Back from the Dead

The author doesn't mince words at describing Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) as "a system full of bugs, pain, anguish, wailing and gnashing of teeth", further adding "Ubuntu makes Linux look bad... Linux is meant to be stable, secure, reliable". However, the same author describes Fedora 12 (Constatine) as "a worthwhile upgrade". To be fair however, Christopher Smart did later clarify in a separate article that "I’m not saying Ubuntu is a bad operating system, or even a bad Linux distribution... I’m also not even saying that Karmic is a particularly worse release than any other... What I am saying however is that, in general, a new version of Ubuntu is simply not stable enough at the time of release." In this regard I find him to be too forgiving towards Ubuntu.

Ubuntu not only "makes Linux look bad" but it is damaging to the Free Software Community in General. Remember "Canonical is not an open source company, they are just using free software to try and get a slice of the huge operating system market." Red Hat on the other hand is a Free Software Company, and continues to contribute with its support to the Fedora Project as well as many others. Fedora actively protects the Free Software Community. Christopher Smart communicates this quite clearly

Defending Your Freedom One of the greatest aspects of Fedora is their uncompromising stance on freedom. The project actively promotes not only the use of free software, but also free file formats and codecs. In 2006, a review of then current Fedora Core 6 called for the entire project to be scrapped because it didn’t include proprietary software and drivers to make things “just work.”

“I appreciate the fact that distributions like Fedora Core are still focused on free-as-in-rights software, but today’s Web content requires more proprietary browser plugins than yesterday’s did, and today’s hardware is increasingly designed to be dependent on proprietary binary blobs in the form of firmware and driver packages… I say pack up, move on, and let Fedora Core die.”

Just over three years later, Fedora is still here and more popular than ever. Fedora could have compromised along the way as others have done, but they haven't. The result is an outstanding operating system which is constantly pushing the envelope in terms of features and stability.

Are Ubuntu's technical problems due to its "Linux for Humans" stance? If so then it isn't worth it to create a buggy, and unstable release just to make it easy to use. What Ubuntu has done is create a situation where it just doesn't fit. It has simplified itself and create complex problems (which will of coarse deter users of ALL Technical skill), at the same time in order to simplify its administration it has made it more difficult for experienced users to fix these problems. Fedora has never prioritised ease of use, but has achieved an excellent balance. Simple configuration is easy to get at. Hardware configuration continues to advance as native free software drivers continue to be added. Plug and Play works almost flawlessly (which is more than can be said for Ubuntu or Windows), with only a few devices requiring more complex manual configurations. Support for those devices that do need to be manually configured is usually added quickly. The only problem device I have ever had is a Microsoft Webcam (to use it I run a virtual copy of Windows Xp). Even better Fedora can be easily configured using traditional Unix methods, so no matter what a skill administrator can fix almost any problem.

Ubuntu 9.10 has been promoted as the "Windows 7 killer" well from what I can see it is worse than Vista. Fedora 12 on the other hand may very well indeed be the "Ubuntu Killer". After all while Ubuntu has codenames like "Feisty Fawn" and "Karmic Koala", Fedora has "Werewolf", "Leonides", and "Constantine".