Hi, I'm new at this Fedora concept and I would like to ask the following questions:
1. How come we only have a limited number of Window Managers in Fedora? i.e only (GNOME, KDE and twm)
Why don't we include more robust or eye-candy desktops such as Fluxbox, Enlightenment, XFCE, etc... ?
2. If we have created some of our own programs, for instance I created pdfmerge/pdfmerge4unix (program which merges any number of pdf files), [I know it's a small thing but it was just an example! ;-p] which is on SF.net, and I wish to make it available to the Fedora project/users since it's a useful program. Where do I submit my rpm packages to?
Is it possible to make it available to apt-repositories of Fedora?
3. Why don't we have a lot of packagers available at hand compared to Debian? I think all of you are aware that the apt of Debian covers a wider range of packages than Fedora/RH.
Debian also have several maintainers which takes care of all their packages issues. Why don't we have the same concept in Fedora?
With kind regards,
Didier.
--- PhD student
Singapore Synchrotron Light Source (SSLS) 5 Research Link, Singapore 117603
Email: slsbdfc at nus dot edu dot sg \or\ didierbe at sps dot nus dot edu dot sg Website: http://ssls.nus.edu.sg
On Sat, 2003-11-01 at 20:56, Didier Casse wrote:
Hi, I'm new at this Fedora concept and I would like to ask the following questions:
- How come we only have a limited number of Window Managers in Fedora?
i.e only (GNOME, KDE and twm)
I don't know the actual reason, but my guess is that the window managers and desktop environments were simplified to a minimal set in order to reduce the engineering load for the previous paid engineer hour distribution that was Red Hat Linux.
With limited engineers and far too much work to do of much higher importance (i.e. NPTL, XFree86 drivers and a thousand other things), you simply cannot expect something like enlightenment to get the necessary time and care needed for a quality package. KISS principles rule when resources are limited.
Why don't we include more robust or eye-candy desktops such as Fluxbox, Enlightenment, XFCE, etc... ?
Now that Fedora is moving toward community involvement in engineering, packaging, quality assurance, we can package these things. For fedora.redhat.com package submission is not ready, so you can submit packages to fedora.us to begin the community driven package acceptance process.
I believe fluxbox is already submitted, or may already be published at fedora.us.
- If we have created some of our own programs, for instance I created
pdfmerge/pdfmerge4unix (program which merges any number of pdf files), [I know it's a small thing but it was just an example! ;-p] which is on SF.net, and I wish to make it available to the Fedora project/users since it's a useful program. Where do I submit my rpm packages to?
Is it possible to make it available to apt-repositories of Fedora?
RH dislikes the idea of putting apt pkglists on official mirrors because they do not ship apt. I personally am unhappy about this, however I accept their decision.
In the future there may be a resolution to this problem. Currently yum, apt, and up2date developers are working on standardizing a header format so all three clients use the same metadata. That way it doesn't matter what client you use, they are all officially supported by all mirrors. I don't know the status of this development though.
- Why don't we have a lot of packagers available at hand compared to
Debian? I think all of you are aware that the apt of Debian covers a wider range of packages than Fedora/RH.
http://www.fedora.us/wiki/PackageSubmissionQAPolicy Fedora Project needs to create our own community of packagers. Read this and get started by doing the Self-Introduction post. Then look at many examples of other people's package submissions, then submit your own packages.
http://www.fedora.us/QA Look here to see all current packages that are in QA. We need more people to do quality QA analysis for these packages to become published.
Debian also have several maintainers which takes care of all their packages issues. Why don't we have the same concept in Fedora?
What do you mean by "packages issues"?
Warren
On Nov 1, 2003, Warren Togami warren@togami.com babbled:
With limited engineers and far too much work to do of much higher importance (i.e. NPTL, XFree86 drivers and a thousand other things), you simply cannot expect something like enlightenment to get the necessary time and care needed for a quality package.
But you still can get support from the Enlightenment team! I currently use Enlightenment and I'm often on their mailing list. I can tell you that they (and including me!) can provide full support for anybody who use E desktop on any distro. I currently use RH9 and willing to help anybody who has problems with E on RH9.
RH dislikes the idea of putting apt pkglists on official mirrors because they do not ship apt. I personally am unhappy about this, however I accept their decision.
I'm unhappy too ;-p
In the future there may be a resolution to this problem. Currently yum, apt, and up2date developers are working on standardizing a header format so all three clients use the same metadata. That way it doesn't matter what client you use, they are all officially supported by all mirrors. I don't know the status of this development though.
