First Look At Fedora 11 Beta Release

Ars Technica has a first look at the latest beta release from the Fedora universe and it has several new shiny-bits including kernel modesetting, ext4, and faster boot times. "Fedora 11, which is codenamed Leonidas, is scheduled for final release at the end of May. It will include several new features and noteworthy improvements, such as RPM 4.7, which will reduce the memory consumption of complex package activity, tighter integration of PackageKit, faster boot time with a target goal of 20 seconds, and reduced power consumption thanks to a major tuning effort. This version of Fedora will ship with the latest version of many popular open source software programs, including GNOME 2.26, KDE 4.2, and Xfce 4.6. This will also be the first Fedora release — and possibly the first mainstream distro release — to use the new Ext4 filesystem by default.

Comments

Leonidas? Cue the "300" jokes in 3... 2...

[tjonnyc999]

1... and GO!

Re:Leonidas? Cue the "300" jokes in 3... 2...

[0100010001010011]

THIS. IS. LINUX.

Re:Leonidas? Cue the "300" jokes in 3... 2...

[MrKaos]

With your filesystem, or on it!

Re:Leonidas? Cue the "300" jokes in 3... 2...

[jamesmcm]

Tonight we design in Hell!

ext4? This is madness!

[MasterOfMagic]

THIS IS FEDORAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!

Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted! Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.

Oh yeah, well tonight, I in fact plan on dining in Hell.

Ext4?

[TheNinjaroach]

Doesn't Ext4 have occasional issues with data integr)_SF*@)_M#$ I'm surprised to see it used by defau#%FVN641

Re:Ext4?

[Anonymous Coward]

a patch was released today.

Re:Ext4?

[sakdoctor]

Spartans! Prepare for data loss!

Re:Ext4?

[Anonymous Coward]

It only has problems if the system goes down unexpectedly during a series of disk writes, or if the system is rebooted before ext4 has flushed its write cache (30-60 seconds)

Re:Ext4?

[Anonymous Coward]

It only has problems if the system goes down unexpectedly during a series of disk writes, or if the system is rebooted before ext4 has flushed its write cache (30-60 seconds)

Sounds like a "yes it does have a severe data integrity issue" to me.

Re:Ext4?

[Anthony_Cargile]

It only has problems if the system goes down unexpectedly during a series of disk writes, or if the system is rebooted before ext4 has flushed its write cache (30-60 seconds)

I thought since it was journaling, it prevents all of this by writing everything to the journal first and retains said data even if interrupted?

Re:Ext4?

[Jurily]

Tonight we dine in /dev/null

Re:Ext4?

[billcopc]

That's the problem, it writes the metadata journal first, and the actual data journal later. So you wind up with metadata pointing to not-yet-written data.

Common sense says it should be the other way around: it's much easier to detect the absense of a file, than to detect that an existing file is full of gibberish.

Re:Ext4?

[Jurily]

Sounds like a "yes it does have a severe data integrity issue" to me.

It's already been discussed. Basically, if you write a small file, rename it before the data reaches the disk, and power down, you lose.

People have been known to lose GNOME and Firefox config files for instance.

Re:Ext4?

[Anonymous Coward]

But why are they dining in purgatory that makes no sense.

Re:Ext4?

[Anthony_Cargile]

I've actually heard Linus complain about this on the lkml, and this is about where Reiser chimed in about metadata. I like metadata and all, but having an intact file is more important to me than a missing file (yet having the metadata for the missing file intact). I don't even search my disks hardly ever, since I keep everything logically organized myself, so metadata is one of those features (next to indexing) that I don't even appreciate, although I'm sure there are users that do.

If I knew a little bit more about modern filesystems, I'd write a patch for this and send it upstream but it might be too late to be accepted for fear of breaking compatibility despite the fact ext4 is still in beta, and the operating systems that use it are either in beta or not meant to be production-quality. Still, might give it a try.

Re:Ext4?

[EvanED]

I don't even search my disks hardly ever, since I keep everything logically organized myself, so metadata is one of those features (next to indexing) that I don't even appreciate, although I'm sure there are users that do.

Keep in mind that "metadata" here is referring to much more than things like extended attributes, and in fact is probably NOT referring to those. "metadata" here means stuff like the inode and indirect blocks, which you definitely DO care about because it's what lets you access your data.

Metadata journaling saves this information so that you don't have things like blocks that are doubly-allocated or just lost because they aren't part of any file but aren't on the free list, which is what fsck saves.

Re:Ext4?

[Darkness404]

...And that is a severe data integrity issue. For example, on a hung system where a poweroff like that might happen, your Firefox config file could be lost. This causes a major problem because a lot of times little config files aren't backed up, or when they are they are older, giving potential conflicts with newer software versions. And what is going to be the typical response from a typical user that knows nothing about Linux when they see everything in GNOME wiped back to default settings, and not just distro default settings, but vanilla GNOME settings. This also could really affect lightweight netbook distros using IceWM or some other WM that looks totally foreign to the typical user who used to rely on carefully configured scripts to make it look like Windows or OS X.

Re:Ext4?

[Jurily]

But why are they dining in purgatory that makes no sense.

Greek mythology, not Christian.

Re:Ext4?

[diegocgteleline.es]

No, it is not, it's like every other filesystem except Ext3 behaves. Welcome to the real world...

Re:Ext4?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a "yes it does have a severe data integrity issue" to me.

Basically, if you write a small file, rename it before the data reaches the disk, and power down, you lose.

People have been known to lose GNOME and Firefox config files for instance.

Sounds like a "yes it does have a severe data integrity issue" to me.

Re:Ext4?

[Anonymous Coward]

who modded this flamebait? I thought the same thing

Re:Ext4?

[andrikos]

But I thought Leonidas was Spartan, not pirate

Re:Ext4?

[jhol13]

Which means it is not good for general use within the next several months.

IMHO.

Re:Ext4?

[nystire]

Gnome has config files? I thought that the devs just hardcoded everything to have the "best" defaults available. (Please note that I am a Gnome user, etc..)

Re:Ext4?

[joib]

Metadata is things like directory entries, and where on disk your file exists, whereas the data is just the contents of the file itself. Without metadata, you wouldn't have a file system, but rather a huge blob of bits with no way of knowing which bits belong to which file. So yeah, your comment makes no sense.

Re:Ext4?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the problem, it writes the metadata journal first, and the actual data journal later.

(Pardon me, I'm not an expert on filesystems so this might be complete gibberish like one of those lost files.) How about: it writes this metadata journal first with an extra flag/bit saying that the data hasn't been written yet, writes the acutal data journal and then updates the flag/bit in the metadata journal?

Re:Ext4?

[serviscope_minor]

Sounds like a "yes it does have a severe data integrity issue" to me.

Yet magically it only seems to affect the enormous windows-alike monsters such as GNOME, KDE and Firefox. I expect to get modded down now since I've managed to insult the big 3 (GNOME, KDE and even worse Firefox). But I don't like them much, and likely never will. For that matter, I'm not overly fond of openoffice either.

Basically the reason it this. It is hard to get enormous monster programs to be correct. That's why the unix way of "do one thing and do it well" works. Sadly, since the web seems to have forgotten that lesson, I have to use firefox quite often. Still at least /. works with Linux. Bonus: no javascript == old discussion system.

Re:Ext4?

[lachlan76]

If I recall correctly, it only happens when the application in question doesn't call fsync, which is required by the standard if success is to be guaranteed.

Bad summary.

[AvitarX]

A package list for a Linux Distro, without listing the version of Linux itself?

Re:Bad summary.

[TheCycoONE]

It's 2.6.29 of course, but here's the document that says it: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Beats/Kernel

Re:Bad summary.

[sakdoctor]

Brace yourself techno-vampire...

Re:Bad summary.

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, we should have known Fedora 11 means 2.6.29!

Re:Bad summary.

[techno-vampire]

If the OP wanted to know which kernel Fedora 11 comes with, he should have asked. He asked "what Linux is it," and that's the question I answered.

Re:Bad summary.

[LingNoi]

If you don't know the difference between a distribution and the Linux kernel it is you that doesn't belong here.

Re:Bad summary.

[Tenebrousedge]

There's some other version of the kernel that includes modesetting?

Also, 1and1 are inexpensive and loathsome. They do not have a good reputation.

Re:Bad summary.

