Linux Consolidation Continues: CentOS Joins Red Hat

by Dietrich Schmitz

The news that CentOS has joined the Red Hat family is positive.

"With today's announcement, Red Hat extends its commitment to rapid open source technology and solution development to deliver:

Commercial development and deployment:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the world's leading enterprise Linux platform, offering an extensive ecosystem of partners, a comprehensive portfolio of certified hardware and software offerings, and Red Hat's award winning support, consulting, and training services. Red Hat subscriptions deliver this value combined with access to the industry's most extensive ecosystem of partners, customers, and Linux experts to support and accelerate success.  

• Community integration beyond the operating system: CentOS, a community-supported and produced Linux distribution that draws on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and other open source technologies to provide a platform that's open to variation. CentOS provides a base for community adoption and integration of open source cloud, storage, network, and infrastructure technologies on a Red Hat-based platform.  

• Operating system innovation across the stack: Fedora, a community-supported and produced Linux distribution that makes it easy for users to consume and contribute to leading-edge open source technologies from the kernel to the cloud. As a cutting edge development platform where every level of the stack is open to revision and improvement, Fedora will continue to serve as the upstream project on which future Red Hat Enterprise Linux releases are based."

The news is most positive in the sense that money doesn't grow on trees and funding to continue ongoing development has to come from somewhere.  I've maintained that this year, 2014, and going forward there will be an overall major consolidation of Linux Distributions as many will drop out by attrition and lack of financial ability to continue.

Last year, we saw evidence of that underway with first Fuduntu's demise, then Cloverleaf and SolusOS.  

However willing developers may be to work on Linux, the harsh reality is that one must have an income to sustain oneself, without which doing any sort of extracurricular project and particularly on a voluntary basis becomes exceedingly difficult if not impossible.

With that said, CentOS Project Leader +Karanbir Singh (left) shared some of his insights with +The Linux Foundation's esteemed +Libby Clark.

In Q&A fashion, here's some of what Karanbir had to say:

 "...Ten years ago when some of us were getting together to start the project, the aim was to get 300 people to use it, that was fantastic. From our perspective it's been fairly successful. How we define success is to build something we would use and that comes back to the user-driven approach. We cared about how things worked, where they worked, and overall it worked out well having that user perspective. 

I've never worked for a big open source company before but I hope to bring that user perspective to Red Hat and what I'll take a way is a large approach to user communities and hopefully manage that better. 

Otherwise, not much has changed. They sent me a phone and a laptop and that's how it's going to go. I feel quite privileged to have this opportunity to focus on the CentOS larger ecosystem side of things." 

... 

"...There's been no money involved in the project. We have a bank account that's never had more than a couple hundred dollars for printing t-shirts for events. This is the first time there's a group of people 'professionally' working on CentOS as a platform (emphasis mine). 

How CentOS used to happen was some of us would go to work and then work another 40 hours a week on CentOS. You can't sustain 80 hours a week. The reason I did it wasn't for compensation, it was because I wanted to."

Clearly, having a big organization the likes of Red Hat certainly will help fuel development efforts at CentOS.  And, as has been seen with Fedora, Red Hat understand well how to cultivate and nuture community-led research and development.  Assuming CentOS will find its way into the Fedora community of spins will round out and close a big gap on server side offerings.

Here's wishing the CentOS Distro Team the best of luck in their new relationship.

-- Dietrich

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Cloverleaf Dead: The Kids Pick Up Their Toys and Go Home

by Dietrich Schmitz

It began with Fuduntu's spring closure announcement, then its team opened a new project called FUSE, a spin of openSUSE.   And now comes another announcement by Shawn Dunn "...we are stopping development on Cloverleaf...":

"Due to many factors, the most important being lack of available manpower, we will be refactoring our efforts as part of the openSUSE project, whether in an official or non-official capacity. 

Initially, we had calculated on having 7-10 active developers available to work on Cloverleaf as an independent distribution, based on openSUSE. 

As things turned out, many of the developers we had factored into our plans had things pop up in daily life, whether personal or professional, and that has cut down on our ability to keep up with changes from the upstream and still develop Cloverleaf into a distribution that would have the same sort of polish that Fuduntu did.     Right now, we only have three active developers and it just isn’t possible to develop a satisfactory project with our current manpower."

That's too bad.  But perhaps the bar was set too high?  And to do anything with openSUSE would have meant developing a much deeper understanding of its internals which are quite broad and expansive.

I personally think that the brain trust of Fuduntu was largely a 'one man band'.  The take-away is that having any one individual in charge of development will always be risky, which left all of the Fuduntu community 'high and dry', unfortunately.

You should therefore ask yourself these questions:  Is my Distro being maintained by more than one programmer?, and, Will my Distro still be around in five years?

I happen to believe only a few Distributions will remain in five years and they will consist of Debian and derivatives, Ubuntu and derivatives, Mint, Fedora, openSUSE, Mageia, Arch Linux and Gentoo.

All others are cookie cutter Distros of sorts and have no real redeeming value beyond being mixes of the aforementioned base Distributions.  There's no innovation in that.  The programmers who maintain them will eventually leave their respective communities 'at the drop of a hat', kind of like what happened with Cloverleaf.    When they chose openSUSE following the initial Confused by FUSE episode, I suspected then the project wouldn't have longevity.  It turns out, I was right.

The Kids picked up their toys and went home.  So long.

-- Dietrich

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The Linux Community: No Rational Discourse Allowed?

by Katherine Noyes

As a child of two academic parents and with a fairly significant academic background myself, I was brought up to believe that there are no stupid questions.

Instead, I was nurtured by the belief that questions are a good thing, helping as they do to clarify and refine the common understanding. If a question is a misguided one, I was trained to believe, the asker would quickly be given to understand what it was he or she had initially failed to understand. If, alternatively, it challenged current widespread belief, a rational discourse would follow whereby the idea (NOT the person who expressed it, mind you) was examined and evaluated as a possible motivation for refining current beliefs.

What I am continually amazed to find in much of the Linux community, however – at least here on Google+ -- is an atmosphere of personal venom and attacks. (Image credit: holytaco.com)

A Poisonous Atmosphere

Case in point: The site Linux Advocates.

I co-founded this site with Dietrich Schmitz earlier this year, motivated by the belief that there were woefully few places in which Linux advocates (which we both are) could discuss the state of Linux rationally and critically – in which we're not bound by the agendas of advertisers or others with irrevocably vested interests.

Neither Dietrich nor I has a vested interest here. We both love and use Linux, but we're not afraid to look at it critically or to ask tough questions, much the way academics do every day in their own respective communities. It is through objective and clear-eyed critical thinking, after all, that intellectual progress is made.

It seems, however, that those with interests in this community can't abide to have objective questions asked. As the sole Linux-focused writer at PCWorld, I am nothing if not well-acquainted with the many barbs, jibes and personal attacks that are typically levied by those with nothing more than hurt pride to defend them. Fans of Windows and Macs alike have long vented much frustration through comments on my stories.

What I've seen here on Linux Advocates, however, has blown all that out of the water.

Gunned Down by the Firehose

A second case in point: After acting as one of Fuduntu's biggest cheerleaders (as have I, incidentally), Dietrich was nothing short of torched with a firehose for daring to question the wisdom of the project team's goals following its decision to shut down the growing distro.

Just to reiterate: In most of the rational world, asking questions is not a bad thing. At worst, it gets you a rebuke for being misguided or silly.

Here in the Linux community, however, it gets you the firehose. Instead of responding rationally to Dietrich's concerns and comments, those involved either directly or peripherally have let loose with all they've got, clearly aiming to drive him out of the Linux community altogether.

Is Progress Possible?

Dietrich has also been sharply criticized for shutting down comments or commentators on the site, even when they involved personal attacks and other completely irrational responses.

To me, this is a very bizarre community indeed, and I think it casts considerable doubt on the community's ability to make any progress beyond the scattered conglomeration of sub-communities it currently comprises. If it's not possible to ask rational questions or to question the status quo – however threatening that may be to some – how can progress ever be made?

I know I can say with complete certainty that both Dietrich and I are rooting for Linux with our full hearts. Neither one of us uses Windows or Mac, and we couldn't imagine ever doing so. But when the community shoots us down simply for asking high-level questions, it's really hard to keep feeling committed.

Has this just been a fluke occurrence? Is there really no room for rational discourse in the Linux community? I await comments from the community itself.