Cool!
- Why don't we have a lot of packagers available at hand compared to
Debian? I think all of you are aware that the apt of Debian covers a wider range of packages than Fedora/RH.
http://www.fedora.us/wiki/PackageSubmissionQAPolicy Fedora Project needs to create our own community of packagers. Read this and get started by doing the Self-Introduction post. Then look at many examples of other people's package submissions, then submit your own packages.
Thanks for the tip. But I wonder why they don't put it on http://fedora.redhat.com
http://www.fedora.us/QA Look here to see all current packages that are in QA. We need more people to do quality QA analysis for these packages to become published.
Debian also have several maintainers which takes care of all their packages issues. Why don't we have the same concept in Fedora?
What do you mean by "packages issues"?
Meaning: if you have problems with let's say Eterm on Debian. Then Michael Jennings (Author of Eterm) will not be the one that you bug for your Debian problems but you will rather bug the maintainer of Eterm on Debian (Currently: Laurence J. Lane ljlane@debian.org--- Well i think so!) to solve your package issues!
With kind regards,
Didier
--- PhD student
Singapore Synchrotron Light Source (SSLS) 5 Research Link, Singapore 117603
Email: slsbdfc at nus dot edu dot sg \or\ didierbe at sps dot nus dot edu dot sg Website: http://ssls.nus.edu.sg
On Sun, 2003-11-02 at 10:30, Didier Casse wrote:
But you still can get support from the Enlightenment team! I currently use Enlightenment and I'm often on their mailing list. I can tell you that they (and including me!) can provide full support for anybody who use E desktop on any distro. I currently use RH9 and willing to help anybody who has problems with E on RH9.
Then the Enlightenment team (or any other projects team) should set up their own apt/yum repository for RH/Fedora.
Due to different philosophies, I doubt that Fedora iseer going to have repositories as big as Debian, so for a number of projects, we will have to rely on 3d party repositories.
-windi
On Sun, 2003-11-02 at 00:33, Stephan Windischmann wrote:
On Sun, 2003-11-02 at 10:30, Didier Casse wrote:
But you still can get support from the Enlightenment team! I currently use Enlightenment and I'm often on their mailing list. I can tell you that they (and including me!) can provide full support for anybody who use E desktop on any distro. I currently use RH9 and willing to help anybody who has problems with E on RH9.
Then the Enlightenment team (or any other projects team) should set up their own apt/yum repository for RH/Fedora.
Wrong. The enlightenment team should submit their official package to fedora QA for inclusion in the community's repository.
Due to different philosophies, I doubt that Fedora iseer going to have repositories as big as Debian, so for a number of projects, we will have to rely on 3d party repositories.
Wrong again. 3rd party repositories will only be necessary mainly for packages that cannot exist in Fedora due to license or legal reasons. This is very similar to Debian's situation.
Warren
Le dim 02/11/2003 à 11:54, Warren Togami a écrit :
On Sun, 2003-11-02 at 00:33, Stephan Windischmann wrote:
On Sun, 2003-11-02 at 10:30, Didier Casse wrote:
But you still can get support from the Enlightenment team! I currently use Enlightenment and I'm often on their mailing list. I can tell you that they (and including me!) can provide full support for anybody who use E desktop on any distro. I currently use RH9 and willing to help anybody who has problems with E on RH9.
Then the Enlightenment team (or any other projects team) should set up their own apt/yum repository for RH/Fedora.
Wrong. The enlightenment team should submit their official package to fedora QA for inclusion in the community's repository.
And the QA/packaging rules part is very important. When you package in isolation your own stuff in your own repository it's altogether too easy to miss problems a larger community will have identified.
Due to different philosophies, I doubt that Fedora iseer going to have repositories as big as Debian, so for a number of projects, we will have to rely on 3d party repositories.
Wrong again. 3rd party repositories will only be necessary mainly for packages that cannot exist in Fedora due to license or legal reasons. This is very similar to Debian's situation.
See jpackage for java as an example of 3rd party repository that is separate for licensing/legal reasons. (Well even if there was no licensing issues I don't think we'd merge with Fedora since it would leave our mdk members in the dust. Some form of close association/affiliation would be possible however)
Regards,
On Sun, 2003-11-02 at 11:54, Warren Togami wrote:
Wrong again. 3rd party repositories will only be necessary mainly for packages that cannot exist in Fedora due to license or legal reasons. This is very similar to Debian's situation.
