Fedora Good, Bad, & Ugly and Debian's Rise
Pádraig Brady today offered up his assessment of Fedora 21 in comparison to Fedora 16 from which he upgraded. Bruce Byfield is back with a look at the "rise of Debian technology" and Softpedia is reporting that CentOS was used to make the black hole in hit movie Interstellar. Gunnar Hellekson refutes the assertions in a recent GCN article declaring Open Source poorly designed and, finally today, Linux powered submersible says polar caps thicker than estimated.
Debian is the basis for 132 other distributions listed on Distrowatch.com, according to Bruce Byfield, more than any other top tier distro. Byfield says Debian has become indispensable because it is perfectly suited for its new role as base for other distributions. He says its 50,000 packages help cement this position. Another factor for Byfield is the Debian project's independence from Free Software Foundation. But ultimately, Byfield thinks it's Debian package management that set it apart from the crowd.
Pádraig Brady just replaced his Fedora 16 system with a new Fedora 21 install and today posted his review. He says the good includes things like better icons, faster package management, "cleaner" bootup, and all around better performance. Some of the bad came in the installer itself, some individual applications, and missing desktop options. He added the default font is very ugly, but see Brady's full post for lots more.
The Westside Story today ran a piece saying a Linux powered submersible recently visited the Antarctic to measure the thickness of the ice shelves. Climate scientists have been estimating the thickness using core drilling and satellite images, but SeaBED has been able to travel to the actual locations and collect more accurate data. Westside quotes the operators saying:
Our surveys indicate that the floes are much thicker and more deformed than reported by most drilling and ship-based measurements of Antarctic sea ice.
Mean drafts range from 1.4 to 5.5 metres, with maxima up to 16 metres.
We suggest that thick ice in the near-coastal and interior pack may be under-represented in existing in site assessments of Antarctic sea ice and hence, on average, Antarctic sea ice may be thicker than previously thought.
In other news:
* Wormhole in Interstellar Movie Designed with Linux
* Open Source Software is Still Software
* Truly private surfing