I think the fight is never going to end . The only topic the whole glugt seems to discuss for the past one month ( or even more than that ) is UBUNTU or FEDORA.

Fedora Supporters :
Gcdart, Sahil , Verma
Ubuntu Supporters
Evo, Donatello and me ,

I have no clue why i support ubuntu. I have never had any big problem with FC , though the only feature which attracted me towards ubuntu is
apt-get dist-upgrade
I had a chance to use ubuntu ( for the first time ) when i was in Novell, Blore. There internet was never the problem . So installed the breezy base and a simple apt-get distupgrade upgraded my system from breezy to dapper. I cant think of something like this for fedora. Though the installation cd always comes with an upgrade option people do go for a fresh install .

Had a small chat with gc regarding the bootup time comparision of ubuntu and FC, finally googled for the comparison , Though i did not get that i got a better one from here.
Some of the details i got from there is

	Fedora	Ubuntu
GENERAL FEATURES	Fedora Core is a community distribution sponsored by Redhat. Fedora Core is a general purpose system – it does not concentrate on one specific market. Fedora Core is innovative (adopts a lot of bleeding-edge software) and secure (includes great security tools like SELinux). It is suitable both for home users, programmers and the corporate server.	Ubuntu is usually described as Debian for newbies. It is based on Debian Unstable and offers some Debian compatibility, adding a lot of features to make the system more friendly for new Linux users. Ubuntu installer is very automatic. After the successful installation, the system is mostly confugured. Ubuntu package selection is very wise and non-redundant, providing one app for a single task. The desktop is very clean and looks consistent. Installing Ubuntu is a great way to have a Debian system with minimal knowledge required.
Random screenshot
TECHNICAL INFO
Supported architectures	i386, ppc, x86_64, sparc (via Aurora Project), alpha (via AlphaCore)	amd64, i386, ppc
Minimal hardware requirements	For text mode: 200 MHz Pentium-class, 64MB RAM, 620MB HDD For graphical mode: 400 MHz Pentium-class, 192MB RAM, 620MB HDD	For text-mode: 24MB RAM, 450MB hard drive For graphical-mode: 64MB RAM, 1GB HDD
Software freedom status	Free as in freedom. The distribution is not officially recommended by FSF probably only due to not enough vocal declarations about the free software (Fedora tends to prefer the term “open-source”).	Mostly free, but includes some proprietary drivers
INSTALLATION
Installer – overall	(8) Very mature installer, offering features both for beginner and expert users. Contains most of the features a modern OS installer should have. The only flaw can be install speed and no separate expert mode.	(8) Since Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake), a graphcal installer is available with the Live-CD edition. The installer is fast and asks a minimal number of questions. It’s one of the easiest Linux distros to set up for a newbie user. Ubuntu alternative text-based installer is based on the Debian Sarge installer. It adds a few new screens in expert mode, and removes a few in novice mode, to make it even simpler to install the system with default setting. And the defaults is: latest Gnome with a selection of GTK software.
Package selection	(9) Present. Single packages can be selected (ald dependencies resolved)	(2) Not available. You can however install additional packages before running the Live-CD installer (graphically or using apt-get). Every package you install before running the main installer will appear in your final installation.
Predefined package groups	(9) Very well-thought package grouping. All package groups incude packaes installed by default and optional ones. The default installation is a desktop system with GNOME.	(2) Desktop or server installations are available. No package group selection.
Expert mode install	(7) No special “expert mode”. Most of the screens (e.g. partitioning) include “advanced” options for non-standard configuration.	(8) Expert/Beginner and kernel 2.4/2.6 choices.
Graphical installer	(9) Graphical (anaconda) or console based installation.	(6) Available since Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake). The older text (dialog-based) installer is also very simple and suitable for most cases as well.
Installer speed	(6) Reasonable speed of the installer.	(6) The Live-CD installation is pretty fast. The installer only asks a few questions and then copies the entire Live-CD image to the disk, configuring the hardware and the boot-up menu. The legacy (alternative) installation process is rather slow. Default installation took 35 minutes on 1.6Ghz, 1GB RAM laptop. On the same machine, Yoper has been installed in 13 minutes.
CONFIGURATION
Graphical system management	(7) Many graphical configuration tools (mostly GNOME-based). Most system-wide operations can be performed without the need to open the terminal window.	(5) Ubuntu does not provide a disto-specific Control Panel app (like in SuSE or Mandriva). Still, a few Ubuntu-specific tools has been added to the default Gnome desktop: the update notifier, update and installation manager (similar to Windows’ Add/Remove Software app), an applet to mount disks, a NetworkManager for wifi support, Beagle Search integration and more.
Console-based system management	(5) Some console tools provided, including network card configuration (netcard-config), etc.	(8) Very good package configuration tool – debconf – from Debian project.
PACKAGE SYSTEM
Number of packages	(7) Package numer is better than openSUSE, but not as big as Mandriva or Debian. There are however lots of alternative sources of packages, like Freshrpms.net, etc. Recently, with versions Fedora Core 4 and 5 and the arrival of Fedora Extras project, the number of alternative software repositories grew considerably.	(8) Except for base Ubuntu packages (built and supported by the Ubuntu team), there are official but unsupported repositories: universe and multiverse. It all sums up to over 10,000 of Ubuntu specific packages. Using alternative sources from Debian or its derivatives is not recommended (and usually not useflu).
Package management, automatic dependency resolving	(6) The famous Redhat dependency hell is almost over with the arrival of yum (the default package manager) and apt-rpm (the alternative one).	(8) Dpkg, APT and aptitude – Debian package management tools are among the leading GNU/Linux tools for software management. Installing software in Ubuntu is simple and troubleless, and certainly much more pleasurable than in most distros using the RPM format. Only Smart package manager is considered superior to APT (however, it can be used in Ubuntu as well).
Graphical package management tools	(7) Fedora Core 5 provides yum based graphical tools such as Pirut for package management and Pup as the updater. Fedora Core 6 provides an update notifier called Puplet. There is Synaptic (a frontend to APT) and other similar tools available as the alternatives. Previous Fedora Core releases (FC4 and earlier) included the old up2date application for package management and a desktop Alert Icon.	(8) Synaptic – a graphical frontend to APT – a software installation and update tool, very useful if someone likes to click rather than type. Also, an “Add/Remove applications” program is delivered, which is much simpler and more straightforward than Synaptic, but allows to install only the most typical desktop apps.
EFFICIENCY
System boot-up speed	(5) Average boot-up speed. The boot-up scripts written properly.	(6) Thoughtful services selection and default configuration make Ubuntu boot faster than Debian. It’s getting better with each release, but there is still some room for improvements.
System responsiveness	(5) Acceptable speed and responsiveness, although there are no special optimizations for either desktop or server use.	(7) Quite responsive system. Working with Ubuntu is fast and effective. Much better than default Debian installation. Technically, packages (except for the kernel and libc) are compiled for 486, but with Pentium III (or higher) optimizations.
STABILITY/SECURITY
Popularity	(7) Very popular distro. For many months locates around 1-5 place on the DistroWatch rank.	(8) Ubuntu got extremely popular during the previous year and places currently takes the first place in the DistroWatch rank.
Security focus	(8) SELinux is included in the default install. Fedora Core offers a whole bunch of extra security features like Exec-Shield, Compile Time Buffer Checks, ELF, Data Hardening, Restricted Kernel Memory access and more.	(8) All of the key security packages (including kernel package) are being updated daily, so if someone updates the system regularily, he/she should not worry about security much.
Stability and maturity	(6) Fedora Core stability is comparable to similar distros like Ubuntu or openSUSE. There are many efforts to make the software testing within Fedora Core even better by implementing an automated test system. Will Woods is currently leading this project.	(7) Ubuntu is based on Debian, which is one of the most stable and mature distros available. Still, Ubuntu comes with fresh software and instabilities may occur.
INTERNATIONALIZATION
Does the installer support multiple languages?	(8) Fedora installer is pretty well localized.	(8) Ubuntu installer is translated into 40 languages which makes it one of the leaders in this area. Internationalization is one of the Ubuntu project priorities.
Is the system localized after installation?	(7) System speaks the language selected during the installation process. Of course not all apps are well-translated, but Fedora-specific ones usually are.	(7) The installed system is localized. The only problems may occur with QT-based apps. QtConfig app can fix this problem when installed.
Is manual system localization easy?	(8) Additional localization procedures are easily available (docs, FAQ-s)	(5) If something does not work, we should make friends with dpkg-reconfigure tool which makes it easier to change the package configuration without the need to mess up with the configuration files.
APPLICATIONS/NETWORK
Support for restricted formats	(4) Fedora is a community distro devoted to Free Software thing. No support for non-free formats is available by default. Fedora Wiki entry Forbidden Items explains the reasons for this and offers possible solutions. If you need restricted formats for some reason or don’t care for the FSF philosophy, don’t worry. You can still install all the packages from third-party repositories like rpm.livna.org.	(5) Ubuntu is a community distro devoted to Free Software thing. Almost no support for non-free formats is available by default. If you need restricted formats for some reason or don’t care for the FSF philosophy, don’t worry. You can still install all the packages from the multiverse repository (no officially supported but hosted at ubuntu.com). The Restricted Formats wiki entry describes the Ubuntu policy and the multiple ways of getting support for non-free packages. Using EasyUbuntu – a graphical non-free software installer is another good option here.
Sagem DSL modem support	(4) No eagle-usb packages. Kernel source and manual module compilation is necessary.	(4) Eagle-USB has been available as a Debian package since version 4.11 (Warty Warthhog). Unfortunately, the support for Thompson modems got worse and worse with every release. Now, it’s not posiible to install the modem without kernel recompilation…
Alcatel DSL modem support	(4) Like in Sagem, installation process is totally manual. A speedtouch.conf script (tested with FC2 and FC3) can be also downloaded from http://speedtouchconf.sf.net/ to make the process automatic.	(5) Speedtouch modem installation is not fully automatic. Package “speedtouch” is responsible for firmware loading. Still, we have to copy the driver manually. Manual configuration is also a must.
Wireless support	(7) Good WiFi support. Native drivers are well supported (clickable installation). Ndsiwrapper is available for Windows-only cards.	(8) System automatically detects wireless connections (adequate icon appears on the desktop). Of course, other debian tools for handling wireless cards are also available.

