Red Hat has taken heat over the past few years for allegedly neglecting the personal computer in favor of more profitable enterprise servers. It's a fair critique: Red Hat is an enterprise software company, a decision it made years ago, and to good effect.
But anyone thinking that Red Hat has somehow forgotten consumer markets in its rush to win the enterprise need only try the final release of Fedora 11, its community-focused operating system for desktops and laptops. I've been evaluating Fedora 11 for the past week and find it polished and professional while meeting or beating Windows in key performance areas.
Reading through Fedora 11's feature list, the geek in you may get giddy seeing the use of ext4 as the default file system. Not me. I don't care about the underpinnings of the operating system. I just want it to work.
This is, in fact, Fedora 11's biggest selling point: it just works. And fast, too: from powering on to logging in takes 20 seconds or less. Beat that, Windows!
(Ironically, if Windows hopes to catch Linux in boot-up performance, it's going to have to turn to Linux, like DeviceVM's Splashtop, for help.)
This, however, is an experience I've been having with several Linux distributions, including Moblin Beta 2, Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix (reviewed here), and OpenSUSE 11.1. While none is perfect, the same is true of my preferred Mac OS X and Windows (Vista or XP). They all work, with little or no fiddling required.
In fact, as an experiment I've been leaving my Linux-based Netbook around the house and have given my children and wife free rein to use it whenever and however they want. My wife looks up actors on IMDB. My daughter writes a school paper. Not one of them has struggled to perform these basic tasks, set up the wireless, etc. Everything just works, and works in a way very familiar to a Mac or Windows user.
This is the state of "desktop" Linux today: it really has nothing left to prove. It took years to become user friendly, but it has arrived, helped along by the world's move to browser-based computing. At this point, the only thing that Fedora and the other Linux distributions can do is embrace and extend the Windows or Mac computing experience, because they've largely matched them (especially Windows).
Perhaps it's not surprising, then, that Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth has targeted the Mac as the "desktop" operating system to beat, with plans to do just that.
In fact, my only real complaint with Fedora 11 is that it doesn't yet have a Netbook-focused "spin." I'm not alone in seeking a "Fedora Netbook Remix," but Fedora Mini, as it's called, is not yet ready for prime time.
In the meantime, yes, Fedora 11 provides support for cross-compiling Windows applications directly on Fedora Linux using the MinGW environment, and yes it provides the latest and greatest in open-source software like Firefox 3.1 for Web browsing.
Just don't expect it to be weird/geeky anymore. Those days for the Linux "desktop" are gone. It still needs some spit and polish but, again, so does Windows. The Mac is the closest any 'desktop' operating system gets to being both beautiful and super user friendly. Linux, however, if Fedora 11 is any indication, isn't far behind.
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Red Hat's Fedora Project has announced several cool things this week. The first was Intel's defection from Ubuntu to use Fedora in its Moblin (Mobile Linux Internet Project). Intel's Dirk Hohndel billed it as driven by the project's preference for Fedora's RPM-based packaging system, but it's still significant, given Ubuntu's momentum in mobile.
But the most interesting Fedora announcement may well have had nothing to do with its code, and everything to do with the process that creates that code. I'm referring to Fedora Talk, a voice-over-IP system that "allows Fedora contributors to use any standard VoIP hardware or software to sign into the Fedora system and make and receive calls to other Fedora contributors."
OStatic highlights some reasons that this is important, and why Fedora couldn't simply use Skype. It's an intriguing way for the Fedora community to tighten the development process by bringing developers together. IM, mailing lists, and e-mail are great, but talking with someone is sometimes the best way to make things happen.
I recently helped my son take third-to-last place in the Pinewood Derby. Reading this, I clearly should have powered his car with Fedora.
Fedora is the operating system of choice for AllemaniACs' winning robot in the RoboCup, a soccer tournament played between robots. Fedora has fueled AllemaniACs' victories in 2006 and 2007, and appears to be poised to raise the cup again in 2008.
The RoboCup sounds fascinating. There is no human intervention in the games beyond coaches yelling instructions to the robots, and the robots responding in kind. Hopefully they respond better than my five-year old does on her mob ball team....
AllemaniACs' robot is mostly powered by off-the-shelf Fedora, with some modifications that have been contributed back to the Fedora core. Importantly, these modifications and the work done for Fedora's RoboCup success aren't limited to the electronic dreams of RoboCup's Ronaldos:
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(Credit:
Jack Aboutboul)
From its countdown server to the video streams behind NASA TV, NASA runs a lot of Fedora (and Red Hat Enterprise Linux), as Jack Aboutboul was privileged to see on a recent tour of NASA's facilities in Jacksonville, Florida.
I suppose it's not surprising that an organization like NASA would use free software like Fedora, in addition to its commercial cousin, RHEL. After all, NASA is powered by rocket scientists (pun intended) that want maximum control over their IT. Fedora gives that to them. No, they don't get commercial support for it, but they likely don't want it, either.
There are some things for which organizations are best positioned to self-support. For everything else, there's commercial open source.
Earlier this year Fedora got a new community project leader. In February 2008 Paul Frields replaced Max Spevack, bringing a different perspective to Fedora's community management. Paul, you see, is not a developer. Nor is he based in Raleigh (Red Hat's headquarters). His background with Fedora has been mostly on the documentation side, and he's been working remotely.
This gives Paul an interesting perspective on Fedora and its community, and how Fedora connects with Red Hat.
I spent a half-hour with Paul today and probed into Fedora and the art of community, as well as some of the innovations in the pipe for Fedora 9.
What is your background? How did you get involved in Fedora?
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Max Spevack is resigning from his role as Fedora Project Lead, handing over the reins to Paul Frields, who has been active in Fedora since 2003 with Fedora's documentation, packaging, marketing, news, and artwork teams. He'll be joining Red Hat as part of his assumption of the Fedora Project Lead duties.
In Max's announcement, he also noted that Jack Aboutboul will be taking a full-time role in Fedora marketing, community building, and Ambassadors. Congratulations to both Jack and Paul.
Isn't it interesting that someone could have such a big impact on Red Hat as Paul has...without working for Red Hat? That's the power of open source. Merit before bureaucracy.
I've written on this topic before, but came across this list of seven reasons for Ubuntu's success that I thought were worth noting.
The Linux distribution battle will come down to two distributions: Red Hat and Ubuntu. Red Hat is the market leader while Ubuntu is arguably the community leader (though Fedora is also coming back strong). How has Ubuntu managed to make such a significant impression on the market, despite its late start?
Having talked about a few of the other reasons on this blog, I'll call out two that I missed:
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