Fedora 9 Preview Cleared for Launch

According to a post made yesterday to the Fedora announce mailing list, a Fedora 9 preview has been cleared for launch. "This is a Preview release, it is fairly close to what the final product will be like. This is the most critical release for the Fedora community to use and test and report bugs on. This is the last major public release before the final GOLD Fedora 9 release on May 13th (we hope). [...] Live images, KDE Live images, CDs and DVD options are available. http://torrent.fedoraproject.org has a section marked 'F9-Preview.'"

Comments

Feature List

[Nos.]

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/9/FeatureList

Re:Differences

[zedlander]

Fedora vs. Ubuntu

Re:like it, but

[fyrie]

Most of that stuff is available in the livna repository. Standard procedure is to install the livna repo immediately and download the non free packages.

Re:Differences

[Phisbut]

I would find an RPM of something I wanted to install, it required me to first find and install another RPM, etc. Sometimes one of the dependant RPM's would not install, because I had a newer/older version for another program. Apt-get has worked flawlessly for me, and the HUGE pool of apps that just work has made it so I almost never have to search for .DEB files.

Comparing RPM to apt-get is apples to oranges. Either compare RPM to DEB, or yum to apt-get. I never had to bother with dependencies when using yum, just as you've never had to bother with dependencies using apt-get.

Re:SELinux is a pain in the ass.

[thule]

... thus the "continued work". Fedora has been trying to strike a balance and get rid of the separate 'strict' and 'targeted' by making better rules. It takes time, but I can tell you targeted works pretty good for me right now. It was easy for me to add an extended rule for an exception I needed. The 'continued work' is making good progress.

Re:Did the yum-based upgrade make it into the tag?

[the COW OF DOOM (tm)]

There was never any talk about yum-based upgrades. Upgrading a live system is total insanity.

You're probably thinking of PreUpgrade, which is like a yum-based upgrade but without the insanity.

See the interview here for more info:
http://www.redhatmagazine.com/2008/04/15/interview-fedora-developers-seth-vidal-and-will-woods/

Re:like it, but

[the COW OF DOOM (tm)]

Yeah. It'd be great, if it wasn't illegal.

Here's the thing: it's not solely a matter of principle. Fedora has to play by a harder set of rules than Ubuntu. Fedora is backed by a public company, based in the US, so they answer to US law and Red Hat stockholders. And under US law, CYA just isn't enough, especially when there's multi-billion-dollar global megacorps who will take any opportunity they can find to sue you into oblivion.

Everyone would dearly love to be able to include mp3 codecs and ffmpeg and all that non-Free stuff. But they can't. So Red Hat and Fedora keep fighting the good fight - lobbying against software patents, pushing for open standards - and still people give them shit because they have to click two places instead of one to get MP3 support.

Way to focus on the big problems, people.

Re:Differences

[proxima]

Comparing RPM to apt-get is apples to oranges. Either compare RPM to DEB, or yum to apt-get. I never had to bother with dependencies when using yum, just as you've never had to bother with dependencies using apt-get.

I completely agree. Since my distros of choice over the last 5 years have been Fedora and Debian/Ubuntu, I've had a fair bit of experience with both yum and apt-get. Yum, at least as of the Fedora 8 install on my desktop, is simply not as good (IMO) as apt-get in Debian or Ubuntu for two reasons:

1.) yum is slow, horribly horribly slow. I think it may have gotten a little better in Fedora 8, and I've heard that they're putting serious work into it. Hopefully Fedora 9 will be better, but it never ceases to amaze me how long it takes to do a "yum search" to look for a package compared to "apt-cache search".

2.) The package repositories for Ubuntu (which is derived from the huge repository from Debian) are larger and more complete, at least for the random software I tend to look for. Again, Fedora is gaining in this regard, the community-supported package setup is starting to rival Ubuntu's universe, making this a huge step up over the old RedHat 7/8/9 days compared to Debian at that time. When it comes to software outside of either repository, RPMs tend to be more common than debs, which is an advantage for Fedora.

So yum (and the standard underlying repositories) are behind in those respects compared to apt-get, but the difference is shrinking. In yum's defense, I think they implemented package signing as a default requirement before Debian did, but I could be wrong on that.

I've run Fedora on my desktop for a while, but Kubuntu on my laptop. I honestly don't know what I'll install on my desktop next. I usually skip every other release, and since I'm on FC 8, that means waiting until FC10. This might be good anyway; I'm a KDE user, and KDE 4.0 just doesn't look feature complete. Best to wait until KDE 4.1 polishes everything a bit more, perhaps. I'm debating whether to try out the latest Kubuntu on my laptop when it's released this month to try out KDE 4.0.

Re:Release Candidate?

[the COW OF DOOM (tm)]

Correct: RC builds are not announced or mirrored worldwide. They're candidate images for testers to work with. They are publically available, though - anyone who's interested in helping can be a tester.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA is a good place to start if you're interested in testing Fedora.

Otherwise, the next major public release is F9 final, scheduled for May 13.

That's a similarily, not a difference.

[SEMW]

Anyone have a link, or know off-hand, the major differences between this and the latest Ubuntu release? KDE 4, among other things. Both Kubuntu 8.04 RC and Fedora 9 Preview are available with KDE4.