[techno-vampire]

Just saying, "which Linux is it," doesn't imply the kernel, at least not to me, and I've been using Linux for years as a dual boot, and as my primary OS for over a year now.

Re:Bad summary.

[LingNoi]

The parent didn't say "which linux is it?".

A package list for a Linux Distro, without listing the version of Linux itself?

Did you even read the post in the first place?

Re:Bad summary.

[techno-vampire]

You may not like 1and1, but I've had very good luck with them, as have a number of people I know. I don't care how good something is, you'll always find people who don't like it, had a bad experience, or have unreasonable expectations.

One question:

[Fallingcow]

Has PulseAudio been either removed or fixed?

I'm off Linux until that crap gets sorted out. It infected Ubuntu too, for some reason.

Re:One question:

[Anonymous Coward]

That will never happen.

It really sucked when most of the users could never have more than one application using audio simultaneously. Also controlling the devices could not be offered via unified user interface.

If you have a problem with pulseaudio, please consider filing bug reports.

Re:One question:

[nrgy]

PulseAudio has totally fubared my computer at work and my laptop at home. I disabled it and went back to alsa however I still get soundlockups and other odd things.

These machines ran perfectly fine before Ubuntu made the switch to PulseAudio. Its one thing that drives me insane about Linux distros. They will switch to something new well before its stable and warranted yet packages that are updated and should be the default are left behind "case in point Eclipse".

Re:One question:

[Fallingcow]

Seriously. I expected this shit when I was on Gentoo, but c'mon, a release from one of the major "user friendly" distros that breaks about half my audio applications--and not just on an upgrade, but on a new installation--and requires me to dick around in settings to get applications to work or not crash? When audio had been working great in Linux for the last couple years, with most of its major problems finally sorted out?

PulseAudio: the answer to a question no one asked.

I'm sure there are features it has that I don't know about and would never use that are nice. Fine. Switch to it when it's mature. It clearly isn't. The switch was made way too early, and, as I understand it, Fedora led that dumb-assed charge into brokenness.

Re:One question:

[Fallingcow]

It really sucked when most of the users could never have more than one application using audio simultaneously. Also controlling the devices could not be offered via unified user interface.

Yeah, I remember those days--a couple years ago, if not more. Audio was finally working great out of the box, and even not-that-bad to configure manually in Gentoo.

Now, it's all screwed up again in the distros that switched to PulseAudio. We got alpha-quality software pushed on us.

If you have a problem with pulseaudio, please consider filing bug reports.

I assure you, there are plenty already.

Re:One question:

[amRadioHed]

Criticizing Ubuntu is fair enough since they intend to be a user friendly distro, but criticizing Fedora for switching to PA early is way off base. It says right in Fedora's objectives they aim to "Be on the leading edge of free and open source technology". If you want a stable and low maintenance system I think Fedora is not the distro for you.

Re:One question:

[Fallingcow]

Really? Most people I hear of using it do so because they're used to Red Hat and want a free version of it, not to be on the "leading edge". I mean, most distros make claims like that; it's a marketing sort of statement. Doesn't mean they intend to release unstable/untested/unfinished software.

It was my impression that Fedora was primarily used by people seeking a "stable and low maintenance" RPM-based distro that they don't have to pay for. I've only used it a bit (intranet server at a former employer) so I'm not in on the distro's culture, but that's the impression I've gotten from reading comments by its users and paying (some) attention to its development over the years.

Re:One question:

[Walpurgiss]

My problems with pulseaudio isn't a bug, but a design flaw. Until they create an option in the PA sound server to let you set DTS/DD streams to passthrough, bypassing the sound mixing, PA is fail to me.

PA seems like a great system for people who don't want to use an external dolby decoder for surround sound and are fine with everything either stereo or decoded by software. But for my needs, it currently fails to plain ALSA. Toss me a way to do proper passthrough and I'd sign up with PA again. It's not like I need or want sound mixing when I'm watching something with surround sound anyway.

Re:One question:

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a n00b whose sound died a nasty death when Fedora decided to use PulseAudio. Any documentation you can point me to on how to switch back to Alsa? I've been wrestling with PA for two straight days without any luck. :(

Re:One question:

[Anonymous Coward]

PulseAudio isn't even "bleeding edge" software, it's more "oh god that edge just went clean through my torso and cut me in half oh god there's blood everywhere I'm going to die".

