Fedora Core 4 Quick Tour

linuxbeta writes "redhat.com says the new Fedora 'has just turned 4' and it 'purrs', 'hums', and 'mesmerizes'. Has Steve Jobs taken over Fedora's marketing dept. or is this release something to really get excited about? OSDir has put together a quick tour of this fresh release in KDE and GNOME desktop flavors. Release Overview. You be the judge."

Comments

Steve Jobs...

[brilinux]

If Steve Jobs had taken over the marketing department, then I think that the announcement would be more like "Fedora Core runs on x86 now" or something ... wait a minute... OMG!

Now back to my OSX/Debian Box ...

"Unrestricted"? Not to me.

[zorn]

I find it interesting that the release announcement claims that FC4 is "unrestricted" when in fact it has a very important restriction - GPL. Given Linux's rise in stature, we should be more careful of our claims.

Re:"Unrestricted"? Not to me.

[MarkByers]

For end-users there are no restrictions - you can do whatever you like with it once you have downloaded it!

The only people who are restricted by the GPL are redistributors.

Re:"Unrestricted"? Not to me.

[VStrider]

GPL doesn't restrict you. It ensures your freedom and makes sure that you will be able to receive any improvements on GPL'd code for free to do whatever you want with them, so noone will be able to deny you access to the source or deny any of your rights to use a GPL'd application.

Re:"Unrestricted"? Not to me.

[yozzman]

GPL restricts you from redistributing under another license. That serves your freedom, and ensures you will always keep that freedom, but it is still a restriction. It is a restriction for the best, but a restriction nonethless. A BSD license does not make you less free. It is less restricted. But in the long run, your freedom is more fragile in a BSD license. Think of the GPL restriction as smart trade-off.

Re:"Unrestricted"? Not to me.

[frag thief]

Labeling it as "warning: don't violate copyrights for selfish wants" or labeling it with "please: do not attempt to ingest fedora CD" amounts to the same thing -- both targeting idiots I don't care about.

Re:"Unrestricted"? Not to me.

[the_xaqster]

The GPL is not a restriction. The GPL allows people to modify and distribute your work.

Copyright exists on the code you personally write. You own that code. If you give your copyrighted code to me without any form of licence, then the Copyright law states that I can not change or distribute that code, as I do not have the copyright holders (your) explicit permission to do so. If you give me your code along with the GPL licence, then I can change and distribute your code, because the GPL gives me explicit permission to do this.

In short, the GPL does not restrict, it enables.

Re:"Unrestricted"? Not to me.

[Evro]

To me this issue is analogous to the question, "If god is omnipotent, can he make a rock so heavy he can't lift it?" Either way, you're admitting that god can't do something. The issue of GPL giving more rights by adding a restriction is similar. The BSD license has fewer restrictions but is also viewed by the FSF as "less free." Both arguments have merit.

Re:"Unrestricted"? Not to me.

[Intron]

I assume you are referring to this?

Fedora Core 4 is 100% unconditionally free. Free of restrictions.And, oh, yes, free of cost.

In a sense, you are correct. Public domain would be completely unrestricted. FC4 is still covered by copyright.

Release Overview

[Kaamoss]

Looking over the release overview it looks like the only real interesting thing is that they now support the ppc platform, which is always nice for us i/power bookers out there but everything else seems a bit lack luster. Here are the new features straight from the website. # Support for the PowerPC (PPC) architecture. # GCC 4.0 # GNOME 2.10 # KDE 3.4 â" includes new accessibility features. You can manage these new features in KDS Control CenterRegional & AccessibilityAccessibility. # Native Eclipse 3.1M6 (part of a free Java stack) # MySQL 4.1 # PHP 5.0 # Xen 2 (virtualization to run multiple versions of an OS) # GFS 6.1-0.pre22 (cluster file system) # Evince 0.2.1 (universal document viewer) # GDM 2.6 - Includes early login capability # SELinux â" This release includes coverage for 80 new daemons by the targeted policy. There are changes to the handling of Booleans. The targeted policy is enabled by default. For more information, refer to: http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/selinux-faq/ For This is the complete list of daemons covered by the targeted policy: This is all good and nice but mostly it's just new versions of apps that are comming bundled with it. Perhaps it's just me but I don't see what all the excitment is about. Enlighten me.