-- Katherine

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Slackware: Is Systemd Inevitable?

by Dietrich Schmitz

I recently wrote a story Systemd: The New Pulse Audio as regards the work undertaken by Red Hat and one employee +Lennart Poettering to improve Linux with a middleware daemon called systemd.

Much press has been given to the story surrounding systemd putting the work into question. Still, the work progresses and continues to move forward and many Linux Distros have chosen to adopt it as others opt to take a 'wait and see' approach.

So, far, the oldest Linux Distro Slackware has avoided the issue and the most recent version, Slackware 14.0 released last fall by its Founder +Patrick Volkerding, is doing just fine without it.

I came across an interview done by LinuxQuestions.org with Patrick and share here a passage in his interview which deals directly with the issue of systemd.  Patrick writes:

"...Concerning systemd, I do like the idea of a faster boot time (obviously), but I also like controlling the startup of the system with shell scripts that are readable, and I'm guessing that's what most Slackware users prefer too. I don't spend all day rebooting my machine, and having looked at systemd config files it seems to me a very foreign way of controlling a system to me, and attempting to control services, sockets, devices, mounts, etc., all within one daemon flies in the face of the UNIX concept of doing one thing and doing it well. To the typical end user, if this results in a faster boot then mission accomplished. With udev being phased out in favor of systemd performing those tasks we'll have to make the decision at some point between whether we want to try to maintain udev ourselves, have systemd replace just udev's functions, or if we want the whole kit and caboodle...."

Given the foregoing and given that historically Gnome was removed from Slackware, it would seem that Patrick is being careful not to tip his hand one way or another as to whether he will 'yield to pressure' and become systemd-compliant.

I speculate (Patrick's development is kept private so nobody get's access to his decision making until he says so), that Patrick's plan's for the next revision may well include software design changes that successfully keep systemd out of his implementation.

If that is the case, it would be virtuous if other Community Developers fell in lock-step and provided him assistance in such a worthy effort.

Personally, I can understand the contention surrounding systemd's invasiveness and how it violates the UNIX concept of "doing one thing and doing it well".

Specifically, having the initialization process loosely coupled to a series of run level cascading shell scripts has served Linux well for many years and maybe the concern that work being done on systemd is too ambitious insofar as bringing too many processes under control of one daemon service, systemd is warranted.  Add that the logging of activities taken by systemd are no longer human readable, but journalized in a binary format and you have a recipe for programmer revolt.

It was most recently the genesis of a decision by Fuduntu to close its doors as the volume of programming required to merge needed systemd changes was simply too large an undertaking for its meager staff to handle.

Will Slackware be the next Distro to fall in line and become systemd-compliant?  Stay tuned for developments.

-- Dietrich

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Confused by FuSE

by Dietrich Schmitz

[Edit: 4/29/2013 2:00pm GMT-5 Comments on this post has been closed.]

[Edit: 4/29/2013 6:00pm GMT-5 A correction to the below story has been made to reflect that +Andrew Wyatt, not Lee Ward, was the sole decision maker on the closure of the Fuduntu website.  The pullquote cited from OStatic was incorrect.  

We apologize for any misunderstanding that may have resulted from this error.]

So it has been decided by +Lee Ward+Andrew Wyatt that Fuduntu's shop will close its doors effective immediately.

Previously, upon announcement of the 'end of life' for Fuduntu, it was indicated that Fuduntu revisions would be forthcoming through the end of year 2013.

Not according to Lee WardAndrew Wyatt.  As reported in an OStatic story:

This weekend brought the news that Fuduntu will be no more effective immediately. WardWyatt said that most of their users have moved on anyway and the team members are already working on FuSE. There just doesn't seem to be any interest in developing Fuduntu anymore even for just a few more months. He said, "May you all find a replacement distribution that you enjoy as much as you enjoyed Fuduntu."

Personally, I have reservations about this decision.  How exactly does this represent innovation?  Taking and forking another concern's Distro, in this case openSuSE and adding Consort by itself isn't noteworthy.

I mean today anyone can create a cookie-cutter Distro.  With all due respect to +Ikey Doherty for his work on Consort, that clearly is innovative and speaks for itself and volumes regarding Ikey's talent.

