2010-09-24

My vision of Fedora 20

I would like that Fedora 20 is the RPM based start-up friendly Debian.

I am going with "RPM based" because that is what we package with.. and have for a long time. I don't see that changing by Fedora 20.. well unless dpkg2 is even cooler than it sounds. [I had dreams of Fedora 10 using conary but those have faded so I am picking my battles a bit better this time :).]

By Debian, I am looking at its large number of packages, its open-books policies and 'organization', and its developer centred culture. I think Fedora has many of these and they are so primary in their being that trying to change them would be more futile than Sisyphus's task. However I believe we can improve on opening the books and having a charter that people understand and know.

Finally the hardest, "start-up friendly". By this I mean in the way that Adam Miller blogged about, the ability for a team of people to focus on developing the parts they really want to in a way that can be separate but also able to feed back those changes to 'upstream'. Thus if a team of people want to create, brand, enhance, (possibly) sell, support Kepi Linux they can. And if another group wants to focus on Nephelae Linux they can... and the Fedora Project is built around helping them start-up, improve, and feedback to Fedora. I guess what I want Fedora to be is an Incubator (as they called them in the 1990's.. they probably have some cloud name these days).

If we can do this I would love to focus on Nephelae. It would focus on web development and web developers. Its desktop would be lightweight and clean with contemporary artwork and fonts. Its work mode would be streamlined for spinning up test servers with the frameworks web developers care about and need. And it would make sure they were easily manageable from the web developers desktop whether local or a 1000 miles away in a co-location. [Thanks to the person who started this idea for me.]

So Fedora would continue to grow and probably stay as "chaotic" as it has been, but it would also allow for people to build a focused product that meets their needs.

2010-09-20

Need help from other distros and old RH distros

So what started as a minor exercise in updating names of Red Hat Linux, turned into a large table of packages for not just Red Hat Linux, Fedora and Debian. I would like to add in Ubuntu, Mandriva and SuSE also at some point.. but this is what I got from downloads this weekend:

Red Hat Linux Release Name Date of Release # of .src.rpms kernel glibc gcc XFree86
0.8 Preview 1994-??-??
0.9 Halloween 1994-10-31
1.0 Mother's Day 1995-??-??
1.1 Mother's Day2 1995-??-??
2.0 NoName 1995-??-??
2.1 No Name 2 1995-??-??
3.0.3 Picasso 1996-03-15
4.0 Colgate 1996-10-03
4.1 Vanderbilt 1997-02-03
4.2 Biltmore 1997-04-24 373 2.0.30 (2.0.36) libc 5.3.12 2.7.2.1 3.2 (3.3.5)
5.0 Hurricane 1997-10-10 385 2.0.32 (2.0.36) 2.0.5c (2.0.7) 2.7.2.3 3.3.1 (3.3.3.1)
5.1 Manhatten 1998-05-07 405 2.0.34 (2.0.36) 2.0.7 2.7.2.3 3.3.2 (3.3.3.1)
5.2 Apollo 1998-10-12 434 2.0.36 2.0.7 2.7.2.3 3.3.2.3 (3.3.5)
6.0 Hegwig 1999-04-19 476 2.2.5 (2.2.17) 2.1.1 (2.1.3) egcs-1.1.2 3.3.3.1 (3.3.5)
6.1 Cartmann 1999-09-26 500 2.2.12 (2.2.17) 2.1.2 (2.1.3) egcs-1.1.2 3.3.5 (3.3.5)
6.2 Zoot 2000-03-08 511 2.2.14 (2.2.24) 2.1.3 egcs-1.1.2 3.3.6
7.0 Guinness 2000-08-28 568 2.2.16 (2.2.24) 2.1.92 (2.2.4) 2.96 4.0.1
7.1 Seawolf 2001-04-04 634 2.4.2 (2.4.20) 2.2.2 (2.2.4) 2.96 4.0.3 (4.1.0)
7.2 Enigma 2001-10-22 759 2.4.7 (2.4.20) 2.2.4 2.96 4.1.0
7.3 Valhalla 2002-05-06 815 2.4.18 (2.4.20) 2.2.5 2.96 4.2.0 (4.2.1)
8.0 Psyche 2002-09-30 838 2.4.18 (2.4.20) 2.2.93 (2.3.2) 3.2 4.2.0 (4.2.1)
9.0 Shrike 2003-03-31 839 2.4.20-NPTL 2.3.2 3.2.2 4.3.0
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Release Name Date of Release # of .src.rpms kernel glibc gcc XFree86
1 (6.2EE) Zoot 2000-03-27 511 2.2.14 (2.2.24) 2.1.3 egcs-1.1.2 3.3.6
2.1 Pensacola / Panama 2002-03-26 728 2.4.9 2.2.4 2.96 XFree86-3.3.6
3 Taroon 2003-10-22 712 2.4.21 2.3.2 3.2.3 XFree86-4.3.0
4 Nahant 2005-02-15 881 2.6.9 2.3.4 3.4.6 6.8.2
5 Tikango 2007-03-14 1226 2.6.18 2.5 4.1.2 1.1.1
6 Santiago 201?-??-?? 2057 2.6.32 2.12 4.4.4 1.7.7
Fedora OS Version Release Name Date of Release # of .src.rpms kernel glibc gcc X
01 Yarrow 2003-11-05 876 2.4.22-nptl 2.3.2 3.3.2 XFree86 4.3.0
02 Tettnang 2004-05-18 946 2.6.5 (2.6.10) 2.3.3 3.3.3 x.org 6.7.0
03 Heidelberg 2004-11-08 2079 2.6.9 (2.6.12) 2.3.3 (2.3.4) 3.4.2 (3.4.4) 6.8.1 (6.8.2)
04 Stentz 2005-06-13 2753 2.6.11 (2.6.17) 2.3.5 (2.3.6) 4.0.0 (4.0.2) 6.8.2
05 Bordeaux 2006-03-20 3137 2.6.15 (2.6.20) 2.4 4.1.0 (4.1.1) server 1.0.1
06 Zod 2006-10-24 3681 2.6.18 (2.6.22.14) 2.5 4.1.1 (4.1.2) 1.1.1
07 Moonshine 2007-05-31 5189 2.6.21 (2.6.23.17) 2.6 4.1.2 1.3.0.0
08 Werewolf 2007-11-08 6042 2.6.23.1 (2.6.26.8) 2.7 4.1.2 1.3.0.0
09 Sulphur 2008-05-13 7085 2.6.25 (2.6.27.25) 2.8 4.3.0 1.4.99.901 (1.5.2)
10 Cambridge 2008-11-25 8103 2.6.27.5 (2.6.27.41) 2.9 4.3.2 1.5.3
11 Leonidas 2009-06-09 8935 2.6.29.4 (2.6.30.10) 2.10.1 (2.10.2) 4.4.0 (4.4.1) 1.6.1.901 (1.6.4)
12 Constantine 2009-11-17 9428 2.6.31.5 (2.6.32.21) 2.11 (2.11.2) 4.4.2 (4.4.4) 1.7.1 (1.7.6)
13 Goddard 2010-05-25 9555 2.6.33.3 (2.6.34.6) 2.12 4.4.4 1.8.0 (1.8.2)
14 Laughlin (2010-09-14) 9644 2.6.35.4 2.12.90 4.5.1 1.8.99.905 ()
Rawhide Rawhide (2010-09-14) 9701 2.6.36 2.12.90 4.5.1 7.6
Debian GNU/Linux Release Name Date of Release # of src dpkgs kernel glibc gcc XFree86
1.1 Buzz 1996-06-17
1.2 Rexz 1996-12-12
1.3 Bo 1997-06-05
2.0 Hamm 1998-06-17 1115
2.1 Slink 1999-03-09 1580
2.2 Potato 2000-08-15 2647
3.0 Woody 2002-07-19 5218
3.1 Sarge 2005-06-06 8727
4.0 Etch 2007-04-08 10215
5.0 Lenny 2009-02-14 12108
6.0 Squeeze(2010-09-15) 2010-??-?? 14835
7.0 Wheezy 2010-??-??
Unstable Sid (2010-09-15) 15888

Pointers on where I can get the information missing I would really appreciate. Thanks

2010-09-08

Board Phone Meeting (2010-09-08)

Many many thanks to Máirín Duffy for being the secretary to this meeting when I was supposed to be secretary. I make a very bad one as I keep writing down my thoughts on what people say ... not what they actually say. [And thanks to Caillon for reminding me that I should make sure Máirín gets credit for her work.]

Her general notes are here. Her more detailed ones will be later. She was very nice to avoid my general grumpiness in the meeting which I apologize to the other board members for.

2010-09-05

Too much Top Gear

Well I think watching 3 seasons of Top Gear on the telly in the last couple of weeks has reached its end. [Well especially since Netflix doesn't have any of the older series yet on instant view.] The last couple of nights I have had dreams of Thomas the Tank Engine narrated by Jeremy Clarkson. And yes the race between Bertie and Thomas ended in "and across the line."

Now to see if I can get a Region 1 DVD player so I can watch James May's latest series: Toy Stories. I really want to see Big Ideas too, but that does not look available. I will just have to order the books. Of the three and a half (the Stig) presenters, I have found I like James the best... as sadly I have his sense of direction and love of little details.

[Oh and I had such a great challenge idea after watching the Gumpert race.. build a car that can drive upside down. I figure a large wind tunnel could simulate the velocity to push a vehicle 'down' (or in this case up)... and you could crash several of them to see if any of the ideas work.]

2010-09-02

Ubuntu Bashing: Please Stop

Recently someone posted a set of pictures of burning an Ubuntu cd case and breaking up a dvd or cdrom. Hurray a great victory for the rights of Freedom everywhere, correct? No. It is just a ritualistic act to try and rally one group of apes who think they are about to be wiped out by some other clan of apes. It reeks of fear, hatred, and intolerance and I want the Fedora community to be above that.

Having had to deal with Red Hat Linux boxed sets returned to us stuffed with dog faeces, or ashes of disks.. I don't like seeing other people's work crapped on. Having grown up in area where book burnings still happened because of some group thinking it would save their children from the sinful world.. I will not stand quiet on this.

You want to promote freedom, make Fedora or the world a better place. Burning disks and posting hatred will not do that.