Re:Release Overview

[BigGerman]

Native Eclipse is a BIG deal. If I read it correctly, this is Eclipse IDE compiled without a JVM (Sun's or someoneelse's) using gcc/gcj. I wonder if this Eclipse installation includes a plugin or something to easily develop native, SWT-based, JVM-less Java apps.

Broken right out of the box

[MobyDisk]

Browsing of Windows shares fails on Fedora Core 4 systems that have the standard firewall configured. This is most easily noticed in the failure of the desktop to display shares. The firewall disrupts the broadcast mode of SMB browsing, which is the default.

So the default configuration out of the box does not work with Windows shares. That's not reasonable! This is how Linux gets a reputation for hard to use and hard to configure.

The bugzilla report makes it even clearer: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi? id=133478

Re:Broken right out of the box

[mukund]

Depending on who you are, the cup is either half full or half empty.

Many traditional Linux users don't have Windows boxes and don't care about SMB browsing and don't want ports open unnecessarily.

Re:Broken right out of the box

[HawkingMattress]

Sure, but it's still a usability "bug" because it would be much better ask if you need to browse windows shares or not. To the new user it will simply mean that "linux can not see windows".
That said, i'm gladly surprized to see that such "details" seems to be taken seriously and as real issues now. Not so long ago everybody would just have said "So what ? RTFM or go back playing with winblowz U NOOB!!" or something like that ;)

Re:Broken right out of the box

[dougmc]

So the default configuration out of the box does not work with Windows shares. That's not reasonable!

Security is not always free. Often some functionality needs to be given up to keep a system secure.

In this case, the default firewall either needs to be opened up (or an option given to open it up if you need this functionality), or this functionality needs to be documented as `not working with the default firewall'. It's probably a good candidate for a release note mention in it's current state, but isn't serious enough to prevent the release of FC4 until fixed.

Personally, I think a default configuration of `secure' is better than a default configuration of `everything works'. Things that are broken by the security should be documented, however, with instructions included on how to open things up to get the functionality you need.

This is how Linux gets a reputation for hard to use and hard to configure.

... and the opposite is how Windows gets a reputation for being insecure. If you think Linux (and we're painting with a really wide brush here, as there's dozens of very different Linux distributions out there) is bad in this regard, take a look at OpenBSD ...

Why do they bother

[ArsonSmith]

Why bother with the Gnome and KDE screen shots? One screen shot showing a Gnome and KDE desktop witht he Fedora logo is all that would be needed. It is the least diffrent thing between distributions yet it fills up most of the reviews.

Re:Why do they bother

[jd]

Well, "yum" makes for some horrible screenshots, and kudzu isn't much in the way of eye-candy, either. :) Seriously, there's nothing in Red Hat or Fedora that won't/can't exist in other distributions, except what is under the hood, and those components don't display anything.

Personally, I don't think the reviews are nearly strong enough for Fedora, Linux in general, or indeed any computer technology.

Imagine having a chart showing all of the options that have been developed over time, for that specific product. Now compare the product with that entire chart, both as a percentage for each feature AND across all features.

We would rapidly see that the "specialized" tools do very well at one or two things, but that's it. That more generalized tools generally (but don't always) suck at everything they do do, which is still only a drop in the bucket of what they COULD do.

(This is one reason I like specialized tools. They don't pretend to to everything, and I can always bolt them together, because that is how they are generally designed. Many specialized tools should, always, beat one universal tool.)

Re:Why do they bother

[ArsonSmith]

writing linux distribution reviews should be easy. First review Gnome 2.10 with all the nice screen shots etc... Then when reviewing Fedora say it included Gnome 2.10 with a link to that review and outline the diffrences. Do this for each of the important parts of the distribution and you'd have a complete review and you'd know what made it diffrent from vanilla compiles and other distributions.

Working Correctly Right out of the Box

[HopeOS]

My OSX-based Mac at home does not allow Windows SMB messages through its firewall either. Does that mean that all OSX installations are "broken right out of the box," too? Blocking SMB by default sounds perfectly reasonable to me; there are no Windows computers on that network anyway.

SMB is a non-essential port. If you want that protocol, open the firewall. Welcome to modern secure computing.

-Hope

Re:Working Correctly Right out of the Box

[Penguin Programmer]

While SMB is a non-essential port for many of us (those of us without Windows machines), it is essential for your average switching-from-Windows Linux noob. If someone who is thinking about switching goes and installs FC4, goes to get his files from his Windows machine and discovers that it doesn't work, he isn't going to read the release notes and figure out how to get it working. He's going to give up and go back to XP, where it works out of the box.

FC isn't aimed at server users who care about security above all else. That's Debian or OpenBSD's terrain. FC is supposed to be a desktop distro, and desktop distros should work out of the box for your average Windows user. That's the only way people will switch.

answer

[Paul Rose]

If god is omnipotent, can he make a rock so heavy he can't lift it?

As my nephew used to say:
He makes it...
then he lifts it.

:-)

Re:answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Oooh, keep the imaginary creatures analogies coming! Can we get one about a unicorn next?

Few thoughts during instalation...

[kosmosik]

I'am just during test drive instalation on my laptop. I've transferred entire partition (FC3) to my server and I do clean install. The instal right about now has rebooted me to fresh system. ;)

So what I saw during instalation:

* Installer now uses different GTK theme (ClearLooks instead of Bluecurve?).
* LVM partitioning actually works which is quite cool.
* Subbmitting "linux reiserfs" as boot command does not work (it should activate ReiserFS as an option during partitioning).
* Selecting packages is not selecting packages but you select functionalities - like "Web Server" instead of "httpd, php-foo..." package names - it is for sure less confising for newbies, but somebody who wishes to have more custom package setup needs to remaster instalation media...
* "Minimal Instalation" option is still retarded, checking it still requires you to have discs 1, 2, 4 - and it copies less then 60MB from disc 2 and 4 so if somebody did it better you could do minimal just from disc 1.

Now the system has booted (few FAILED messages but I can manage that) and it is EXTREMELY FAST, it booted (Minimal Install) in like 10 seconds on P3 based low-end laptop. This is quite nice... Now im going to clean up this mess and see what this baby can do. ;)

Thank you Fedora Devs!

Oh!

[jd]

You mean, like use a hypertext markup system to, well, develop reviews with hypertext? Hmmm. I wonder if I can patent that.

(Seriously, that is so incredibly obvious, because it means that when component X gets updated, you update the one review, not every review of every product containing X.)

Lock down wizard:

[tod_miller]

Would you like to browse other windows machines shared directories? Yes | No | Exit

Would you like to run an smtp server, ftp server, ssh server, plus the other 27 servers that are installed by default on your distro? Yes | No | Exit

Would you like to bother setting up cups? Yes
No | I don't have a printer maaaan

Would you like to auto-configure Firefox for faster pr0n access Yes | Yes | Exit

You see, easy to use doesn't have to be expensive.

if a disto rises in the forest will anybody hear?

[dankelley]

Hm. it's 7:11PM and I see

• 24 posts regarding FC4 release posting 7 hours ago
• 375 posts regarding No threat to linux with apple and intel deal posting dated 4 hours ago

An apple thread thus attracts comment at 30 times the rate of a Fedora thread. Does this say something about interest in Fedora?

Individual package selection

[200_success]

Selecting packages is not selecting packages but you select functionalities - like "Web Server" instead of "httpd, php-foo..." package names - it is for sure less confising for newbies, but somebody who wishes to have more custom package setup needs to remaster instalation media...

I just installed FC4 using the Custom option. For each category, such as GNOME or Web Server, some packages are required and some are optional. If you click on the Details link, you can choose to include or exclude individual optional RPMs.

Re:Individual package selection

[kosmosik]

> I just installed FC4 using the Custom option.
Yeah me also... :)

> For each category, such as GNOME or Web
> Server, some packages are required and
> some are optional.

But if you experiment a bit you will find out that these are no single packages. These are *groups* of packages.

> If you click on the Details link, you can
> choose to include or exclude individual
> optional RPMs.

Yeah. I choosed not to install "sendmail" (I haven't choose any Mail Server Package) but it still installed me... Guess what... A sendmail package. ;)

But I can deal with it, I am using RH/FC since RH4 and I get along well with rpm... But this GUI/install is in fact confusing, I prefer custom made strict lists of what package to install and what not to install...

Re:Individual package selection

[chochos]

I have installed FC3 on 10 servers this year, and I always choose "custom" for package selection, and I always uncheck sendmail because I never use it, and it is always installed and active.

It's become a habit for me to uncheck it, and then just chkconfig sendmail off on every install I do. So I guess this didn't get fixed then. Oh well, it's just a minor annoyance to me since I always turn it off as part of my install procedure.

Thinking about it, it's probably not a bug but a feature... probably some admin package depends on sendmail so it gets installed.

Re:Individual package selection

[kosmosik]

> I have installed FC3 on 10 servers this year,
> and I always choose "custom" for package
> selection

Usually go with minimal installation (it still loads tons of crap anyway), then I run script that removes (rpm -e) all unwanted (by me obviously) packages. Then it sets up apt (one repository, freshrpms is sufficent and very good quality), installs GPG keys (for apt), and generates me keys (for SSH) for given machine. Then it does apt-get update; apt-get upgrade. Runs some commands to disable unwanted services (chkconfig --del) and copies over my preffered configuration for most obvious stuff.

It works unattended so I just run it and after some time I have neat clean install to start configuring the system. If I need some functionality (like httpd, samba or smth.) I just install it with apt and it works.

Also you can pepare custom instalation discs but it is a bit more hassle. My script works for me. Too bad every release I need to tweak it a little and it is what I've done after writing my previous post. ;)

> and I always uncheck sendmail because I
> never use it, and it is always installed and
> active.

It is active only locally to deliver system notifications (cron, atd, logwatch etc.) to local users. I *do* use SMTP daemon on every machine, but I don't want sendmail.

My point is that using standard CD installer in some cases there is *no* *way* of not installing certain packages. They will get installed whatever you click in instalator. They are mandatory and often stupid (for me) - like tape streamer operating utilities - I haven't used any streamers in like 7 years. ;)

Re:Individual package selection

[chochos]

Ah well the thing is, usually at the sites where I'm installing, the servers I'm configuring have no access to the internet, and getting even temporary access for them involves going down on my hands and knees to the site admins and waiting for three days till they figure out how to give me outbound internet access without compromising their site's security, etc etc.
So, no apt-get for me.

Re:Individual package selection

[kosmosik]

> Ah well the thing is, usually at the sites
> where I'm installing, the servers I'm
> configuring have no access to the internet,
> and getting even temporary access for
> them involves going down on my hands
> and knees to the site admins and waiting
> for three days till they figure out how to
> give me outbound internet access without
> compromising their site's security, etc etc.

Seems way retarded (I mean those admins not you) - how do you install patches then?

> So, no apt-get for me.

You can create local apt repository and it works fine. Load all packages from instalation cd to one directory (name it core) in web server range, rsync your favourite additional repository to another dir, run one command, configure clients and it works via local network.

FC4, here we go

[chochos]

just yesterday I installled FC3 on 3 HP servers with hardware RAID and Xeon processors. Everything went smooth. But I guess it's the last FC3 install I make.

From now on it's going to be FC4, as soon as I test it on a dev machine I have here. If FC3 always handled all the RAID and HT stuff correctly, I don't see why FC4 would have any problems. I'm hoping for SATA RAID support, I guess we'll see.