[SGVLUG] FC repository searches

[Dustin Laurence]

On Mon, Sep 11, 2006 at 06:54:37PM -0700, Jeff Carlson wrote:
> Dustin Laurence wrote:

> > genuine Debian install, so the circumstantial evidence is that either
> > Knoppix isn't a good way to install Debian or you botched the install.
> > I'm guessing the former.
> 
> Given the profound lack of options in the latter (a dialog which reads,
> "do you want to continue?  [YES] [No]."), then the former stands to reason.

It's hard to screw that up, I agree. :-)

Out of curiosity, what were the symptoms?  I have a guess as to the
problem: Knoppix releases far more often than Debian, so it's not likely
to be based on Debian Stable.  I'm guessing Knoppix does what Ubuntu
does and takes a snapshot of Sid and then tweaks it for stability.  That
would mean that the base install is not any of the Debian repositories,
and so to be consistent it would need to point apt at it's own Knoppix
repository as Ubuntu does.  But since Knoppix isn't mainly about
permanent installs I bet it just uses a Debian keyword, probably Sid, in
which case I can see the potential for trouble.

Also note that the hard-disk install feature of Knoppix is pretty new,
so it may not be debugged anyway.

> I have to be honest, the most recent installations I have done have
> either been new computers or replacing failed HDs.  But I have a few
> which I'm planning to go to FC6 that way, including this laptop.

Well, tell me what happens, particularly after running it for a while.
I'm still keeping an eye on the statistics.

> > Well, it'll work until and unless RH ever feels it's rice-bowl is
> > threatened.  Then Fedora will become even more "bleeding edge" or
> > something.  Hopefully it won't ever happen.
> 
> RedHat has always drank its own Kool-Aid.  Everything they have
> acquired, and everything they have written in house, they have always
> open-sourced, at least that's my recollection.  Whether those items be
> their Anaconda installer, all the system-config-* utilities, or major
> things like GFS and Netscape's LDAP server, they've kept that much up at
> least.

I agree.  RedHat often skates close to the edge (their attempts to shut
down the RHEL rebuilds with trademark and copyright come to mind), but I
don't believe they've ever crossed the line.  That is why I still
generally prefer them to keep winning in the enterprise space--they are
still an FLOSS pure-play and play (sometimes barely) by the rules.  As
you say they have generally released proprietary products they
bought--even Cygnus had backslidden when RH bought them, IIRC.

In some sense, RH is the classic and greatest experiment in how fully a
company can be totally committed to making money for it's investors (as
the law more or less mandates for a publicly traded company) and still
stay within the rules of our community.  If RH fails, the model that
will win will be more like that of Novell.  I respect Novell's plans and
need to differentiate itself, but RH is far more committed to our ideals
(as opposed to our software) than Novell is.  So I want RH to win on
it's own terms.

> ...I believe they will continue to support Fedora because it is a
> symbiotic relationship, and they base their commercial product on what
> happens there.

I am about 93% sure they will.  Beyond the free development work for
RHEL, I think (hope) they realize how disastrous their loss of mindshare
was when they ended RHL.  I wasn't suggesting they'd drop Fedora, only
that if they feel it's competing too strongly with RHEL then they'll
*very* likely do something to make it less competitive there.  The
publicly stated reason will be different and plausible (almost certainly
that it needs to be "more bleeding edge" for "enthusiast desktops" and
"community demand"), of course.

I'm not at all saying this is bad--after all, people *do* want something
very like Fedora, and if you want something more like RHEL there is
always White Box Linux and CentOS.  I'm just saying that it has to be
understood that one of the costs of RH's (considerable and very useful)
support of Fedora is the fact that it *will* change as necessary to keep
it from encroaching past a certain point into RHEL's territory.

> I just wonder if others get sick of the purely theoretical outlook of
> threads like this.  There isn't a black and white question being
> answered.  We just keep going back and forth on opinion.  It's only
> interesting on an intellectual level.

Hmm.  Is it?  We started with how to find the packages in Fedora, which
is practically useful (I always have a toolbar link to the package
browser for any distro I'm running, that's how important it is to me),
and now we're discussing (among other things) what Fedora's purpose and
direction is.  That's sort of useful if you want to decide whether to
run it at home, no?  I think there is *some* practical value here.

> ...At least it's not about
> bio-diesel this time.  :)

Too bad we didn't end up discussing how to hack an ECU to run Linux in
your car, isn't it? :-)  Man, I want that.  Well, to be honest, I may
not--that's a realtime, human safety issue, and really requires far more
engineering than we typically demand.  Linux certainly *could* do it,
but it may be an application that should not be community developed.  To
keep us all out of jail, if nothing else.

OTOH, we might learn the awful truth about the proprietary engineering
the car companies have done.  We might be better off not knowing. =8-O

Dustin

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