Fedora 24 schedule, DevConf.cz, looking back at 2015, and modularization

Fedora 24 schedule update

Fedora at DevConf.cz

“Year in Review” initiative

2015 was an active and busy year for Fedora. Every day, the great people that make up our community of contributors hack away at code, monitor our infrastructure, drive our design efforts, represent Fedora in the field, and so many more things. It’s hard to try to sum up all of Fedora!

The Community Operations (CommOps) team is helping lead a new effort to help guide all of the different subgroups, special interest groups, and other teams in Fedora to write 2015 “Year in Review” articles on the Community Blog. I know we’re already getting into the swing of 2016, but I think this is a great initiative, and it’s not too late to spend a little time reflecting.

If you were involved in a Fedora subproject in 2015, even in a small way, take a look at the guide to writing a “share your year in review” article. The CommOps team promises resources and guidance to help any team in Fedora put together a quick retrospective. Like 5tFTW, these don’t need to be big productions — just three highlights for the past year, and one big goal for the coming one.

Speaking of Year in Review…

Tech tabloid The Register did their own review of the state of Linux desktop distributions in 2015 (2015 was the Year of the Linux Phone … Nah, we’re messing with you), and what they say about Fedora is so nice that I definitely have to quote it: “Fedora found its groove again with Fedora Next and turned out its most impressive releases to date. More than just a great release though, the Fedora Project feels re-energized, like Fedora suddenly remembered what it was and where it was going.”

Linux hardware site Phoronix felt similarly; Fedora Linux Had A Very Productive, Tremendous Year says: With the releases this year of Fedora 22 and Fedora 23, Fedora stakeholders should be proud of themselves with the quality of Fedora releases/support continuing to go up while driving a lot of new innovation and success into Linux.

I agree — congratulations and thanks to the whole Fedora community.

Modularizing Fedora (Video Presentation)

Part of the revitalization The Register notes comes from our “Fedora.next” efforts — an umbrella term for looking at our next ten years and thinking about where we want to go and how we can improve and grow. One visible part of that is the new Get Fedora web site and our focus on three editions — Fedora Cloud, Fedora Server, Fedora Workstation — serving different use cases.

But, there’s another part too, that we haven’t come as far on. That started with my “Fedora Rings” proposal in 2013, and has evolved to what we’re calling the “Modularization objective“.

Why modularization? Several reasons!

• The unified approach with tens of thousands of packages in one repository is pretty amazing, and it’s impressive that the Fedora community has done all that. It’s also sometimes problematic, because sometimes not all of the pieces can be made to fit nicely together, and some software just is messier than other projects. It’d be nice if we could categorize software in a way other than “in” or “out”. COPR, a system where users can create their own repos, is a start — but we can do a lot more.
• We don’t have a good solution for letting users select the version they want of certain software stacks. This is particularly important for developers. It’d be really nice to separate the Ruby that’s used for the Puppet configuration system from the one that’s used for webapps — and different webapps may prefer different versions. Sure, Fedora strives to always have the latest, but we need Features as well as First.
• Right now, all of our editions need to move in lockstep — the same six-month release cycle and the same 13-month lifespan. It’d be awesome if, for example, Fedora Server could be supported in some configurations for twice that. We’ve taken a small step towards this with Fedora Atomic Host, which is now automatically updated on a two-week cycle — but it’s still based on the six-month cycle underneath. Modularity means more flexibility in both directions.

So, we have this top-level idea that we should make this happen. In 2016, we need to bring better definition to how, exactly, we’re going to do this — and then get actually doing it. Langdon White is the Fedora lead for this objective, and on Monday, he gave a presentation to the Fedora Council (our top-level governance body) on the current status and next steps. Watch it here:

You can also read a transcript taken in real time by Fedora Community Lead Remy DeCausemaker.

Thanks again to Justin Flory and the CommOps team for helping me assemble 5tFTW!