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Fedora Core 3 Test 1 Released

Gudlyf writes "Notice just went out to the Fedora Announce List about the availability of Fedora Core 3 Test 1. Things expected in FC3 include Linux kernel 2.6.7, GCC 3.4, GNOME 2.8, KDE 3.3, and Evolution 2.0. As always, you can get Fedora Core test releases at redhat.com, specifically here and (for a torrent) here."

23 of 318 comments (clear)

  1. Anybody else have problems? by atheken · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No disrespect intended against the Fedora team, but I find that this release schedule is not so hot. There have been A LOT of issues with my installation of FC2 on a standard dell box. Maybe this was just a fluke, but I can't understand the whole idea of a point release every few months. Nonetheless, where's the torrent?

  2. Re:That was fast.... by bob670 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Except you don't have to pay $199 for it...

  3. Re:Will this break Windows XP installs too? by Alex+Brasetvik · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's test1.

    If you're afraid of it breaking anything at all, you probably don't want to use it.

    If you on the other hand want to help the developers find the bugs at an early stage so they can squeeze the bugs, download it immediately, start testing and report bugs.

  4. At this rate.... by Harbinjer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They're moving so fast, that I think they pile on more bugs than the rate they fix them at. Its generally pretty good, but still, a slightly slower schedule wouldn't impare them much. There really hasn't been that much new software since FC2 was released. Why not patch FC2, and wait for more stable builds of the next Gnome, like 2.8.2 or something, and KDE 3.3.1. It doesn't seems like Gnome 2.8 is that far along, and will be shipping as RC instead of finalized and tested. And if they do finalize 2.8, will is just be a bug-fix with like 1 new feature?

    1. Re:At this rate.... by nine-times · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Well... this is a 'test', after all. I mean, shouldn't they constantly be testing? If they were releasing FC3 final today, I'd say, 'er, yeah, isn't that a little quick?' But I don't really expect a 'test' to have all stable builds. I expect and hope that they're testing the newest tech they have, and figuring out what's "stable" in time for the final version.

      And aren't there updates to FC2? I don't use it, but can't you use yum or something to get patches and bug-fixes? I thought Fedora used yum. So aren't there plenty of updates.

      I guess I'm confused.

  5. Re:WMP54G by infernux · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Wait and see... too early to say right now I guess. But keep in mind, even if you read that the WMP54G is supported at some point, make sure that it is YOUR revision of the card that is supported because there are at least two with entirely different chipsets (Prism GT Vs. Atheros).

  6. Missing links. by phaetonic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I would have expected to see a ChangeLog in the article posted, as well as saying if the big bugs in FC2 have been fixed! (Windows mbr breakage and Orinoco wireless PCMCIA support breakage).

  7. Re:Will this break Windows XP installs too? by Jahf · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You should have expected at least 1 response like that.

    A) This is /. ...

    B) It is a -test1 release ... it breaks EVERYTHING ...

    C) This is /. ... if it had been the other way around (will XP SP2 break my Fedora install?) you'd still have had an equally brattish response.

    Don't let it disappoint you ... just move on and read the better comments.

    My personal feeling ... if you are at all worried about breaking something, you should wait until it is final, not in any form of test release. Otherwise, you're just asking for problems.

    --
    It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
  8. OSS Development too fast? by rally_redhat · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sometimes, just sometimes, I get the feeling that Linux distributions are being released too fast for ordinary users to keep up. I mean, FC2 was released about a month back (roughly), and here we are, talking about about FC3 Test 1 already! I guess FC3's slated to be released sometime in October.

    The problem with this is that often, packages (rpms) for older distros are discontinued, thus forcing users to upgrade. I know stuff like Yum solves a lot of these issues, but the fundamental problem still remains.

    For instance, I was running FC1 with KDE 3.2 Beta 2, which released sometime in December 2003, and wanted to upgrade to KDE 3.2.3 - but I couldn't find any rpms for FC1 at all, only FC2. Since upgrading was on the card anyways, I did download and install FC2, and all's well that ends well, but it did leave me thinking about whether Open Source software products are being released a tad too fast.

    I wrote an essay about technology overload [rahulgaitonde.org] on my website. This news post on /. made me instantly think back to that essay.

  9. Re:4 CD's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    In those 4 CDs is the equivelent of windows, Office, Access, IIS, and Visual Studio.

  10. Re:SLOW THE FUCK DOWN! by Alex+Brasetvik · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I can't believe that you got moderated "Informative" for such rant.

    First of all, it's not about "every X weeks". FC1 was released 5 November 2003, FC2 was released 18 May 2004. FC3 is due 18 October 2004.

    Secondly, nobody forces you to upgrade. These people are doing their best to improve free (as in libre) software, while you scoff at them. Give me a break.

  11. Re:SLOW THE FUCK DOWN! by brettlbecker · · Score: 3, Insightful

    /feeding the troll, but this same kind of thought is appearing too regularly when discussing Fedora

    Dude, chill.

    As has been mentioned many, many times, and is explicitly stated on fedora's homepage, fedora is not in any way an enterprise-ready distribution. It's not meant to be. It's meant to be a testing ground for RedHat Enterprise Linux.

    This comes with all appropriate caveats. No one is forcing you to continually install the most bleeding edge software, and if you are doing so in anything other than a troubleshooting/hobbiest/dick-in-the-wind environment, you are asking for a lot of trouble.

    Don't blame Red Hat for your obsession with having the absolute latest software installed all the time. /feed

    B.

    --
    "We must still have chaos within in order to be able to give birth to a dancing star." --Friedrich Nietzsche
  12. 4 CDs is excessive by nurb432 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    While i totally agree that you are getting much more then just an OS and windowing system, it doesnt take 4 cds to put out an OS+desktop+sql+office suite+devlopment ide.. etc

    If you doubt this, look at mepis, or FBSD....

    While some choice is good, Fedora is piling on TOO many duplicated items.. Unfortunately this is a common problem with linux distros in general.. Just because its free and you can, doesnt mean you should... Bulk doesnt always mean better..

    --
    ---- Booth was a patriot ----
  13. Re:Will this break Windows XP installs too? by 0rbit4l · · Score: 2, Insightful
    This is an important question and a serious problem - it needs to be addressed *now*. For the previous respondents: you can't just blow this problem off as a "beta" bug and blame the user for using test software - this bug was RELEASED in Fedora Core 2 (along with many others, including a buggy version of gcc that dies on large functions unless you throw it -O0).

    Also, all the links describe how to recover from & avoid this bug by manually entering hard drive geometry information for import into the partition table - uh, isn't it obvious then that there's a bug in the code that generates the partition table? A person is not a troll nor are they spouting "FUD" when there is a genuine issue that needs to be resolved. This needs to be resolved so that your average Linux newbie (who presumably is half-following the manuals correctly) or even a CAREFUL Linux newbie doesn't hose their system and give up.

    Finally, the take that I've seen on the mailing lists that this isn't really a bug is really quite pathetic - quit shifting the blame. I don't care if "it's really Microsoft's fault" or not. If you know there is a compatibility issue and you can work around it, then you should. Step back for a second - Did Redhat9 have this problem? No. Did previous distributions with different tool versions have this problem? No. The problem exists *now* - ergo, this is a bug, and quite clearly (by virtue of functionality of previous versions), it is possible to release software that does not exhibit this behavior. Fix it and quit arguing.

  14. Already?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    What the hell? All I want to know is, will C3 be as bloated and slow as v2, with matching exhorbitant system requirements?

    Seriously, I'm not trolling -- Core 2 was thoroughly trounced in a recent benchmark test by Mandrake 10 and Windows XP SP1. This, despite the fact that v2's system requirements are, by far, the richest of any desktop OS on the market ATM. So, not only is it slower than the average, by far, but jacking-up the the hardware it's run on doesn't seem to help much.

  15. Re:Please Fix FC2 instead by johnnyb · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why do you think RedHat switched to the Fedora model? Fedora is not meant to be a stable, production distribution. Even the non-test releases are still test releases. That's the whole point. They have "bleeding-edge", Fedora, and "enterprise stable", RHEL. They decided that maintaining a middle category that wasn't providing them with funds was a bad idea. With Fedora, they give a free bleeding-edge OS and get free testing. With RHEL, they have you pay for a solid OS and you get technical support.

