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Fedora Core 2 Test 2 Released

Kalak writes "Fedora Core 2 Test 2, part of the project's goal to 'work with the Linux community to build a complete, general purpose operating system exclusively from open source software', has just been released - this test release 'is specifically designed for SELinux testing, as well as testing the 2.6 kernel, GNOME 2.5, and KDE 3.2.1.' Get a copy from one of the mirrors or grab a copy via BitTorrent. You probably want the binary only Torrent."

37 of 264 comments (clear)

  1. Yipee by altaic · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Now we can use the lk 2.6 without having to add homebrew packages (yeah, I know there's some guy who provides a yum-able package tree). Anyway, this release should be an excellent updgrade. I'd be very interested to hear of the pre-release stability. Anyone care to comment?

  2. Bueno by WTFmonkey · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I'd heard great things, but then I wasted one hard drive trying to make kernel 2.6 work with Fedora 1. I mean, it worked, but only by stretching definitions.

    I'm not horribly ign'nt, but I'm obviously no genious either. Somewhere along the line /dev got all dicked up and stuff stopped working. So to stop the bitching, it's great to see a faster-than-average turnaround by the Fedora guys. Will be installing this (and checking config files to see where I went wrong-- LEARN from your mistakes, people) tonight.

  3. ACPI and kernel by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I hope their gonna switch to 2.6.4 cuz last time I checked, they were using 2.6.1 and acpi for that is still broken. For some reason, the acpi people don't even support 2.6.3 any more...

    1. Re:ACPI and kernel by prockcore · · Score: 4, Informative

      I hope their gonna switch to 2.6.4 cuz last time I checked, they were using 2.6.1 and acpi for that is still broken. For some reason, the acpi people don't even support 2.6.3 any more...

      When was the last time you checked? FCtest has been using 2.6.4 for a few months now.

    2. Re:ACPI and kernel by ajs · · Score: 5, Informative

      This is still pre-release so your comments aren't too unreasonable, but just so that people understand that this isn't always the right way to look at the problem:

      The way version numbering works in Red Hat (and by extension, Fedora), is that the package version number is the version of the software that the package STARTED from, but it may have little to do with the state of the software as installed.

      For example, you might have openssh version 3.1 on a box, but if you look at the SRPM for that package, you will find security bug-fixes applied from all of the openssh versions between 3.1 and the current day.

      The SRPM is essentially three things: A tar-ball(s) of the original source as shipped by the developers; a set of patches or add-ons that the vendor has decided to include and a Makefile-like thing that RPM knows how to read called a spec file.

      Thus, FC2 might ship with Linux 2.6.4, but that doesn't mean it lacks a feature or bug-fix from 2.6.5... you have to check the patch-set in the SRPM to know that.

      Every time the contents of that SRPM are updated, the RPM version changes, so you'll see something like "foo-1.2-2", where 1.2 is the version of foo that the SRPM was based on, and this is the second build from Fedora.

  4. Re:Not the first project to do this? by aeoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You mean "UnitedLinux" started by Caldera?

    Is UnitedLinux still alive in a more than a symbolic way?

  5. Re:Not the first project to do this? by Coneasfast · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Pardon me, but isn't that what UnitedLinux was supposed to do?

    look at the united linux page. looks very 'commercial' to me, you can't even find a download link easily, or can you even download it?

    while the fedora page has a nice and simple download link.

    --
    Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
  6. Re:Not the first project to do this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    I think the correct question is what happened to United Linux... and I think we all know what happened there.

    *SCO!* *cough* *cough* *SCO!*

  7. So the previous distributions weren't.... by millahtime · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So are you saying the previous distributions of linux weren't general purpose operating systems or that they weren't completely from open source software. Was say redhat 9 not general purpose??? Isn't FreeBSD general purpose and all open source??

    What defines general purpose???

  8. Re:Not the first project to do this? by SquadBoy · · Score: 5, Funny

    Debian you were thinking of Debian

    --

    Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
  9. Exciting stuff going on at Fedora by capz+loc · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I installed Fedora Core 1 when it first came out and I was very impressed. It included some stuff that wasn't in RH9, including a very pretty graphical boot. If Fedora continues on the path that it is on now, it could become a worthy competitor with SuSE and Mandrake on the home user front.

    The community projects like Fedora and Debian tend to innovate more than distros that are managed by companies because they can get away with the "if it breaks, you keep both pieces" warantee. Distros used in enterprise scenarios (generally) offer a more stable product, at the cost of innovation.

    1. Re:Exciting stuff going on at Fedora by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The community projects like Fedora and Debian tend to innovate more than distros that are managed by companies because they can get away with the "if it breaks, you keep both pieces" warantee. Distros used in enterprise scenarios (generally) offer a more stable product, at the cost of innovation.

      Please show me a company managed Linux distro that is more stable than Debian Stable. I'll promise to try it.

  10. MP3 support? by IO+ERROR · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Is Fedora Core 2 going to re-enable MP3 support now that it's no longer a "commercial" product?

