A very early look at Fedora 15 through the 2/17/11 nightly build: It's surprisingly stable

Just because the alpha of ubuntu did not work for you means nothing. The alpha for me, worked great. Who's experience is more valid? NEITHER, MR. PATHETIC, IT'S AN ALPHA!

Don't you have anything better to do than compare alpha releases? I can't believe you would waste space on the web for this.

Steven,

Your experience, and for that matter "ed"'s experience as well, is why I use Debian Unstable.

Linux "alpha" releases tend to be quite usable. "Beta" releases of F/OSS are better than commercial software that's being shipped and sold.

I think the last RedHat I used was 7.2, in the pre-Fedora days. Maybe it's time I took another look. Their installer was always "Business Ready", meaning very serious and useful. I'm very impressed they put a pre-release Linux kernel in there as well. Surprise surprise, I'm running 2.6.38-rc4 myself right now, to quote Linus himself, "just for fun."

thanks for testing - if everybody could try it out and then log any bugs they find with bugzilla then there will fewer overall problems once F15 goes live.

Now you see the real problem with Ubuntu, the users. Apple's got nothing on Canonical when it comes to bug-eyed, feverish sycophants.

@ed, how funny; the author is rightly impressed with an alpha release of Fedora and decide to write about it. Then "ed, the UNPATHETIC" deems the article beneath some arbitrary standard that he's decided upon for article worthiness. Somehow the article that included in its title plenty of information on what was written was compelling enough for you to read it! Even if the author had nothing better to do than write this article, what does that say about reading it and then adding comments to it?

Thomas

What you have there is the fallback mode that's used (or should be) only if your hardware doesn't support Shell. Your hardware ought to support Shell, so that's a problem. Can you go to a console, run 'gnome-shell --replace', and report what happens? Thanks.

False premises.

Two alphas are comparable in name only. Alphas are usable in FOSS in an arbitrary standard and is demonstrably false in a lot of cases (eg KDE 4.0, Fedora problems with the proprietary ATI drivers, Xorg alphas).

@thomas: ed's opinion is far less arbitrary than the main thesis of this blog. He is presenting a contrary opinion in a public forum. What is your problem? And in the same vein, if ed had nothing better to do, what does it say about your comment to his comment?

I probably should neither write about alpha releases nor mention their existence.

My conclusion from the entries on Ubuntu and Fedora, which are releasing about a month apart (Ubuntu first) is that Ubuntu has a much longer way to go and less time in which to make the progress needed to have a solid release at the end of April.

There's a lot of interest in these projects (Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian), and I think the alpha releases merit comment. Sure they're available so there are more eyes on the potential bugs. And yes, any release of software is strictly YMMV (your mileage may vary) depending on your hardware and use pattern.

My experience is only my own. I did not claim to try these alphas on multiple machines, just on one. So my posts are merely reflections on what I learned from my actual tests.

I'm not an insider at any distribution or project, but I still wonder if Ubuntu's push for Unity by April is motivated more by Gnome Shell's debut in other distributions than it is by the relative readyness of Unity to be the default.

First of all: I agree with AC, you can't compare Alphas.

For example, the main problem in this case, is that Ubuntu is developing (as in "adding and modifying code") the Unity interface, while Fedora 15 pre-alpha uses a stable version of Gnome, so you can't expect the same level of functionality.

It's not possible to compare two alpha versions, and it's worse when you are not familiar with the develpoment process of each one. So, if I would take this serious, that would mean that Ubuntu 11.04 will be full of bugs while Fedora 15 is going to be great?

I don't think so (I do think Fedora 15 will be great :), but I also think that Ubuntu 11.04 will rock).

I wouldn't call you pathetic :/, there's no need to be rude, but I would ask you to get informed about the developing process of linux distros (and of software in general) before posting your opinion about the subject.

Regards

First of all, Fedora 15 will be using GNOME 3 and GNOME Shell, which are not exactly old technologies.

Second, what I'm saying is that yes, Unity is 'behind' GNOME Shell as far as development goes. And for that reason the Alphas don't "compare" in terms of actual functionality (and Fedora won't reach its alpha for about 10 days at this point).

So can we agree that Gnome Shell is farther along than Unity at this point?

That said, Ubuntu is scheduled to ship a full 10 days BEFORE Fedora, and while Fedora often delays a release for a week when there are problems, Ubuntu (in my recollection, anyway) has only delayed a release one time (6.06, which was a great release that I used extensively).

So given the differences in "maturity" of Unity and GNOME Shell, how is Ubuntu going to have a good release if they've got less time than Fedora to get it right? And in the case of GNOME Shell, Fedora can rely on the entire GNOME developer team, while it appears as if Ubuntu is doing much if not most of the Unity development in-house.

So in response, I don't see how I'm not "informed." I see a real red flag here, and I'm just pointing out what look to me like "facts on the ground."

If Fedora was releasing in April and Ubuntu in June, July or August, I'd feel better about what I'm seeing and hearing. But as it stands now, Ubuntu 11.04 is due in two months and 10 days. Is that enough time to shape Unity into something worthy of being the default shell in a major Linux distribution? I can't say for sure, but it looks very, very dicey.

