Fedora Core 5 Available

Jan Slupski writes "New release day today. Fedora Core 5 CD images are now available for download (i386, ppc, x86_64) on the ftp servers or via the torrent page." Linclips also has a short screencast on some of the default functionality.

Comments

Yowza

[MAXOMENOS]

We're up to *five* CD-ROMs now?

Upgrading

[Rik Sweeney]

I new to Linux and am still running Fedora Core 3. Am I right in thinking that to upgrade to FC5 I have to basically backup anything I want to keep and reinstall everything? Is there no easier way of upgrading?

Good for Older laptop?

[SaidiaDude]

Would this distro work for an old laptop - UMAX 233MHz 256MB 3GB? I have one lying around and was thinking about creating a wireless terminal to check email and possibly display pictures. A basic Core 4 installed fine but the UI wasnt very responsive sometimes. Thx for your help.

Fedora Mirrors

[Brian The Dog]

Am I the only one that thinks it is awesome that playboy.com mirrors the distro? They should have 'customized' it. (Special backgrounds, prepopulated bookmarks, etc.)

Poor testing

[gr8_phk]

Never mind that they don't test with proprietary drivers. They applied a patch that affected the functionality of tainted kernels - normal development practice would natrually require *that patch* be tested with a tainted kernel regardless. Throwing a patch over and saying it's OK because the automated testing didn't find a problem is like saying "it compiled - ship it".

So if I wait for 2.6.16 kernel on FC5 is that going to break with nVidia too? I saw a comment in the 2.6.16 story saying that doesn't work either (may have been distro specific).

Damn people, I understood the 4K stacks thing - make a good decision for good reason and let nVidia catch up. This utter disrespect for drivers used by a large number of people is really unacceptable. Actually, when a disto fails to test with drivers used by a large portion of their userbase, it is the user who feels the disrespect. Please don't make excuses - that's disrespectful too. Just get FC6 right.

That said, I'm downloading FC5 now ;-)

Re:Probably the worst beginner's distribution

[AKAImBatman]

FWIW, Red Hat has always liked to be on the Bleeding Edge of Linux, but in their own way. (e.g. If GNOME 2.x isn't ready to ship, make quick patches around the problems and ship it.) This tended to get them into a lot of trouble, because their OS would have all kinds of idiosynchrasies and inconsistencies that other distributions didn't exhibit.

RedHat decided to address the matter with the Fedora branch. Fedora is a perpetual beta of RedHat's enterprise product. By releasing this beta, RedHat is able to get real-world testing of their latest tech before they foist it upon paying customers.

As a result, Fedora tends to look very nice and has a lot of nice features that are hard to find elsewhere. (e.g. Its beautiful BlueCurve theme.) Unfortunately, it also means that you're testing beta software. Unless you are completely comfortable with that, you shouldn't use Fedora.

So you're right. Your professor was being a little kooky on this one. He was probably blinded by the "latest and greatest" mentality that tends to permeate the software industry.

Re:Screenshots?

[alx5000]

LILO 22.7.1 really turns me on.

Re:Fallacy

[crush]

Mp3 was excluded for one reason. Dogma. It has nothing to do with Fraunhofer being beligerent, because if it did, don't you think Ubuntu or others would have excluded mp3 support by now. No. It has to do with Red Hat, and now the Fedora Project, trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, i.e. trying to get the world to move away from mp3, and towards FOSS alternatives.

I think if there's any "dogma" on display it's yours. Red Hat is a company incorporated in the USA and is legally liable for any infringement of Frauenhofer's patents. Ubuntu does not face that situation. Red Hat also owns significant assets unlike Ubuntu and is vulnerable on that score.