Here’s the final installment of Bill Nottingham’s series based on the talk he gave at this year’s Red Hat Summit. Find out about the latest and greatest Fedora™ developments… and the future of Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® from this experienced engineer. Missed the first part? Catch up in the archives.
Another area that’s shown a lot of improvement since Enterprise Linux 5 is networking, especially for desktop and laptop computers. In Fedora 9, we’ve greatly enhanced NetworkManager, and as a result, have switched to NetworkManager by default for all installs. Some of the features we’ve added to NetworkManager include:
Open sourcing code is more than sticking an OSI approved license on it and putting it up on a public repository. Discussing this is getting to be a bit of a theme at Dev Fu, as many of our experienced open source developers are watching companies and projects swing wildly trying to hit the ball.
In his post How Open Source Is Your Open Source?, Michael DeHaan covers twelve components that are needed for a company to successfully start and lead an open source project.
If you have an open source project, think about how to grow a community of users and a community of developers. The latter is pretty darn hard, but a pretty rewarding thing to achieve.
I could have written this more simply — open source code is great, open everything is better. Hopefully this is useful to some new software companies out there, as well as some developers. The main idea here is, think community, not code. It’s everything — and when you do that, THAT is when you actually reap the benefits of open source. Otherwise the only real benefit you are getting is freedom to debug/fork, which is only a very small part of the equation.
Joel Berman explains the ‘G’ part of the MRG offering–the grid. Watch as he demonstrates how the Amazon Cloud can be used to help complete resource-intensive tasks much more quickly.
This is the first in a two-part series from Summit presenter and Red Hat/Fedora engineer Bill Nottingham. It is based on the talk he gave at this year’s Red Hat Summit. Part two will be published later this week.
One of the most-asked questions in the software world is:
“What’s coming in the next release?”
Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® is no different. You can wait for the beta, and pore over the release notes and the package changelogs. You can corner a product manager at the right moment. But the easiest and best way to get the scoop on what’s coming up in future Red Hat Enterprise Linux releases? Take a look at Fedora.
Fedora, for those that don’t know, is a freely available and distributable Linux-based operating system that showcases the latest in free and open-source software. It’s developed globally within the Fedora project community, and is where Red Hat innovates. Read on as we describe some of the innovations in Fedora that will be headed for future Enterprise Linux releases. » Read more
Release Found: Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® 4
The following options can be used in the kickstart configuration file to control SELinux behaviour in a kickstart installation.
1. selinux --enforcing: Enables SELinux with the default targeted policy being enforced.
2. selinux --permissive: Outputs warnings only based on the SELinux policy, but does not actually enforce the policy.
3. selinux --disabled: Disables SELinux completely on the system.
If any SELinux option is not present in the kickstart file then SELinux is enabled by default and set to --enforcing.
Note: The system-config-securitylevel-tui package is required for controlling the SELinux policies. If this package is removed from the kickstart configuration file, SELinux will set to --enforcing mode by default irrespective of the SELinux options.
It should be noted that Red Hat does not recommend disabling SELinux.
Here’s this week’s list of what we found interesting. (And don’t forget–if you see something you think we should see too? Let us know about it.)
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) has emerged as a popular technology for modern voice communications. Many organizations have replaced their analog or proprietary digital telephone systems with VoIP-based solutions. This allows the consolidation of telephone services into an existing IP infrastructure. In addition, using IP to host voice services lets the organization leverage existing expertise–while retaining all of the network’s management advantages. Though not without its disadvantages, VoIP provides a compelling option to those looking for a telephone solution.
This article will present a simple VoIP solution using Asterisk, an open source private branch exchange (PBX) product. It will show you how to install Asterisk, configure it using its LDAP backend, and connect to it using the Ekiga software VoIP client and a Cisco 7900 Series VoIP telephone to make calls. » Read more
Paul Frields (Fedora Project Leader) sits down to discuss the Live USB feature debuted in Fedora 9 with developer Jeremy Katz. See a live demo of the persistant desktop, and find out how to get more involved in the next Fedora release.
For years I have envied how easy my Windows- and Mac-based peers had it when traveling with their laptops. They connect to hotspots with ease, get online while I was still logging into root and running some tools. It just wasn’t fair. I wanted an integrated easy-to-use tool that did not require bringing up a shell or logging into root.
I now have that tool in NetworkManager. In this article I will explain what NetworkManager is, what capabilities exist in the tool (in both Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux), and what you can do to extend it to give you more control over your system than before.
NetworkManager is a software utility that allows a desktop user to manage wired, wireless, modem, WWAN/3G, and VPN network connectivity from a single source. It does not require root access or manual editing of configuration files.
NetworkManager started as a Gnome project and initially appeared in Fedora. It is now supported on multiple desktop environments (Gnome, KDE, Xfce, etc.) and in multiple distributions (Fedora, SuSE, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Debian, etc.). NetworkManager uses dbus and hal to provide network status updates to other desktop applications, allowing them to alter their operation based on this information. For instance, if NetworkManager shows the network is offline, then apps like Evolution and Pidgin will put themselves into offline mode andwait for the network to come online. » Read more
It has always been possible to solve the puzzle of Red Hat’s success in the software business. By piecing together Red Hat’s open source ecosystem methodology for their own understanding, many businesses have had an eye on Red Hat in how to organize their open source development practices. The idea of community and enterprise editions, for example, owes a lot to the split of Red Hat Linux into Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the Fedora Project.
Yet, there is a difference in how Red Hat started and grew compared to how some newer companies are running their open source-based business. Many offer closed source and proprietary add on components as part of their enterprise offering. Red Hat has always avoided this practice, striving to ship only 100% open source.
As the Fedora Project has grown, it has continued to pioneer open business practices that complement the open development methodology. The business model of taking the best from Fedora to support for seven years as Enterprise Linux lends itself to absorbing other practices from the Fedora community, ones outside of software. In every area, such as software packaging, documentation, translation, and marketing, Fedora’s open and highly visible work develops methodologies that affect the way Red Hat does business into the future.
It is not good enough to just act in this open, visible way. The open source model gains strength from community growth. The size of the community contributes to the quality of the software. This is in the best interests of everyone, including those who are paying actual staff to work actual hours on free software. Especially those people, as they get a force multiplier from efforts in the community, rather than going the road alone.
If it is a good idea to learn and grow business practices from community influence, wouldn’t the rest of the open source methodology concepts apply? The more pioneers of open business practices who are following an open source methodology, the stronger their work is.
One example of this is in the connection between EPEL, RHX, and ISVs. As the Fedora for ISVs page explains, there are a number of valuable gains to be had. By bringing your open source development work out more in to the community, you gain increased awareness, reduced maintenance burden, and a serious head start on the next version of Red Hat’s supported products.
This week, folks from RHX and Fedora’s Community Architecture teams are going to be at OSCON, talking with open source ISVs about getting their software in to Fedora. A strong point we are making is the chance to absorb and contribute to the open business practices, which are centered around the open source we hold in common, strengthed by all our contributions.