    --
    How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
    1. Re:MP3 support? by rgmoore · · Score: 5, Informative

      No. Fedora is trying very hard to avoid IP issues, so they've deliberately refrained from including things like mp3 decoders and DVD decoders that might get them into legal trouble. Fortunately, Fedora does have apt and yum available, so it's easy to add external repositories, like FreshRPMS or Livna, both of which do include mp3 players and DVD decoders. It's very convenient, and avoids a lot of legal headaches for RedHat.

      --

      There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.

    2. Re:MP3 support? by Kalak · · Score: 5, Informative

      The commercial / non-commercial isn't the reason - it's that mp3 is a proprietary format, and Fedora is still backed by RedHat. Royalty issues for mp3 have been talked about before on slashdot, and I don't see RedHat giving the nod to distributing mp3 decoders in Fedora any more than in the RedHat Enterprise distributions. It's the same as distributing the NTFS modules. New Fedora releases shouldn't effect this decision.

      Just grab XMMS RPMS for Fedora from their home page and let RedHat worry about what they distribute. NTFS module RPMS are available as well.

      --
      I am, and always will be, an idiot. Karma: Coma (mostly effected by .hack)
  11. Fedora News by hey · · Score: 4, Informative

    Maybe this is obvious -- I donno.
    If you are interested Fedora, check out:
    Fedora News
    (unofficial site).
    Lots of good stuff there.

    1. Re:Fedora News by prisen · · Score: 4, Informative

      Fedora Forum is also a good resource, which the "unofficial" fedora.artoo.net FAQ/Forum recently merged into.

    2. Re:Fedora News by geirt · · Score: 4, Informative
      --

      RFC1925
  12. Goddamnit. by el-spectre · · Score: 4, Funny

    As I type, one of my machines at home is downloading FC2 test 1. Guess I'd better check the timeline next time...

    --
    "Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
  13. No by Wesley+Felter · · Score: 4, Informative

    They can't include MP3 support precisely because Fedora is non-commercial. (Who would pay the per-copy license fees?)

  14. UL still alive and widely used by bigirondawg · · Score: 5, Informative

    No, UnitedLinux was formed by Caldera, Connectiva,TurboLinux, and SuSE. SCO is obviously not an active contributor anymore, but Suse, TurboLinux, and Connectiva continue to distribute UL. UL is actually more of a brand that stands for packaging uniformity, since you download (or purchase) the UL version you want based on the vendor you choose. (i.e. You can get UL based on the SuSE, Turbo, or Connectiva dist. of Linux.)

    Basically, the UL framework allows the companies to still market their product to corporations while still standardizing the Linux product and giving a (semi) unified front to the Linux world.

    --
    - Proofs of Sturgeon's Law Delivered Daily -
  15. Re:Gnome 2.5 by daemonc · · Score: 5, Funny

    This not surprising, considering Gnome 2.6 will not be released for another 2 days. Unless you have some method for pulling tarballs from the future that you'd like to let us know about.

    But yes, this is just a test release, and the final will include Gnome 2.6 and hopefully will not require time travel.

    --
    All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
  16. The email announcement by afd8856 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Anybody else thought their email announcement is extremly hilarious? :)

    One bug, two bugs, tar bugs, su bugs,
    grep bugs, mew bugs, old bugs, new bugs.

    This bug has a little hack,
    This bug has a broken stack.
    Say! What a lot of bugs to track.

    Yes, some are in tar, and some in su.
    Some are old. And some are new.

    Some in sed, and some in jed.
    And some are even in parted.
    Why are they in parted, jed and sed?
    I do not know. Bugs should be dead!

    Some in jpeg, and some in TIFF
    This TIFF one has an attached diff.

    >From there to here, from here to there
    Test release bugs are everywhere.

    Fedora Core test 2 is available for
    x86 and x86-64
    It should not be installed where production is hot;
    use it only for test, as we say quite a lot.

    If you install with the default
    SELinux will be the result
    SELinux is a form of MAC
    For more answers, check the FAQ [*]
    By explicitly stating what apps can use
    Unwanted accesses it will refuse

    [*] http://people.redhat.com/kwade/fedora-docs/selinux -faq-en/

    So please test test2 in this mode;
    and please test it with your code.
    Plus it comes with a new GNOME;
    can you test that in your home?
    Also X.org is new,
    replacing XFree, test it too.
    And 3.2.1 of KDE
    We need to test, test, test, you see!
    So we will test it on our box.
    And we will even test out sox.
    And we will test it in our house.
    And we will test it with our mouse.
    And we will test it here and there.
    Say! We will test it ANYWHERE!

    --
    I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
    1. Re:The email announcement by Kozar_The_Malignant · · Score: 4, Funny

      >If you install with the default
      SELinux will be the result

      Shouldn't that be SeusSELINUX?
      --
      Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
  17. Re:Gnome 2.5 by Skeezix · · Score: 4, Informative

    They'll ship Fedora Core 2 final with GNOME 2.6, but GNOME 2.6 isn't due to be released until March 31st...