    It's actually a pretty good model, but not one my company can afford, so we are in the process of switching to Mandrake.

  16. Re:MYSQL 4 by Donny+Smith · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Strange reasoning.
    It's easier to install mySQL 4 on Fedora than reinstall OS.

  17. Egad! by pr0vidence · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Slow DOWN guys!
    You just released FC2 a few months ago. To be honest, it was lackluster. Bugs and problems are rampant. Really guys, fix up FC2, release FC2.1,2.2,etc first. Then move on to FC3. You guys cannot stay bleeding edge, and noone is expecting you to. That kind of thing is better left to the likes of Gentoo. You just worry about staying a version or two behind bleeding edge, and release a really solid OS that people can move into from Windows and have realatively few problems. Remember, the less problematic a first timer's (n00b, whatever) experience is with Linux, the more likely they will be to sticking around and finding out what this "open source" thing is really all about.

    1. Re:Egad! by bankman · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Slow DOWN guys! You just released FC2 a few months ago. To be honest, it was lackluster. Bugs and problems are rampant. Really guys, fix up FC2, release FC2.1,2.2,etc first. Then move on to FC3.

      That's the main problem I have with Fedora.

      You guys cannot stay bleeding edge, and noone is expecting you to. [...] Remember, the less problematic a first timer's (n00b, whatever) experience is with Linux, the more likely they will be to sticking around and finding out what this "open source" thing is really all about.

      Fedora is advertised as being a bleeding edge distro for techno junkies. I used to be one of them and nowadays find that Fedora just isn't for me anymore. SuSE 9.1 is new enough, while maintaining a very usable system that just works out of the box more or less (for me Debian Stale is too old, Debian Unstable and Testing too unsupported and I really don't understand why one would want to compile a whole system like Gentoo).

      I am getting the feeling that the Fedora (RedHat) developers are not interested in providing a decent distro for free (as in beer) to the masses, which is ok, but who is going to do the testing if no one can actually use Fedora Core in a semi-productive environment?

      Please, don't misinterpret this as an attempted flame (I still can't get to grips with YaST, but have to say that I dislike the FC/RH config-tools almost as much). I used to love RH6.1-7.3 (apart from the x.0 versions and the braindead idea of supplying different gcc versions with one distro, but I think most agree with me here).

      Guys, what was wrong with the old RedHat release cycle? Rawhide installs were often more stable than FC2.

      Aaah well, maybe I have just become one of those "Back-In-The -Good-Old-Days"-kinda guys....

      --
      I feel so sig.
    2. Re:Egad! by Plug · · Score: 3, Insightful
      There are two ways of fixing bugs:

      • Finding the exact code fixes for bugs and applying those fixes back to the old packages, and then worrying about maintaining that 'backported' package (what Debian does with security updates, and nothing else
      • Pushing out a new package, which has the problem fixed, and more features, and is "better".


      While we all know it's not necessarily the case, surely software should tend towards having no bugs (it works with TeX!), and programmers should tend towards being better. This means distros like Fedora are right; they give us the new version of the software, which fixes the bugs in the old one. We all do it with kernels, don't we?
  18. I'd like to try it.... by CoolVibe · · Score: 2, Insightful

    But they'd have to fix the mp3 support... I know, it's easily fixable, but it's so terribly _annoying_

  19. Re:Will this break Windows XP installs too? by pseudochaotic · · Score: 2, Insightful

    So maybe, just maybe, he was asking if Fedora's devs have fixed it in this release? After all, looking at the GP, it could just as easily have been meant for linux distros in general.

    --
    And the l33t shall inherit the 34r7h.
  20. Re:Will this break Windows XP installs too? by mikefe · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Did the gentoo installer run on a 2.6 kernel?

    If not, then they avoided the problem that way, not by fixing it.

    --
    There: Something at a specific location.
    Their: Owned by someone.
    Please make sure your english compiles.