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Fedora Core 6 Preview
An anonymous reader writes "Earlier this week Jesse Keating announced the availability of Fedora Core 6 Test 1. New items in FC6T1 include Intel Macintosh support (well, mostly), update notification applet, GNOME 2.15, KDE 3.5.3, and the Fedora Core 6 Extras development repository is already available. With FC6T1's availability, Phoronix has published their own preview of this release. The article is focused on an editorial about changes to come for Fedora Core 6, as well as images from Fedora Core 6 Test 1. The next Fedora Core 6 testing release (Test 2) is due out in July, while the final release is due out this September."
I started to use fedora a few months ago and really like it. The main problem I find with it is they seem too willing to update too quickly. I was speaking on a forum about the problems I was having (Kernel update 2107 had real problems) I was told "core 5 is very new, it will get more stable over the coming months"... I kind'a feel like they should make core 5 as stable and as good as it can be and keep it going for about a year or two from when it is completely setled. The only reason that I am a little worried is I'm pretty sure yum will update me to core 6 automatically if i forget to "--exclude" everytime I do a update
Still, it is a really lovely distro (I know it sounds like I slagged it off)... but give it a go : D
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
Rock and Roll
Ubuntu? It's years behind Fedora in case of security... *sigh*
/ 2006-June/000150.html
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Security/Features
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-hardened
Do I still need to jump through ridiculous hoops to get mp3 support in rhythmbox and get *any* support in totem?
Out of the box, Totem can't play *anything*.. completely useless.
At least make it like Ubuntu, where I can add a repository that has all the stuff they can't ship in the box.
Red Hat view (or at least did when I was in Raleigh last September) FC as an incubator for RHEL.
I discussed the release frequency and period of support, and they were pretty unsympathetic to the user's point of view. Their requirement is fast turnaround of new releases to ensure a strong test of new technologies / versions of new packages.
This has some upsides, like the multipathing support in RHEL4, Update 3 which means we can finally do away with Veritas on most of our machines. But it can suck for the user.
As someone whose been using Fedora since Core 1, this release seems more evolutionary. Even without major changes between releases, the accumulated bug fixes contribute to a desktop that 'works' better and has the functionality I need. We all remember the bad old days of manually mounting your USB peripherals.. well now I have suspend, easy networking (thanks to NetworkManager) and useful stuff like Beagle to play with, so thats quite good progress. This release will be worthwhile just to get the latest of everything, and it looks as if some nice eye-candy will be ready in GNOME 2.16.
I personally would like to see a general reduction in memory usage in GNOME and various apps; it's been moving in the right direction, I hope it stays that way. I believe there is an effort to remove various deprecated libraries to help here.
The ridiculous hoop you have to jump through is to simply type:
rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-5.rpm
Why do I have to type something at the command line to get basic multimedia support? Can't they just make a button during the install that you can press to get 'illegal' software. The button could read:
'I want to play mp3 files and I don't care if it's illegal. I take full responsibility for my actions.'
or:
'Software patents don't apply in my country, give me an mp3 player already!'
Why do they make you use the command line? It doesn't make sense.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
At least Ubuntu is moving in this direction. Consider also that Ubuntu is only what, 2 or 3 years old? And Fedora has the benefit of running upstream of a commercial linux distro where features like this are considered important. Ubuntu has been working backwards, hitting the desktop market first and only just now breaking into the server market.
With 1/5th the age of a distro that gets to exchange features back and forth with a commercial, enterprise linux if a few security features is all that you can complain about that's not too shabby. And according to it's creator Ubuntu will NEVER leave us hanging by commercializing and forking off into a crappier, less stable, free derivitive.
Besides, linux distros have not been including the technologies you link to for "years" and even if they have... Ubuntu is years behind simply by chronology yet still has managed to beat out fedora by making a professional desktop ready linux in a fraction of the time. Try to keep a little perspective and save your sour grapes *sighs* for apples vs. apples comparisons. Ubuntu is a baby in the distro market compared to redhat/fedora.
Throwing my mod points away to respond to this :
I run FC5 at home and Ubuntu, Debian and Mandrake at work. Read this series of reviews of the latest Ubuntu release (6.06), they are not all positive. A significant number say Drake was rushed and not on par with the previous release.
I have tried many distros out there, everyone has their favourite, and in particular Ubuntu is quite good, but there is no clear winner. Most people I read tend to base their impression of Linux on the latest distro they've tried. Usually this shows some improvement over the one they had tried earlier and (incorrectlly) conclude this is due to the distribution being "just better".
In fact the whole of Linux is progressing at a rapid pace. Both Fedora and Ubuntu have quick and frequent release schedules, a large professional and dedicated team, and as a result they are quite solid, but the same is true of many distros out there. I've come to realize that by and large innovations by one distribution quickly permeate all. See the good work of Debian with apt, that of Ubuntu with their automounter and RH's work with sponsoring Gnome and SELinux.
Ubuntu and FC have different, incompatible aims. Ubuntu is not a testing ground for RHEL, they show little interest with SELinux for instance, whereas this is of strategic importance for FC. However strangely perhaps they cover much of the same ground as far as the end-user is concerned.
Saying that one particular distro among the big ones does something "much better" than any other is misinformed. Because of the nature of FOSS, none holds any permanent advantage over the others, as long as they all continue their development efforts.
Maby not the easiest way but I have been doing it since fedora 3:
/dev/sda2 /mnt/source /dev/sda1 /mnt/source/boot /mnt/source
/boot/initrd.img kernelversion
/boot/grub/grub.conf
Insert Fedora core cd #1 and turn on your computer. Boot to the cd.
When the boot screen comes up, type "expert" and hit enter. That will allow you to install to the usb drive. Install as normal, and make sure you install grub to the MBR.
Now, shut down. Boot up with Fedora disk 1 in the cd drive. at the boot screen, type: "linux rescue", and answer the questions about language when they come up. when it asks you if you want it to search for the installation, click "skip this step", and you will be brought to a shell.
mount
mount
chroot
Next, create the initrd, with the usb driver included:
mkinitrd --preload=ehci-hcd --preload=usb-storage --preload=scsi_mod --preload=sd_mod
Now, you have to edit your grub.conf:
nano
put the new initrd file name "initrd.img" in place of whats there. save and exit nano. reboot and it should work
of course your bios needs to be able to boot off usb devices. Hope that helps.
Redhat hacks KDE beyond the feel and proper use of KDE. Fedora replaces a lot of QT applets with GTK ones to perform a lot of functions. KDEsu is a prime example although there is others.
If you are a KDE fan, than you're being shortchanged if you run Fedora or Redhat products.
SuSE used to be a great product, but 10.1 had so many problems I've lost confidence.
Give Mandrake, Gentoo, Kubuntu a try.
RPM hell? As a Red Hat Network subscriber I enjoy one-click installations of pre-configured software packages that you won't find anywhere else. Plus apt-get works as good as on Ubuntu. Like it or not, RPM is de-facto standard today. Having one more supported format helps, you know?
I'm amazed there's no mention of this yet, with all the fuss about XGL and Compiz recently...
The FC development repo (so I assume FC6T1 has it as well) includes AIGLX, a different approach to the accelerated desktop thing. The metacity that comes with Core has support for a few effects (like wobbling windows), but if you want to try the cube and othe compiz goodies, Kristian has an RPM of compiz for AIGLX here. Just install it and voilá: eye candy goodness.
When I went from FC3 to FC4, I was in an excited rush only to be disappointed by some bugs with sound and stuff. I was already accustomed to tweaking and figuring things out, but over the past couple of years, I have grown weary of it and prefer things to just work. As FC5 grew near, I was really hopeful that they learned lessons from the problems of FC4. But somehow, in my continuous updating of my laptop, ATI had finally gotten around to fixing their proprietary driver to allow for suspend to RAM/Disk. I had all but given up on ever having successful hibernation on my laptop, but when I discovered that it worked, I became very excited by the announcement of FC5test#.
I downloaded and installed it on another hard drive. Went straight for suspend and it just worked out of the box flawlessly. I think I might have wet my pants... it was some time ago and my memory is hazy on the details, but there was urination at some point immediately surrounding the event... maybe I closed the lid on my laptop, took a piss and came back to find that the laptop was able to resume where it left off. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that was it. Anyway, I decided FC5 wasn't coming fast enough for me.
When FC5 arrived, I was not disappointed in the least. And with only one problem with periodic "yum" updates, FC5 scores an almost perfect record in my opinion.
Now there's FC6 around the corner? Why? I'm REALLY happy with FC5. I don't need FC6. Of course I will upgrade though. FC5 development will slow down and stop eventually. But I doubt I will scramble for FC6 without something really compelling. The improvements from the summary don't indicate anything compelling to me.
As for competing distros? Ubuntu is the name being used most. I still haven't tried it. It's not what I'm used to, and that's reason enough for me... for now. Maybe one day I'll bump into an Ubuntu user with the OS on his laptop and I'll get a demo I can appreciate. But where Fedora Core is concerned, I feel very well supported with RPMs available for everything I can think of. Only on rare occasion do I find myself stealing RPMs built for other distros because it's not available for FC5. And that's mostly due to the "I don't want to get sued" mentality coming from RedHat.
