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

Fedora 9 Not Ready

[nmb3000]

I dunno. I hear that Fedora 9 is really lacking in important functionality. Why would I want to install something so obviously half-baked like this?

With serious issues like this, obviously 2008 won't be The Year of the Linux Desktop (Really This Time, We Mean It).

Re:Differences

[zedlander]

Fedora vs. Ubuntu

Re:Differences

[QuantumRiff]

the Apt/RPM is a huge difference. I used to love Fedora, and (still) run RHEL at the office on our servers. RHEL is fine, as I don't play and experement and try new things on it, but Fedora got to be a real pain in the ass with RPM Dependancies. 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. I think the only change I had to do was add google's APT repository to Ubuntu, and it keeps picasa and google-earth up to date.

If the RPM system gets a huge makeover, I would probably play with Fedora again. It may have already been done, I switched to Ubuntu at 6.04.

like it, but

[thermian]

This issue of not having media codecs other then the free ones is a real deal breaker for me.

Yes I know, they aren't 'free as in freedom'. Sad, but true. However, when I install desktop linux I don't want to fart about trying to find media codecs. They should be there, in the install, or immediately available via an obvious link once installation is complete. It should be a one click and done experience, has to be really.

Yes I could find them myself, but I'm not really the problem, since I'm pretty much addicted to linux for everything but desktop. I'll remain a fan, and live in hope of a decent out of the box desktop experience.

No, the problem is the vast numbers of techno numpties who won't use linux as long as it has this glaring hole in its out of the box state.

Mark me as troll if you wish, but this is a serious issue that the purists don't want to confront. In spite of what they beleive, ogg is not enough...

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: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:like it, but

[techno-vampire]

The aforementionned person new to linux will get Ubuntu.

I've been using Fedora along with Windows for a number of years now. My sister has an older machine (800mhz) and Win2K was getting slower and slower, even with all the firewall, anti-virus and anti-spyware stuph. In fact, it was the anti-virus that was slowing it down more than anything else; the daily scans took forever and made it almost unresponsive. Then, she tried a Live CD of Ubuntu. In less than 15 minutes she knew it was for her. The next morning, she installed it. The first time it rebooted, it let her know she needed proprietary drivers for her nVidia Geoforce video card and got them. It's now her main OS, and Win2K is the Dark Side to her. I'm happy with Fedora, and will be moving from 8 to 9 when the time comes, but I'd never have suggested it to her. Fedora's a geeky, bleeding edge test bed of a distro, and all she wants or needs is something that Just Works. That's why there are so many Linux distros: different people need and/or want different things, and no matter what you want in the way of Linux, there's at least one distro that's right for you.

Re:like it, but

[Richard W.M. Jones]

The problem is that the desktop experience has become, thanks to the almighty Microsoft, (whose name we speak in hushed tones, lest they smite us with their stick of smiting), have defined the desktop as being a place where even a moron can get a decent experience with minimal work, or none, in some cases.

Last time I checked, Windows out of the box couldn't create PDF files, display DivX movies, open tarballs, can display but not edit DOC, PPT, can't display web pages properly, can't create ZIP files [maybe it can do this one now?] etc. It doesn't have a system where you can install one of 1000s of programs just with a few clicks from a menu (and for free). It doesn't have virtualization or a SQL database or any programming languages at all.

Rich.

what about youtube ? is it working ?

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

if it doesn't work tove may end up killing linus... and since she's 5 time finnish karate champion, that'll be pretty damn easy for her.

like he said: youtube no workee, wife no happy.

selinux

[Crispy Critters]

I really like selinux. The best part about it is this: Whenever something is broken, I uninstall selinux, and then whatever-it-is works again. I wouldn't know how to fix the system if I couldn't uninstall selinux.

(I am not denying that it is important or useful. I just can't understand how to make it work.)

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: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.