Slashdot Mirror
Fedora 9 "Sulphur" Alpha Released
JonRob writes "The first development snapshot of Fedora 9 (Sulphur) has been released, providing both a KDE and a GNOME live CD. This is the first of three test releases before the final version of Fedora 9 this April. The alpha features many changes including KDE 4 by default, GNOME 2.21.4, support for creation of encrypted partitions and for resizing EXT2/EXT3/NTFS partitions during install, speed improvements to X, the Linux 2.6.24 kernel, and much more."
nice. i had wondered where you were hiding...
Fedora 9: Sulphur Alpha
Isn't this a new show on the SciFi channel?
This guy's the limit!
Are you sure this isn't the code name for keep-the-Windows-open-for-ventilation 7?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWrMyqX_MNM&NR=1/
...but can anyone give some good reasons as to why a Fedora 4,5,6,7 and 8 user might migrate to F9 instead of maybe waiting and checking out F10?
I was checking out the F9 Features only last night and it didn't seem that there was a lot in there that had me salivating like F8 did. There was mention of Firefox 3 but I couldn't ascertain the status of it.
It's a certain amount of trouble to do the upgrade (I usually do it as a new install), just wondering if it's worth it for me this time round.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
"Sulphur" translates to the Finnish word "rikki", which incidentally also means "broken".
I realise I'm still very new to Linux, familiarising myself with Ubuntu Server and the desktop variants only recently, but 'sulphur'? The new improved Fedora: 'smells like rotting eggs'? Surely that's not the best name they could've come up with. Mind you, it's an Alpha release so maybe it's simply to prevent accidental downloads...
That right there is the NUMBER ONE reason to get it if you have a laptop. It's been a long time coming and it is sorely missed.
Now you too can reap the benefits of transparent encryption enforced at boot on your portable device, wrapped up in a package that is easy to set up.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I have had no problems with wireless using the ndiswrapper.
http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/
The switch on the side of my laptop that turns it on and off has caused me more grief for a while than any driver issue.
I wish they'd add a decent extent based filesystem to their install defaults. I'd love to have xfs in there by default and not have to install a separate module.
Salut,
Jacques
http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/
The switch on the side of my laptop that turns it on and off has caused me more grief for a while than any driver issue. Some of us have wireless cards that have native Linux drivers, but Fedora lacks support for them. For example, my PowerBook has a broadcom. Ubuntu supports it with open drivers out of the box. OpenSUSE is the same way. My main desktop is supported by Madwifi. Fedora lacks support, though you can add it manually (pain in the ass). Ubuntu supports it out of the box, as does OpenSUSE. My ThinkPad has an Intel 3945. Fedora lacks support for it, but you can install it manually (pain in the ass). Ubuntu supports it out of the box, as does OpenSUSE.
Some of them can be supported via a third party repo (livna) that's incompatibility with the repos that have the software you actually want (rpmforge).
Would it kill them to have a unsupported repo that contains nothing but drivers? Ie, nVidia, wireless, and fully in sync with the constant kernel updates?
I don't feel like using a Windows driver on Linux when there is a Linux driver available.
After using Fedora for a while, it appears to me that they don't actually test the packages all that well. Some of the bugs in FC8 are glaringly obvious and yet it got tossed out to the masses.
I mean "bleeding edge" is one thing but this is quite another. Do other distros do better testing?
phew! What's that smell?
Let me know when it will boot after install on one of these, otherwise I'll be sticking with Slack on my servers
Depends on what you mean. Will they start providing closed-source or otherwise IP-encumbered drivers? No.
of course, that's a sign that there are lots of daemons.
Badass Resumes
I've been trying different Linux releases since 6 or 7, and I can't get anything to run stable on my VIA EPIA EN-15000G. Memtest86 will run for days with no errors. NetBSD (CURRENT) will run stable for as long as I've kept it up. Linux dies (just locks up hard: ping gets nothing, no response at the console) after a day or two at most, whether or not X is running. I'd _really_ prefer Linux for this box, since I wanted VMWare and to be able to consolidate a few boxes I use for various things. But I can't get Linux stable. Other people have reported their EN-15000G is stable, but not mine for some reason...
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
It was getting the installer / boot scripts to support them (and also getting mkinitrd patched) so you can do encrypted root out of the box.
There's little things about that you have to watch out for... for example, if you decide to use LVM and swap but use a dynamic generated key for encrypting swap, then you have to disable hibernation because resume won't work. Blah blah blah...
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
You'll note that their target machine for X11 2d desktop performance is a 1.7GHz Pentium M with a Radeon 7500, which they say is "not fast and therefore a good target for tuning." I miss the days when you could expect- out of the box- to get good desktop performance on your 400MHz Pentium II and have a ~1.5GB install footprint (or less if you bothered deselecting stuff you didn't need on install). Now endless tweaking and tuning and putzing with stuff is required to get poor (rather than abysmal) performance on something 2-3 times that fast using 2-3 times the space. There's really been about as much proportional bloat in Linux distros since the RH 6.x days as there has been in corresponding Windows versions up to Vista.
It's not the environment is bad, I just don't like rolling APT packages. I was okay with hand-rolling patched mkinitrd's for the last few years but anaconda support here is like delicious gravy to me.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
1) install the repo
2) disable the repo (to prevent routine updates from pulling updates from it, possibly hosing your package set)
3) say, i.e., "yum --enablerepo=livna install mypackage"
4) IF that doesn't replace anything you don't want replaced, say y; otherwise, say n
4a) you have to enable the repo manually, AND check for package replacement manually, every time you want to update that package
For example: many people use livna's nvidia driver package, which is fine because there is no collision. Every time you update the kernel, you have to say "yum --enablerepo=livna update kmod-nvidia" to get the drives for the new kernel version. (It's the price to be paid for having working 3D nvidia drivers under package management in Fedora.) Perhaps the wireless drivers you mention are available like this. Would it kill them to have a unsupported repo that contains nothing but drivers? Ie, nVidia, wireless, and fully in sync with the constant kernel updates? Yes. The reason many packages are found in unofficial repos is the murky legality of "redistributing" them in Fedora's (Redhat's) country of origin. That's why the repositories tend to be based in countries where it's OK to, say, package the effing drivers properly and redistributing them via the repository system, since you're not claiming they're yours, or modifying them. Those repos also tend to have the media functionality that some U.S. company will sue you into financial death for having or distributing without giving them money. Yeah, you bought that DVD at Walmart but you can't play it unless you *licence* the *right* to play it? That's unreasonable on several levels, and fortunately there are a few places on Earth that realize this and permit the existence of such repo servers.
That does not address the problem of certain repositories (rpmforge) being mutually compatible with the main distribution and thus each other, while others (Livna, ATrpms) are mutually INcompatible. That seems to be the real heart of your complaint, and it's legitimate. The RPMforge consortium was formed to fix the problem of repository collision, and the other repositories just aren't on board (for various reasons).
does anyone know where the torrent can be found?
I do as a matter of fact, have a 400MHz PII and a ~1.5GB (maybe less than half of that) install footprint, but I'm using LFS. I get to choose the packages that I want. It takes about a day to compile everything (I made scripts to ease the tedium). For those who won't bother, a 5 MB Ubuntu Minimal CD would do, plus a fast connection. Should be just about the same.
Yeah, I've tried each new Fedora release (and some Suse and Ubuntu) when it comes out. Each one locks up hard. I don't care if it's fast, as it's a replacement for a Cobalt RaQ2+ 250MHz MIPS machine with no X11 installed...I just want it to run, be stable, and run VMWare.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
I thought Fluorine was 9. Sulfur is 16, last I checked.
--
BMO
Try it... You may find the ar5212 with openbsd HAL driver works.
Otherwise:
# rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-9.rpm
# yum -y install kmod-madwifi
The main difference is that the 3rd party drivers contain firmware ripped from Windows drivers. Not free to distrbute but you just want it to work, right?
> You'll note that their target machine for X11 2d desktop ...
...
> performance is a
Nope, the link merely notes that their reference machine for _testing_ an enhancement to X is a
RHEL 3 = red hat 9?
RHEL 4 = fedora 3
RHEL 5 = fedora 6
RHEL 6 = fedora ?
If I'm right, that last number will be a 9. If you install alpha now, you'll have all the latest stuff and a really long support life time.
All Fedora 3 packages work on RHEL4. RHEL4 packages work on Fedora 3.
They are the same thing. RHEL4 is just an updated version of Fedora 3.
If you installed Fedora 3, you can just set yum to update from RHEL4/CentOS4/ScientificLinux4 servers.