Redhat, Fedora and common questions

There’s been quite a bit of confusion lately about just what redhat is up to with fedora core, how it relates to Redhat linux. I thought I’d post my take on the issue. I’ve been subscribed to the fedora-devel lists (rhl-devel before that) since the redhat linux project was announced, so hopefully this information is mostly correct.

First, think way back to the beginning of this year when redhat announced EOL on their products. This reduced the update lifecycle of their Redhat Linux products from ‘a long time’ to 12 months. The focus here was on reducing their maintenance costs of their consumer distribution, and being able to release the ‘latest greatest thing’ to their loyal users. For people who needed updates, stable ABI etc. You could purchase their Enterprise offerings with 5 years guaranteed fixes.

Next up was redhat announcing the endof their boxed distribution. Redhat Linux moved from a product to a project, allowing greater community involvement. With no boxes the project could release more frequently, absorbing great new packages and new versions of the kernel, GNOME etc.

Things then went quiet on the list, the project page disappeared for a while. Then out of nowhere Redhat Linux merged with Fedora to produce Fedora Core. Basically the fedora package repository, is to become Fedora Extras, and redhat linux is to become fedora core. Fedora Core will be a high quality distribution with a focus on time based releases containing the latest greatest release versions of everything they ship. Fedora Extras will be a set of packages not included in the core. For example, Fedora Core ships KDE and GNOME, if you want fluxbox, windowmaker or XFCE you’ll get them from Fedora Extras, assuming someone packages them up for you.

Diego asked some questions so I thought I’d answer them here. Hopefully this will be of use to someone somewhere.

Why announce that they would kill RH9 and then say they’d release another one? I believe that the redhat’s marketing / sales dropped the ball on this one. They announced the end of their boxed version months ago, replacing it with a community driven project, then when the time comes to announce fedora core 1, they go and make a press release like that . As I hope is clear, fedora core 1, is what would have been redhat linux 10, were it not for all the renaming and rebranding along the way.

What exactly is the difference between the current “workstation” version and the new one that’s coming up? Faster changes? Fees? Firstly, it’s not coming up, it’s out now. But yes, fedora core 1 is the logical and technical successor to redhat linux 9. Things will start changing faster, as I mentioned above.

Hopefully this is of use to someone, if there are any errors. Please let me know.