Fedora Core 2 Schedule Up

An anonymous reader writes "The Fedora website has posted a schedule for their second release. " Now that the 2.6 Kernel is out, I imagine all the major distributions will have updates relatively soon.

Comments

Lets hope the new glibc will be out before fedora

[the_2nd_coming]

enters freeze. then we can get a system that uses all the features of 2.6 to their max.

2.6.0 RPMs are already out

[The One KEA]

Arjan van der Ven has a directory here which has RedHat RPMs available for 2.6 and all of the userspace components needed to run it properly.

Re:2.6.0 RPMs are already out

[Wesley Felter]

Those RPMs have been pretty much obsoleted since 2.6 is in rawhide.

Re:2.6.0 RPMs are already out

[rgmoore]

It's already available on the testing channel for Fedora. If you have the updates-testing in your yum configuration, you can update to 2.6 with a yum update.

Re:2.6.0 RPMs are already out

[rgmoore]

My mistake. It's not under updates/testing. It's under development. Also, FWIW, I found that I just got a 404 if I tried using the addresses in the original yum.conf. I got much better results when I updated mine to include (for updates-testing as an example):

baseurl=http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/ fedora/linux/core/updates/testing/$releasever/$bas earch

I'm not 100% certain that the equivalent directory for development (which would be /pub/fedora/linux/core/development/$basearch) is a valid yum channel, but it ought to work if you want to keep on the bleeding edge of things. That looks to be roughly the Fedora equivalent of Rawhide, with newer goodies. It does include kernel-2.6.0-0.1.14.i686.rpm.

Sounds like folks are already.....

[tcopeland]

...having good experiences with the current Fedora release. Good to see this working out.

Mmmmm

[friendofafriend]

This page last modified at: 2003/12/12 18:05:01

Nothing new here, please move along.

Updates: Yes; Default: No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Updates will be out, yes, but most distributions have already had 2.6 updates available as a "No, it's not ready yet, but here you go."

Remember how fun 2.4 was when it first came out?

Yeah.

whats the schedual for 2.7?

[Anonymous Coward]

we have had 2.6 for a number of hours now, its time to move on... whats the schedual for 2.7 or 2.8?

2.6.0 experiences

[xchino]

I know alot of this was mentioned last night when the story of the kernel release came out, but I thought I'd mention it anyways.

There are two new interfaces to configuring the kernel. xconfig (based on QT) and gconfig, as well as the old menuconfig. I only tried xconfig and menuconfig, but they both worked fine and more quickly than their predecessors.

When compiling your kernel, drop the make dep and make clean and just #make bzImage modules modules_install. It might just be my imagination, but it seems like it took half the time to compile 2.6.0 and modules as it did for 2.4.23-pre6 which I was using.

If you get an error message like QM_MODULES: Function not implemented you haven't gotten the module-init-tools for 2.6.0 installed.

Nvidia users need to patch the nvidia-kernel sources with the appropriate diff from http://www.minion.de and apply before installing your new nvidia.o. My install went like this (Gentoo 1.4):
1. Get the nvidia-kernel package
#emerge -f nvidia-kernel
(if it's not already is /usr/portage/distfile)
2. Extract nvidia-kernel
#sh NVIDIA-Linux-...-pk0 --extract-only
3. Patch driver
#cd usr/src/nv
#patch -p1 NVIDIA_Kernel-1.0.4496-2.6.diff
#ln -s Makefile.kbuild Makefile
#make install

Hope this helps someone out there, I spent an hour or two googling to figure this out, so I hope I can save someone the trouble :)

Re:2.6.0 experiences

[The Analog Kid]

If your using Gentoo, then just emerge nvidia-kernel and nvidia-glx, and portage will autodetect you running the 2.6 kernel and automatically patch it for you.

WTF? Fedora Schedule? Windows XP SP 2 Changelist?

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop that. Now. Or I'll post my New Year's decision list.

You have been warned.

Re:Hopefully Not

[GrenDel Fuego]

Fedora is basically Redhat's testbed for new technology, so it makes perfect sense for them to push out 2.6 this quickly.

