Fedora 9 (Sulphur) Released

BrianGKUAC writes "Fedora 9 has been released as of 10 AM Eastern Time this morning. Release notes can be found here. Some of the more interesting new features include a new package management system, which can be used as an alternative to pup and pirut, known as PackageKit. This release also includes GNOME 2.22 and/or KDE 4.0.3, and Firefox 3 beta 5. Overall, there are a lot of improvements worth looking at, and the Bittorrent seeds are already feeding the release fairly effectively."

Comments

Firsties?

[xmason]

Yes!

Not a good codename

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would any project choose a codename that brings to mind anal wind? It makes Fedora sound just as bad as the day after eating bean soup with anchovies in it.

Fedora 9 (Sulphur)

[wiredog]

Smells pretty shitty to me...

So

[sveard]

What smell is that? :p

Re:So

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry about that.

Re:So

[Anonymous Coward]

What smell? That's be the crapware which is Fedora 9. I've had great results with fedora from FC4-FC8. Suddenly though, Fedora 9 does not work on any of my systems where FC8 works wonderfully.

Fedora 9 is crap.

You forgot the most important feature...

[eck06]

- Uses seeding with openssl

PackageKit

[brejc8]

PackageKit is actually a just a tool which sits on top of yum and does not replace it. It does replace pup and pirut though.

See PackageKit site of the release notes.

Re:PackageKit

[tobiasly]

PackageKit is actually a just a tool which sits on top of yum and does not replace it.

Depends on your definition of yum I guess. It does/can replace yum, the command-line tool, but does not replace the yum database. The wording is misleading though.

Re:PackageKit

[Anonymous Coward]

This is one of the things that pisses me off about Linux. 50 tools to do the same - damn - job. I can't count the number of new users I've encountered who get confused on what they need to use or can't accomplish an objective simply because the information they were given was written for program X but they only now learned to use tool Y. Think of how frustrated they are when they finally learn to use tool X but then someone tells them, "oh. You should be using tool Z!"

Re:PackageKit

[Anonymous Coward]

This is one of the things that pisses me off about Linux.

Win!

Another angry Winshill. It's always nice to bait Microsoft marketing droids.

Re:PackageKit

[JohnBailey]

This is one of the things that pisses me off about Linux. 50 tools to do the same - damn - job. I can't count the number of new users I've encountered who get confused on what they need to use or can't accomplish an objective simply because the information they were given was written for program X but they only now learned to use tool Y. Think of how frustrated they are when they finally learn to use tool X but then someone tells them, "oh. You should be using tool Z!" Which is nothing in comparison to what happens when someone puts the TV remote back out of line with the edge of the table.

PackageKit does not replace yum

[Tester]

PackageKit is only a front-end over yum (or any other backend), it does not replace it.

Beta software in a production release?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you bundle beta software (Firefox 3 Beta 5) with a production OS?

Re:Beta software in a production release?

[mrslacker]

Yeah, why would you use RPM in a production OS?

I just love how failed post-installation scripts still result in a "successfully" installed package.

Re:Beta software in a production release?

[Nos.]

1. Fedora is not a production OS
2. FF3 is due out in the near future, so F9 will have the current release then, as opposed to the old version 2.

Re:Beta software in a production release?

[wizardforce]

Firefox 3 is set to be released in June, the next Fedora release will be much later, the same decision was made with Ubuntu Hardy which is a LTS release so it would make some sense to have the latest browser version as it's not too far from the actual release date for FF3. but assuming you don't like FF3, there is nothing stopping you from installing FF2 instead, your FF profile works fine on both anyway.

Re:Beta software in a production release?

[CastrTroy]

Why not error on the side of stability then, and ship Firefox 2. For everyone who really needs to have Firefox 3, they are free to install it themselves.

Re:Beta software in a production release?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Fedora is not a production OS

And yet, I use Fedora in every day life, as if it was a production OS. Fedora does contain a lot of bleeding-edge code, and I reinforce upon that matter by compiling software from svn repos and installing that software on it. Funny thing though, it never crashes.

Re:Beta software in a production release?

[ettlz]

Funny thing though, it never crashes.

You should tinker with the kernel features more. ;)

Re:Beta software in a production release?

[shentino]

Firefox...Sulphur... ...Yup, this release is going to bomb

Re:Beta software in a production release?

[RiotingPacifist]

Because FF3b5 is much more stable than FF2. plus as somebody else pointed out its not a production OS.

Re:Beta software in a production release?

[dotancohen]

Why not error on the side of stability then, and ship Firefox 2. For everyone who really needs to have Firefox 3, they are free to install it themselves. Because then they'd have to support it. In the case of LTS Ubuntu, that's 3 years, and Mozilla will not be supporting Fx2 for the next 3 years. Now was a really bad time to release an LTS, or at least, have Firefox as the included browser in an LTS. For similar reasons regarding KDE[3|4] Kubuntu 8.04 is not LTS.

Re:Beta software in a production release?

[init100]

the same decision was made with Ubuntu Hardy which is a LTS release

And if Red Hat follows their established pattern, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 will be based on Fedora 9.

Re:Beta software in a production release?

[CastrTroy]

But currently Firefox 3 is still in Beta, and now they will have to support that. Also, who's to say that Firefox 2 won't be supported in 3 years. Firefox 1.5 is still being supported. For that matter, who's to say that Mozilla will even be supporting Firefox 3 in 3 years?

Re:Beta software in a production release?

[jensend]

Mozilla stopped supporting Firefox 1.5 in May 2007- 7 months after 2.0 was released. I'd imagine support for the 2.0 branch may be a bit longer than that but it certainly wouldn't be more than a year. FF3 may not be supported in 3 years but by the time it isn't getting security updates from Mozilla Hardy Heron will be close to EOL anyway.

Re:Beta software in a production release?

[Captain Arr Morgan]

Still a bad idea, isn't there still a know bug that totally breaks the Firebug console? Hope no web developers are using it.

Re:Beta software in a production release?

[MSG]

While no plans have been announced, I've heard that basing EL 6 on Fedora 9 or even 10 is unlikely. Look for EL 6 to be based on Fedora 11 or 12.

It looks EL 5 will be enjoying a very long lifetime as the platform of choice for EL shops. I'm happy with that.

Re:Beta software in a production release?

[Anonymous Coward]

... otherwise they will be forced to gulp install a previous version! The horror!

Re:Beta software in a production release?

[cjb658]

Ubuntu and Fedora have update managers. Why not ship Firefox 3 through the update manager in June?

I immediately downgraded to FF2 when I installed Hardy for the same reason I always wait a while for new versions of it to mature: none of my extensions from FF2 work in FF3.

Re:Beta software in a production release?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is an obvious pun modded flamebait?

obviously one of the mods doesn't like puns...

Re:Beta software in a production release?

[mweather]

Disable the compatibility check in FF3. It'll make most extensions work. The only one I use that doesn't is del.icio.us, which has a beta for FF3 that works like a charm.

Re:Beta software in a production release?

[dotancohen]

But currently Firefox 3 is still in Beta, and now they will have to support that. Also, who's to say that Firefox 2 won't be supported in 3 years. Firefox 1.5 is still being supported. For that matter, who's to say that Mozilla will even be supporting Firefox 3 in 3 years? Betas getting upgraded to release versions is a security issue, thus a mandatory upgrade. Canonical will not have to support the beta Firefox any more than telling the customer to upgrade to the latest secure version and then dealing with whatever issue remains.

Re:Beta software in a production release?

[Quattro Vezina]

No, FC9 Beta was not a production OS.

FC9 final is a production OS.

Production OS != Enterprise OS.

Re:Beta software in a production release?

[smyrnensis]

Yeah, right. I had so many problems with FF3b5 in Hardy Heron that after a fortnight I chucked out the whole operating system and moved to FreeBSD. I wonder how many people have had problems with the Adobe flash plugin in Hardy and how's it working in F9.

Re:Beta software in a production release?

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox 3 is set to be released in June, the next Fedora release will be much later, the same decision was made with Ubuntu Hardy which is a LTS release so it would make some sense to have the latest browser version as it's not too far from the actual release date for FF3. but assuming you don't like FF3, there is nothing stopping you from installing FF2 instead, your FF profile works fine on both anyway. I just installed Fedora 9 and Firefox 3 Beta 5 keeps on crushing. What in this world made them bundle beta software instead stable versions? I removed it, but Firefox 2 needs some F8 libs, so... I'm screwed.

PackageKit

[Anonymous Coward]

Does not replace yum.

Seed, damn you!

[bignetbuy]

download pegged at 892KBps. An hour to snatch the DVD ISO!

SEED, you bums! SEED!

Re:Seed, damn you!

[Dog-Cow]

Some Debian guy removed the seed code so Red Hat would be slower!

Re:Seed, damn you!

