one which many distributions would get.
http://www.linuxformat.co.uk/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=709
A amusing comment from the side admin caught my eye there "On the flip
side, I would never, ever use it as a server distro either, simply
because it doesn't provide a good enough security infrastructure for my
requirements. ". FC4 includes Exec Shield, GCC 4 security improvements
and 91 daemons covered under SELinux targeted policy by default along
with the strict policy as an alternative. I would have thought that
would provided enough of a security infrastructure in comparison to any
other distribution or even operating system out there.
regards
Rahul
* http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/release-notes/fc4/errata/#sn-why-no-mp3
PS: It would perhaps be a good idea to look at how reviewers go about
understanding new release highlights to help them see through such
changes in an evident manner. It would be interesting to hear Andy
Hudson's comments on his approach
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