Now, for a lot of Linux purists, this is about as close as you get to Microsoft launching their own proprietary distribution ;-)
The truth is, no matter how you cut and slice it, Ubuntu is the one distro out their that is getting onto millions of desktops, is being pre-installed on machines, and offers a great user experience. Yes, I know Fedora and Suse , name your favourite distro here, use the same basic components like Gnome, but the Ubuntu team have put together a decent desktop distro, and using the Debian package management system - apt - doesn't do them any harm either. Having worked with Redhat/Fedora yum for years, I know which one I prefer.
Another point I should mention here, and it is an extremely important issue, is that there is a lot more software more easily available for Ubuntu/Debian. Just look at my post on the site on how I had to muck around just to get truecrypt installed on Redhat.
Anyway, have a look here at what is being launched, and if you use Ubuntu, I would certainly give the first half dozen issues a go and see it you like it. The article in the first issue on package building for Debian has to worth the cover price alone.
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Just a few notes. You haven't indicated what your problem with yum/rpm was and if anything, I would like to see you try out the latest version of Fedora about to be released in a week - Fedora 11.
# yum repolist
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, presto, refresh-packagekit
repo id repo name status
fedora Fedora 11 - i386 enabled: 13,289
livna rpm.livna.org for 11 - i386 enabled: 3
rpmfusion-free RPM Fusion for Fedora 11 - Free enabled: 614
rpmfusion-free-updates RPM Fusion for Fedora 11 - Free - Upda enabled: 614
rpmfusion-nonfree RPM Fusion for Fedora 11 - Nonfree enabled: 237
rpmfusion-nonfree-updates RPM Fusion for Fedora 11 - Nonfree - U enabled: 237
updates Fedora 11 - i386 - Updates enabled: 1,053
updates-testing Fedora 11 - i386 - Test Updates enabled: 535
repolist: 16,582
So thats over 16000 packages and maybe not big as Debian but pretty solid I would say. Truecrypt is only not in Fedora or RHEL because of licensing issues, namely it is proprietary software and Red Hat is a Free software company.
If use RHEL, look at EPEL as well
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL
Use any distro you prefer but it is important to get a fair assessment.
Red Hat's impact is
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Red_Hat_contributions
Unfortunately I'm having to use RHEL 5.3, which is behind the developmental curve to put it mildly ;-(
Don't mis-understand my post, I'm a RHCE, and I have been working with RH for 10 years, and love the server products, but I gave up on the desktop when upgrading from Fedora 8 to Fedora 9 on my main desktop, and it was a mess. Ubuntu is just better. I have tried 10, and I will try 11, I always do with RH releases, but as yet there is nothing there to make me want to switch back.
I understand the free software stance, but that misses my point, there was a deb available from their site, but no Redhat rpm, and I had the dependency hell , that you can get when the app you want isn't in the repos.
Hope that answers you questions, in fact this post is coming from FF3.5 pre5 installed on a RHEL 5.3 desktop ;-)
Long term releases are by definition not going to be bleeding edge.
I don't think it practical to assess the current of Fedora by an upgrade from Fedora 8 to Fedora 9. Fedora 8 has been EOL'ed for so long and Fedora 9 is almost going to be EOL'ed as well. Try Fedora 11 when it is released and you will be able to know the current state
truecrypt rpm is available from RPM Fusion repository (and I believe rpmforge as welll). Yes, the fact that is proprietary is a major reason why it is hell to package it properly and why it is not available in the primary repositories. That's not missing the point at all.
I hear you, but I would counter your claim, and say why don't you give Ubuntu 9.04 a try, you might just like it.
The package management on Redhat is just not as good as Debian's , fact. So whichever version of Fedora I install, I'm not going to get around that.
I think we shall have to just agree to disagree.
I have tried Ubuntu. Can you do
# yum install /usr/bin/foo
RPM has file based dependencies, multi-lib (so you can mix 32-bit and 64-bit software for compatibility) and I actually find yum much better. Although apt synaptic and smart is available in the Fedora repository so there is no real difference.
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