[Anonymous Coward]

(Yes, I realize the above post was humor.)

Before I got off of dial-up a year and a half ago, I was proud of my phone connection remaining uninterrupted for an entire night, and for having downloaded a full 100MB while I slept, at anywhere from 3 to 5 KB/s. Be grateful. :P

Re:Seed, damn you!

[cscorley]

I actually snatched the torrent out of the /torrents directory on the website last night and was one of the first to become seeders this morning when it went live. Enjoy your 30kBps. :p

Re:Seed, damn you!

[Shakrai]

Enjoy your 30kBps. :p

I'm getting about 2.5MBits (213kBps) on my DSL at home. Once I got it there I'm gonna transfer it to my T-1 at work and seed it at both locations. Will be tossing 1.5MBits + 768KBits at it for the foreseeable future.

Re:Seed, damn you!

[HolyCrapSCOsux]

I'm only getting 15kB/s on the x86_64 version. Direct download is faster wtf
What tracker(s) are you using?

Re:Seed, damn you!

[Yenya]

Try http://ftp.linux.cz/pub/linux/fedora-releases/9/ (especially if you are in europe). We still have some free bandwidth.

Re:Seed, damn you!

[LilGuy]

I'm actually downloading at a full 1.5 megabytes/sec. Seems the speed issues have disappeared.

Re:Seed, damn you!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's dial-up for you.

Re:Seed, damn you!

[Shakrai]

721 seeders to 5,211 leechers on the 32bit version at the moment. 426 seeders to 2,564 leechers on the 64 bit version. I'm seeding both of them -- would have thought the 64 bit version would be more popular but there you go.....

Re:Seed, damn you!

[L4t3r4lu5]

How's hardware support for 64bit? Last time I used it (FC6), half of the drivers were rubbish.

I'd be more than happy with the 64bit version (in fact, happier) if they've got a decent range of hardware supported.

Re:Seed, damn you!

[Shakrai]

I've never had an issue with it but I'm probably the wrong one to ask -- I primarily use it as a server so I'm not overly worried about graphic/sound cards and other devices. As long as the console and network cards work I'm happy.

Now why did I ...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is sure to be a stinker of a release...

Sorry couldn't resist...

*waits for -1 mod points*

Re:Now why did I ...

[ajs318]

Sulphur itself, in its elemental state as flowers of sulphur, is actually odourless.

However, most sulphur compounds are very smelly indeed. Thioethanol (used in stink bombs) is reckoned to be the smelliest substance in the world.

Oh, and props to them for using the "old-fashioned" spelling!

Re:Now why did I ...

[dotancohen]

The stinkiest stuff in the world is apparently some material called "what me?" developed by the US or the French in WWII to spray on captured German officers. The idea is that they would stink so bad that their troops would be demoralized. Of course, the French got it on themselves 1 time out of 3, so the substance was not widely used. Of course, I'm quoting from memory and too lazy to google, so I could be all mistaken. Verify before quoting this.

Re:Now why did I ...

[lattyware]

Old-fashioned? You mean English as opposed to American, right? (Correct as opposed to wrong.)

Re:Now why did I ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Old-fashioned? You mean English as opposed to American, right? (Correct as opposed to wrong.)

And English came from where? Language evolves. You're obviously fluent in the obsolete dialect, oh little islander.

Re:Now why did I ...

[cerelib]

Whether you are American or not, I hope you understand the historical context. British English is a way people used to speak in the United States. Therefore, it is not out of the question for an American to call British English "old-fashioned". Furthermore,

"IUPAC adopted the spelling 'sulfur' in 1990, as did the Royal Society of Chemistry Nomenclature Committee in 1992 and the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority for England and Wales recommended its use in 2000." [wikipedia from cited sources]. So saying that "sulfur" is wrong is a very close-minded provincial thing to say.

Re:Now why did I ...

[LizardKing]

Actually, for the most part US English retains the older spellings, not British English. That said, dictionaries and the codification of languages was still a novelty until the mid-nineteenth century so the differences in spelling can be pretty arbitrary.

Konsole disimproving?

[BDaniels]

I'm a sysadmin and use KDE all day long, with Konsole as my terminal. I tried the preview release of Fedora 9 and found
that the new Konsole - has less features!

The buttons for quickly closing/opening a tab are gone. Right-clicking on tabs is gone. The ability to send input to all tabs
is completely gone, not even accessible through menus.

These are features I use every day while working on servers. KDE4 adds a lot of eyecandy (and a Vista-style 'start menu' - ick),
but why remove useful functionality?

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[Anonymous Coward]

Too lazy to log in at the moment but in the process of getting fedora 9.... If what you say is right I'm not going to plsd wrt to konsole. I see a downgrade in my future. Konsole is (was?) the best terminal/console app and those features simplified my use of it. While I use gnome I'd always use konsole with it as the gnome terminal truly sucked big time.

Double ugh...

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[icydog]

IIRC, KDE said that 4.1 will have feature parity with 3.5. 4.0 is still a work-in-progress. I do agree though, I use konsole all the time and it's rather unpleasant right now. 4.0 is also missing a bunch of other basic stuff, like dragging between the two panes (files and the folder tree) in Konqueror.

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[SlashdotOgre]

"I'm a sysadmin and use KDE all day long, with Konsole as my terminal. I tried the preview release of Fedora 9 and found
that the new Konsole - has less features!"

They must be going for the Gnome look...

All kidding aside, I'm very surprised they went with KDE4. I've been playing around with it on Gentoo for several months now, and I could understand making it an option, but to not provide KDE3 out of the box at all (http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f9/en_US/sn-Desktop.html#sn-KDE) is shocking. I thought even the KDE folks were recommending waiting until 4.1. Oh well, Fedora always likes the latest and greatest.

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[93 Escort Wagon]

I'm a sysadmin and use KDE all day long... Oh, come on, we're supposed to believe THAT? If you were a REAL sysadmin, you'd use twm at most! And you wouldn't ADMIT to having X11 installed at all! You'd talk about how console mode lets you do everything faster, and how bloated X11 is compared to X10...

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[Anonymous Coward]

To be more like Vista. Seriously that's the reason it's so hated here, the DRM isn't a real issue, the real issue is that the UI is just far less powerfull than its predecessor for the sake of simplicity.

Like it or hate it that's the way UIs are going right now... but I'm with you: hate it.

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[CastrTroy]

I'm surprised they didn't offer both as an option. Mandriva 2008.1 has KDE3 by default, and an optional KDE4 install. You can install both, and select which one you want from the login screen. It's way too early to force KDE4 on everyone. A lot of features are still missing, and it's still pretty unstable. For the Record Mandriva 2009, plans to be KDE4 only. Hopefully KDE4 will be more mature by then.

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[Peter H.S.]

These are features I use every day while working on servers. KDE4 adds a lot of eyecandy (and a Vista-style 'start menu' - ick),
but why remove useful functionality? Lots of KDE 3.5 features hasn't made it into 4.0 KDE yet. KDE 4.0 is bleeding edge just like Fedora 9 is.

--
Regards

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[RiotingPacifist]

I felt KDE4.0 was very vista-like :( forunatly i have been told that by there are no objections to patching it to allow it to be kde3.5 like, personally id rather stick with kde3.5+compiz, but some of the backend changes are fairly impressive, so by the time somebody offers kde4 that looks like kde3 ill be happy to switch.

I think fedora switched to KDE4 early hopefully to give it enough users that people will start developing on its stong base to get it to feature parity with kde3.5 (in terms of little tweaks people have anyway) quicker.

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[AtomicX]

Hello - as the maintainer of Konsole I'll explain what is going on. I'll address specific points first:

> The buttons for quickly closing/opening a tab are gone.

Konsole in KDE 4.0 is orientated more around keyboard shortcuts - which I think makes sense in a terminal. (Ctrl+Shift+N creates a new tab, Ctrl+Shift+W closes the current one, although I would recommend using the normal Ctrl+D combination to exit the shell)

Enough people complained (via bugs.kde.org) that I added the 'New Tab' button back in as an option in KDE 4.1. Plus there are Firefox-esqueue close buttons on tabs and support for re-arranging tabs by drag and drop or moving tabs between windows.

> The ability to send input to all tabs is completely gone

It didn't work at the time of the 4.0 release so it got cut. It has been reimplemented in KDE 4.1 with more flexibility in response to various RFE bug reports:

http://commit-digest.org/issues/2008-04-13/files/konsole-copy-input-to.png

It is not the case the Konsole in KDE 4.0 has 'less features' in total. The menus may look far emptier but there is actually not very much missing. In fact it has quite a few additions, mostly fulfilling a large backlog of feature requests in bugs.kde.org, which I think are very useful:

* The terminal setup UI was replaced with one which is simpler but also more flexible
* Split-view mode
* Incremental search
* Key binding editor
* Improved performance, especially scrolling in large windows

In any case, if you have a complaint then please report it at http://bugs.kde.org/ - I am much more likely to read about it there than on Slashdot. Plus it also allows users to vote on the issues most important to them which is helpful from my perspective trying to allocate the limited spare time I have.

