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Fedora Core 2 Test 3 Released

Posted by timothy on from the try-it-out dept.

Wee writes "I just got an email from Bill Nottingham of Red Hat letting me know that the third and final test release of Fedora Core 2 is now available. The announcement mentions the big changes are SELinux being disabled by default, that on-and-off problem with install CD1 not booting should be fixed, and anaconda now is sporting 31 languages. The mirrors look like they are opening slowly but surely, and bug reports are always appreciated."

19 of 287 comments (clear)

  1. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  2. Let's keep Gentoo out of this! ;-) by ObviousGuy · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Actually, it shows a very important split in the Linux distro world that began to emerge back around 2001 when RedHat developed its certification system and Debian started to catch on in earnest. On the RedHat side we have a group of distros dedicated to making Linux easier for the user to use, more powerful for the admins to admin, and more up to date for the up-to-daters to update. On the Debian side you have people focused on making distributions that are not encumbered by IP violations.

    As Debian makes itself more and more a closed system (by restricting itself from outside sources) and RedHat shows itself to be a more reliable distribution vendor (by releasing very modern operating system versions), it remains to be seen whether the Linux ecosystem can allow for two completely dichotomous memes to exist and flourish.

    --
    I have been pwned because my /. password was too easy to guess.
    1. Re:Let's keep Gentoo out of this! ;-) by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Nice karma whoring, you even managed to mix gentoo in there, without talking about gentoo! My hat is off to you sir.

      RedHat is showing itself to be a less reliable distribution vendor, by canning one distribution (free RedHat) and unleashing the unstable Fedora betas which one day will become a product which you must pay for.

      Granted, you can run RHEL without a license, though you will have a hard time supporting it.

      Finally, there are many Linux distributions, not just two. Gentoo has become a major player - I'll mention it even if you won't. Let us not forget Novell and SuSe, either. And Slackware will never die!

      Of course, for some people, like those who want Oracle support, there is only one distribution of Linux, and it is redhat. So I'm not sure either of us has managed to prove anything here, except that we have too much free time on our hands.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re:Let's keep Gentoo out of this! ;-) by buysse · · Score: 2, Interesting

      does not have dependency hell by avoiding dependency checking altogeather.
      Why is this considered a good thing? Yes, the dependency trap does make it more difficult to work with RPM -- get the source RPM, rpmbuild --rebuild it, install the resulting binary. Dependencies on specific library versions you don't have are generally solved. I understand that it doesn't help you run Gnome 2.6 on Redhat 7.3. You could recompile the whole system for that, but if that's what you need, you're better off running Gentoo where the system will take care of recompiling the entire tree for you.

      Basically, just because Slack doesn't enforce dependencies does *not* mean they aren't there. Versioning of shared libraries is done for a reason.

      --
      -30-
  3. NVidia Drivers by DAldredge · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Does anyone know what you have to do to get the NVidia 3d accelerated drives working? Evertime I start X with the nvidia driver it hangs my system, the nv driver doesn't exhibit this behavior. This is on a dual athlon Tyan s2460 system.

  4. Red Hat by PeaceTank · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Ever since Red Hat died (sob) i've been kind of up in the air on distro's. I'm currently running Debian, but I decided that I'm going to at least try Fedora. I've tried Test 2, and overall, I was impressed. Other than the fact that they still have mp3 support disabled, it's a great distro. Still it lacks the amazing 'apt-get' feature that makes me love debian. I do like that it comes with Gnome pre-installed, since gnome can be a real pain to install otherwise, and the 2.6 kernel is nice. Wish somebody would just combine debian and Fedora and make the uber distro with a beatiful graphical installer like Fedora, and all the power of apt-get like Debian. For now, though, I'll just have to wait.

    1. Re:Red Hat by pyros · · Score: 2, Interesting
      What makes yum less amazing than 'apt-get'? They appear to do the same thing.

      As lame as it might sound to say, a graphical front-end like synaptic is what makes apt better, in my opinion. On a headless server it doesn't make a difference, but when I'm using my desktop, I don't want to fire up a shell and su to root (or setup sudo). I just want a nice pointy/clicky app to do package management. And no, system-config-packages doesn't cut it, it can't handle dependencies for anything not in the official Fedora Core package set.

  5. Exclusion of SELinux as a default? by Coryoth · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Anyone know exactly what the issues with SELinux by default were? Having SELinux, or something equivalent system using the LSM kernel module as a default is the way that Linux should e heading - it would dramatically increase the security of Linux systems. I was looking forward to Fedora Core 2 being the first to include it by default, and anticipating other distributions making the move in the near future.

    Jedidiah.

    --
    Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
  6. Differences from Core 1 by thpdg · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Does anyone have the URL to the list of differences from Core 1?
    Thanks!

