Date: Fri, 11 Sep 2009 21:59:50 +0100 From: "Sharpe, Sam J" sam.sharpe+lists.redhat@gmail.com Subject: Re: Guess who's right behind Ubuntu at Distrowatch To: "Community assistance, encouragement, and advice for using Fedora." fedora-list@redhat.com Message-ID: a21b301b0909111359h2ed0a938se4a40c5e2b02e4c3@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
2009/9/11 Kavon Farvardin kavon89@gmail.com:
Fedora is as easy as Ubuntu to use (and I've less issues than with Ubuntu), I don't see what the fuss is about
Fedora colour scheme is predominantly blue. Ubuntu colour scheme is predominantly brown </end differences>
-- Sam
I wouldn't be so sure. They're about half of year back. And they use deb-packages - there's no yum. Recently I installed Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) on my girlfriend' laptop. I never entered root pass during installation process. Instead I created user for her and sudo entry was created automatically.
2009/9/11 Hiisi very-cool@rambler.ru:
I wouldn't be so sure. They're about half of year back. And they use deb-packages - there's no yum. Recently I installed Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) on my girlfriend' laptop. I never entered root pass during installation process. Instead I created user for her and sudo entry was created automatically. -- Hiisi.
Thats a policy they have. They opt for the notion that users are stupid enough not to be trusted with a root password. All the admin tools use sudo, gksu or gksudo. The only way to drop to root is use runlevel 1 or activate the root account using `sudo passwd'.
Fedora on the other hand encourages the use of potentially powerful admin tools. We use polkit instead to keep track of the permissions. It is a contrasting philosophy which makes me love Fedora over Ubuntu. As far as I understand the feeling is the same for most of us on this list.
In conclusion, Ubuntu is different enough for us to love Fedora over it.
... And they use deb-packages - there's no yum.
They guys who have to actually package up our software at work consider that an advantage. From the practical complications involved in packaging, they say deb packages are infinitely easier to understand and generate than rpms.
Fedora on the other hand encourages the use of potentially powerful admin tools. We use polkit instead to keep track of the permissions.
If only fedora would tell polkit that the answer to any question like "Can root do this?" is yes :-). (Someone posted the config file gimmick to do that and my life got much simpler, but I have no idea why it isn't the default).
There are plenty of other confusing sysdamin differences. For instance, when installing NIS, you have to manually add the magic +::::: entry to /etc/passwd. There are basically no runlevels, everything is runlevel 2, and you disable gdm by disabling the gdm /etc/init.d script. No chkconfig tool (some other toll who's name I forget instead). No ifcfg-eth0 scripts, just one big "interfaces" file with all interfaces defined in the same file, etc.
Then there is the "synaptic" tool, which makes all fedora gui update tools look like something scraped off the bottom of a bridge :-(. Since doing updates is a common operation visible to all users across all distros, I've always suspected that synaptic was the primary reason ubuntu was somewhat more popular.
Tom Horsley wrote:
... And they use deb-packages - there's no yum.
They guys who have to actually package up our software at work consider that an advantage. From the practical complications involved in packaging, they say deb packages are infinitely easier to understand and generate than rpms.
That's simply opinion, just as I feel that packaging rpms is infinitely easier than packaging debs. I've done a bit of both and I would take a single spec file anyday over the much higher number of files involved in created anything more than a dirt-simple deb package. :)
On Saturday 12 September 2009 09:13 AM, Tom Horsley wrote:
Then there is the "synaptic" tool, which makes all fedora gui update tools look like something scraped off the bottom of a bridge :-(. Since doing updates is a common operation visible to all users across all distros, I've always suspected that synaptic was the primary reason ubuntu was somewhat more popular.
Synaptic is definitely the best gui package manager I have used. Its so easy to do everything, even distro upgrades are a few clicks away!
On 09/12/2009 10:46 PM, Suvayu Ali wrote:
On Saturday 12 September 2009 09:13 AM, Tom Horsley wrote:
Then there is the "synaptic" tool, which makes all fedora gui update tools look like something scraped off the bottom of a bridge :-(. Since doing updates is a common operation visible to all users across all distros, I've always suspected that synaptic was the primary reason ubuntu was somewhat more popular.
Synaptic is definitely the best gui package manager I have used. Its so easy to do everything, even distro upgrades are a few clicks away!
That has nothing to do with the packaging format however. Synaptic is available in Fedora as well btw.
Rahul
On 09/12/2009 03:54 PM, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
On 09/12/2009 10:46 PM, Suvayu Ali wrote:
On Saturday 12 September 2009 09:13 AM, Tom Horsley wrote:
Then there is the "synaptic" tool, which makes all fedora gui update tools look like something scraped off the bottom of a bridge :-(. Since doing updates is a common operation visible to all users across all distros, I've always suspected that synaptic was the primary reason ubuntu was somewhat more popular.
Synaptic is definitely the best gui package manager I have used. Its so easy to do everything, even distro upgrades are a few clicks away!
That has nothing to do with the packaging format however. Synaptic is available in Fedora as well btw.
That's true, but of course it doesn't do upgrades as cleanly as on Debian-based systems.
rh
2009/9/12 Rahul Sundaram sundaram@fedoraproject.org:
On 09/12/2009 10:46 PM, Suvayu Ali wrote:
On Saturday 12 September 2009 09:13 AM, Tom Horsley wrote:
Then there is the "synaptic" tool, which makes all fedora gui update tools look like something scraped off the bottom of a bridge :-(. Since doing updates is a common operation visible to all users across all distros, I've always suspected that synaptic was the primary reason ubuntu was somewhat more popular.
Synaptic is definitely the best gui package manager I have used. Its so easy to do everything, even distro upgrades are a few clicks away!
That has nothing to do with the packaging format however. Synaptic is available in Fedora as well btw.
Rahul
Does it use rpm as the back end? I thought synaptic is an exclusively dpkg/apt-get front end. I am more at ease with rpm and yum on the cmd line.
On 09/13/2009 01:50 AM, rgheck wrote:
That's true, but of course it doesn't do upgrades as cleanly as on Debian-based systems.
Not sure what you mean by that. However remember the tool is just one small portion of what makes upgrades work. The release intervals, packaging, custom packages or configuration etc matters.
Rahul
2009/9/12 Rahul Sundaram sundaram@fedoraproject.org:
On 09/13/2009 03:17 AM, suvayu ali wrote:
Does it use rpm as the back end? I thought synaptic is an exclusively dpkg/apt-get front end.
It uses apt-rpm in Fedora.
Forgive my ignorance here Rahul, but does that mean apt-rpm does what yum would do? Would it work with the usual set of the repositories for fedora? And if I use synaptic do I still get to use yum on the command line?
I also came across the home page for apt-rpm[1], it seems the project has been abandoned. An article on wikipedia[2] says the lead developer has moved on to develop smart, which he considers as the successor to apt-rpm.
[1]http://apt-rpm.org/ [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apt-rpm
On 09/13/2009 10:39 AM, suvayu ali wrote:
2009/9/12 Rahul Sundaram sundaram@fedoraproject.org:
On 09/13/2009 03:17 AM, suvayu ali wrote:
Does it use rpm as the back end? I thought synaptic is an exclusively dpkg/apt-get front end.
It uses apt-rpm in Fedora.
Forgive my ignorance here Rahul, but does that mean apt-rpm does what yum would do? Would it work with the usual set of the repositories for fedora? And if I use synaptic do I still get to use yum on the command line?
All of this, yes. apt-rpm doesn't read comps.xml and doesn't understand yum groups as a result however.
I also came across the home page for apt-rpm[1], it seems the project has been abandoned. An article on wikipedia[2] says the lead developer has moved on to develop smart, which he considers as the successor to apt-rpm.
It is currently maintained by Panu who is also the primary upstream developer of RPM itself.
Rahul
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Hiisi -
Rahul Sundaram -
Richard Heck -
Suvayu Ali -
Todd Zullinger -
Tom Horsley