Finally, as someone who followed KDE development discussion quite closely over the last two years, it is inaccurate to say that KDE is attempting to "copy" Windows Vista or is in some large measure "inspired" by it. The menu for example was originally developed by OpenSuSE for KDE 3 - a long time before Vista was released, based on openSuSE's own research. Evidence of this can be found in some notably different design decisions compared with Vista's menu. For example, both the Gnome SLED menu and KDE's "Kickoff" have a search facility but it is located at the top of the menu rather than the button because users couldn't find it when it was placed at the bottom.

I think the view that KDE is trying to "clone" Windows, if not trolling, boils down to the use of black on the bar at the bottom of the screen. I am not involved with that part of KDE but I understand that the look of it is quite likely to change somewhat for KDE 4.1.

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[dfgchgfxrjtdhgh.jjhv]

fedora is always bleeding edge. it's a testing ground for redhat. if you don't like that, go for a more stable distro.

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[Peter H.S.]

All kidding aside, I'm very surprised they went with KDE4. I've been playing around with it on Gentoo for several months now, and I could understand making it an option, but to not provide KDE3 out of the box at all (http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f9/en_US/sn-Desktop.html#sn-KDE) is shocking. I thought even the KDE folks were recommending waiting until 4.1. Oh well, Fedora always likes the latest and greatest. You got it the wrong way around, why should a distro like Fedora release make a release with KDE 3.5.x when KDE 4.0.3 is available. If one needs a stable KDE and OS, stay with Fedora 8. It will be supported for quite some time yet.

Some may think that Fedora moves too fast, but a lot of people really, really wants to work with the latest and most shiniest toys, even if they are somewhat less stable.

--
Regards

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[chill]

Thank you for the clarifying post and your work on Konsole.

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why dont you give Mrxvt/Materm a spin? I have been using since I was forced to use Gnome and wanted to have all the features of Konsole and found it to be more. Do check out examples of mrxvtrc on the internet - there's a lot you can do with it! P.S. its not been updated for a while, but it works very, very nicely and it is much lighter on resources than Konsole.

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[BDaniels]

Many thanks for the response.

>Konsole in KDE 4.0 is orientated more around keyboard shortcuts - which I think makes sense in a terminal.

The keyboard shortcuts are welcome. I use the button for convenient access to the 'Shell at Bookmark' list, where all my servers live.

Glad to hear that the missing bits are being added back in. I live in Konsole, so it felt like I was suddenly using a Swiss Army
knife with several blades missing. I'll be holding off on F9 until 4.1 is out.

This was my first look at F9, so no bugs logged yet. :-) It's always a bit awkward logging a 'preference' bug i.e. "I don't like new feature X, make it work like it did before..."

I am a little surprised that Fedora went with 4.0 as the only option.

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a sysadmin and use KDE all day long... Oh, come on, we're supposed to believe THAT? If you were a REAL sysadmin, you'd use twm at most! And you wouldn't ADMIT to having X11 installed at all! You'd talk about how console mode lets you do everything faster, and how bloated X11 is compared to X10... Pfft! I dial into my servers from random pay phones at least 20 miles away from any place I normally would go and use a whistle I got in a Captain Crunch box to send commands.

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[value_added]

They must be going for the Gnome look...

The day is still young, but that gets my vote for Quote of the Day.

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[Anonymous Coward]

while i'm not a huge fan of the new app menu, it is a port to qt4 from the app menu designed by Novell for kde3 which is way older than windows vista...

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[value_added]

Improved performance, especially scrolling in large windows

Not sure what value of large you're using, but FWIW, my own opinion is that any terminal application that has a problem scrolling is a non-starter for anything non-trivial.

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've not downloaded the new version yet, but I can guarantee 100% that Konsole definitely does not have less features.

It may however have fewer.

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[rdieter]

Many thanks for the response.
I am a little surprised that Fedora went with 4.0 as the only option. Short version: it would be a PITA.

Longer version:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/KDE/KDE4FAQ

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[Atti K.]

That's why I'm waiting for OpenSuse 11.

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[MmmmAqua]

Damn, where is the "+1, Great Sig" mod option when you need it? A flower for your sweetie would also have been acceptable.

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it bothers you so much, just build an alternative (3.5.9 or 4.1) from source.

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[Anonymous Coward]

thx

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[Anonymous Coward]

I like mrxvt also, it's very powerful yet light. The one big thing it's missing is Unicode support. Hopefully it will get that soon.

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[glitch23]

I'm a sysadmin and use KDE all day long, with Konsole as my terminal. I tried the preview release of Fedora 9 and found that the new Konsole - has less features!

The buttons for quickly closing/opening a tab are gone. Right-clicking on tabs is gone. The ability to send input to all tabs is completely gone, not even accessible through menus.

These are features I use every day while working on servers. KDE4 adds a lot of eyecandy (and a Vista-style 'start menu' - ick), but why remove useful functionality?

They must have hired some pidgin developers.

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[Khaed]

I tried the preview release of Fedora 9 and found that the new Konsole - has less features!

They must have picked up some Gnome developers!

-- Khaed, who is still looking for the preferences in Gnome Screensaver.

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[TihSon]

It is a rare treat to be able to thank a maintainer directly, so thank you for the clarification, and thank you very much for you effort.

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well in ah actual sysadmin and i use kde4 on my main box

Its way more easy to access multiple servers with a confortable DM than with a console and screen

Sorry to be in no agreement with u

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[syousef]

Typical and unfortunate dismissive attitude here when it comes to user feedback.

So a user complains about missing features. You respond that they're accessible from shortcuts??? WHAT? Why would the menu items be removed? In fact the only good reason for removing (rather than enhancing or keeping) features in a new release is that they caused the vast majority of users more problems than they were worth and there was no easy way to keep the workaround and fix those problems.

I'm tired of getting hooked on good software - "free" open source, paid proprietary, it doesn't matter - only to have someone come along and take away features I've come to rely on and thought were fantastic. I'm sick and tired of developers who don't use the software in the same way as the end user (or some subset of end users) insisting they know better.

Next the user attacks the look of feel as being too similar to an OS he clearly dislikes and you half accuse him of trolling and half dismiss his concerns as not related to your work. Oh sure you gave him somewhere to report his issues, but you also left him with the impression he'd be ignored unless lots of others had the same complaint.

Have some pride in your project (not just the snippet you work on), stop cutting features, and learn to take on criticism without being defensive! This guy was giving you gold. You've responded with something akin to "waiter, there's a turd in my soup".

By the way I don't know the GP at all.

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[zoward]

Thank you, both for your response and your work on Konsole.

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[kramulous]

Just throwing a little more weight behind the thanks.

Marketing 101

[AssTard]

Rule 38: Don't nickname your product after something really stinky.

Re:Marketing 101

[creepynut]

"AssTard", you make an excellent point! Thank you for your input!

Re:Marketing 101

[flu1d]

I was wondering what they were trying to say with the Sulphur nickname. It stinks? If mixed with the right elements it blows up?

Re:Marketing 101

[howardd21]

How ironic... BTW - that may be the biggest laugh I ever had on /., which usually vexes me with its insanity and trolls.

Re:Marketing 101

[Anonymous Coward]

"AssTard", you make an excellent point! Thank you for your input! Wouldn't it be more appropriate to thank AssTard for his output?

Re:Marketing 101

[TBerben]

Don't you mean 'output'?

Re:Marketing 101

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you mean 'output'? No he means 'output'.

Re:Marketing 101

[kramulous]

Yeah, cause I'd hate to think AssTard could be dismissed as a creepynut.

preupgrade

[gderf]

preupgrade also 'works' if you want to skip the usual download iso, burn image to DVD, upgrade from DVD scheme.

I say 'works' because mine is in process and not completed yet. So I don't know if I'll have a Fedora 9 box when it's done, or a mangled Fedora 8 box.

Re:preupgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

I think in either case you have a mangled box. :P

Re:preupgrade

[cbart387]

If you don't mind, please say how the preupgrade turned out. I have Fedora 8 on my machine and will likely be upgrading it in the next couple weeks. It would be nice to try out preuprade (if it seems to work).