Each system gets a mark from 0 (min) to 9 (max). In most cases the description precises the mark. A question mark (?) means that we do not have any information about certain feature.

Note :: Have edited the post from FC5 to FC after reading the first comment. Think comment is posted by a FC supporter . :) . Anyway i have not seen Edgy till now, still downloading the repos (seems it is some 14 GB for i386 ) . And not yet explored FC6. I just hope i find enough time to explore both FC6 and Edgy .

Went home for diwali hols and the moment i entered my room , the first thing i did is to switch on the comp. I have already taken a resolution that no tech , no php , no linux for the next 5 days [ resolutions are meant be broken , you know :) ] . So instead of booting the comp in linux , i booted the comp in windows ( i had no clue what i was going to do in windows ) .

My sister had stored a few harry potter movies which i was in no mood to see.After some 5-10 minutes of arbit clicking , i decided windows is not for me :-). I noticed a folder called books which was the only useful thing for me in my comp apart from the linux. But reading a book will make me break the resolution. Though reluctant , i started with the “Unix Haters Book”. When i started , i never had an idea how great the book will be .

The book will make anyone hate unix ( this includes linux also ) and i am not an exception. That too even after the first chapter , i started to realize the drawbacks [this is a better way to say hate :-) ] of shell , the most powerful and the tool which i liked the most in Unix or Linux.

So here is the details of the first chapter in short. It mostly blasted a singlr command “rm”. Now i realise the deadliest command one can ever type is “rm”.

The first thing i liked in the book is the way they described unix.
“ Who would have thought it: Unix, the hacker’s pornography.”
I have no clue why the author mentioned Unix as hacker’s pornography , but i seriously liked the guts of the author to say something like this . I did realize that this book is good after reading the foreword ( very few books can do this ) . After reading the first chapter , the author made sure that whenever i type rm , i will surely remember this book.

The first chapter started with the quote saying
“Two of the most famous products of Berkeley are LSD and Unix. I
don’t think that this is a coincidence.”
—Anonymous

Another chapter said this
The most horrifying thing about Unix is that, no matter how many
times you hit yourself over the head with it, you never quite manage
to lose consciousness. It just goes on and on.
—Patrick Sobalvarro
The attack on “rm” gave many real life-horror stories .
“rm” Is Forever
A series of exchanges on the Usenet news group alt.folklore.computers illustrates our case:
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 90
From: djones@megatest.uucp (Dave Jones)
Subject: rm *
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers2
Anybody else ever intend to type:
% rm *.o
And type this by accident:
% rm *>o
Now you’ve got one new empty file called “o”, but plenty of room
for it!
Actually, you might not even get a file named “o” since the shell documen-
tation doesn’t specify if the output file “o” gets created before or after the
wildcard expansion takes place. The shell may be a programming lan-
guage, but it isn’t a very precise one.

In my comp i got a file named o , seems the output file gets created after the wild card expansion takes place.

Here is the next real life story
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 90 15:51 CST
From: ram@attcan.uucp
Subject: Re: rm *
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
I too have had a similar disaster using rm. Once I was removing a file
system from my disk which was something like /usr/foo/bin. I was in /
usr/foo and had removed several parts of the system by:
% rm -r ./etc
% rm -r ./adm
…and so on. But when it came time to do ./bin, I missed the period.
System didn’t like that too much.
Unix wasn’t designed to live after the mortal blow of losing its /bin direc-
tory. An intelligent operating system would have given the user a chance to
recover (or at least confirm whether he really wanted to render the operat-
ing system inoperable).
The third case is really really important and a dangerous one .
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 90 10:40 CST
From: kgg@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Kees Goossens)
Subject: Re: rm *
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Then there’s the story of the poor student who happened to have a
file called “-r” in his home directory. As he wanted to remove all his
non directory files (I presume) he typed:
% rm *
… And yes, it does remove everything except the beloved “-r” file…
Luckily our backup system was fairly good.

Now i stopped reading the book. I realised that i will surely start a Windows User Group , Trichy if i complete the book. :P .

The whole sun lab is waiting for FC6 . People even wann to add a cron so that the download starts at tomorrow 6 pm automatically . I saw the pre release version in balli’s comp and MY GOD !!! . FC surely rocks . Some of the nice features which my friends told me are .

1. In built XGL features with no need for drivers and other requirements . The first thing balli showed me in his comp is XGL. So FC6 is surely going to rock .

2. Yum speed increased. Seems the whole yum in re written in C. Though i donn know whether this is true or not , but this will be a great feature if implemented . Currently yum in fully in python and it is a bit slow :-( .

3. Faster boot up . Seems they have made the readahead early process better. So this maybe the reason for faster boot.

Here is the techinical details of the new features of FC6 which i read in a article from fedorasite.

Installer improvements

Fedora Installer in Fedora Core 5 started using the Yum API, and now in this release we have an easy way to access Fedora Extras and connect to custom repositories–even during installation. This makes it much easier for users to access a larger base of useful software packages. Plus, system administrations can now heavily customize their deployments of Fedora using their own custom yum repository using Anaconda or kickstart. Anaconda now uses the Squashfs filesystem to compress and store more software in the images. It also supports IPV6-based networks better, and you can install from Firewire and USB storages devices. Fedora Core 6 is also the first mainstream distribution to add support for Intel-based Macintoshes

Performance boosts

If there is a single major “feature” in Fedora, it would be the extensive performance improvements that this release carries throughout the distribution. Fedora Core and Fedora Extras have been entirely rebuilt on a new glibc that takes advantage of precomputed hash values to boost the performance of dynamic linking very heavily. GNOME 2.16 has a number of performance improvements, including better login time, bonobo speedups, and faster rendering of non-Latin scripts and Cairo graphics. Plus, Nautilus and file chooser saw some improvements, and Evolution IMAP underwent some backend changes. KDE 3.5.4 has a number of new optimizations, as do system-level libraries such as the CUPS printing service and the fontconfig library.

Yum 3.0 increases the performance of the package manager drastically with a new metadata parser written in C. The codebase has gone through a major revamp with a large number of API changes to make yum a better foundation for building applications. These speed improvements reflect on Pirut and Pup, as well.

Desktop effects

Red Hat has been working on AIGLX through the Fedora Rendering Project, and while we did have it as an optional experimental repository for Fedora Core 5, it has now gone through a number of changes to provide easily enabled desktop effects in your Fedora Core 6 desktop. What have Fedora Core 6 development teams been up to? Here’s a few of the things they accomplished:

• Unveiled AIGLX as a community-oriented incremental approach to providing a framework for compositing desktops.
• Merged AIGLX framework into Xorg. It is now available as part of Xorg 7.1 release and will be included in Fedora Core 6.
• Xorg has an improved dynamic configuration mechanism and compositing extension is now enabled by default.
• Changed the OpenGL-based compositing window manager Compiz. It will now work on top of AIGLX and has been tweaked to work better with Fedora.
• Installation of Compiz by default in Fedora Core 6. You can enable it by clicking on the appropriate checkboxes in System=> Preferences => Desktop Effects. With capable hardware it will just work without having to configure anything or even logout of the system.

Here are some of the nice backgrounds for FC6. They are really great .

This HOW-TO covers up the whole process of installing Adobe Photoshop CS2 on a Ubuntu box in a few simple steps. This method has been tested only on Ubuntu, but it should work on any other linux flavor.
-What you need?

* A fresh install of Ubuntu Dapper + all the updates
* A Windows box with a fully installed and activated version of Adobe Photoshop CS2

- Fire up a terminal session and type the next commands;

TIP: Instead of using apt-get, you can install them with the Synaptic Package Manager located in the System/Administration menu

1. $ apt-get update

2. $ apt-get install wine and then type “yes”

3. $ wine /*To create the wine file structure*/

4. $ apt-get install recode and then type “yes”

– Then you need to copy all the necessary files from the Windows box;
5. Copy the whole Adobe folder from “c:\Program Files\” to “/home/YOURNAME/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/”

– Now you need to export the registry keys of the Adone Photoshop CS2;
6. In your Windows box, type “regedit” in the command-line and export the whole “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Adobe/” to “adobe.reg”, then copy it to your your Ubuntu, convert it to ascii with “$ recode ucs-2..ascii adobe.reg”. Afterwards, type “$ wine regedit adobe.reg” to run it with wine.

7. That’s it! Type “$ ./wine –winver winxp “[path to Photoshop]/photoshop.exe” or create a launcher and enjoy Adobe Photoshop CS2 on Ubuntu ;)