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Fedora Core 4 Available
Limburgher writes "As of a few minutes ago, the torrents listed at duke went live. Nothing on the main site yet, however. The more people get on the torrents, the faster they will be. You all know the drill." Update: 06/13 19:07 GMT by T : Also in Red Hat-related news, halfbyte_hosting writes "CentOS 4.1 is now on the mirrors and ready for download."
I actually just did a new dual-boot install of Fedora Core 4, and Windows XP, and found Fedora Core 4 (the beta is the one I installed this past weekend) about 10 times easier to install than Windows XP. It was incredibly easier to configure after the installation, also.
3 /ctl/ArticleView/mid/575/articleId/319/Dualbooting WindowsXPandLinux.aspx
s n-new-in-fc
Here is that commentary about my process (I am a first-time user of Linux):
http://www.mygadgetbag.com/MGBCommentary/tabid/18
Also, for anyone wondering, here is a link to the newest updates that are in Fedora Core 4:
http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/release-notes/fc4/#
I am very happy with Fedora Core 4 (beta) after using it for a few days. The only thing I am having trouble with is connecting to the Yum repositories, as described on the Fedora FAQ.
The main Fedora site is updated now, also!
Managed to snarf a copy over the weekend from an unsecured official mirror. Four CDs, each about 630MB.
Installed it onto my ThinkPad T23, 733MHz/1.13GHz with 512MB RAM. Familiar graphical installation procedure, auto-detected everything in my laptop. Didn't expect it not to, as previous Fedora Core releases did so. When setting up the soundcard though, couldn't hear the test sounds but booting into KDE produced the familiar jingle. SELinux option during installation is Enabled or Disabled, no halfway house as in FC3. Compiling with GCC4.0 has made a noticeable speed difference, especially in KDE 3.4. Start-up time seemed quicker as well.
As always, read the release notes. They have taken the decision to move some stuff off into the Fedora Extras project. XMMS was the main one I noticed. And yes, this being Red Hat-influenced, there is no support for MP3 or DVD playback straight off the installation discs.
If you have a Matrox-based card that requires you to use the Matrox-sourced mga_hal module, you're not going to have much luck configuring X until they release a new version for X.org 6.8.2. I get lovely vertical bars every 1cm on my TFTs using a G550 DVI.
I've got a fever and the only prescription is more COBOL.
The release notes are here. Major changes include:
http://ftp-stud.fht-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/fedor a.redhat.com/linux/core/4/i386/iso/>r a.redhat.com/linux/core/4/i386/iso/ r a.redhat.com/linux/core/4/i386/iso/
n ux /core/4/>x /core/4/ x /core/4/
4 />
http://ftp-stud.fht-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/fedo
http://ftp-stud.fht-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/fedo
http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/li
http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linu
http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linu
ftp://ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/linux/fedora-core/4/
ftp://ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/linux/fedora-core/
ftp://ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/linux/fedora-core/4/
and many more....
dont wait for shitty slashdot to report on old news.
cuz nothin is older than the news of yesterday/yesterhour/yesterminute...
In short, no. /home and easy to back up and restore. But for those running servers on FC, ouch.
There is not even a supported way to upgrade from FC3 to FC4, or even from a FC4 test release. The reason being explained to me was that testing all that upgrading would greatly slow down the release process. Personaly, I'd rather have to wait another month or two for a release then have to fresh install. It's not as big a deal as it is with windows though, since all the user settings are in
Why is it so hot? Where am I going? What am I doing in this handbasket?
OpenSolaris is coming out at the end of June. OpenSolaris is basically Solaris 10 in source code form. The license is the CDDL which is basically the Mozilla Public License with restrictions removed .
http://www.opensolaris.org/faq/licensing_faq.html
Anyone can create an OpenSolaris distro, in fact the guy who created cdrecord for linux (Joerg Schilling) is creating one called SchilliX.
http://schillix.berlios.de/
The great thing about OpenSolaris is that it is the opensourcing of Solaris 10 which means it has all the features and stability of that Operating system. It also has features that Fedora Core or linux don't have.
An example is DTrace. With DTrace, one can specify sensors in Solaris 10 and monitor everything. Even user programs.
You also have Zones in OpenSolaris which are like BSD jails, but are easier to maintain and create. Linux has user mode linux, but that is cumbersome compared to Zones.
SMF in OpenSolaris is questionable in benefit, but it allows services to be restarted automatically if they fail. Not something I'm interested in, but some people may like it.