Re:One question:

[Drew M.]

It was my impression that Fedora was primarily used by people seeking a "stable and low maintenance" RPM-based distro that they don't have to pay for. I've only used it a bit (intranet server at a former employer) so I'm not in on the distro's culture, but that's the impression I've gotten from reading comments by its users and paying (some) attention to its development over the years.

Nope, you would be thinking (or should be thinking) of CentOS http://www.centos.org/

Re:One question:

[Lendrick]

If someone is used to RedHat and wants a free version of it, they ought to be using Centos, which is pretty much an exact duplicate of RedHat Enterprise, except rebranded and free.

Re:One question:

[cetialphav]

Really? Most people I hear of using it do so because they're used to Red Hat and want a free version of it, not to be on the "leading edge".

Obviously, I can't speak for why most other people use Fedora. I suspect anyone using it for the reasons you state are misinformed.
Fedora's goal is to be bleeding edge. They are pulling the latest versions of almost everything with the philosophy that the only way to stabilize these things is to get them into a real system used by people.

This will mean occasional brokenness as seen with KDE4, pulseaudio, networkmanager, etc. Obviously, Fedora does not want to put out a broken distribution and so they work hard to get things usable. But if you are looking for the stability of RedHat distributions, Fedora is the wrong place to look.

Re:One question:

[Znork]

Most people I hear of using it do so because they're used to Red Hat and want a free version of it

Ah, no. CentOS is a free version of Redhat. Fedora is what you use if you like time warps into the future to explore what may work in a year or two and eventually get merged into Redhat when it's stable. Or if you have need for some bleeding edge hardware drivers that aren't going to get back ported into point updates of Redhat. Or if you just generally like being on the bleeding edge.

It's nice enough and personally I use it for desktop stuff as I'm going to have to deal with the news eventually anyway, but it's not going to remain unchanged for any longer interval, nor it it going to be particularly low maintenance.

Re:One question:

[Chabo]

Really? From the start (Fedora Core 1), I've always had the impression that Fedora was the place that Red Hat puts unstable packages, so that by the time the next RHEL comes out, those packages are stable.

Re:One question:

[PitaBred]

Interesting... I seem to get pass-through working fine on my 8.10 Mythbuntu media center. But I think I also use the ALSA libs instead of Pulse. Thanks for the heads-up on this. Might explain a few weird audio things I've experienced.

Re:One question:

[drinkypoo]

It was my impression that Fedora was primarily used by people seeking a "stable and low maintenance" RPM-based distro that they don't have to pay for. I've only used it a bit (intranet server at a former employer) so I'm not in on the distro's culture, but that's the impression I've gotten from reading comments by its users and paying (some) attention to its development over the years.

Fedora is and always has been the alpha test version for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. They try new stuff out on Fedora users first, since they're not paying customers. The mature, tested product becomes RHEL. They instituted this so that they actually could put out a stable product for their paying customers. Look around their website if you don't believe me, it is its own citation.

Re:One question:

[Fallingcow]

This will mean occasional brokenness as seen with KDE4, pulseaudio, networkmanager, etc. Obviously, Fedora does not want to put out a broken distribution and so they work hard to get things usable. But if you are looking for the stability of RedHat distributions, Fedora is the wrong place to look.

Ubuntu released that same stuff around the same time. Maybe they're being more bleeding edge than they ought to be, but Fedora doesn't sound all that "out there" to me. Of course, with the exception of PulseAudio, Ubuntu generally just made the software available but not default until it was good enough to be the default, so that may be the difference.

That said, I'd completely forgotten about CentOS, as a couple others had mentioned.

Re:One question:

[Just Some Guy]

It really sucked when most of the users could never have more than one application using audio simultaneously.

FreeBSD moved past that while staying on OSS.

Re:One question:

[ADRA]

I would hope that anyone -informed- who want to use 'Free Redhat' would use Centos. Anyone using Fedora should realize that the OS is a testbed for enterprise Redhat Linux. That said, within a few weeks of a new release, they generally fix ~90% of the issues I have with it.

At work, my F10 PC has a performance problem with the Kernel Modeset free ATI drivers, so I had to turn those off.

At home, my Sound Blaster Audigy 1 card was causing all types of horrible performance problems which made my video playback almost unusable. Switching to my Mobo's internal audio eliminated the problem completely, so I suppose the card drivers are flaky.

Besides those listed, F10 is really really good. Its getting to the point that if I never played games, I wouldn't even bother having windows for anything.

Re:One question:

[Anonymous Coward]

Really because I have hda_intel and have no problems with alsa. Obviously there's more then one person that doesn't have a clue about what they're talking about.

Re:One question:

[marco.antonio.costa]

It seems to be working semi-well in my Ubuntu 9.04 install.

It always gave me serious headaches in the past though. I guess they need the most people possible being annoyed by it so they can make it work while we cringe.

Re:One question:

[shutdown -p now]

It really sucked when most of the users could never have more than one application using audio simultaneously.

I have been actively using Linux way before PulseAudio first appeared, and I don't recall that being a problem. In fact, rather, there were always too many solutions, from dmix in ALSA to sound daemons such as arts and esound. Why add another one to the list, especially if it's not good enough yet?

If you have a problem with pulseaudio, please consider filing bug reports.

While it's definitely advantageous for users to file correct bug reports, not all of them understand the procedure, nor should they be made to. And, of course, developers shouldn't just ignore criticism under the excuse that it's not properly framed as a bug report.

For staters, how about this?

Re:One question:

[amirulbahr]

Some do, some don't. I prefer stable and well tested and that is why I use CentOS.

Re:One question:

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on what your problem with Pulse is. I had problems myself with pulseaudio, but Fedora 10 fully updated hasn't given me any issues at all (Ok, well to be honest, no issues once I disabled the "glitch-free" feature).

Re:One question:

[Buelldozer]

Would it even be possible to file *more* bug reports? Frankly I'm not sure I have enough free time to report all the bugs.

I don't mean to be harsh to the devs but does pulseaudio work for anyone BUT them?

Re:One question:

[Buelldozer]

Right on.

I was just talking with a group of *nix heads two days and the outpouring of disgust around so many distros switching to PA was incredible.

Apparently it didn't work well, or at all, for anyone in the group!

The other commonality was everyone agreed that audio was finally starting to work _well_ before the switch!

Re:One question:

[donaldm]

It was my impression that Fedora was primarily used by people seeking a "stable and low maintenance" RPM-based distro that they don't have to pay for.

What! you have to be kidding. Fedora is normally on the cutting edge of a Linux distributions, however most new features are reasonably tested before a Fedora distribution is mainstream released. Yes there will be some packages that could be unstable but many just work. I always recommend Fedora to those people who are willing to put up with some strangeness and also willing to learn. If you only want a Linux distribution that is stable then Fedora is not for you.

Re:One question:

[Ant P.]

It really sucked when most of the users could never have more than one application using audio simultaneously. Also controlling the devices could not be offered via unified user interface.

I solved that problem by installing a PCI sound card I found in the trash. It can cope with me forkbombing sox processes at it and it has a unified user interface - the three sound buttons on my keyboard that run aumix.

Compare this to Pulseaudio, which manages to combine the obtrusiveness of aRts, the unusability of a Gnome GUI, and the uselessness of a network server that sounds like trying to stream a wav file over 56k - on the rare occasions that it produces any result at all.

Re:One question:

[jackspenn]

I am posting this message from a fully patched Fedora 10 system on my home laptop, because I want to be on the bleeding edge. I have a CentOS system that I use when I need a stable Linux system.

Re:One question:

[Anonymous Coward]

C'Mon.... Pulseaudio works fine if you just would not have crappy distribution like Ubuntu.

I have used Pulseaudio now almost since it has come without problems. If your distribution does not tweak it correctly so it would work, then you need to do that.

And do not blame Linux OS from Pulseaudio either because those do not have nothing to do together. You can use Linux OS if you want and use other soundsystem if you do not know how to tweak Pulseaudio or your distribution sucks so much.
Last time I checked you could still use OSS or ALSA without problems. I like Pulseaudio and thats why I use it!

Re:One question:

[Anonymous Coward]

It's easy enough to completely remove pulseaudio. At least in Fedora 10.

I'm sure almost everyone knows the "new Fedora" routine by now: disable selinux, remove pulseaudio, remove mono, etc., etc., etc.

