At the end of April 2004, Red Hat will discontinue its support and maintenance of Red Hat Linux, leaving a good number of users in a lurch. While some users will likely switch to SUSE or Debian or others, the Fedora Project promises to take up where Red Hat’s left off. But is Fedora a viable option? Here’s a hands-on trial of Fedora Core 1.
In November 2003, Red Hat announced that “Red Hat will discontinue maintenance and errata support for Red Hat Linux 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, and 8.0 as of December 31, 2003.” The company’s message continued, “Red Hat will also discontinue maintenance and errata support for Red Hat Linux 9 as of April 30, 2004. Red Hat does not plan to release another product in the Red Hat Linux line.”
In other words, “No more free Red Hat software.” Red Hat’s missive confirmed that it was going to focus its efforts on large, enterprise-wide Linux installations and suggested that Red Hat Linux users migrate to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, albeit at a significantly increased annual cost.
At face value, Red Hat’s announcement seemed like terrible news. A significant, influential, and popular Linux distribution was being obsoleted, seemingly leaving serious hobbyists, developers, and small businesses in a lurch. Yet buried in Red Hat’s announcement was a reference to the Fedora Project, a “development forum for new Linux and open source technology” sponsored by Red Hat. A merger between Red Hat Linux and the Fedora Linux project, a community project dedicated to building high-quality, third-party RPMs for Red Hat Linux, the Fedora Project promised hope for those migrating from existing Red Hat installations.
But is Fedora a viable option? And for whom? Anxious to answer some burning questions, we doffed the Red Hat and donned a Fedora to find out just how well the new hat fits.
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