Debian Press Release

[SparkMan]

In response to the recent release of kernel 2.6.0, Debian is accelerating their development cycle and plans to immediately release a stable distribution containing the new kernel. Look for this new version sometime in 2005.


(actually I'm a big fan of Debian but they gotta do something about their 2-year release cycles)

Re:Debian Press Release

[SparkMan]

I'll tell you why.

Because I love and use Debian, but contrary to what the Debian fanatics will tell you, the testing/unstable versions are unusable for serious business. So, I have to use the stable build, which has many good qualities, but as others have noted... kernel 2.2 as the default kernel?!? X Window System is a P.I.T.A. for anybody but an X god and forget about detecting my Radeon. GCC in stable is so old that there are ANSI compatibility problems. etc. etc. And no, package pinning does NOT solve any of this.

I absolutely despise Windows, but at least I can run recent compilers on Windows 98 without having to compile the compilers myself. At least the latest games still work.

I'm not merely complaining idly. If I could pay $50 for a stable version of Debian that worked right, had reasonably modern versions of everything, and was still idealistically free, I'd be first in line with my checkbook.

Re:Debian Press Release

[ninjaz]

Debian Planet has a news article pointing to an in-progress OSNews series of reviews: http://debianplanet.org/node.php?id=1025 It focuses on the different Debian-based distributions.

I had the same problems with the 2-year release cycle. I'm convinced this is due to the core OS being held back from release while every random application with a critical bug is stabilized (the tail wagging the dog), and the apps should be decoupled a bit. That is, something like how FreeBSD does it with a solid core, and the add-ons in ports which is a separate tree.

From the review linked above, Libranet looks like it would be the best option for my purposes (from a technical standpoint, anyway - it even has XFree86 4.3!). It's $64 for the "Home/Small Office" version.. It looks like there are some non-free components included, though.

Re:Debian Press Release

[swillden]

contrary to what the Debian fanatics will tell you, the testing/unstable versions are unusable for serious business.

Maybe I'm one of the aforementioned fanatics, but I've been using unstable for serious software development for about two years now. There are only two "problems" I have with it, and neither of them has anything to do with reliability. For that matter, neither of them has anything to do with Debian, per se, they're problems that arise from being "non-standard".

The first problem is package formats. Most commercial software comes packaged for Red Hat and only for Red Hat. Alien, which is a utility that repackages .rpm files as .debs, works 90% of the time, but the other 10% can be a huge pain. For example, I was doing some embedded development about a year ago, using the MontaVista distribution (which provides a Linux kernel and libraries for the target platform, plus cross-compilation development tools). Alien didn't work. Luckily, I noticed that one of the MontaVista developers is also a Debian developer and I e-mailed him (I'd love to give him a public plug here, but I don't recall his name). He was very helpful and told me how to tell the Debian installation of rpm to create the needed database and even gave me a little .rpm file that faked the needed dependencies. Not ideal, since I now have two package management systems on my machine, neither of which knows about the other, but it works. I recently installed DB/2 by just using rpm directly.

The second problem is that, contrary to what people usually think when Debian is brought up, my software is often too new. Unstable nearly always has the latest released versions of everything, and even a few late pre-releases. Particularly since Debian unstable moved to glibc 2.3, I've found that a lot of binary-only software that was compiled against older libs doesn't run right. For example, DB/2 comes with a little graphical installer written in Java, and the installation CDs include a JVM that is used to run it. The included JVM segfaults on my box, and the installer didn't seem to like running in a Sun 1.4.1 JVM. No big deal, though, because the non-GUI installer is a shell script that invokes rpm, and it worked fine.

So, IMO, if you're willing to accept being a second-class citizen because you're not using "the" commercial distro, Debian unstable is a fantastic platform for desktop use and software development. Debian stable is great for servers. Testing is sometimes the best of all worlds, but is a bit dangerous since it doesn't always get security patches very quickly.

Re:Debian Press Release

[swillden]

In response to the recent release of kernel 2.6.0, Debian is accelerating their development cycle and plans to immediately release a stable distribution containing the new kernel. Look for this new version sometime in 2005.

Actually, 2005 is about right.

What just released is 2.6.0. Looking at the past history of kernel releases -- or even just reading the comments of kernel developers about this release -- you'd have to be an absolute fool to put this on an an important production server now.

It's important to understand the Linux kernel release cycle. When Linus cuts loose a "stable" release, that does not mean that it's stable in the sense of "reliable", it means it's stable in the sense that developers aren't going to be hacking the guts apart (well, excepting the 2.4 VM thing, which actually supports my point). There are going to be problems for a while, and that's just part of the process.

Nope, if your workload is important, you'll want to wait a few minor versions. From what I read on LKML, the developers think that 2.6 will stabilize a lot faster than 2.4 did, because 2.6.0 is a lot more solid that 2.4.0 was, but you still probably shouldn't even think about it for serious production work until at least 2.6.5, and even then you'd better test the crap out of it (never a bad idea anyway).

So, figure that about six months from now, 2.6 will be solid enough to be the default kernel in less conservative distributions. At that point, Debian will be watching how well everyone else fares with it. A year or so later, they'll have some confidence that it's trustworthy. The next release after that, it will probably be the default. In the meantime, 2.6 will probably be available in woody fairly soon, and is already available in sarge, though it's very unlikely to be the default when sarge is released.

Meanwhile, one of my Debian unstable boxes is happily running a Debian-provided 2.6 and has been for a couple of months now.

Multiple monitors without restarting X

[propellor_head]

From the website:

...there is one new function in Gnome which I hope makes it to the final release due sometime in November 2003. It's the ability to change your X screen resolution without having to restart X

Does anyone know if there will be a feature that allows you to enable another monitor via Xinerema without having to restart X?

Re:Hopefully Not

[the_2nd_coming]

it is a test bed, but it is not rawhide. it is a normal user distrobution. everything is stable and works well. the test bed is just a place for issues to be workedout on system design.

Re:Hopefully Not

[Alan Cox]

There is plenty of time between now and when FC2 is released for that kernel to stabilize further and old drivers get tidied up (if anyone actually uses them any more). The core stuff is looking very solid and passes test suites that killed early 2.4.x

Positive so far on Fedora

[Ars-Fartsica]

There have been complaints about the stability of some Fedora 1 components but by and large I commend RedHat for further freeing their user-oriented distro by unencumbering the copyright issues that caused PinkTie etc to spring forth.

I think /. should replace the RedHat logo since there is a clear distinction between the Fedora product and RedHat's primary branded offering, and this would also recognize the community of non-RedHat employees contributing to Fedora.

Updates Soon?

[sflory]

There will be unofficial updates for testing, but the big boys will holding off for months. Doesn't anyone remember the pain and suffering of 2.4.0-2.4.12? Linus and co ripped out, and replaced the vm code twice in the 2.4.0 to 2.4.11 time frame.

Red Hat didn't release a 2.4 kernel untill 2.4.7, and pretty much everyone considered it broken. Sure gentoo and the rest of the bleeding edge are already running 2.6.

Re:Lets hope the new glibc will be out before fedo

[the_2nd_coming]

umm, if it is part of the next version, when you apt-get upgrade, or yum update, you should have a fedora 2 system working fine.

we love bill gates?!?!

[Janek Kozicki]

fedora screenshot from Fedora 2 Test Screenshots.

I must care more about my eyes...

Re:Lets hope the new glibc will be out before fedo

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest glibc change is moving to the NPTL threading system. Red Hat has already done so with Fedora 1, now it'll be interesting to see if and how other distros manage to take advantage of all the testing done by RH. Also, you can be quite sure any further changes needed for Fedora 2 will be made in time to glibc, as Red Hat is the defacto primary developer of said system these days.

Funny name.. core

[cyb97]

The word core makes me instantly think of core-dumps... Kind of like if Microsoft named their next Windows version "Microsoft BlueScreen"

Re:Funny name.. core

[NateTech]

I'm not that old either, but I have a piece of core memory lying around here somewhere that someone gave to me and I also can Google, and I can assure you - the ferrite donuts (cores) don't move.

I think this calls for a plonk! and an STFW.

It's electromagnetic changes, silly -- just like today's RAM, only much much much bigger and with stranger problems. (Like core heating due to the resistance of the wires and other fun stuff.)