But I can't help but feel the effort to fork openSuSE is a wasted effort and a diversion from doing real innovating.

There's nothing wrong with doing it but it continues to dilute the pool of technology represented by Linux on the Desktop.

The codebase for openSuSE is massive and I am quite certain the Lee Ward's team is understaffed to maintain or even scratch the surface in comprehending the depths to which one must go to keep such a Distro going.

Once upon a time, and up until 2006, I was a tried and true openSuSE Linux advocate.  It was with the poisoning of the well by Ron Hovsepian and the Novell/Microsoft Interoperability that I withdrew my support and moved to Ubuntu.  To this very day, SuSE Gmbh, the commercial version receives financial support from Microsoft.

So, you see, openSuSE is simply not a Distro I can or will ever consider by virtue of that relationship.

I am not sure if Lee Ward 'the FuSE Team' gave that any consideration but I don't see any merit in cloning yet another Distro and bolting on someone else's GUI and calling that progress.

FuSE will have little to differentiate itself aside from Consort as far as I can tell.

So, color me confused, if you will, by this decision.  There's nothing particularly interesting about it.

-- Dietrich

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Power in Numbers

by Dietrich Schmitz

We enjoy and reaps the benefits of choice.

I've been thinking about what effect choice has.  If you are using Linux then you are aware to some extent about the nature of things that set it apart from other operating systems.

Your journey in getting to the point of switching may have an interesting tale, or, you may have simply stumbled upon it in some random fashion.  Still here you are, using it.

But have you given any thought to what effect you are having in your choice to use one Distro over another?  Does the question even matter?

In thinking about all of the wonderful variation and vast array of Distros from which to choose, your selection and the combined users around the globe who have chosen the same Distro do have an effect on the dynamics behind development for your Distro.  The more popular it becomes, so too do the demands placed on Developers continue to grow correspondingly.

So, I thought when I supported Fuduntu that I was having a positive effect.  In a way I was, but then another dynamic came into play which placed Developers into a vice and resulted in a decision to 'end of life' what I still believe is a great Distro.

While I feel saddened that Fuduntu has closed it doors, I am happy for at least the choice made by its founder +Andrew Wyatt who now can resume a personal life which was consumed supporting this Distro.

It doesn't seem right to me that so much good can come from one person's efforts only to push them into a corner or create stress and unhappiness.

So, where do you go when something like this happens?  It's a good question.  Should I be more selective in which Distro I choose this time around?  What can I do to have maximal 'positive' effect in the community and benefit a larger cause and serve my own personal interests at the same time?

These questions are worth considering.  Would it be better to support one of the larger Distros or one of the commercial ones?

I submit as food for thought that endorsing a commercially-backed community Distro is the best choice.

It's the best choice because if the majority of Linux users move away from the small fledgling Distros to a small handful of larger, stable organizations, it will have a multiplier effect.

Power in numbers means that we achieve a group purpose and Developers who may have written for a smaller Distro can contribute to a focused demand for a larger Distro which has hundreds of committers and thereby reduce the burden of responsibility placed on themselves for carrying the load of work on a small Distro, as was done by +Andrew Wyatt.  He was, to a large extent, a 'one-Man Band'.  And while he is very talented, there are only so many hours in a day which get consumed.  The project ate him up, quite literally.

So, when you make the choice to use a large commercial Distro, you are widening its base, its foundation, which allows its structure to grow high like a building.  The load of shared work and responsibilities are spread more evenly across the project with hundreds of staff to do the programming at hand.

With that, I submit that we do enjoy choice but we must exercise care in doing so.  It does have an effect.  When you choose a young Distro you get limited resources and your positive effect is less felt.  

When you join and support a larger commercial Distro you help consolidate and create efficiencies as demand rises.

Thus, I have made my choice to go with Fedora 18 as it serves as the community Distro for ongoing Red Hat Enterprise Linux research and development.

Think about your choice and see if it makes sense to stay where you are.  Consider Power in Numbers. 

-- Dietrich

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Where Will Your Linux Distro Be in Five Years?

by Dietrich Schmitz

No question in my mind.  There will be more fall-out similar to the likes of what happened to Fuduntu.  Call it a consolidation, if you will. (Image credit: aeromedicaleducation.org)

It gave me pause for thought to realize that the choice one makes for a Distro should be given very special consideration.

For personal use and, particularly, when it comes to the business world, there are some critical questions which need to be answered before making that choice.  I have come to realize that just a handful of things are important and that made Fedora 18 the obvious choice.  So what attributes should one be looking for in a Distro?

Leading Edge 'best of breed' Technology and true Innovation

Along with a six-month release schedule comes the newest technology available.  Some might argue that such is a cause for unstable operating conditions.  For example, Debian does not operate on a time-based release management schedule, which I have issues with. It is highly debatable as to whether their policy promotes stability or not.  While Ubuntu is also time-based at 6 months, it relies upon the Debian 'Test branch'.  Fedora on the other hand works closely with upstream providers.  Also, I argued the merits of Yum and have concluded that Fedora's implementation of Yum dependency resolver combined with the LSB-certified Red Hat Package Manager, rpm,  represent a superior technology.

Linux Standard Base certification

In The Linux Desktop Mess, I argued for a singular standard filesystem (Filesystem Hiearchy Standard) and package manager (Linux Standard Base).  With the proliferation of cookie cutter Distros comes the tendency for programmers to take shortcuts and hedonistic ways prevail.  The result is seen in a wide variation of implementations with differing filesystem directory structures and package managers.  Worse is the fact that how a given package manager is implemented on one Distro does not automatically confer its ability to work on another Distro using the same package manager.   This adds wide-ranging complexity and added cost in deployment.  Fedora is the source for all Red Hat Enterprise Linux cutting edge development and by default is fully LSB compliant.  Both issues are satisfied with Fedora.

Support

When it comes down to corporate environments, this is probably the most important consideration for IT Departments.  Having a service level agreement can be the difference between having downtime and smooth seamless uninterrupted operation.  Users of Fedora can automatically migrate to RHEL and expect that level of commercial grade support.  Fedora does an excellent job in both chat and forum technical support.

Stability and Longevity

As I mentioned, Fuduntu left me shocked.  It was a moment that brought me to the question, will my next Distro be around in five years?  When you have a business to run, this becomes magnified in importance and the crowd of competing Distros falls back to reveal only a small handful which are truly stable and with a large enough community to have the requisite longevity.  I ruled out Debian on the speedbump issue and knew YUM is superior, so that left SuSE and Fedora.  SuSE uses Zypper for its dependency resolver, but yum is in their repository and supported.

But, my memory is long and I haven't forgotten the Microsoft Inter-Op partnership Novell's Ron Hovsepian struck and since then SuSE Linux Gmbh has become a subsidiary of AttachMate and renewed their agreement with Microsoft in July 2011.  That has become the deciding factor for me.  That ongoing relationship is unacceptable.  Thus, Fedora is my choice.

It should be noted that Red Hat has billion dollar-plus annual revenues going on two years now and provide enterprise grade application software for the New York Stock Exchange and are ranked number two Linux kernel contributing vendor according to the Linux Foundation's Annual Linux Development Report for 2012.

So, think of Fedora as being a test bed, if you will, for all ongoing software R&D that finds its way into Red Hat Enterprise Linux.  While the technology is leading edge, you can trust that Red Hat's support and stability will ensure that technology undergoes continual refinement.

These are the things which you should be asking yourself.

Where will my Distro be in five years?  

The answer may cause you to make a switch, as I did, to Fedora 18.

-- Dietrich

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Pimp Out Your Fedora 18 Xfce Desktop

by Dietrich Schmitz

So, the other day I wrote the Fedora Got Game story and have been continuing to make my transition from Fuduntu which as you may or may not be aware announced that it would close it doors.

Initially, I had selected the Fedora 18 KDE 64-bit spin but found that it put a bit of a strain on my Netbook. Then, I opted to simply install the Xfce Desktop group onto the KDE spin.  The problem with doing that is that your menu winds up having the combined items from both KDE and Xfce and so I opted to reinstall with the Xfce spin.

And I have made some tweaks to the appearance which I would like to share with you.  Here goes.

With just a few simple changes, your Desktop's appearance and clarity can be dramatically improved.

Starting with Style, I chose to install Zukitwo. Open a terminal window and type:

$sudo yum install zukitwo-\*-theme

For Icons, I chose Faenza.  Again from a terminal window type:

$sudo yum install faenza-icon-theme

For Font, I chose Google's Droid true type font.  The difference in ease on eyes is dramatic.  From a terminal window type:

$sudo yum install google-droid*

Then add some really nice Desktop backgrounds by typing from the terminal:

$sudo yum install verne-backgrounds-extras-xfce

Now open your menu, Settings, Settings Manager, and select Appearance.  On the Style tab, select the Zukitwo theme:

Select the Zukitwo Xfce theme

Then, select the Icons tab and select the Faenza icon set:

Select the Faenza Icon set

On the Fonts tab, set the font to Droid Sans.

Select the Droid Font, enable anti-aliasing

As per the above screenshot, Xfce out of the box uses a default 12 point font, but I prefer 10 point and have set Droid Sans to use that size.  Also, I have enabled anti-aliasing, full hinting with rgb pixel order.  Be sure to have a check on the 96 dpi setting.  Whether you prefer to show images on the menu and having accelerator keys is up to you from the settings tab--I have all checked.

On the Desktop, right-click and select Desktop Settings.  As per the screenshot below, I selected verne-skye.jpg as my desktop background.

Select verne-skye.jpg background

Next, go to the menu again, Settings, Settings Manager, Window Manager Tweaks, then click on the Compositor, then make sure to check all boxes per the screenshot below:

Enable compositing from the Window Manager Tweaks Compositor Tab

Now, when a brand new Xfce install has been finished upon login, you will be prompted for Xfce to use the 'default' panel layout (top panel and bottom dock) or to select single menu.  I chose the default.  Right-click the top panel, Panel, Panel Settings.  Click on the Appearances Tab.  Set the alpha channel to 25.

Set top panel appearance tab alpha channel to 25

Then, click on the Items tab, click the first item,

Click the top panel's Items tab,
then click properties for the Applications Menu

Then, per the screenshot below uncheck 'Show Button Title', check 'Show icons in menu'.  Click the default Xfce icon button, and select the Fedora icon as shown.

Uncheck Show button title, select Fedora Icon

Returning to the top panel Items tab, click Window Buttons and then Properties

Select Panel Items Windows Buttons Properties

Per the below screenshot, on the Window Button dialog set the Show button label and Show handle to unchecked, and the Show flat button to checked.

Uncheck Show Button Labels, Show Handle; Check Show Flat Buttons

As I mentioned, during my install of Fedora 18 Xfce Spin, I selected the 'default' panel layout, which created the top panel and a dock at the bottom of the screen.  You may prefer that location, but I chose to unlock the panel and set it's orientation to 'vertical', then using the grab handle moved it to the left edge of screen, locked it in place and set it to auto hide.  In addition, on the Appearance Tab for the Dock panel, I have set the alpha channel to 25.  For both the top and dock panels, I have set the 'Separator' items to have a 'transparent' type.

Finally, go to the menu Settings, Settings Manager, Window Manager, set the Window Title font  to Droid Sans Bold.

Set the Window Title Font to Droid Sans Bold in Settings Window Manager

And here is the desktop with all of the above settings:

[Edit 4/21/2013 12:00pm GMT-5 I've updated the desktop screenshot per the suggestion of +Chris Ahlstrom -- since the sidebar has those desktop icons, why not remove them (except the automount device).  As shown on the sidebar, I have added a trash icon.]

Fedora 18 Xfce Desktop Pimped Out!

Conclusion

The end result is a really easy on the eyes Desktop and the Droid true type font really is a big improvement in readability.

Now, come on Folks.  You can't tell me that Gnome3.8 is any better.  I am sorry, but, I was incredulous that I had to go to a website to get the Classic extensions and add a 'Quit' button so I could quit the dang Gnome3.8 desktop.  I ask you.  How is that an advancement in technology?  Answer:  It isn't.  Pah Leeze.

I'll stay put with Xfce thank you very much.

[Edit: 4/20/2013 5:00PM GMT-5 +Max Wachtel gave a good tip--to remove the frame around the Notification Area, go to Panel, Panel Prefs, Items, click properties on Notification Area, then uncheck Show frame (see below).]

Remove frame around Notification Area,
uncheck Show frame check box 

-- Dietrich

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