I run Ubuntu on my Laptop. On my desktop I decided to give a try with a Fedora 9. Just to know what all has changed. I started my Linux usage with Redhat 5, back in 1998. I was a great fan of Redhat and moved my entire company from Windows to Linux back in 2001. Redhat 9 was one of the supreme stable system I saw from Redhat. Things suddenly changed when I received Fedora core 1 in my hand. As a system admin of growing company I found it hard to deal with suddenly growing crashes and dependencies thrown by the Fedora. I had no choice but to continue using Fedora cause Debian was not keeping its self updated with the latest packages. I continued to use Fedora Cores with every update. Fedora Core 3, 4, 5. It became even complicated for me to maintain multiple versions of Fedora. It was hard to first identify which Fedora version I'm using. Fedora core 5 really checked my patience. It took me 2 complete days to install Asterisk PBX system by resolving all dependencies because Asterisk PBX was not available in yum! By now my organization had around 50+ desktops running Linux on desktops and test machines.
It was during 2004-2005, I came across a link of Ubuntu during that period I ordered Free Ubuntu CD's... tried it but was not convinced of jumping on to the same. The release of Ubuntu 6.06 I tried again and was really impressed with its slick packaging. The most important thing was I install the Ubuntu on one of my test machine and opened the Synaptic... searched for Asterisk ... found the same ... marked it .. install ! It took Ubuntu 6.06 around 6-7 minutes to resolve all the dependencies and install a package on Ubuntu 6.06 with latest packages!!! I was pleased to the limit. I tried more packages with Ubuntu install/uninstall it was breeze. I also tried apt-get system and it was super fast when I compared it with the yum. On most of the occasions I had terrible experience with yum. Example: Every time I type "yum install asterisk" it used to take 2-3 minutes doing some updates and at the end used to display "Nothing to do!" As against on ubuntu I rarelly came accross package not found issue!
Well update manager in Fedora was also mess... it used to take hours to update the system. After using Ubuntu on one system I was fully convinced that this is the distro I want to go with, if I have to reduce the administrative task. One day I installed Ubuntu 6.06 on my senior's laptop. First he had demanded Fedora 5 but I told him give a Ubuntu try! He agreed!! He used it... and came jumping to me that his Wireless card of laptop is working in this Ubuntu after following the Forum steps. He was hardcore icewm fan he asked me how can I install icewm on this Ubuntu? I said lets try following command.
sudo apt-get install icewm
It worked! He was watching all the time... it took hardely 2 minutes for Ubuntu to install icewm, update the gdm login manager to include icewm into sessions. After that day that engineer always insisted to me that he wants Ubuntu on his all test machines. Also when his junior folks saw him using Ubuntu it became trend of removing Fedora and install Ubuntu. There were more discussion of Ubuntu and people started waiting for Ubuntu release!
All I needed was to convince one senior user to use Ubuntu and entire company started to sing Ubuntu! There were few servers I had configured back in 2001-2002 that were still running Redhat 9. It was time to retire them. I naturally went for only 2 choices on server side.
1. CentOS
2. Ubuntu server edition.
After that I saw news of Fedora 6, 7, 8 releasing but I never looked at them. Today I thought of checking Fedora 9 to see how its doing after 3 long years. Installation on my Pentium 2 GHz PC went pretty well. I have 40 GB HDD with 512 MB of RAM. I selected the GNome as my desktop on Fedora 9. Logged in system. Gnome on both system looks and behaves same so there was not much to complain!
During the installation I skipped OpenOffice installation on my Fedora system to complete the installation quickly. Now I'm trying everything to install Openoffice using my Fedora DVD. If I try to install using rpm command there are hell lot of dependency packages to be install. If I try yum localinstall openoffice.org-core-xxxx.rpm then it takes only that package from the DVD repo directory but rest of the packages from internet! I checked "Software source" menu from System->Administration but I didnot find any way of adding my DVD into sources there.
The good thing I noticed in Fedora 9, it also has "Add/Remove Software". Although it is extremely slow in searching and fetching packages compared to Ubuntu.
System update runs very slowly and never shown what exactly its updating and searching. It runs a scrollbar for 15-20 minutes and at the end comes up with message 65 new updates 2xx security updates are available! Since the Fedora 9 is shipped with Firefox 3.0 beta it was freezing all the times. To install the latest Firefox I may had to deal with 200+ packages. I did not find any option of de selecting packages from the update. Even though i have checked updates 5 minutes ago, if you try to check again then it takes 10-15 minutes again to tell you the update number available!
Because of Freezing Firefox beta version I decided to download and install Seamonkey. To my surprise I faced problem with libstdc++5 and I could not find the required "compat-libstdc++" package in yum. I had to download the same from web. I remember this same package in Ubuntu I was able to install using apt-get.
My experience with Fedora 9 was not so good after 3 years! I was quite disappointed with the package management handled by the yum. On the same desktop I felt that Fedora 9 was not as fast as Ubuntu 8.04. One of the Major blocker in Fedora adoption is its package management system. Today I'm running more than 120+ desktop, laptop, test systems and Servers on 32 bit and 64 bit Ubuntu!
I'm naturally complaining about yum. Fedora's out of the box experience with package management is hampering due to the same. I really wonder why Fedora is sticking with yum.
Only good thing I'm missing in Ubuntu is that Fedora offers is Kickstart system for installations over http, nfs.
Looking at the received comments I decided to update my blog page to show how easy it is to add required packages in the repositories and make end users life easy and enhance experience. The trick has been successful on ubuntu, check the simple dialog shown in the screenshot. These small small changes has made Ubuntu very successful.
Here is a cool link that covers the packages available in Fedora and Ubuntu
http://www.go2linux.org/debian-ubuntu-centos-fedora-comparison
- Fedora.- (Repositories enabled are: core, extras, updates, livna)
- CentOS.- (Repositories enabled are: kbs-CentOS-Extras, update, rpmforge, base, contrib, addons, extras)
- Ubuntu.- (Repositories enabled are: main, restricted, security, universe, multiverse)
- Debian.- (Repositories enabled are: main, security)
The number of packages reported by yum list all command
is: 7334
The number of packages reported by yum list all command is: 5785
The number of packages reported by apt-cache stats command
is: 24088
The number of packages reported by apt-cache stats command
is: 23851
9 comments:
apt-get and synaptic is available in Fedora as well. Your comparison seems to show you haven't done much of a homework.
And oh, btw. PackageKit is a effort from Fedora developers that is default in Fedora 9 and is going to be adopted by Ubuntu as well. Much of what Ubuntu provides is developed by Fedora:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Overview#What_makes_Fedora_different.3F
I know I can use apt-get and synaptic but that is a extra effort and extra package I need to install. It is not shipped with Fedora by default. Installation of apt-get and synaptic on 100+ computer is not a small effort. Most important fact is yum repositories are not package rich.
Also if you and I can understand and see that apt-get is a better option than yum, why Fedora people cannot understand it?
"I know I can use apt-get and synaptic but that is a extra effort and extra package I need to install"
It takes about two minutes to install them. You cannot be seriously complaining that what you prefer is not installed by default. There is over 10000 software packages in the repository.
"Installation of apt-get and synaptic on 100+ computer is not a small effort. "
Why in the hell would anyone would this manually in over 100 systems? That would be a very stupid thing to do. Just use kickstart. Adding a new package by default is just a single line there and you can manage any number of systems. You can also use spacewalk to manage everything centrally. Ubuntu has nothing like this.
"Also if you and I can understand and see that apt-get is a better option than yum, why Fedora people cannot understand it?"
Did you hear me say that apt-get for Fedora is better?. It is not the default for very good reasons. Again, you haven't done enough research. Refer
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Tools/Apt
As I already pointed out, even Ubuntu realized that synaptic is not what they want and wrote something else. Now they are adopting PackageKit written by Fedora developers. Fedora is really leading the way here.
I am afraid you fail to recognize the work done by Fedora developers who are the largest contributors to the Linux kernel, Xorg and so much of the desktop software that Ubuntu has copied.
"I am afraid you fail to recognize the work done by Fedora developers who are the largest contributors to the Linux kernel, Xorg and so much of the desktop software that Ubuntu has copied."
I do appreciate the work Fedora people are putting! But may be they need to think if their efforts of distro are in right direction? Agreed Ubuntu is copied pack from Debian.. but who cares? Things that Debian and Fedora never managed to do are done by Ubuntu people.So in the end Ubuntu wins! thats what matters most.
Unfortunately apt-get on Fedora again points to the same repository created by Fedora people. For average user using yum is a painful job. Debian/Ubuntu package management points to 15,000+ unlike yum's 10,000... and most important thing the packages that I need I never found in Fedora repository. For me Fedora's yum is useless thing.
You sound more like Microsoft! Even when people say we didnot like Vista MS is still telling them Vista is the best!
Also yum and PackageKit may be the worlds most advance package managers but if they dont work I give damn about it. It seem you have not done enough research on Ubuntu, you are blindly following Fedora... Search on google why people are moving to Ubuntu and one of the major primary reason you will find is Ubuntu's package management "apt-get & synaptic"
"I do appreciate the work Fedora people are putting! But may be they need to think if their efforts of distro are in right direction?"
Maybe you need to know what their direction is in the first place. Read
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Objectives
"Debian/Ubuntu package management points to 15,000+ unlike yum's 10,000... and most important thing the packages that I need I never found in Fedora repository"
It is not yum's repository. That is a silly statement. You are confusing a distribution software repository with a package manager. Those are two different things. Btw, you haven't name a single package. Fedora includes everything that is free and open source and not encumbered by patents. If you want those, you can use, http://rpm.livna.org. A combination of these two would cover almost everything.
"Things that Debian and Fedora never managed to do are done by Ubuntu people"
Like what? Ubuntu/Canonical has no upstream contributions while Fedora is the #1 contributor to Linux.
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/RedHatContributions
"You sound more like Microsoft! Even when people say we didnot like Vista MS is still telling them Vista is the best!"
Your comment about installing packages individually on 100+ systems was a silly comment and this one is just adding to that. If you don't have a valid argument, just admit it and move on. Have you even used cobbler or spacewalk?
"Also yum and PackageKit may be the worlds most advance package managers but if they dont work I give damn about it"
How can it be the world's advanced package manager if it doesn't work. That is nonsense. It does work for millions of people.
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Statistics
"Search on google why people are moving to Ubuntu and one of the major primary reason you will find is Ubuntu's package management "apt-get & synaptic""
Then, why did Ubuntu write their own tool instead of using synaptic? Why are they now using PackageKit? Your statements are contradictory to even Ubuntu developers.
Absoulately there is a huge gap between what people expect and what Fedora is offering. You may throw 100 links at me. But you didnt met me in 2005 when I was playing with Fedora and was expecting to install Asterisk. I cannot direct my 100+ user all the time to various links. If rpm.livna.org is so good why Fedora is not adding it by default? Why even bother users to search and add 10 different links into yum repo? If you see it is good add it! After all you will make end users life easy.
Also you have not read my blog very well you are just jumping to conclusion too fast. I was looking for Asterisk installation and that yum could not handle. To install Asterisk on Ubuntu I didnot add any repos I just fired apt-get install asterisk and it work! That is what I call out of the box support.
As far as giving back to community and bla bla... I dont care :) I have nothing to do with that. I have to do tasks in given time and I'm not gonna spend time in researching 2 days for one package. Also throughout my blog all the time I was complaining about yum and not Fedora! Cause I have no complains against Fedora as such. I have complains against its packaging system. Unfortunately Fedora has made its choice of sticking to yum! Good Luck to Fedora with its packaging.
If in near future if I see Ubuntu fails to deliver good packages out of the box and its apt-get deteriorates and like you said Fedora is getting ready with worlds best packaging system I will switch back to Fedora! What stops me from doing that? I'm not loyal to any distro.. thats the reason I have blogs talking about CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian and like I have given a try to Fedora if I find something good in Fedora I'll write. So far I have not found anything good in Fedora that is not present in Ubuntu! If I have switch I'll without debating with any Ubuntu loyal :) It wont take much time for me to switch company from Ubuntu to Fedora.
Btwn I can throw at you 100+ articles that talk about yum and apt-get but its pointless! Google it and you will find it. Point is it does not work out of the box its pointless for me and many users like me.
"You may throw 100 links at me. But you didnt met me in 2005 when I was playing with Fedora and was expecting to install Asterisk."
Oh. I thought you were talking about something less ancient. Today, I can just do
# yum install asterisk
Any other packages you got that is based on current status? Do you realize that yum has nothing to do with package availability?
"rpm.livna.org is so good why Fedora is not adding it by default?"
Again, no research done by you. It is not added because pointing to patent encumbered codecs is illegal for a US based organization. Canonical is not including decss for similar reasons (this is why medubuntu exists as seperate repository) although since the laws in UK are different they have more flexibility.
Btw, even Intel recognized that Fedora is superior in packaging and switched from Ubuntu to Fedora because of RPM.
http://digg.com/linux_unix/Intel_s_Moblin_dumps_Ubuntu_in_favor_of_Fedora
Do you want to know how much your
favourite distribution contributes to Linux?
00.10068% in three years.
http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/lpc_2008_keynote.html
"So far I have not found anything good in Fedora that is not present in Ubuntu! "
You mention one yourself: kickstart.
There are dozens and dozens of good projects. To name a few, cobbler, koan, spacewalk. All the good projects came from outside of Ubuntu.
"As far as giving back to community and bla bla... I dont care :) "
Oh. so you dont care about the community. Then I guess you are a good match for Ubuntu. Good luck.
Here is apt-get / synaptic having yum for breakfast...! yum is nightmare and here are facts to prove it.
http://www.linux-mag.com/cache/7382/1.html
I dont have personal issues with Fedora but I do have issue with yum and packagekit that Fedora has decided to use. If yum starts responding like apt-get / synaptic I'll happyly use Fedora.
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