Fedora Linux vs Fedora Project

Project Conversations Magazine
#1

Helllo, Magazine writers. I’d like to explain a personal windmill at which I am tilting, and hopefully enlist your help in that battle.

When we say “Fedora” without a qualifier, I’d like people to think “Fedora Project”, not the bits we produce. Like, Red Hat is the company, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Red Hat OpenShift are products. I know there’s a long habit of calling our distro just “Fedora”, and long habits are hard to break, but I think the magazine can help.

Instead of calling the distro “Fedora” (as in “Using IceBreaker on Fedora”), try one of:

  • Fedora Linux: “Using IceBreaker on Fedora Linux”
  • The Fedora OS: “Of course, IceBreaker works well with the Fedora OS…”
  • A specific Fedora Edition or other variant: “Play IceBreaker on Fedora Workstation”, “Play IceBreaker on Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop”, “Play IceBreaker on Fedora Server with xpra!”
  • The Fedora package collection “IceBreaker is now available in the Fedora package collection”

… and similar. Slowly but surely with many small taps of the editorial lance, we can knock this windmill over!

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#2

That does sound like a hard problem to skewer. My suggestion would be to post a motto along the lines of “Fedora – more than just an operating system”. In a few prominent places (e.g. on the header bar of the Fedora Magazine and/or start.fedoraproject.org).

Regardless, I’ll do what I can to promote this connotation.

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#3

Should be pretty easy for us to just say “with Fedora Linux” in titles from now on, along with editing to the above guidelines too. Patches also welcome to the docs. :wink:

2 Likes
#4

Also, as @bcotton teasingly reminds me, we certainly don’t want this to become a “well, actually” interjection thing. If someone says the “wrong” thing, let’s not make a habit of correcting. Instead, I want to steer things slowly by example in our official communications and publications.

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#5

@FranciscoD brought up the help wiki, which prompted me to peruse the FAQ which reminded me of this conversation.

The link preview isn’t very descriptive. It’s a link to a FAQ about the difference between Fedora Project, Fedora distribution and Fedora.

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#6

Oooh, thanks. I’m going to edit that FAQ a little bit. :slight_smile: