A lot of people running around asking for RedHat Linux, suddenly, and most of them at last getting pointed to me and getting disappointed. When asked why RedHat, and why not any one among the hundreds of other distros, I came to know a very important information: “Shell programming cannot be done in fedora”. It was very difficult to understand how this idea spread virally around the 3rd year honours Asutosh College students (a lot of them). The strangest part is even a shell program is run in front of the mass, they refuse to believe that Fedora actually can run shell script. It feels like someone going down to Sachin Tendulkar and telling “Hey man, you know nothing of cricket”.
Whatever it be it is better to get out of this myth and face the cruel reality : “Fedora CAN run shell programs” . Before comments to this post starts raining asking why, let me tell what I know and support my statement.
To run shell scripts you need basically the below three components:
- An OS kernel
- A shell
- The set of commands which will be used in the script
Now, in GNU+Linux systems we have the Linux kernel, The bash shell (some may have others as well), and the standard set of commands are the coreutilities. There are some more packages which contains some commands (programs) which are used.
Each of the above components are very basic and includes in all the GNU+Linux operating systems. Even an OS of size below 10MB can contain the components, which any one with proper knowledge can make for herself. Even before booting the Fedora or any GNU+Linux OS, the initial ramdisk image the initrd runs a long shell script, which configures the system and helps fedora or any GNU+Linux OS to boot.
Conclusion: Fedora can run shell scripts (Sachin can play cricket), provided the programmer knows shell scripting. (provided the bat is not a table tennis bat).
Phoxis 
hehoha
I wish i know shell programming……
It is not a big deal at all. Just get some standard book and get started.
Not only is Fedora great for all kinds of programming including shell programming — but the Fedora community also includes the very people who work on developing the shell itself and many other programming tools such as compilers and libraries. The Fedora community has the deepest level of technical knowledge and experience that I’ve ever come across. They constantly amaze me!
Thanks for your post and hope you are enjoying Fedora 12.
It’s great to see the Fedora project leader stopping by and commenting in my blog.
Personally i use fedora for my programming purposes with gcc tool chains, debuggers Eclipse, i use it to browse the net with firefox, i also use it to listen to music and watch movies, basically everything.
People here around me are not GNU+Linux aware so there are a lot of myths which people believe, amongst which one you can see in the post. I am trying to introduce to people GNU+Linux and show an alternative to Microsoft Windows. When some one asks for a suggestion of a distro , i cannot think about any other but fedora, which i am using for 2 years and without any complain.
Thanks again Paul for stopping by.