Good to see that I was wrong. :)
A large repository of software packages is a big plus point for any distro.
-windi
On Sun, Nov 02, 2003 at 12:54:16AM -1000, Warren Togami wrote:
On Sun, 2003-11-02 at 00:33, Stephan Windischmann wrote:
On Sun, 2003-11-02 at 10:30, Didier Casse wrote:
But you still can get support from the Enlightenment team! I currently use Enlightenment and I'm often on their mailing list. I can tell you that they (and including me!) can provide full support for anybody who use E desktop on any distro. I currently use RH9 and willing to help anybody who has problems with E on RH9.
Then the Enlightenment team (or any other projects team) should set up their own apt/yum repository for RH/Fedora.
Wrong. The enlightenment team should submit their official package to fedora QA for inclusion in the community's repository.
Due to different philosophies, I doubt that Fedora iseer going to have repositories as big as Debian, so for a number of projects, we will have to rely on 3d party repositories.
Wrong again. 3rd party repositories will only be necessary mainly for packages that cannot exist in Fedora due to license or legal reasons. This is very similar to Debian's situation.
There are more reasons for the existance of independent repositories than being illegal.
Warren
On Sun, 2003-11-02 at 11:54, Warren Togami wrote:
Wrong again. 3rd party repositories will only be necessary mainly for packages that cannot exist in Fedora due to license or legal reasons. This is very similar to Debian's situation.
Good to see that I'm wrong :)
Having a fairly large repository is going to be a pretty big (IMO) plus point for the Fedora distro.
-windi
On Sun, Nov 02, 2003 at 05:30:24PM +0800, Didier Casse wrote:
Thanks for the tip. But I wonder why they don't put it on http://fedora.redhat.com
Because when I asked, there was some concern that the workload spike from saying it too loudly would hurt fedora.us
michaelkjohnson
"He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes a book." Linux Application Development -- Ben Franklin http://people.redhat.com/johnsonm/lad/
On Sun, 2003-11-02 at 07:56, Didier Casse wrote:
Hi, I'm new at this Fedora concept and I would like to ask the following questions:
- How come we only have a limited number of Window Managers in Fedora?
i.e only (GNOME, KDE and twm)
Why don't we include more robust or eye-candy desktops such as Fluxbox, Enlightenment, XFCE, etc... ?
A month ago I detailed the drawbacks of redundant software: -takes resources to package and test -some of it ends becoming unmaintained by original author and after a while no longer compiles -security holes: the more software, the more you have, specially when maintenance is not active -confuses users: "which window manager between 10? which web server between 8?"
For including a piece of redundant software two conditions have to be met: a) it has a definite ecological niche where it is head and shoulders superior to the defending champion (and a lot of people are in this niche) and/or b) it has a sizable community of users (eg VI and Emacs)
The above is for Fedora proper. Rules for repositories could be more relaxed.
- If we have created some of our own programs, for instance I created
pdfmerge/pdfmerge4unix (program which merges any number of pdf files), [I know it's a small thing but it was just an example! ;-p] which is on SF.net, and I wish to make it available to the Fedora project/users since it's a useful program. Where do I submit my rpm packages to?
Is it possible to make it available to apt-repositories of Fedora?
- Why don't we have a lot of packagers available at hand compared to
Debian? I think all of you are aware that the apt of Debian covers a wider range of packages than Fedora/RH.
Debian also have several maintainers which takes care of all their packages issues. Why don't we have the same concept in Fedora?
Debian is IMHO a fine example of what NOT to do: the only time I got a headache installing Linux was with Debian while I struggled with program after program doing the same thing some of them with no ecological niche or one who was quickly closing.
I will also recall again the problem of programs whose maintenance stops: you include a marginal program in the distribution, some users see it and use it because of this, the maintenance stops and after a while the program no longer compiles/works properly against new versions of libraries and kernel. If you withdraw it then you betray those users who adopted it because of YOU, if you keep it you will be burning a lot of resources for a program who concerns only a limited number of people
With kind regards,
Didier.
