Fedora Project Podcast

Plenty of sysadmins will tell you Fedora is a great desktop and the wrong choice for a server. Is that still true, or is it a reputation Fedora hasn't outgrown? This week it's just the two of us, and we put the question to ourselves. We get into: Where the hesitation actually comes from, and whether it describes the Fedora of today or the Fedora of a few years ago What Fedora Server is, who it's for, and how it sits next to the image-based options Whether bootc changes the math, when the OS is an image you build and roll back rather than a thing you upgrade in place Fedora as an appliance, which Noah is seeing more of in industry, including one running inside a medical organization Nine months of support, and what a live upgrade path would have to look like Noah's argument that the thing standing between Fedora and a production server is not technical at all, it's a path of escalation, and that IT malpractice is a real category We also go thoroughly off topic for a few minutes while Noah explains why ad targeting feels like your phone is listening to you, and why it isn't. Eric calls it out on air. We left it in. No guest this week. Just the two of us arguing in good faith and mostly landing on "it depends." So we want your answer. Would you run Fedora on a server, and why or why not? Bonus points if you have actually done it in production. Comments, the Matrix room, or, as Noah correctly points out, RFC 1149.

Red Hat announced Hummingbird at Summit back in May. Five months later there are Hummingbird containers in the wild, a spin of Fedora Linux built on the same principles, and a full Bluefin ISO built on top of it. Scott McCarty is a senior principal product manager at Red Hat who kicked off Podman with the team and launched Red Hat Universal Base Image. Jorge Castro runs Project Bluefin and was last on the show back when it was still rpm-ostree. Noah is out this week, so Eric flies solo. We get into: Two things launched at Summit, not one. Red Hat hardened images went generally available and Fedora Hummingbird Linux was announced, and they are not the same thing The real difference between them, which comes down to whether there is a kernel in it. A container image will never boot. Add a kernel and it becomes a bootable container Roughly 95 percent of Hummingbird comes from Fedora Rawhide, with the rest pulled from the major releases or run ahead of Fedora when something lands upstream first Why patching speed suddenly matters, and Scott walking through time to exploit collapsing from two and a half years and a seven person team down to days for one person Risk based versus compliance based patching, and why Scott will not call any of this more secure, only different Utah Raptor, which Jorge built the first cut of in a bar on a dare, and what it took 13 people 22 days to turn into a shippable Bluefin What it actually takes to point an existing bootc home lab at Hummingbird, which turns out to be a pointer change Scott and Jorge both close with the same ask: tell them what you would actually use this for. The Fedora discussion threads are open, and there is a thread for every episode of this show.Special Guests: Jorge Castro and Scott McCarty.

Framework does not have a storefront you can walk into. What they do have is a laptop you can order that arrives with Fedora already on it, and a screwdriver in the box. Michael Tunnell is the Senior Marketing Manager for Linux Marketing at Framework, and spent years covering this ecosystem at TuxDigital before joining. Noah is back this week after missing the last episode while stuck forty feet up on a scissor lift with a dead battery. We get into: Why Fedora KDE, and why the answer is a boring technical one: KDE tested best for stylus and touchscreen, and Fedora moves fast enough on the kernel for brand new silicon The 80 percent of Laptop 12 owners already running Linux, measured before any preload existed, so every one of them installed it themselves What "officially supported" means at Framework: engineering collaboration with the distro, support for the distro, and a dedicated Linux support specialist a customer can actually reach Real upstream fixes, including a CPU limiter and thermals bug on Wildcat Lake, audio modules, and screen rotation, all landed in Fedora and the kernel The expansion card system, with two of the four slots on the 12 running Thunderbolt 4 ZMK open source keyboard firmware, published CAD files, and 3D printable components What it costs a company to commit to repairability instead of planned obsolescence There is a written companion post at https://itguyeric.com/blog/fedora-ep61-framework-laptop-12/Special Guest: Michael Tunnell.

Fedora has a job whose entire purpose is the health of the community around the distribution, and this month a new person took it over. So we got both of them on at once. Justin Wheeler has held the Fedora Community Architect seat since 2022 and is moving into a new role as AI Alignment Community Architect. Shaun McCance is stepping into the Fedora role while staying on as CentOS Community Architect. Noah is out this episode, so Eric hosts solo. We get into: Where the role came from, why Robyn Bergeron pushed for it in 2015, and how it went from community outreach and impact lead to Fedora Community Architect in January 2023 What actually lands on the desk: a Council seat, the Mindshare Committee, the Code of Conduct Committee, budget stewardship, and Flock How Mindshare funding works for ambassadors, local organizers, and anyone who just needs a box of stickers and will write an event report Justin's new AI Alignment role, why he wrote his own job description, and why he thinks community consent on AI has to be earned rather than assumed This Week in Fedora, and the argument that started when a bot began ingesting messages from a public but non-indexed Matrix room What Shaun brings from CentOS and from years as GNOME Foundation treasurer, and what he finds daunting about Fedora's breadth Why one shared budget spreadsheet is not a merger, and what stays separate on purpose Where to find both projects: CentOS Connect January 28 and 29 in Brussels, DevConf US September 24 and 25 in Boston, Texas Linux Fest in November, and All Things Open There is a written companion post at https://itguyeric.com/blog/fedora-ep60-changing-of-the-guard/Special Guests: Justin Wheeler and Shaun McCance.

A couple of episodes ago we talked to Carl George about EPEL, and half that conversation ended up being about CentOS. The questions kept coming, so we made a whole episode out of it. This is the biggest panel the show has ever had. Amy Marrich chairs the CentOS Board and does technical marketing for OpenStack at Red Hat. Troy Dawson leads the CentOS Stream team, sits on the board, and builds CentOS Stream for RISC-V. Shaun McCance is the CentOS Community Architect, and as of two weeks ago the Fedora Community Architect as well. We get into: Why CentOS Linux and CentOS Stream are different projects, and why one of them retired around RHEL 9 The pipeline: Fedora, then Fedora ELN, then CentOS Stream, then RHEL, and why Btrfs is the example everyone reaches for How Stream and RHEL now build from the same commit, on a one-week cadence versus six months Why partners shipped on RHEL 9 launch day because they had been building against Stream 9 How the board actually works, why only one seat speaks for Red Hat, and what the SIGs and the SIG Council do Where to file a bug (against RHEL, not at Troy) How to contribute without writing code, and why being new makes you good at documentation There is a written companion post at https://itguyeric.com/blog/fedora-ep59-what-is-centos/Special Guests: Amy Marrich, Shaun McCance, and Troy Dawson.