[ltp] Re: X30 linux installation

[Oisin Feeley]

On 3/30/07, Phil <phil@stairbridge.org.uk> wrote:
> All interesting stuff Richard. As a long-time Fedora user who's
> contemplating moving to Ubuntu is there anywhere that describes all this
> stuff in one place. Things like the differences between rpm and debian
> package etc etc.

There's a good recent thread on LWN which discusses the the various
tools available for rpm-package based systems versus deb-package based
systems.
http://lwn.net/Articles/223116/

It seems as though the hardwork of Debian in maintaining a high
standard of packaging has paid off in the software ecosystem of that
distribution (upon which Ubuntu piggybacks).

The most complete comparison is here:
http://kitenet.net/~joey/pkg-comp/

> The reason I'm tempted to go with Ubuntu is I'm fed up of finding all
> the bits that are missing from Fedora due to Redhat's licencing policy.

Hmmm.  Specifically what?  One of the features of Fedora 7 is going to
be a "CodecBuddy" which points out where people can get licensed
propiretary codecs (from a Spanish company called Fluendo)
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/FeatureCodecBuddy

Apart from that the Fedora Project's licensing policy is one which
essentially refuses to ship anything that is not Free software.  From
a pragmatic point of view this is a very sane approach as it means:
1) If something is broken then it can be fixed.  This is in sharp
distinction to having to wait for some manufacturer to deign to
release an update to their binary-blob once enough people get
frustrated and figure out what's making their system freeze.

2) Red Hat won't be sued by some patent-holder, so we can continue
benefitting from having a GNU/Linux distro that hires developers to
keep working on e.g the kernel, wireless drivers

Do what works for you, but realise that non-free binary-blobs/firmware
for e.g. graphics cards pretty much consigns Linux to being a second
class citizen which manufacturers will continue to ignore.  Free
software is pragmatic.

Ois=EDn