    --

    -Patrick

    "They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."

  7. SELinux, et al by jd · · Score: 4, Interesting
    First, if SELinux is now disabled by default, then presumably it was enabled by default before. Hopefully with all the relevent patches to all relevent packages being applied!


    However, this would result in a system very different from one that most Linux users would be used to. It would also be very different from any system described by any manual or textbook out there. MAC (Mandatory Access Controls) do strange things to the way systems work.


    Now, those strange things happen to be Very Good Things, if you're wanting a secure system. They are also very disconcerting things, if you're wanting a very usable system.


    Fedora's now on 4 CDs - yeesh! And the mirror I saw only showed source ISOs, no binary ISOs. That makes it hard to test such things as install routines.


    Now, 4 CDs isn't too bad, when you consider that a comprehensive system would have nearer 100 CDs in it!


    For those who don't believe me, here is a quick-n-dirty guide to some of the things you are missing:

    • Scenery to FlightGear. This takes at least 2 CDs on its own!
    • Various additional compilers and interpreters. eg: Occam, Intercal, BCPL, Cobol, etc. Now, arguably these aren't really in widespread use, but we're talking comprehensive, not practical.
    • Alternative web/ftp servers. There are lots of these!
    • A hard real-time kernel, eg: Linux with RTAI.
    • Network routers, such as Click and PIMd
    • Berlin
    • Distributed systems code, such as a MOSIX kernel, a Beowulf kernel, Cactus, PVM/MPI, Globus, COSM, etc.
    • FreeVMS (Another kernel patch!)
    • The first 200 billion decimal places of Pi


    The list is extensive. And, yes, all those would be valuable to someone. Even Pi.


    So, I suppose that although 4 CDs seems a lot, it's actually a lot better than it could be.

    --
    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  8. Re:What about X? by Spoing · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Did you update from XFree to X.org? There were some hassles for me on another card (Nvidia) that likely would not be an issue on a "clean" install (guessing).

    --
    A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
  9. Re:Fedora *sucks*... just from my experience by Spoing · · Score: 4, Interesting
    1. I installed it last week, and it froze the machine _cold_ twice... i.e. had to reach for the power switch. I had enough (as this box _had_ to be reliable) and switched to Debian Testing (sarge)... no problems since.

    Erm...don't run a beta on an important machine?

    If you do...thanks for testing!

    --
    A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
  10. Sounds like you need more data points. by el-spectre · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Best I can tell you is that something sounds radically wrong with that system. Maybe FC doesn't like the hardware, I dunno... but I sling gigabytes of data around on my Fedora rig and it seems to be ok.

    I'm not a fanatic, I like the balance of "you don't have to be an expert" and "you can tweak it easily" that Fedora provides. Good support / documentation / community makes it a good choice for me.

    Like I said, sounds like your machine has problems , and that sucks, but it's hardly fair to damn a whole distro based on one buggy machine, is it?

    --
    "Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
  11. Penguin Computing vs. RH 9 EOL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I was surprised to learn that Penguin Computing is still pre-installing Red Hat v9.0 during the same week it reaches it's end of life. It would be nice if they took responsiblity for the security issues and bundled a license to Progeny Transition Service with the workstation. After two weeks, Penguin Computing sales has failed to respond to if they will continue to pre-install RH9 after May 1st.

  12. Sparc 32 port by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I started porting this to sparc 32 as a kind of contribution to the Aurora Linux project, but damn is that tedious. I dont even know of a distro that has an up to date port for sparc 32... except maybe gentoo, and I still think it lags behind a little.

    --

    "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
    1. Re:Sparc 32 port by tbuskey · · Score: 2, Interesting

      With NetBSD and OpenBSD the sparc ports are as up to date as the i386 versions. In fact, with OpenBSD at least, they can do some security stuff on the sparc that couldn't be done on the '386.

      If you're not running linux on a '386, you're a step behind. With the BSDs, you're up to date.

  13. Re:What about X? by juhaz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Nothing much they could do about it.

    XFree86 4.3.0 FC1 was using came out 26.2.2003, and Radeon 9600 and 9800 series later that year (9800XT not until november, I believe) so it couldn't support them out-of-the-box because they didn't exist when the relevant X version was made.

    Since this one will be using the much more recent X.org server based on XFree 4.4.0, yes, it should work fine now.

  14. Re:What about X? by bruthasj · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It was a framebuffer issue in the early versions of the 2.6 kernel. For example, under 2.6.2-1.156 the ATI cards framebuffer would be blank during boot if you passed in parameters to run at a higher resolution.

    I'm not sure which kernel FC2 will eventually run, but under 2.6.5-1.332 which is the latest from arjan, the ATI framebuffer now works and the nice Penguin Crony can be seen again.

  15. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion