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Fedora 7 Released
fedoraman writes "Fedora 7 has been released. With Xorg 7.3, KDE 3.5.6, GNOME 2.18, and version 2.6.21 of the Linux kernel Fedora 7 comes with all the latest and greatest open source desktop software. Fedora 7 drops the traditional 'Core' nomenclature, since it includes both what used to be termed the Core and Extra components by default. Fedora 7 is also the first release to be constructed with Fedora's revolutionary new build system, which is designed to improve the ease of developing derivatives and Fedora-based software appliances. As usual, extensive documentation and release notes are available. Torrents are also available and ISO images can be downloaded from mirrors around the world."
Not even x.org has 7.3 yet! Fedora is really on top of things!
It's not Xorg 7.3 that's packaged with Fedora, but Xorg 7.2 with the xorg-server 1.3.0 release. It still features very interesting software, like, for example, noveau, a free reimplementation of NVIDIA's hardware-accelerated 3D-drivers (still work in progress, of course), as well as a kernel patched with the all-new and highly anticipated mac802.11-subsystem that whould yield much better compatibility and performance for all things WLAN. I also like this idea of "Revisor", an application easily allowing for building customized bootable (install-)media with specific packages only.
:%s/Open Source/Free Software/g
YTARY!
> Is there a good reason they seem to think they know better than Linus and all the other devs working hard on the standard kernel
> or is it just an ego trip for the developers at these distros?
Yes, there are lots of good reasons. We can start with Xen. All of the big distros support it but it isn't in the mainline kernel tree. So right there you blow away the ability to run the mainline kernel without breaking things. The list goes on from there. The latest device drivers that haven't yet made it upstream, bug fixes that are working their way upstream, etc. There are lots of other good reasons why a distro kernel gets patches.
SUSE, like RHEL is longterm stable. That means bug fixes and security issues get patched into the same base kernel that originally shipped with that version of the distro because revving the whole kernel would be a nightmare.
That said, Fedora does have a policy of trying to stay close to the upstream kernel, pushing their patches upline wherever possible and not being afraid to revv the whole kernel in the lifetime of a 'stable' release. But when it comes down to big patchsets like Xen that they really want to ship but that neither Xen nor Linus appear interested in seeing merged they don't really have much of a choice. Longterm, just as an interested bystander, I'd suspect Xen to disappear from Fedora once KVM gets stable enough to totally replace it for the non-enterprise workloads Fedora is aimed at.
Democrat delenda est
What I'd like is for Red Hat to build better diffs, develop some alternative scheme for merging in new code, or get as many of their patches rolled into the -mm tree as possible, then use the -mm tree exclusively. It may not be a true vanilla kernel, but at least -mm is openly maintained, heavily used, popular and actively folded into the mainstream.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The complete build process is FL/OSS!
The tool for taking all the RPM packages and composing them into an installation tree is pungi. It's FL/OSS.
The tool for taking source from CVS and turning it into packages is Koji and it's completely FL/OSS too
The tool for producing updated packages is bodhi and is FL/OSS
Be happy. The Fedora Project yet again has made major contributions to FL/OSS which can be enjoyed and improved by everyone. It means that Fedora is completely independent of Red Hat (apart from Red Hat's very generous donation of hardware and developers) and that anyone that wants to can easily produce a specialised "spin" of Fedora suited exactly to their own needs. That's one of the main innovations that Fedora is pursuing with the above: instead of being stuck dependent on the choices of a distributor you can benefit from the patched sources, even their packaging, yet diverge when needed. This should be the goal that every distribution follows, and the only thing that is similar in terms of flexibility is Gentoo, but that IMHO fails to provide an easy path for those that are happy with a distributor making the decisions for them.
I'll freely admit to being a Fedora and Red Hat fan, but I hope that the significance of the release of these build tools is not overlooked by people using other distributions.
Core and Extras have been merged into a single repository, so those names no longer exist. But what you are looking for DOES exist. It's all there in the "Everything" version of Fedora. That's an install tree that we provide at (for example):
x /releases/7/Everything/
http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linu
The last version of Debian worked on a 486/133 with 32 MB RAM, I'm sure the current ought to too...
-uso.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
Slackware (my favourite distro) uses utterly vanilla kernels. Want a new one? Download it from kernel.org, untar it, build it. No sweat.
I consider building a custom kernel to be an integral part of an installation: all the distro kernel does is bootstrap building the production one. All my systems run kernels that are a precise match to the hardware and my needs, with no superfluous junk. No superfluous security holes, either.
...laura
With respect you're an idiot. Fedora is NOT designed or distributed as a stable plateform with long term support, if you want that from a Redhat type install use Enterprise or CentOs. Fedora *is* however the cutting edge of Redhat development and I use it across all my (personal) servers and PCs/Laptops ungrading when nessesary.
When the last version of Debian was new, wasn't that current hardware?
I don't care about your karma, I don't care about what's hip. --Weird Al
The LiveCDs aren't CDs?
No. They are not. I want a set of CDs with all the RPMs on them (just as I had with FC2, 3, 4, 5, and 6). The LiveCDs have a minimal Fedora install. If you want to put it on your computer (and toss out the CD), you need to do a network install. I have 17 computers here. I don't want to wait hours and hours for a network install on each one.
The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned one of Fedora's major strengths; security. This is the primary reason that I use Fedora. The combination of security layers has made Fedora immune to many (all?) of the compromises/exploits in recent history.
While distributions like Ubuntu are more popular with end-users, I'm concerned that an exploit across such a popular (but security weak) distribution will paint all of Linux with an unfavorable brush.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.