Wow, there is a whole lot of stick up butt attitude going on here with these comments. Steven just tried out a pre-Alpha and reported his experiences. So what?..

He's looking at how Natty is shaping up compared to the other GNOME3 debut's and its a very interesting read. Personally, I think both projects are a waste of resources and time but the kiddies like that stuff so there you go. Hopefully well see some real innovation shake out of that mess at some point that will actually improve the user experience in important area's.

I really don't think you can draw any meaningful conclusions from these comparisons. That Ubuntu might in some sense be "behind" Fedora at this stage of development could easily be mitigated by having more developers, or developers putting in more hours per week, etc, not too mention the differences in the software itself. Also a similar comparison six months ago or in six months time might show the reverse, with Fedora lagging Ubuntu.
I have installed both distros over many years and in my experience Ubuntu has always proved to be more reliable than Fedora, presumably mainly because Fedora is (IMHO) more cutting-edge than Ubuntu.
The really sad thing is that there are so many distributions, and so many regluar updates to distributions, that there is no stability whatsoever in the Linux software world. Hardly ever is there anything really groundbreaking or essential in any distro release to justify another round of installs/upgrades and learning curves. This is one area where Windows leaves FOSS for dead. It may not be the worlds best OS, but at least there are a few years of relative stability between releases.
I keep wondering when it will begin to dawn on people that progress can be too rapid - there is a happy medium to be had here as with everything else. These days everything is so short lived and transitory, that after a while one begins to become disinterested in everything. Nothing lasts long enough to make it worth while getting into it.

This is precisely why the Ubuntu LTS, which only appears every two years, should be a special release, not just a regular six-month release that just happens to get longer security support.

Fedora should also create an LTS. RHEL doesn't have the packages that Fedora has, and I still can't figure out why EPEL even exists - there's nothing there (for the desktop anyway).

I really, truly hope Ubuntu surprises us with a great 11.04 and a great 12.04 LTS ...

Obviously it is "valid" it play with these alpha distributions and to share your discoveries. It is, however, not reasonable to complain about the relative quality of a distribution based on the unreliable behavior of a high viability component in the middle of feature development.

I think the situation of the author happens under two different scenarios:

1) Someone who is not very informed tries and alpha build, something doesn't work quite right, and then goes to a forum to rant about it and say ubuntu is crap. This kind of people can be rightfully claimed as pathetic, though it's unnecesary and you would do better by simply ignoring them or giving a politically correct answer and move on.
2) You test an alpha release, go to a forum, and report the error to try and see if someone has an answer. A smart-ass comes by and says you're pathetic, simply because you were trying to find a workaround for a problem in an alpha release.

I've had #2 happened to me a significant amount of times, as to understand were the authors frustration can come from.

You know what I like about living in Los Angeles? You might think it's all about fake this, fake that, Hollywood this, etc. And it is. But not really. It's the paradox all around you that makes L.A. interesting, banal, exciting, livable. It's like Silly Putty. It sticks to things and reproduces them backward.

Nobody in L.A. cares what you think about it. There's no pressure to say "L.A. is so totally awesome, it's the only place to live." And nobody does it, either. Not that this is a hellhole, even though Hell is where you find it, or so the cliche goes.

I can think of more than a few other American cities where if you don't openly and frequently refer to it as the greatest place on Earth, everybody thinks you need your head examined. (San Francisco, I'm talking to you.)

We're all here (in L.A.) for a reason. And while there are many ways in which, collectively and otherwise, the city of Los Angeles in the form of its government, its individual residents and its community groups, et al. could do better, what you can do in Los Angeles is make your own way, hoe your own row (if you'll accept a farming metaphor), do your thing and create your reality without a lot of exterior bullshit.

Oh that bullshit is there if you want it. But it's not mandatory.

Sure you can load up a huge set of saline/silicone, drive a leased Mercedes, pop champagne because you don't buy no drinks at the bar, or talk about the seven-dozen scripts you have in pre-pre-pre-development. But that's not everybody. You don't have to love everything about L.A. to live here and not be thought a pariah.

And if you're going to be different, there's enough indifference here to tame your ego while letting you do your thing.

L.A. is a canvas. Get your f#$%$n brush and paint what you want.

It's a popular place - millions live here. They're not all in the movie business. It's sunny most of the time. Smoggy sometimes. Everybody complains. Often. But for the most part they remain.

If you say "L.A. sucks," nobody will tar and feather you and dump you outside the city limits.

This isn't San Francisco. Nobody has to say "I love L.A.," and if you look at the lyrics of the Randy Newman song, it's submerged in irony that most listeners miss. That's L.A. Submerged in irony that nobody notices. That, I love. Seeing the irony means more when others don't want to see it. Or they see their own. At the end of the day, life is what it is. You live it.

So you ask, "What does this have to do with Ubuntu, my precious, precious baby whose self-esteem will be damaged and potential to take over the world waylaid by your speaking ill of its Alpha release?"