But if you are unhappy with the bleeding edge of Fedora Core, give OpenSolaris a look when it comes out later this month.
I've been running FC4 (actually Rawhide, the equivalent of Debian unstable) on a Mac mini / Hitachi PJXT100 (yes, my computer is 16cm, my screen is 4m) for a few months here. Bluetooth Apple mouse and keyboard too. A pretty weird hardware setup. Everything works reliably.
In particular, OpenOffice 2 rocks. In FC it comes as individual packages for each app - ie, I get by with openoffice-core, openoffice-writer, and the English language package. In Ubuntu, I have to install and, worse, update a few massive packages.
Gnome does cool stuff. Like never stealing focus. An app wants focus, it pulses in the task bar. As it should be.
Extras now works well, it's easy to get a package into Fedora and there's a lot of useful stuff available. The days of having to go to freshrpms and dag wieers to find your app are numbered - FC4, FC Extras, and Livna for the patented stuff will satisfy most people. Other distros never had this problem, but other distros still don't have decent config tools, and other distros don't install menu items when they install GUI apps. Yes, this means you Debian.
There's a non-poo directory server that has proper ACL support (unlike OpenLDAP, where they were kept outside the directory), multimaster replication. etc as part of the distro. Combine it with JXplorer and you've got a decent Open Source LDAP server.
Off topic: once installed, OOo 2 is the first version I'd say would be on par with MS Office. The toolbars are decent - they no longer take up an entire row, and can be edited and docked together at will, like you damn well expect. Spell check can count selections. Floating docks becomes sidebars. And, surprisingly, it can work with MS Offices proprietary XML files. All the usual OOo features are still there
Other nice things about recent Fedoras:
FC3 and newer: Partitioning uses LVM by default. Online resizing is supported. Ext3 has signficant speed improvements, bechmarks favorably against Reiser, and unlike Reiser, works properly with SELinux.
FC3 but expanded in FC4: SELinux is enabled by default. For example, Apache is prevented from reading files who don't have the 'web content' context, and cgi scripts can't access particular device files without the right context either. If someone breaks into apachge, the chances of them going further than breasking into your web site are limited.
One note: while yum is getting better, I don't use it. Instead, I use Smart Package Manager. A command line and GUI tool from the author of apt-rpm and Synaptic, that replaes both those tools, and works with Yum metadata repositories. It's faster (downloads in parallel from each source), has a better GUI, and simpler error messages than yum and apt (no 'but version foo will be installed'-without-any-explanation type stuff).
Nice troll, RedHat didn't leave it. Infact every core engineer is paid for by RedHat. RedHat simply let the decision making process become a little more open. Fedora is not unstable, where as Debian unstable used to break on me monthly. Fedora is highly integrated and easy to use. The same devs working on Fedora are usually the same devs doing the majority of kernel development, Gnome development, Apache, OpenOffice, etc... so things tend to work real nice together. This latest release only goes to show moreso how great it is working out. RedHat however did not just let them go, Fedora is a huge part of their enterprise offering, RedHat still fully backs Fedora.
Regards,
Steve
Something that's not mentioned -- this is the first release of Fedora Core with the "Extras" repository enabled by default. Fedora Extras is a volunteer packaging project of various software not in Core, and is currently providing additional 1,000 packages ready to install just by running "yum install foo."
If you don't see your favorite package in Extras, you can always become a contributor yourself.
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
Mad Penguin published a "progress" review of FC4 not too long ago and it was a pretty good read.
Sorry, but no. Upgrades from any FC release to any newer FC release are supported. Upgrades from any RHL release (well, since RHL 3.0.3) to any newer FC release are supported
What's not supported is upgrades from tests (like FC4 test3) to stable releases (like FC4). That's it. Tests are not meant for use on production machines, or non-production machines by those who don't want to deal with the pain of actually, you know, testing stuff
There is not even a supported way to upgrade from FC3 to FC4, or even from a FC4 test release.
That's not true at all. Upgrading from release to release is completely supported -- not in the "call Red Hat and they'll help you" sense, but in the "designed to work and if doesn't it will get fixed" sense.
Upgrading from test releases to final releases isn't supported (sometimes last-minute back-outs of dead end ideas makes that hard) but generally works.
And live update of a running FC3 system to FC4 via yum isn't officially supported, but also generally works just fine.