Re:preupgrade

[Swave An deBwoner]

My attempts at preupgrade (using first the 0.9.3-2 version and then the corrected 0.9.3-3 version) were long, drawn-out failures. Using 0.9.3-3, there were some 20 or so files that couldn't be found on "the server"; turned out that they were available in "Everything" but that preupgrade wasn't looking there, so I had to manually fix each and every one of these as they turned up (and no option to skip obviously unneeded files, though that's more likely due to the extreme intertwining of dependencies in the release trees). After that, all went well until I ran out of space in /var and the upgrade blew up. Making a symbolic link from /var/cache to someplace with more room was futile because preupgrade (or perhaps anaconda) doesn't look there, unlike yum itself which does. Finally I canned the whole thing, burned a DVD with the F9 iso, and booted from it to do my upgrade. I recommend that you do the same if you value your time and/or sanity.

Hope my issues with Fedora are solved

[bogaboga]

I will recount my I had trouble with the last Fedora Distro.

I bought myself a second hand Samsung ML-2510 printer that Samsung touted as "supported" under some Linux kernel version and later.

I connect power cables, power it up and connect it via USB expecting some prompt but nothing! I check....nothing!

I attempt to use the included driver CD-ROM, so I load it, and nothing happens. This is as disturbing as it is amazing in this USB 2.0 world. Not being timid, I fire up the terminal, navigate to /mnt as suggested by Samsung and I see nothing in there! I note that Samsung might have made a mistake so I navigate to the actual device and there, I see some files. I follow the directions as if I were at /mnt earlier suggested by Samsung and the system fires up some "error 2. Unexpected end of command."

Not really being a Linux newbie, I fix that error and the system then complains of missing SANE, Ghostscript and CUPS packages. I install two of them and on trying again, the system complains of a wrong SANE version.

I then do what I will call an update via YUM to install the latest SANE then I try again. I succeed this time but my printer, which is still powered and connected, cannot be found on any usb ports! Restarting the system did not help at all!

What bothers me are the Linux zealots who think Fedora and Linux are doing wonders in today's world. If I were working on that "other" platform, I would not need any software downloads whatsoever, and the printer would be churning out print work in less than 12 seconds.

Guys, it's [still] pathetic in the Linux world and progress is very very slow. As usual, people are going to blame the distro in question as if that helps mitigate the problem Linux faces.

My verdict on the released Fedora will be out by the end of this week. I hope I will be [pleasantly] surprised.

Re:Hope my issues with Fedora are solved

[Anonymous Coward]

linux has come a long way, the time you spent trying to install the printer, i would spent twice as much compiling the linux kernel to get cdrom support and xfree86, i don't miss the old days and i'm under 30

Re:Hope my issues with Fedora are solved

[Anonymous Coward]

I have the same printer. You got off easy, believe me. When I tried to use the Samsung software, it changed all the permissions of my root partition, and I had to re-install. I had followed the instructions, too.

What I did the SECOND time is, I threw away the Samsung disk and went into the printer management tool. I added a new printer, but instead of a 2510, I used one of the older ones; a 2250, I think. That worked perfectly, and I was able to use the printer without further incident.

This one is Samsung's fault, not Fedora's. Be fair.

Re:Hope my issues with Fedora are solved

[Otter]

I have the same printer (as you say, it's touted for having good Linux support) and followed the instructions in a Gentoo forum thread to ignore the driver CD and just use CUPS. That worked perfectly, FWIW. (Of course, getting it supported by my Mac took maybe 5 seconds, but so it goes...)

Re:Hope my issues with Fedora are solved

[LnxRocks]

Check here http://openprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=Samsung-2510

also, do an lsusb to ensure the printer appears

Re:Hope my issues with Fedora are solved

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you buy a second hand printer from a company that makes TVs then blame Linux for your troubles. Do you blame your doctor when your car dies?

Re:Hope my issues with Fedora are solved

[Peter H.S.]

I will recount my I had trouble with the last Fedora Distro.
  I bought myself a second hand Samsung ML-2510 printer that Samsung touted as "supported" under some Linux kernel version and later. You are not the only person that seems to have trouble with the binary drivers, look here:
http://www.openprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=Samsung-ML-2510_parallel_with_Samsung_PPD
http://www.openprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=Samsung-ML-2510

There seems to be some workaround though, so it should work.

Anyway, http://www.openprinting.org/ is a good place to start regarding printing support.

--
Regards

Re:Hope my issues with Fedora are solved

[X0563511]

Your Mac uses CUPS. Pop open your Mac and go to http://localhost:631/ and you will see.

Re:Hope my issues with Fedora are solved

[flyingfsck]

Yeah well, it is Fedora - what did you expect? If you want an easy to use Linux, then Fedora should be close to the bottom of the list, between Gentoo and Slackware.

Re:Hope my issues with Fedora are solved

[FranTaylor]

My wife is jamming away just fine on my Fedora laptop and she is no developer. She has been a Mac user forever and she just picked up my laptop and starting using it instantly. Now she has it all tricked out the way she likes it. She actually likes it better than her Mac except for the lack of Garage Band and iTunes.

Re:Hope my issues with Fedora are solved

[Anonymous Coward]

Major Security Hole In Samsung Linux Drivers

Samsung printers go as well with Linux as Lexmark ones. Get an HP if you want some proper support.

Re:Hope my issues with Fedora are solved

[Anonymous Coward]

Your printer is broken. Complain to samsung for misleading you. All the hardware I ever plugged into my linux computer worked out of the box including a USB Keyboard/Mouse, Two cammeras, one scanner, one printer and one phone. It is not 1995 anymore.

Re:Hope my issues with Fedora are solved

[techno-vampire]

Guys, it's [still] pathetic in the Linux world and progress is very very slow.

I see: you had trouble installing a printer that came with wrong instructions and an install CD that didn't work the way it should so Linux itself is bad. Has it occurred to you that the OEM may have given you the wrong instructions, or possibly instructions that only work for some other distro? Nah, it couldn't be...

Beta XORG as well

[fyrie]

I can live with the beta Firefox, but the fact that they are using a beta XORG has put a kink in my plans to upgrade to F9 because NVidia doesn't have drivers ready. I'm anxiously awaiting this situation to be resolved. In the meantime I'll stick with F8 which is very stable at the moment.

Re:Beta XORG as well

[Anonymous Coward]

Check here: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=9959d4806fa0925ec3b511c7d038fcb8&t=111460

and download the 173.08 with experimental support for xorg-server 1.4.99.901

Re:Beta XORG as well

[tuffy]

Beta NVidia drivers are available for the beta x.org server. There's also the Nouveau drivers, which might be good enough for 2D performance.

Re:Beta XORG as well

[mauriatm]

Check here: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=9959d4806fa0925ec3b511c7d038fcb8&t=111460 and download the 173.08 with experimental support for xorg-server 1.4.99.901

Sorry but those have been available for a month now and for the most part they don't do much. If you follow those instructions you'll just get a Nvidia 2D driver. The Livna packagers have not pushed the Nvidia driver out of the development repository also.

Basically Nvidia Accelerated 3D will have to wait (compiz,etc.).

Re:Beta XORG as well

[Brebs]

For nvidia, downgrade xorg.

Re:Beta XORG as well

[rainhill]

links on that page seem to not work;

here instead http://ftp.freshrpms.net/pub/freshrpms/fedora/linux/9/nvidia-x11-drv/

Re:Beta XORG as well

[herk]

I think these are Fedora 8 rpms, note the fc8 in the filenames. Also the versions seem to match the nvidia driver that doesn't work with the xorg in Fedora 9.

Anyone test out the Kernel Based Mode Setting yet?

[BrookHarty]

This was the feature I was waiting for, was hoping to hear more about it when Fedora 9 was released.

The article (or snippit) says Fedora 9 has kernel based mode setting..

http://www.osnews.com/story/19661/A_Preview_of_Kernel-Based_Mode-Setting

Anyone test it yet?

Oh no, it's getting better!

[bogaboga]

My best feature is the slider to change font size "in real time". You move the slider and see the effects immediately. I love this. Your issue will be addressed in KDE 4.1, so be patient. In the meantime, submit those bug reports. KDE unlike the other environment, does not suck big time.

Re:Oh no, it's getting better!

[Niten]

KDE unlike the other environment, does not suck big time.

It is a sad fact of life on Slashdot, that thousands of moderators use up all their mod points without having the chance to righteously nail someone for a blatant "Troll" or "Flamebait" comment. How generous of you to sacrifice yourself for their benefit, so that at least a few of these moderators, when their points are finally spent, will be able to look back upon it all, breathe a deep sigh of satisfaction, and reflect, "I've used my time here wisely."

Comes with OpenJDK and Netbeans too

[njcoder]

Fedora 9 is also one of the first linux distributions (along with Ubuntu) to include OpenJDK. Fedora also includes Netbeans.

They moved from IcedTea, which was based on the upcoming java7 to the stable java6 release. Looks like some of the stuff in IncedTea made it into OpenJDK 6.

Re:Comes with OpenJDK and Netbeans too

[Anonymous Coward]

It comes with Emacs and VI too. Who really cares about another editor (NetBeans).

Re:Comes with OpenJDK and Netbeans too

[njcoder]

It comes with Emacs and VI too. Who really cares about another editor (NetBeans). People that like things like integrated debugers and profiles, to name a couple of benefits. There's a big difference between an IDE and an editor.

Re:Comes with OpenJDK and Netbeans too

[jrumney]

I don't know about vi, but Emacs has come with debugger integration since 1988.

Re:Comes with OpenJDK and Netbeans too

[marnues]

As for as I'm concerned, VI and Emacs ARE IDEs.

Building custom spins...

[flabbergasted]

What I would really like to be able to do is to build my own custom spin of Fedora 9 from within my Fedora 8 setup. It's seems wasteful to have to install a new distribution before I can build a custom spin of it. There doesn't seem to be a reason that they couldn't publish sufficient updates to 8 to allow this to work. Basically, it should only require installing new comps files and anaconda packages on 8 with maybe updates to Revisor. Everything else gets pulled off of the internet.

Re:Building custom spins...

[equivocal]

It was like that way back when I had to install RH9 in order to build updated RH9 installation discs.

Respins, an excellent concept, have been destroyed by the underlying packaging tools (yum, looking at you) user to generate them. They've been afflicted by "MyComputer"ism where they have absolutely zero platform independence (must run on the exact arch and OS that is being respun) and require root to run (even when all the /etc and /var paths have been overridden by options).

And since FC4, Fedora has had the additional feature of being incapable of using the install media after installation. So you gotta install everything you want on the first shot.

Re:Building custom spins...

[hawaiian717]

You should be able to respin on other platforms. Running Fedora 8 on i386, Revisor gives me the option of building Fedora 6, 7, or 8, CentOS 5, or Rawhide media, for i386, x86_64, or PPC. It actually defaults to Fedora 7 i386.

Not that it actually works as sometime in the past month or so, something broke, but that's another issue entirely.

Not Fedora's Fault

[FranTaylor]

It is not Fedora's fault that Samsung has such crappy driver support.

You never even mentioned if you tried another distribution. Did you? Did you determine whether it's a Fedora issue or a CUPS issue? Did you file bug reports?

Anyone who complains about Linux problems but does not fill out bug reports is just an asshat as far as I am concerned. You are willing to leech from the efforts of others but you are not willing to make a contribution when the opportunity is right in front of you. Blah.

This particular printer was also advertised as having OSX driver support, but the driver is not available in the US unless you lie to their web site and tell them you are from Australia. Tell Samsung to get off their butts and make sure their printers work right in Linux AND OSX.

Re:Not Fedora's Fault

[dedazo]

So what you're saying is that this OS is essentially worthless for normal users. Correct? And I suppose that's fine. Let's just not pretend Joe Windows can install this and be on his way, like he would with something like Ubuntu or Xandros.

So what exactly is the point of Fedora then? To serve as a corporate desktop for companies that also use RHEL? As a toy for techies? Some sort of test bed for new RedHat technologies?

Re:Not Fedora's Fault

[init100]

Anyone who complains about Linux problems but does not fill out bug reports is just an asshat as far as I am concerned. You are willing to leech from the efforts of others but you are not willing to make a contribution when the opportunity is right in front of you. Blah.

Especially since writing a bug report isn't exactly hard. It does not involve coding, just describing in plain text what hardware you have, what you did and what happened (and possibly how you expected it to work).

Of course, Joe Average may be too lazy to do even that, and instead ventures onto some forum to bitch and moan about how much the distro, or Linux, sucks.

Re:Not Fedora's Fault

[mrbanzai]

So what you're saying is that this OS is essentially worthless for normal users. Correct? And I suppose that's fine. Let's just not pretend Joe Windows can install this and be on his way, like he would with something like Ubuntu or Xandros.

The same issue would have been encountered with Ubuntu and Xandros. The grandparent attempted to use the provided Samsung drivers, which do not function correctly in Linux. CUPS happens to have a functioning driver, but you have to configure it for a different printer model for it to work.

Fedora has functioned wonderfully as an OS for normal users, my grandparents included. There are always some usability issues when compared to Windows, but those are generally to be attributed to driver support more than distribution-specific implementations. Ubuntu has some simple interfaces, but I do get tired of this assumption that it is a perfect Linux distribution with regard to "Joe Windows".

Re:Not Fedora's Fault

[FranTaylor]

Who are you kidding? I have half a dozen random junk PCs, x86, x86_64, PPC, and Fedora installs on all of them without issue.

Anyone can fill out a bug report, even normal users. No programming skills are necessary.

Yes, yes, yes. And more too. Fedora is not for everyone and it makes no claim to that. I run Fedora on my laptop because it has better hardware support for that particular model than Ubuntu. I run it on my desktop because I need it for the software I work with. I run it on my server because all the server packages are already configured just the way I like them. I run it in general because I really like SELinux and Fedora is where SELinux development is happening.

Re:Not Fedora's Fault

[martin_b1sh0p]

This has nothing to do with Fedora. My mother in law got a new computer with Vista on it. Guess what? Her nice Lexmark all-in-one printer/fax/copier/scanner stopped working (worked fine with XP for years). Go to the Lexmark website and sure enough, her trusty all-in-one does not work with Vista and Lexmark has no intentions of making Vista drivers for it. So we had to go out and buy her a new all-in-one.

At least with Linux the GP was able to use some "other" drivers (in this case CUPS) and didn't have to go out and buy a whole new printer.

Re:Not Fedora's Fault

[dedazo]

I know it would be an issue with any distro. I know that there is hardware that works and hardware that doesn't. That's true even for Windows.

My comment was really aimed at the GP's assertion that anyone who doesn't fill out bug reports is an asshat, and is therefore leeching the valuable work of others. You either give away your valuable work and face the fact that not everyone is going to know or even want to file your bug reports, or you freaking charge for it. Either way, calling potential users "asshats" is not exactly the smartest thing to do. The first time I did it nine years ago with RH 5.x when I couldn't get it to work with an Ultra ATA controller. I found something that started along the lines of "if you were stupid enough to connect your CD-ROM to the controller..." Unfortunately things have not changed much in the intervening years. And this was a document recommended by the RH website. I've never seen a Microsoft KB article or an IBM reference doc that calls me stupid.

Is this common or widespread? No. But it shouldn't even exist.

The communities that form around the large distros are extremely helpful. They are also afflicted by asshats who are convinced everyone should be as clever and hard-working as they are. This attitude does absolutely nothing for the acceptance of Linux among normal consumers.

In the end, the user does not care if the source of the problem is RedHat, Samsung or the troll under the bridge. They just want their hardware to work.

Re:Not Fedora's Fault

[Jay L]

Anyone who complains about Linux problems but does not fill out bug reports is just an asshat as far as I am concerned

Clearly, you have never actually tried practicing what you preach.

Last summer, I decided to start being a Proper Open Source Netizen. Whenever I ran into a problem with open source code, I'd go file a proper bug report, including a fail case whenever possible. Unfortunately, it turns out that there's an infinite regression there; in order to properly troubleshoot a bug in one package, you're going to need a troubleshooting tool. That tool, of course, will have a bug, as will the browser you're using to find the tool, the build script for the tool, the editor you use to edit the build script, the compiler the editor is built upon, and so on.

After a few days of that, I got so frustrated that I decided to start blogging about it. I even registered a domain for that blog: nothingeverworks.com. According to WHOIS, I did that on September 3, 2007.

It is now May 13, 2008, and I have yet to put a web site there. You see, it turns out that there was a bug in the blogging software, and so I tried filing a bug, but then the mail server...

Re:Not Fedora's Fault

[drunkahol]

Stop stop STOP

It's every person's right to do whatever they want (laws of the land not withstanding).

If a user is not inclined to submit bug reports - fine. To call them an asshat for not doing so is poor at the VERY least.

The vast majority of society are sheep. We will generally follow each other without complaint.

The Linux community is not just made up of developers and testers. There are also a huge amount of USERS. These strange beasts merely USE systems and actually expect them to work. Shock horror. As someone who actively submits bug reports (although not as much recently I have to admit), I do not have the right to criticise anyone else for not joining in the community and putting in effort like I do. The development is not carried out solely by unpaid coders doing things for their own enjoyment any more. Corporate money is ploughed into Linux at every stage.

Criticism should not be taken as an attack. It should all be taken constructively. That's part of how the community has to work. If there is a problem somewhere in the OS/distro/application, then that problem should be looked into - regardless of whether the user managed to submit a bug report.

In short - stop whining about non-contributory users. They outnumber you, me, the developers, the testers, the artists, the translators etc by a huge margin. They're not going to convert to bug submitting do-gooders that you think we should all be. Telling them that they're all asshats - way to go. We'll grow the user base that way!

Cheers

Duncan

Re:Not Fedora's Fault

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not Fedora's fault that Samsung has such crappy driver support.

You never even mentioned if you tried another distribution. Did you? Did you determine whether it's a Fedora issue or a CUPS issue? Did you file bug reports?

Anyone who complains about Linux problems but does not fill out bug reports is just an asshat as far as I am concerned. You are willing to leech from the efforts of others but you are not willing to make a contribution when the opportunity is right in front of you. Blah.

This particular printer was also advertised as having OSX driver support, but the driver is not available in the US unless you lie to their web site and tell them you are from Australia. Tell Samsung to get off their butts and make sure their printers work right in Linux AND OSX. Boy, comic book guy...

Well I have these samsung drives as well and managed to install Ubuntu Fiesty and Hardy and Mandriva and Pardus.

You, asshat, what the f' does cups have to do with using your hard drives anyway. Printer?? Is that what it says in your last paragraph? Try reading the comment thoroughly before you open your fat useless hole. Do your parents find you to be such a disappointment as well?

Re:Not Fedora's Fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Bug report on Samsung drive issue....

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Bugs/F9Common#samsung-hdds

PS.. Whoever deleted my post. An asshat like FranTaylor that replies to an issue with criticism and snide remarks should be edited. Not me.

Another disto? Not helpful.

dundant again?

[Anonymous Coward]

"10 AM Eastern Time this morning"

As opposed to 10 AM Eastern Time this evening?

Re:dundant again?

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe as opposed to 10 AM Eastern Time yesterday morning?

Re:dundant again?

[chunk08]

The "-1 Redundant" moderation is ironic :-)

Broadcom support?

[bsDaemon]

I currently have LinuxMint on my Dell d830 laptop, but tried bringing up Fedora 8 on it the other day. However, following explicitly the directions for using bcm43xx-fwcutter, using the firmware file that I was using with LinuxMint, it kept telling me that it would not work.

Is 9 going to be any better or what? I have used RH 4.2, 5.0, 5.2, 6.0-CORE and 7.2 in the past, and quite frankly I prefer that setup to the Debian variaty (despite my nickname, RH 5.2 was the most pleasant OS experience I have ever had. I did cut my teeth on FreeBSD 2.2.8 and am quite fond of the *BSDs though).

Its erally a hassle because the apartment that I live at right now gives free wifi, but I don't have hard ethernet to plug into in order to sort things out like I wish I could.

Re:Broadcom support?

[doxology]

Well, I've been using fwcutter for my bcm4318 on a a Dell d810 in Fedora 9 (since like the first preview release), and it works more or less fine.

Will not install on Samsung hard disks

[kriston]

Fedora 9 will not install on certain Samsung hard disks.

If your hard disk has a "/" character in its model name as reported through the ATA interface then Anaconda will fail. The Python error message reads like "ends with '/' and is not just '/'" and the kernel halts.

I have a very standard desktop Dell Optiplex that has one of these hard disks, model number "SAMSUNG HD080HJ/P".

The "/" character kills the installation.

So disappointing yet so simple to have fixed before release.

Re:Will not install on Samsung hard disks

[Peter H.S.]

The "/" character kills the installation.

So disappointing yet so simple to have fixed before release. Yeah, too bad no one with a affected Samsung HDD bothered to try one of the release candidates and file a bug report.

--
Regards

Re:Will not install on Samsung hard disks

[kriston]

I actually did test them.

Something changed or regressed on the way to the final release.

Someone said "I thought we fixed that" on IRC when I asked about it.

Re:Will not install on Samsung hard disks

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone said "I thought we fixed that" on IRC when I asked about it

EL OH EL OH EL

Re:Will not install on Samsung hard disks

[pmgst17]

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=442457

As for the status of the fix, I don't know.

Re:Will not install on Samsung hard disks

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you reported the problem?
It might be easy to fix but it is very hard to fix issues which no one has reported.

I just searched the bugzilla at redhat and was unable to find it so please post a Bug on it if it is not there already and it will certainly be resolved in the next unity respin.

Re:Will not install on Samsung hard disks

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone did. Too bad you jump down peoples throats over your ignorance of the facts.

Pricks like you that are rude, with bad attitudes, and noses high in the air are a great reason for the majority of other alternative OS's to ignore the Linux community when they get treated like this.

Maybe you should have ended your post with RTFM if your only purpose in life is to piss people off.

Read this and get over yourself or even better go crawl back into your miserable dark little hole.

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=442457

Regards

Re:Will not install on Samsung hard disks

[dbIII]

The will be putting * or ! in model names next. It amazes me how supposedly technical people do not understand how to use computers.

Re:Will not install on Samsung hard disks

[kriston]

You mean the hard disk maker or the anaconda authors?

If it is a string and comes from someone else you always need to handle any possible combination of characters--including non-ASCII.

It's an unfortunate oversight for a product that used to have so much mindshare before Ubuntu strolled along.

PulseAudio with Adobe Flash on x86_64

[Anonymous Coward]

I"m planning on putting FC9 on a machine, FC9 has Pulse Audio http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Overview, I'm not certain about it on a 64bit machine. I've gotten Adobe Flash to work on my Arch Linux machine using Nspluginwrapper. http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Install_Flash_on_Arch64 The Arch Linux Wiki says there might be trouble with Pulse Audio and Flash. http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PulseAudio Anybody try Adobe Flash+Nspluginwrapper+x86_64+PulseAudio? How'd it go?

Re:PulseAudio with Adobe Flash on x86_64

[mauriatm]

Fedora 8 had PulseAudio as well. However Fedora 9 seemed to work much better. I have Flash, Sound and Realplayer (i.e. another mozilla plugin) working perfectly in Fedora 9 x86_64. Some notes here: Fedora 9 Guide.

Btw, the "core" has been dropped (FC9 -> F9).

Re:PulseAudio with Adobe Flash on x86_64

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using Fedora 9 for several months now and had no problems with flash and PulseAudio. The only problem you'll come across is the Adobe package is missing a dependency to make sound work, so you'll need to yum install libflashsupport.i386 for it to work (I think you need the i386 package).

Besides that, it's awesome :)

Re:PulseAudio with Adobe Flash on x86_64

[Black Art]

I have it working. It is a bit obtuse, but it works on x86_64.

You need to install the nsplugin code for both x86_64 and i386. You also need to make sure that the i386 version of pulseaudio gets installed. (yum install pulseaudio.i386)

Before you install flash, make sure /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins is created. (It will try and install files there but will not create the directory if it is missing.)

After all that is installed, install the flash-plugin. You also might want to install realplayer and helix at that point as well. (BBC streaming audio gets a lot of use by me.)

Once that is all done, type the following as root:

nspluginscan -v -a -i

That will make wrappers for any needed plugins.

Should work fine after that. (If you have problems with sound, make sure you do not have muted audio on your sound card. (Like PCM.)

Hope that helps.

ATI drivers not available either

[flabbergasted]

It looks as though the ATI drivers aren't available from livna yet either. I think I'll hold off until they're ready. I like Fedora, but it can be a little too cutting edge sometimes.

Re:ATI drivers not available either

[IBBoard]

Apparently it is possible, you just need to downgrade XOrg-server and downgrade mesa-libGL for now. Seems a bit of a shame when "new XOrg" is one of the features, but I've set the DVD downloading at work overnight tonight, so I'll see if it downloaded in the morning and then take the dive soon :) IIRC there was a similar situation with fgrlx drivers and AIGLX at one point where the only way to fix gtk-window-decorator in Compiz was with the F7 version of XOrg.

ATi seem to have been releasing drivers mid-month or earlier more recently, so hopefully it won't be too long until new drivers are out and hopefully they'll support the new XOrg server.

Who wrote this?

[Mr_Icon]

"Some of the more interesting new features include a new package management system, which can be used as an alternative to yum, known as PackageKit."

...and Linux kernel was replaced by Gnome.

FedoraSoft

[Frosty Piss]

It's been a long time since I've heard any excitment about Fedora. The Linux buzz has moved on while RedHat lives in it's own little world, no longer cutting edge and as stuffy as Microsoft...

Re:FedoraSoft

[Anonymous Coward]

You know the poster hit the nail on the head when the Fanboys mod it Flamebait.

Re:FedoraSoft

[Anonymous Coward]

It's actually a complete lie. Fedora ships a lot of new stuff which eventually cross-pollinates into other distros, like PulseAudio and ext4. The idea that nobody cares about Fedora is an example of perception being out of touch with reality - much like your own post.

Re:FedoraSoft

[Peter H.S.]

It's been a long time since I've heard any excitement about Fedora. The Linux buzz has moved on while RedHat lives in it's own little world, no longer cutting edge and as stuffy as Microsoft... Well, Mr. Frosty Piss, I really do think you have followed Fedora that closely; stuff like LVM, selinux tend to appear in Fedora before any other distro. This release has KDE 4.03, PackageKit, kernel modesetting, EXT4 (preview), OpenJDK 6 etc. If you don't find that stuff exciting hand over your geek card.

Me, a personally doesn't give a damn about "buzz", I want a nice solid but modern distro that is free as in free speech, and Fedora is just that.

Btw. next time you bad mouth Red Hat, which seems to be popular though lame attitude among certain people, just remember which Linux vendor who has contributed the most to make Linux what it is today, and how much Red Hat still contributes to core linux technology. And Red Hat has never, ever waivered in its support of Free, OSS software, and eg. released some proprietary closed source software as part of their distros,

--
Regards

Re:FedoraSoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Oooooo! Smmoooooch! Smmmmmmoooooooch!

I see you've dropped your pants and are presenting your bung hole to your Red Hat masters!

Re:FedoraSoft

[Peter H.S.]

Well, my first "Troll" moderation.

--
Regards

Re:FedoraSoft

[rainhill]

you have gotta be an newborn Ubuntu baby, welcome...

Re:FedoraSoft

[upside]

I second that. Props to RedHat, a company that Gets It. They are a huge contributor to Linux and GNU. I prefer stability (bug fixes!) over cutting edge, so I value RedHat highly. Since yum was included in RHEL5 I've stopped installing Debian on my machines.

If your company uses Linux I suggest you support RedHat or another Linux vendor with your wallet. Discover a bug and RedHat will fix it AND FEED THE FIX BACK TO THE COMMUNITY. You don't have to be a coder to contribute to Linux code. :) There's even talk of tighter cooperation between Linux vendors. Where else in industry do you find this except in OSS? Awesome.

Re:FedoraSoft

[PixelSurgeon]

I agree. I've been using Fedora since version 1 and have found it to have a stability that many other distros just can't achieve. I own a production company and we're constantly looking for ways speed up our 3D render time. We recently built a very effective render farm based on Fedora 8, which renders significantly faster than the Windows based systems we were testing on. We also use Fedora to run our mail server, web server, file servers, etc... etc... and have had almost no problems (unless by human error). Sure we come across things that require strange and sometimes extensive workarounds, but thats part of the fun, anyway. Not only is Fedora free like free speech, but also free like free beer and this suites our pocket really well.

Firefox 3 BETA ?

[Superken7]

Why is it so common nowadays for linux distributions to include *BETA* software (as complex as a browser can be) in their releases?
Sure, there can be some heavily tested and simple programs left as beta, but firefox? The web browser is a heavily used and substantial tool these days..

Firefox 3 Beta 5 takes my CPU usage to 100% easily, while firefox 2.x does not.

is it so hard to stick with stable, tested software ? bleeding edge is not always better.

Not to speak of KDE 4.0 :)

Re:Firefox 3 BETA ?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a bug in the Linux version of FF3b5 associated with the phishing/malware detection and the sqlite database used to store the url-classifier data. As the database is populated with downloaded Google data, around mid-point it starts churning the hard drive and consuming IO resources causing that spike you see and affecting system performance. The workaround is to disable the phish/malware detection stuff, and delete the sqlite db files in your Mozilla profile. They'll be recreated on the next session, but will never get beyond ~9k.

Re:Firefox 3 BETA ?

[Zontar The Mindless]

There's something stopping you from downloading FF2 and untarring it into your ~/bin, if that's what you prefer to use?

Re:Firefox 3 BETA ?

[Superken7]

Of course not, and that is exactly why it should be the other way around ;-) providing the stable product, while you can still try out the BETA.

Re:Firefox 3 BETA ?

[Peter H.S.]

Why is it so common nowadays for linux distributions to include *BETA* software (as complex as a browser can be) in their releases?
Sure, there can be some heavily tested and simple programs left as beta, but firefox? The web browser is a heavily used and substantial tool these days.. Nowadays? Linux distros have always (since RH 5.0 at least;-) ) included beta-quality software simply because their audience demanded it. Some distros are of course more bleeding edge/conservative than others.

The newest Fedora release are for people who wants the latest software available. If one wants a more stable Fedora release, get the previous release like Fedora 8; it has KDE 3.5.x, FF 2, etc.

That a distro like Fedora includes Firefox 3 Beta is also mean extra beta testers so perhaps a bug or two gets fixed before the final FF release (June I believe).
And if FF 3 Beta are too broken for some tasks, then there a Konqueror (which I prefer), or elinks.

--
Regards

Re:Firefox 3 BETA ?

[jeffstar]

try disabling the anti-phishing measures under edit->preferences security by unchecking both suspected sites boxes.

My whole hardy system was virtually unusable before I did this.

Re:Firefox 3 BETA ?

[Black Art]

Why is it so common nowadays for linux distributions to include *BETA* software (as complex as a browser can be) in their releases?
Sure, there can be some heavily tested and simple programs left as beta, but firefox? The web browser is a heavily used and substantial tool these days.. What part of Redhat do you not understand?

Redhat has always shipped beta code in their distros. You don't remember the time they shipped a beta version of GCC and pissed off much of the Gnu people because of it?

Redhat 3 beta 5 has worked fairly well for me. I am not seeing the CPU spikes you are seeing either. Are you sure it is not one of the flash replacements causing the problem and not Mozilla?

Re:Firefox 3 BETA ?

[xenocide2]

Well, judging by the comments this is how Fedora rolls. The bug you state is easily the most duplicated one in Ubuntu 8.04. I was curious if Fedora fixed that before release. From your original post I may presume they did not?

Re:Firefox 3 BETA ?

[Khaed]

Yeah, isn't Debian about the only distro that makes a release using only thoroughly "stable" code?

Re:Firefox 3 BETA ?

[cbart387]

I'd tend to agree. On my machine is both Fedora 8 and Debian Etch. Debian's "stable" code is maddeningly stable sometimes. For instance, Fedora keeps up along with the Pidgin version, whereas Debian Etch currently maintains a Gaim version (I forget which exact version).

However, Fedora has a lot of focus on upstream work that distros, who focus on stability, can benefit from. Not saying either is better, but there's a place for each of them. So... you do tend see some less mature software in Fedora but that's expected. I'm not sure how the other distros operate but Debian and Fedora seem to be on the opposite sides with what is released.

Re:Firefox 3 BETA ?

[Khaed]

I use Ubuntu, and 8.04 also shipped with FF3beta. Which surprised me mostly because 8.04 is the long-term-support version. I always got the impression that means it's built to be as stable as possible.

I don't really mind less mature software myself, for my personal desktop, as long as it's reasonable. I've not really had a problem with FF3b myself, yet, so that's all fine with me. I'm really glad we have the diversity among distros, though -- it's one of the things that appealed to me about Linux before the switch over from Windows.

As for a GAIM version -- blah. I have a few gripes about the current version of pidgin, but GAIM 1.5.whatever* had some infuriatingly stupid limitations.

* I also forget, but it was the "stable" release; GAIM's 2.0s were all betas.

Re:Firefox 3 BETA ?

[cbart387]

I use Ubuntu, and 8.04 also shipped with FF3beta. Which surprised me mostly because 8.04 is the long-term-support version. I always got the impression that means it's built to be as stable as possible. I've heard that this is because if they shipped with FF2, they would be stuck supporting that version for all of 8.04's life. Starting with FF3, it will eventually be off beta. I'm surprised that they can not just upgrade from FF2 to FF3 but what do I know.

Incidentally, I checked and on Debian it's Gaim 2.0.0beta5 that is being supported. From what I remember, that pretty much translated to the first version of Pidgin.

Re:Firefox 3 BETA ?

[Khaed]

Ubuntu has some policy against changing version numbers in a version of Ubuntu. I'm not really sure why, myself.

I believe you're right about that being the first version to correspond to Pidgin.

Awesome news

[motang]

Well going to have take the LiveCD for a test drive and see how Fedora 9 is. I also found out the Linux Mint 5.0 Beta 1 is out (here are the screen shots of that system) which I also plan on downloading and testing out.

Sulphur story

[BytePusher]

I thought the name Sulphur was kind of... lame, so I decided to see what the name was about. The truth is, it was the least bad of all the names voted upon.
 
The logic behind it is thus:
Some more suggestions

  "sulphur"
  "mayonaisse"

(like werewolves they react badly with silver)
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-December/msg01194.html
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/Names
The other options were:
vote_count , name
                62 , Sulphur
                54 , Bathysphere
                43 , Chupacabra
                39 , Mayonnaise
                32 , Dragicorn
                29 , Woodwose
                23 , Tourette
                13 , Asperger
                13 , Barmanou
                10 , Chingachgook
                  6 , Kingsport Town
                  5 , Marfan

https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-January/msg00012.html

Re:Sulphur story

[knarfling]

I, for one, am really, really glad they didn't choose a couple of those names.

