Taciturn

I thought I'd make a prediction for 2007. I'm beginning to think it's more likely to happen in 2008, but I'll stick with 2007 anyway. I've embellished it a little bit towards what I'd like to see rather than what is perhaps more likely. I do hope it happens soon, though.

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Red Hat today announced that it will switch its package management system to dpkg and apt for its next Enterprise Linux release, due in 2008. Likely factors in this decision have been the rise in popularity of dpkg & apt in other distributions and recent difficulties in maintenance of its existing package manager, RPM.

The package format change is a large shift in a core part of the distribution, but Red Hat marketing manager Brian Daily said that the decision has been carefully considered and discussed internally and has received a positive response from customers.

The rollout will begin with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and testing ground distribution Fedora is expected to follow suit for its next release, also due in 2008.

Red Hat will co-operate with other projects including Debian and Ubuntu to ensure packaging differences will be minimal, aiming to provide users and third-party developers with a more consistent environment regardless of which distribution the packages come from. Red Hat has rejected claims that it will lose its market edge as a result, instead suggesting that consolidating Linux environments will make it a more attractive platform for prospective customers.

RPM-based Linux vendor Novell has not stated whether it will follow suit with its SuSE distribution.