So yeah, that's the only beef I have with Fedora Core -- the "we don't support MP3 because we're scared" thing. Did the patent on GIF run out already? How much time left on MP3?
WOW, I can't believe you prefer the look of Ubuntu to Fedora!
One of my main reasons for not even looking at Ubuntu for longer than about install+1 hour is that it just looks plain ugly compared to Fedora. How weird.... I mean I really hate the brown/orange thing and the Gnome icons and text seem to look years behind Fedora, more like RedHat before Bluecurve or SUSE's Gnome, it's just unfinished.
I was considering putting Ubuntu Dapper LTS on my new fileserver as I don't want to wait for CentOS 5 (RHEL5) and would like to brush up on my Debian skillz, but after playing with Dapper for a bit I'm just not impressed.
I mean, there seems to be so many options for installing software and configuring Ubuntu that it's actually a become a A Bad Thing(tm). With Fedora you install software using YUM and there's one or two "best practice" ways of doing things. Fedora is to Ubuntu as Python is to Perl in that way.
#include <sig.h>
That is not RPM's fault. Ubuntu/Debian are not any different. If you download a .deb of something and it has dependencies on packages you don't have installed, you will encounter the same problems. You may have heard of "apt" for Debian based distributions. There is also "yum" for RPM.
Knowledge is power.
Lord High Crapflooder The Right Honourable Vlad Craig Esther McDavenpherson III
Destroyer of Mercatur.Net
It might have more to do with the quality of package maintainers than the technology itself, but getting codecs or obscure packages installed from freshrpms, livna, etc. *often* left me with broken installs in Core. Fixing the problems meant uninstalling packages that I actually wanted to run, or picking between packages I wanted so as to not mix repositories.
Getting the same with Ubuntu has yet to be a problem, not to mention that getting all the weird repositories is done graphically, with less hassle than on RedHat. I say this as a former RedHat gushing fanboy too.
Again, it might happenstance, or it might have to do with how the two groups manage or coordinate (or don't!) the different package repositories.
Based on http://www.google.com/trends?q=ubuntu%2C+fedora+%7 C+fc5+%7C+fc4+%7C+fc3%2C+RHEL+%7C+redhat+%7C+red+h at%2C++suse%2C+debian&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all at Google Trends, my belief is that RH and Fedora are losing ground while Ubuntu is making a serious run at becoming the most popular distribution.
I'm still using FC5 on my desktop for now, largely because I found it the simplest to 'extend' with non-vendor apps and drivers (such as the proprietary ATI drivers and the intense multimedia support available via the Livna repository to replace the frankly useless sound and video "support" in the vanilla FC5). I am fairly likely to stick with it either until FC7 or until Ubuntu reaches the critical mass where most app and driver vendors explicitly support it as a preferred distro.
...let me reply to some of the posts here:
H HHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Did they put the "Install Everything" button back in yet? If not, I'm not interested.
Waaah!
New KDE, new Gnome, an updater, and CUPS? Yawn...
Waaaaahh!
I switched to ${ANOTHER_DISTRO} and never looked back.
Waaaaaaaaaahhhh!
If you are a KDE fan, than you're being shortchanged...
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagggghhhh!
I'm REALLY happy with FC5. I don't need FC6.
Waaaah!!! Waaaah!!! Waaaaaaaaaaah!!!
The main problem I find with it is they seem too willing to update too quickly.
Waaaah waaaah waaaah waaaah waaaah!!!!!
Out of the box, Totem can't play *anything*.. completely useless.
Wah wah wah wah wah, wah wah wah, waaaaaaahhh!
Why do I have to type something at the command line to get basic multimedia support? Can't they just make a button...
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGH
[DISCLAIMER: This post is a joke. This post is only a joke. Had this post been intended to deliver actual derision or condescension it would have been supported by bad analogies, the anecdotal 'evidence' of a single user, and/or numerous mentions of other Linux distributions that are not germane to the current discussion. I apologize preemptively if anyone's fragile psyche was offended by this post. Additionally, I don't really have the authority to speak on Artie Lange's behalf.]
Don't you have someone you'd die for?
"With 1/5th the age of a distro"
Bullshit. Ubuntu is based off of Debian, and a very large chunk of the things Ubuntu uses were developed at Red Hat. Both are Gnome based distros, using Ubuntu is not easier than using Fedora, but Fedora comes with a lot of additional things that Ubuntu doesn't have. All of these Ubuntu supporters are simply falling right into Mark Shuttleworth's hands by building brand recognition so that his commercial side of tghe business will thrive. Mark Shuttleworth is a marketing genius.
Regards,
Steve