Re:Very Important -- Please Note.. (Time/Screensho

[koekepeer]

nice way to increase karma, very professional

especially the MOD THIS UP part is hilarious. slaughter.edu... very funny.

this guy is a very impolite, crap-posting troll

check his recent posts (especially the insults written in CAPS). i don't care if this costs me (offtopic, troll, whatever) karma, please mod parent according to his behaviour.

Re:Very Important -- Please Note.. (Time/Screensho

[baximus]

Check out advanced Fedora 2 Test Screenshots for some great eye candy!

If you actually look at the page, and look at the date at the bottom - Last update October 14th, 2003. - you'd realise that these are screenshots from Fedora Test 2, not Fedora 2 Test. That is, it's the second Test release prior to Fedora Core 1.

Re:Boot CD's with 2.6?

[grahamdrew]

There are some experimental Gentoo LiveCDs for x86 using the 2.6 test kernels at http://gentoo.oregonstate.edu/experimental/x86/liv ecd/

Not too useful if you're trying to run off the CD, but not bad if you want to test 2.6 compatability or need a rescue CD.

Re:i agree

[cyb97]

Is this really where linux is going, one distro for this kind of utilities and one distro for security, another for network-chores and this one for mailservers etc.

I know you can't win them all, aren't there enough distroes out there. What the world needs now is more people contributing to the existing projects rather than people forking new projects.

I'd rather see 10 new RedHat/Debian/Whatever developers than 10 new distroes specializing in their own thing. Why not create the necessary packages for a smashing audio-distro and submit them to your favourite distro ?

Re:Lets hope the new glibc will be out before fedo

[AstroDrabb]

I am using Fedora Core 1 now and find it very stable, fast and well put together. The only problem is that it is a little "bleeding" edge for 3rd party apps. My Netlock VPN client doesn't work with the stock FC1 kernel so I had to install a Red Hat 9 kernel. I cannot get the Corda graphing server to run, and various issues with the newer NPTL and glibc stuff that requires patches to get Oracle to run. Though with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 with similar packages, the 3rd party support should pick up soon. Overall it is a good desktop, especially with freshrpms.net to get tons of extra packages.

Re:Lets hope the new glibc will be out before fedo

[T-Ranger]

Uh, the whole point of Fedora Core 1 is that it is bleeding edge. If your want something that is stable, FC-1 isnt it.

Re:Lets hope the new glibc will be out before fedo

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I'm anticipating that the Natalie Portman Threading Library will be something very special.

Re:Boot CD's with 2.6?

[AlXtreme]

That's Morphix damnit, next thing they'll be calling it Muppix and expecting green frogs jumping around...

Anyway, main reason is that cloop needs to be ported to 2.6 and everyone's too lazy to do it. Klaus is busy as hell, and everyone else is waiting for Klaus :-)

Re:Lets hope the new glibc will be out before fedo

[bogie]

Sure you don't want to use it for a long term server, but plenty of people find Fedora stable enough for desktop use. Look at Mandrake, a lot of people use it and don't complain about stability even though they are notorious for being bleeding edge and doing things like ship RC packages.
I don't think its either fair or accurate to just call Fedora unstable, because it isn't. A lot of really smart people put it together and test it and they don't go out of their way to just blindly ship the latest package X just because its out there. For all the talk of "Bleeding Edge" Fedora's bleeding edge is a lot less sharp then some people like to claim.

Re:Lets hope the new glibc will be out before fedo

[clem]

I tried it out and my whole system locked. It was as if it was petrified.

Re:Lets hope the new glibc will be out before fedo

[AstroDrabb]

As I posted, in my experience FC1 is just as stable as Red Hat has been for me. I have not had any stability problems with it at all. The only problems I have ran into is with 3rd party applications that do not yet have support for the newer NPTL, glib or exec-shield.

Re:Lets hope the new glibc will be out before fedo

[macemoneta]

Sure you don't want to use it for a long term server

Your mileage may vary, but I'm not having any problems with Fedora Core being used as a server. It's been running since the day it was first available for download, with zero downtime.