[Scribus] INkscape Friendly Linux Distribution _OT

[Craig Ringer]

BandiPat wrote:

>frank gaude' wrote:
>  
>
>>Gregory Pittman wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>BandiPat wrote:
>>>      
>>>
>>>>Fedora Core is purely experimental, Red Hat tells you this on their
>>>>site. It feels that way too, as well as behaves that way! Again, it's
>>>>Linux, so it is fixable, but it always feels unfinished to me. I also
>>>>never get the feeling it's reached a completely stable state either,
>>>>although I think a good Red Hat user could make it feel that way.
>>>>        
>>>>
>
>================Greg wrote:
>  
>
>>>From their site:
>>>*"Fedora Core* is a *free* operating system that offers the best
>>>combination of *stable* and *cutting-edge* software that exists in the
>>>free software world."
>>>
>---------------
>Greg & Frank,
>
>Taken from the Red Hat site for Fedora:
>
>"The Fedora Project is a Red Hat sponsored and community-supported open
>source project. It is not a supported product of Red Hat, Inc. The goal?
>Work with the Linux community to build a complete, general purpose
>operating system exclusively from free software. Public forum. Open
>processes. A proving ground for new technology that may eventually make
>its way into Red Hat products."
>
>Fedora is listed as a "project" not a product with constantly changing
>parts & programs.  From the Fedora site: "An operating system, a set of
>projects, and a mindset."
>  
>
It doesn't say it's experimental, or anything close to that. Red Hat 
don't support it - but I hardly see that as an issue for most users.

Yes, it moves fast - and if you want the same set of software etc for 3 
years, you won't find it in Fedora. That's only one aspect of stability 
- one that can alternately be called stagnation (and you can always use 
Debian Stable for that :-P). If what you want is an OS that improves 
while retaining the ability to handle all your old documents, doesn't 
force you to totally re-work the way you use it with every release, and 
in which all functionality works smoothly and correctly, then I think 
you'll find FC qualifies nicely.

The RHEL products are for corporate environments looking for a 5-year 
support period (bug and security fixes, tech support, engineering 
access, etc) for a platform that they want to standardise on. Most of 
the issues they face just aren't as relevant for home users - especially 
if they want up-to-date software (ie inkscape friendly, 
scribus-friendly, etc).

>As I mentioned not once, but twice, I asked that no one take offense
>with my thoughts, yet I guess it's inevitable that someone will because
>they use that item.  I reread my mail, yet still do not see anything
>negative in my thoughts.  Fedora Core, as OpenSuSE, is an ongoing
>project, experimental, certain to be unstable and not intended for the
>faint of heart.
>
I'm really not sure where you get that impression. Yes, it's an ongoing 
project, but so is every other application and distro, OSS or otherwise. 
Like Debian - which I don't think anybody will argue isn't stable. 
Fedora moves faster, but in my experience does an excellent job of 
making choices that ensure stability, and spends enough time settling 
down for each release that the releases are very solid. I can think of 
only *one* significant bug I've run into in FC4 - file-roller 
incorrectly escapes shell metacharacters when opening files from 
archives. That's not to say that there aren't more, just that in 
day-to-day use it doesn't exactly leap out at you and scream "buggy!".

>  That's not to say it's bad or can't be used, but the
>user needs to prepare themselves to do the things needed to make it
>fully usable.
>  
>
Having been using it since FC1, I must say that the only thing I've ever 
had to do to make it usable is install it. If you want MP3 and DVD 
support you have to add it, but that's for legal reasons not an issue of 
stability, and is trivially accomplished. I guess it depends on your 
definition of usability - if some things you need aren't included in the 
stock install, you'd probably have to set up a 3rd-party repository (but 
FC4's extras tends to be rather comprehensive now), and might consider 
that an issue with the distro.

>Again, I don't reply to you guys to incite a riot, but I feel the facts
>should not be waxed over simply because it's what one uses or prefers.
>  
>
Most of this is opinion, not facts. It is very difficult to do more than 
a highly subjective look at any of these issues. How do you even 
*measure* stability? Heck, what is your definition of stability as it 
relates to a distro? Meh. You can have your opinion, I can have mine, 
but I don't see any "facts" being "waxed over" I'm afraid. The biggest 
issue in this whole furball seems to be a difference of interpretation 
of some wording on Red Hat's web site. My personal view on that is that 
the wording doesn't seem to say to me what it does to you, and that it 
doesn't much matter anyway since the actual distro is rather more 
important than a few words on the website.

I'm not generally inclined to care what people use (but I don't do 
support for Gentoo users :-P [prods cbradney])... and don't generally 
see why anyone else should. I currently prefer FC4 as my main desktop 
but have in the past used Debian extensively (and still do on all my 
servers, home and work). Scribus and Inkscape aught to work on any 
distro with sufficiently up-to-date libraries, so overall I really don't 
think you should have to factor in a couple of apps too much in your 
distro choice. Just pick a distro that stays up-to-date.

--
Craig Ringer