"Hey Asperger!! When was the last time you took a look at Chingachgook?"

"I can't have Chingachgook at my place. The walls are thin, and my Mom might hear."

Re:Sulphur story

[vladsinger]

I hear these came from the legal department - names w/out copyright issues are hard to come by these days. I believe this was mentioned in an interview w/ the Fedora art leader on the Linux Action Show a couple episodes back. On the other hand, "mayonnaise"? Huh.

Re:Sulphur story

[Anonymous Coward]

Tourette? Asperger? Dragicorn?

Obviously they weren't taking this serious, if they really wanted to pwn they would have named it
"Fedora 9 NinjaPirate!"

Re:Sulphur story

[kramulous]

Hey, given the shitload of volcanic bathymetry manipulation I've been doing I'd vote for bathysphere.

"Of course it's right! This OS is written for it!"

Release schedules

[jensend]

One thing which the Ubuntu and Fedora releases show is that having regularly scheduled releases does not always work out for the best. Both have shipped with a primary browser still in beta (FF3 is a big leap ahead, but it still has some issues to be shaken out), and Ubuntu will be doing long-term support for an outdated GCC version which misses out on a lot of improvements while Fedora uses a brand new .0 compiler. Seems like both projects might have had better releases a month or so later.

Re:Release schedules

[esocid]

It still encourages a good rolling release of new packages rather than letting things stagnate. Not saying newer is always better, but things will be fixed within a few weeks and regular package releases to solve any bugs, as well as support for newer technology. This is coming from someone partial to fedora, since I've used it since core 4, and I've never really had an issue with anything, with the exception of getting my wireless card on my laptop to work, but everyone knows what a bitch that is to solve. Desktop, however, has never had an issue.
In the other corner we have XP which I will refuse to update with SP3. SP2 forced me to do a fresh install, so I won't bother with it until I really need to.

Re:Release schedules

[Black Art]

One thing which the Ubuntu and Fedora releases show is that having regularly scheduled releases does not always work out for the best. Both have shipped with a primary browser still in beta (FF3 is a big leap ahead, but it still has some issues to be shaken out), and Ubuntu will be doing long-term support for an outdated GCC version which misses out on a lot of improvements while Fedora uses a brand new .0 compiler. Seems like both projects might have had better releases a month or so later. No matter what you do, some major component is not ready. If it is not KDE, it is Gnome or xorg or Apache or Firefox or whatever.

There are a bunch of components in this release that were ready in time. Perl 5.10.0 is one that will make a difference. (Especially if your code uses regular expressions heavily.) There is also a new code base for TeTex. A new version of OCAML. Many things have been upgraded here, not just the unstable bits.

Every release has this problem, not just Fedora 9.

Re:Release schedules

[Kjella]

In other words the Debian approach, which is what took them 22 and 35 months instead of the planned 18 for the last two releases. I think the important thing is how long it's been since the *last* release and how much the users that are still on that old thing need your upgrade, not what's just over the horizon. There's always something just over the horizon, but if your users go elsewhere because your last release is getting really old, you're doing it wrong. If they can keep the quality where it's at (Gutsy -> Hardy was a breeze, except I have to manually set sound volume up from 0% on boot...) I'd much rather have 6mo upgrades. Not ready? Well it's not that long until it will be...

Re:Release schedules

[MZoom]

I'm kind of fond of the 'release early, release often' school of thought. Waiting around until everything is perfect never seems to materialize and does little, if anything, to promote the strengths of free software development models.

I just

[esocid]

installed fedora 8 a few weeks ago. guess i'll have to recompile my kernel if it's a new one, not sure since I haven't checked if it is 2.6.24 or not. i guess it's a good thing i'll most likely forget to do it for another month and wait for some new packages to appear.

It stinks!

[msgtomatt]

Sulpher Stinks! Phew

proprietary software in RHL

[Crispy Critters]

"Red Hat has never, ever waivered in its support of Free, OSS software, and eg. released some proprietary closed source software as part of their distros"

Er, Peter, would you like to see my copy of RHL 4.something with a proprietary X server on it? I believe it was something like MetroX. Netscape 4 was also available as part of RHL for a while (looks like at least 6 and 7).

Not saying this to attack RH; their distros are the only ones I ever use.

Re:proprietary software in RHL

[Peter H.S.]

My choice of words weren't good since release can mean two things. What I meant was that Red Hat never has produced and released any closed or non-free software produced by Red Hat self on their distros. I believe that e.g. former SuSe had proprietary software made by them as part of their distro, AFAIK Xandros still does something similar. Several other Linux distroes tried to make money that way by producing proprietary software features other distros couldn't copy because of the licence or lack of source code, but never Red Hat.
I was aware that the early Red Hat distros also included non-free software like Netscape etc, but it was third party software.

--
Regards

Re:proprietary software in RHL

[Micah]

Ah yes, RHL 4.1, the same distro that included the proprietary Red Baron web browser!

But can we afford the Microsoft fees?

[paratiritis]

Because as Steve Balmer said last year we should be paying M$ if we dare use a Red Hat distro. So we have to wait until they set the price :-(

And the alternative is?

[FranTaylor]

Well, the alternative is to make everyone march to some sort of schedule, which not even Microsoft can do.

The idea of Fedora is to push things along. If you are writing software or need the new features, yay!

If you are more happy with stability, CentOS is what you are looking for. Same stuff, but older and more stable.

Re:And the alternative is?

[cbart387]

Well, the alternative is to make everyone march to some sort of schedule, which not even Microsoft can do. Actually that may change. Quoting here, who is quoting Mark Shuttleworth's blog.

He pledged: "If two out or three of Red Hat (RHEL), Novell (SLES) and Debian are willing to agree in advance on a date to the nearest month, and thereby on a combination of kernel, compiler toolchain, GNOME/KDE, X and OpenOffice versions, and agree to a six-month and two-to-three year long term cycle, then I would happily realign Ubuntu's short and long-term cycles around that." Hopefully other distros and software maintainers go along with this idea. It can only help.

Recompile kernel?!?

[FranTaylor]

I haven't had to recompile a kernel in years! What is your problem?

Re:Recompile kernel?!?

[PenGun]

Package man you have made your problem go away by depending on others to do the work for you. No big deal but it's your problem not his.

My laptop wireless finally works!

[Anonymous Coward]

Without any funny gyrations, either. It just....works!

Re:Improved performance, especially scrolling

[UberLord]

One thing that was always snappy in GNOME was the scrolling in GNOME terminal. The main improvement when working with AA fonts (and most people are these days) iirc came from using OpenGL. As KDE4 has loads of OpenGL candy, is konsole going to take advantage of OpenGL to speed up its rendering?

All My Samsung drives are dead

[FranTaylor]

Sorry, can't help you. I only buy real drives now.

net install

[Anonymous Coward]

you can do a minimum net install, then install whatever you want (if that is what you are looking for)

http://docs.fedoraproject.org/install-guide/f9/en_US/ch-other-install-methods.html#sn-alt-install-method

Does YouTube work?

[rrohbeck]

Remember, YouTube no workee, wifey not happy.
Or something like that.

Re:Does YouTube work?

[Brebs]

Yes, YouTube works. With SELinux on.

Re:Does YouTube work?

[retsil]

Like most other distros, all patented and binary packages are not included. Wifey doesn't quite understand why it doesn't just work out of the box. I pull the guilt trip and then threaten to install Vista and leave her swimming in the deep end. I've found 3rd party repositories for Fedora a bit of an adventure (atrpm vs Livna). However, I can ssh in to fix the problems without her even knowing. I'd really like to see a "core" repository for the essentials like drivers, codecs and browser plugins.

Re:Anyone test out the Kernel Based Mode Setting y

[Bazer]

Unstable like hell. Do not use it if you're not planning to help with development. It brought down the whole X server when, for example, the swfdec plug-in crashed (which was often). Basically it felt like any crashing application could crash X along with it. I tried it on a laptop with a X3100.

HP Proliant 380GL G5 w/Firmware 8.00

[muckracer]

Fedora 9 kernel on first boot crashes hard. Bunch of errors over three pages long. Fedora 8 worked fine. Anybody else run into this?

Re:Mine too

[teh_commodore]

My wife also runs Fedora (8) on her laptop. I turned it into a dual-boot XP-Fedora box awhile back, and at first she never touched the Fedora side. Over time, it shifted, and now she's in Fedora 99% of the time (Windows only to update the ol' iPod). She also is in a no way a developer, and still knows little about the CLI and how to use it, but hey, it's a start.

First impressions

[Sadsfae]

The changes in NetworkManager are quite nice.

It now picks up EVDO/CDMA cards and will seamlessly connect you to the best medium available on the fly.

It also features a GUI similiar to Windows display properties where you can easily manage multiple monitors and resolutions without the need to run xrandr by hand or fiddle with xorg.conf