PhD student
Singapore Synchrotron Light Source (SSLS) 5 Research Link, Singapore 117603
Email: slsbdfc at nus dot edu dot sg \or\ didierbe at sps dot nus dot edu dot sg Website: http://ssls.nus.edu.sg
-- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
On Sun, 2003-11-02 at 01:56, Didier Casse wrote:
Hi, I'm new at this Fedora concept and I would like to ask the following questions:
- How come we only have a limited number of Window Managers in Fedora?
i.e only (GNOME, KDE and twm)
Why don't we include more robust or eye-candy desktops such as Fluxbox, Enlightenment, XFCE, etc... ?
How many do we need? A computer only ever needs one desktop. Do you really want Fedora to need 8 CDs to install just to have the option of installing a "desktop" like Fluxbox or whatnot?
Those things belong in Fedora Extras, not Fedora Core. (to be honest, I don't even think we should have all the DEs we have now in Core, but then we hit religious ground...)
- If we have created some of our own programs, for instance I created
pdfmerge/pdfmerge4unix (program which merges any number of pdf files), [I know it's a small thing but it was just an example! ;-p] which is on SF.net, and I wish to make it available to the Fedora project/users since it's a useful program. Where do I submit my rpm packages to?
Is it possible to make it available to apt-repositories of Fedora?
Just make a repository and publish it. Or, when the Fedora architecture is ready, perhaps it can be part of Core or Extras.
- Why don't we have a lot of packagers available at hand compared to
Debian? I think all of you are aware that the apt of Debian covers a wider range of packages than Fedora/RH.
First, Fedora is brand new. Of course it doesn't have as many developers. Second, I'm not sure Debian's plethora of under-skilled developers is anywhere near a good thing. 10,000 packages, most of which are sub-standardly packaged, and the vast majority of which aren't needed by even 1% of the user base, is a very poor situation.
If people want to make packages, nothing stops them - they can just make repositories on their own and publish those. People who need the software can use them, and those that don't have no need to worry about needing 8 CDs to install from and mirrors don't have to worry about being required to carry 100GB of packages. ;-)
Debian also have several maintainers which takes care of all their packages issues. Why don't we have the same concept in Fedora?
With kind regards,
Didier.
PhD student
Singapore Synchrotron Light Source (SSLS) 5 Research Link, Singapore 117603
Email: slsbdfc at nus dot edu dot sg \or\ didierbe at sps dot nus dot edu dot sg Website: http://ssls.nus.edu.sg
-- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
- How come we only have a limited number of Window Managers in Fedora?
i.e only (GNOME, KDE and twm)
Because Fedora at the moment is turning from "Red Hat" to community. Within Red Hat the business needs didn't favour it. Duplication costs engineering time. It also annoys business customers who want what they perceive as consistency.
With Fedora now of course the rules are different since anyone can begin adding packages (and indeed www.fedora.us has a collection so far, plus a need for more QA folks, so if your favourite toy is there help QA it)
Is it possible to make it available to apt-repositories of Fedora?
Should be. The general favourite seems to be yum but apt works too. I'm not sure if yum direct off sf.net works with all their weird redirect stuff
Debian also have several maintainers which takes care of all their packages issues. Why don't we have the same concept in Fedora?
That is where a lot of the add on package stuff is heading, and over time maybe even core stuff.
Should be. The general favourite seems to be yum but apt works too. I'm not sure if yum direct off sf.net works with all their weird redirect stuff
no, the crazy redirects from sf don't work for any of the downloaders I've seen, so far.
Also work is continuing on providing a common metadata format for apt/yum/redcarpet/up2date and others. If we succeed in a new format then there will be no real difference b/t an apt repository and a yum repository.
it will simply be a package repository. (and much rejoicing will be heard, hopefully ;)
-sv
Le lun 03/11/2003 à 19:38, Alan Cox a écrit :
- How come we only have a limited number of Window Managers in Fedora?
i.e only (GNOME, KDE and twm)
Because Fedora at the moment is turning from "Red Hat" to community. Within Red Hat the business needs didn't favour it. Duplication costs engineering time. It also annoys business customers who want what they perceive as consistency.
With Fedora now of course the rules are different since anyone can begin adding packages (and indeed www.fedora.us has a collection so far, plus a need for more QA folks, so if your favourite toy is there help QA it)
Is it possible to make it available to apt-repositories of Fedora?
Should be. The general favourite seems to be yum but apt works too. I'm not sure if yum direct off sf.net works with all their weird redirect stuff
Sf has an "ftp-only" kind of service. We use it for JPackage apt/yum/urpmi repositories (many thanks to the sf team btw - the eu mirror sucks but the us one is great)
Cheers,