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Red Hat Fedora Core 4 Test 1 Now Available

Posted by timothy on from the are-ipods-plug-and-play-yet dept.

krunchyfrog writes "The first test release of Fedora Core 4 is now available from Red Hat and at distinguished mirror sites near you, and is also available in the torrent. New features in Fedora Core 4 test 1 include previews of GCC 4.0, GNOME 2.10, and KDE 3.4, as well as support for the PowerPC architecture. Please file bugs via Bugzilla, Product Fedora Core, Version fc4test1, so that they are noticed and appropriately classified. Discuss this release on fedora-test-list. -- The BitTorrent link is already there."

9 of 300 comments (clear)

  1. PPC by BibelBiber · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hopefully PPC works as expected. It's a shame that this platform is so poorly supported.

    1. Re:PPC by codeguy007 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      As long as you want either all 32 or 64Bit libs. APT still can't handle multilib installs.

      If you can handle a pure 64Bit distro debian is fine. But man I know I prefer not seeing those puzzle pieces in FireFox when I hit a flash site.

  2. KDE 3.4 translations by magi · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I hope they'll wait for KDE 3.4.1. The .1 releases have traditionally been translation releases (unless something has changed recently).

    It's rather frustrating to do translations, and then notice that they are never packaged in some Linux distributions, because the packagers don't have patience to wait for the translation release. Other than English-speaking people use Linux too, you know.

    Well, probably most of the translations get in time for 3.4, so the problem isn't that big.

    1. Re:KDE 3.4 translations by kiwibird · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Users: learn English. Translators: keep translating.
      Not just because of the importance of keeping languages alive (which is a controversial and "feely" issue no matter what), but because there'll always be users who don't have that much comprehension of English (and it's better to have some understanding of a program than none), and it'll expand the Linux user base. All of M$' programs are translated into my native language, why should free software be behind there? And users of free programs have the choice of using the original languages, whereas users of say Office buy a version in just one language. Keep translating...

    2. Re:KDE 3.4 translations by MrHanky · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Learning English is generally a good thing, but well translated software certainly has its place. The examples you mention show the opposite: remapping keys and translating proper names creates confusion, especially for the bilingual user.

      My impression, however, is that one reason why somewhat competent users don't like software in their native language is because they don't really see that the English words they are already used to are all metaphors, but this becomes painfully obvious -- and weird -- when they see it in their native language. But the metaphor can be important for understanding how the UI is supposed to work. A child learning both computer use and English as a foreign language at the same time might be better off learning the localized metaphor for Firefox's 'tabs' and the everyday meanings of the word 'tab' in English.

      Good translators can be hard to find, though. Especially if they are supposed to work for free.

  3. So.... by WindBourne · · Score: 4, Insightful

    With Linus now doing ALL of his work on the PPC, and that IBM is making a big move into Linux on PPC, do you think that it will see a massive investment in time? I do.

    --
    I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
  4. Re:Hope they get more bugs sorted out before relea by pklong · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "Your ignorance is astounding and complete" Thank you for the kind complement. You must be a really fun guy to be around.

    "If these kinds of issues make them give up then they aren't tech fiddlers. Just common every day dime a dozen users who like to think they're tech inclinced. ie point and click monkeys."

    Maybe they just have a life and have better things to do that spend hours and hours trawling the Internet downloading source, searching bug lists etc. for really simple basic problems that shouldn't exist anyway. When your installer tells you you don't have any hard disks you have a problem.

    When I was installing it 2.10 wasn't out and the bug wasn't resolved. I had to revert to the deprecated driver to get it working. Later I had to edit the Kernel source, which got the SATA_NV driver working (now that would really really scare a point and click monkey) before finally 2.10 came out, which worked!

    Point and click monkeys would also give up when their system just freezes up on booting as with my rhgb problem. At least with doze there is safe mode, and you can even revert to the 'last known good configuration' which I have seen get a system working again (once, I know it can leave your system in a bad way though)

    "Next time you post make sure you have at least an hour of experience beyond the trained monkey stage and try to at least pretend you have half a clue. I doubt you'll fool anyone though."

    Not even worth bothering to reply to this one.

    --

    Philip

    Signatures are broken

  5. Stop Griping About Short Release Cycles by theManInTheYellowHat · · Score: 2, Insightful

    By now everyone should understand what Fedora is all about. It is not a production distro, it is not meant for anything but getting the new stuff working and stable FOR a production release. Thusly the releases are going to quick and should not necessarily be an easy upgrade. The fact that you can upgrade from release to relaase if you don't break anything yourself with yum IS impressive, and requires extrodanary effort from the team.

    Strong Work Fedora Crew!!! Very wonderful effort.

  6. Re:When will RPM-based distros change to .deb? by Ih8sG8s · · Score: 2, Insightful

    *.rpm or *.deb.

    Both of these things describe a specification for package file format. The file format specification determines the logistic layout and conventions used in the format of a package file, like header structure, byte boundaries, supported data types for given structure data, etc. The package format is purely data structuring, and actually has very little to do with packages.

    It is important for people to understand that a file format specification has no tangible effect on user experience. A lot of people are confusing tools with formats.

    Maybe it was a mistake for Redhat to call both their file format specification AND their userland tool RPM. RPM has never been a good user land tool insofar as features go. Apt if a great tool, as is yum, as are others I'm sure I have not used. Please realize, Apt, yum, rpm, all of them have nothing in common with the file format specifications, ecept that they follow specification when dealing with a file format as defined by the rpm, deb, or some other format specification.

    So you love Apt or yum. Great. Apt does not mean .deb. Apt can still do its normal great things using rpm formatted packages, so clearly the greatness comes from the tool, not the package specification.

    Personally, I have done a lot of (work)low level work with RPM packages. The specification is a good one, and well thought out. The documentation is horrible in my opinion, but the format is sound. Sound enough for the LSB.

    To answer your question, RPM package distributions will never change to deb. There is no reason to, and doing so would mean a break from the rediculously late and political LSB.

    If you mean when will RPM distributions start shipping with Apt, I don't know. You can use apt-for-rpm now in exactly the same way you would with deb files.