  18. "You probably want the binary only Torrent." by syntap · · Score: 5, Funny

    You insensitive clod.

  19. Re:Great by prockcore · · Score: 5, Informative

    But do we really need Yet Another Linux Distro?

    As far as I can see, Debian, Gentoo, Slackware and probably others are already


    Two of those distros are younger than RedHat (fedora).

    Plus none of those offer SELinux out of the box (which FCTest2 does), none of those offer xorg instead of XFree86 (which FCTest2 does).

  20. Re:YMMV by SuiteSisterMary · · Score: 4, Funny
    and then switched back to the regular 2.4.x kernel so I could get hassle free updates...

    Might have answered, in part, at least, your own question there, boyo.

    --
    Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
  21. Just finished installing on my desktop by bdigit · · Score: 4, Informative

    I had alot of problems, the graphic installer would not work for me, it would just lock my mouse up out of no where and I had to reboot. Once I got it installed I could not change my clock out of 24 hour format , the clock applet kept crashing. I tried to open hwbrowser to take a look into setting up my printer, that never loaded. The new nautilus is just garbage imho. I then tried to run yum but that failed as it couldnt reach any servers so I installed apt-get but I could not install any packages due to gpg issues. Sigh... core 1 runs fine on my laptop though.

  22. Re:Gnome 2.5 by Shakrai · · Score: 5, Funny
    This not surprising, considering Gnome 2.6 will not be released for another 2 days. Unless you have some method for pulling tarballs from the future that you'd like to let us know about.

    It's called a subscription and it let's you see into "The Mysterious Future" where you should be able to get ahold of whatever tarballs you need.

    (Sorry, that was probably lame, but I couldn't resist)

    --
    I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
    We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
  23. re: NTFS by bani · · Score: 4, Interesting

    and what exactly is preventing redhat from distributing NTFS like everyone else, commercial or not?

    i've asked redhat repeatedly to explain, and they have refused to give a straight answer. first they claimed it was "stability issues", claiming NTFS would "corrupt memory", but wouldnt give any examples and clammed up when i asked for clarifications. then they suddenly changed their story to "legal issues", but again clammed up when asked to explain. patents? copyrights? trade secrets? no answer.

    it ain't legal issues -- unless you can point to NTFS patents. and it ain't copyright issues either -- because the code was written from scratch. the codebase for NTFS was developed much the same way as the codebase for SAMBA -- from publically available documentation and reverse engineering. if redhat has a legal problem with NTFS then they shouldnt be distributing SAMBA either.

    it also strikes me very odd that they would include FAT filesystems which DO have patent issues, but exclude NTFS which does NOT.

  24. How about giving Fedora its own topic/icon ? by phoxix · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Because Redhat != Fedora.

    Sunny Dubey

  25. Live support URLs by jroysdon · · Score: 4, Informative

    fedoraforum.org has a wealth of info in the FAQs and Forums.

    For the newest issues, jump on IRC: irc.freenode.net #fedora

  26. Configure Fedora up2date to use a mirror by Copperhead · · Score: 4, Informative
    I was upset that the system pointed to download.redhat.com for updates, which is constantly being hammered. I would get 9k/sec if I was lucky, and the download was constantly freezing.

    However, in looking through the messages, I found that there is a document on how to use mirror servers as a source for updates. I'm surprised that Fedora doesn't have a system for balancing clients to different mirror servers, a la Gentoo, but now that I've picked a few mirrors, things have been a lot smoother.

    --
    Your reality is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever. - Baron Munchausen
  27. Re:fedora update by RichiP · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is a test of the distribution. This way, they get to test the ISOs, as well. You CAN apt-get upgrade or yum update your older release installation if you want to. Not everyone has an older installation and for those people, they'd rather download the new distribution rather than an old one and the upgrades.

    Would've been logical if you thought it through.

  28. Re: NTFS by Burdell · · Score: 5, Informative
    There apparently are patent issues with NTFS, and people from Red Hat have said that multiple times (here for example).

    As for FAT, from what I've read the patent (patents?) doesn't cover the way Linux uses a FAT filesystem.

  29. Re:Not the first project to do this? by Pros_n_Cons · · Score: 4, Informative

    Damn my modpoints ran out just as i was reading the article =)

    "think if Red Hat really had the best interests of the Linux community in mind, they would have joined the UL project at the beginning, anyway, instead of trying to "go it alone" with their own marketing and distro environment."

    Do you think this has anything to do with it? A clip from a ZDnet Germany interview with Red Hat:

    Were you asked to be part of the UnitedLinux team? Were there any negotiations?
    We were asked to be a part of UnitedLinux team hours before their public announcement.

    If Red Hat got together with mandrake, developed a standard that is 99% red hat, Calls SuSe the day before its released and says. Hurry up and be a standard, you have 9 hours! Think SuSe would do that?

    --

    -- "of course thats just my opinion, I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller