Is Fedora Linux Still Relevant?

The guy hasn't gotten over Red Hat splitting RHEL and Fedora ... and he has very little to back up why he dislikes the community version so much, other than that he does.

Yeah, when the split happened nothing really changed. Enterprise Edition became Enterprise Linux before that. Red Hat Linux became Fedora. It wsa really just a name change. The point was to differentiate the paid product from the free. Some people took that as some sort of abandonment or demotion of the free/community edition. Some started accusing RH of being the Microsoft of Linux. All very silly but some people persist.

I knew the article wasn't worth reading even before I finished the headline.

Quoting: ... Some started accusing RH of being the Microsoft of Linux.

True*, but on /. this long preceded the creation of the Enterprise edition**.

YBT

* Unfortunately, serious this time.

** Regarding the differentiation of RH free vs. not free (as in cash exchanged) as you (caitlyn) have pointed out elsewhere (and more than once) even a copy of the Enterprise version can be copied and used for no charge. The pay portion is for server support not the code.

TxtEdMacs: Enterprise Edition of Red Hat dates back to the 6.2 release circa 2001. I don't remember Red Hat being compared to Microsoft back then. Red Hat remains committed to FOSS as you yourself point out. Any comparison to Microsoft is specious at best. Yes, of course, you are correct that what Red Hat is charging for is support. The code (in source, not binary form) can be freely downloaded by anyone, anytime.

> I don't remember Red Hat being compared to Microsoft back then.

Folks started comparing Red Hat to Microsoft not to long after Red Hat went public, maybe even before.

> Any comparison to Microsoft is specious at best.

Of course, but that doesn't stop some people.

@Steven:

Ken Hess' BaitNSwitch story probably was enough to understand he doesn't like Redhat.

I haven't run Fedora much, but all my interaction with community members, paid and volunteer, has been relentlessly positive, encouraging and inclusive.

That more than anything makes Fedora a project that deserves another look.

As far as Red Hat goes, if splitting RHEL off from Fedora is what they needed to do to be a successful company, more power, because it seems to be working.

And I get the idea — don't y'all? — that Red Hat tacitly approves of CentOS, the freely available clone of RHEL. It's an easy way for people to see if RHEL is right for their application/hardware, and in a critical environment, a little free knowledge is often followed by a support contract. And between Fedora and CentOS, a world full of Linux geeks can learn all about what makes Red Hat distros work and then apply that knowledge (and probably buy support) from their employers present and future.

And since CentOS isn't a Red Hat-produced product (except that it is ... but it isn't DISTRIBUTED by them or NAMED by them), you get the feeling that it doesn't make paid-up RHEL customers think they're getting cheated by paying thousands for something that others get for free.

So Red Hat, the company, is smarter than you might think.

I have a feeling the author and whoever he's bumping heads with are confusing popularity with relevance.