Re:One question:

[AnibalOjeda]

Fedora is like a playground for new technology, i can imagine someone want this on their systems. The funny think is they are not bringing anything interesting for the desktop, i forgot they made a nice wallpaper on f10 & the nicest boot splash ever & a lot of bugs. I a shame Fedora/Red Hat dont do it right on the desktop, they got a nice installer & Red Hat based distros are awesome, in some way i totally dislike Fedora.

Re:One question:

[ion.simon.c]

1) PA generally sucks, hard core.
2) KDE 4.x's PA integration seems to work just fine on my Gentoo systems.

Re:One question:

[ion.simon.c]

It works for me, more or less.

However, I really wish that ALSA's dmix would have the network/source transparency bits of PA pushed into it. We *really* don't need yet another Linux audio system.

Re:One question:

[ion.simon.c]

PulseAudio: the answer to a question no one asked.

I asked for this feature a million years ago. I like having a good answer to it. PA is not a good answer.

Re:One question:

[ion.simon.c]

*seconds the "hda_intel actually has supported ALSA mixing" comment*

OTOH, some Apple machines have hda_intel hardware that's rather unsupported. From what I understand, it's very hard to determine if you have a crummy card or not.

So who's gonna kick Steve Jobs down the well?

[Anonymous Coward]

Non-flicker boot?
This is madness!
No....

PulseAudio on Fedora ..

[rs232]

And if you could expand to explain how Pulse Audio differs and what benefits this will have for end-users? Or even for developers of existing applications too, such as Audacity/Jokosher/Rhythmbox/$general_audio_application.

A lot of things have changed. For example, you can now change the volume of every playback stream seperately. Then, we have better hotplug support: Just plug in your USB speaker and it will appear in your mixer (as long as you use pavucontrol, of course, PA's native mixer tool; the classic gnome-volume-control which we still ship is not hotplug-capable). You can move streams during playback between output devices. With a single click in our "paprefs" tool you can aggregate all local audio devices into a virtual one, which distributes audio to all outputs, and deals with the small frequency deviations in the sound card's quartzes -- and that code even deals with hotplugging/unplugging. If that checkbox is checked, just plugin in your USB headset and you get audio through it. (This is actually pretty cool, and it might be something we enable by default in F9)..

Re:PulseAudio on Fedora ..

[Fallingcow]

Oh, man, that interview is funny. I notice that the last edit was June '08, so the interview took place before that.

I really liked this part:

The balkanization we have in Linux audio was the biggest obstacle in itself. Before we could think of moving everything to a new audio system we had to make sure that we have compatibility support with all that software that is out there right now (or at least the majority of it). There are so many audio systems and APIs around, some being very hard to virtualize, so this was a major amount of work. But I guess we tackled most now, and even have special support for closed source software like Adobe Flash.

Hahah, nope. At least not in the version that was shipped (and made default!) with Ubuntu 8.10. From what I've heard, Fedora's version isn't any better off. Either the distros are fucking things up big time, or this dude's vastly overestimating the completeness of his software. Or both.

This was funny, too, but for different reasons:

- If you run two Totems side-by-side, the one that is active should have 100% volume, the other one 20%. And if you change focus with your window manager, the two volumes should slide to the inverse. I think this would be very, very useful. Especially for things like Flash: if a flash video is running in your web browser, the system should automatically slide down the volume of everything else and slide it up again when the Flash clip finished to play.

Re:PulseAudio on Fedora ..

[Lendrick]

Hahah, nope. At least not in the version that was shipped (and made default!) with Ubuntu 8.10. From what I've heard, Fedora's version isn't any better off. Either the distros are fucking things up big time, or this dude's vastly overestimating the completeness of his software. Or both.

They're referring to Flash 10 Beta, which I've found to be pretty usable. Certainly way better than previous versions, which mucked up my sound output.

Re:PulseAudio on Fedora ..

[Orp]

I have a fully up-to-date Fedora 10 box (64 bit Intel dual core) and I have terrible issues with sound. I have a Creative soundblaster Audigy 4 (emu10k2.5). I have all sorts of issues with dropouts while watching video with pulseaudio. The only solution I've found is to uninstall pulseaudio, which sucks, because it's kind of cool. It's been suggested that Jack might help on top of pulseaudio... but I am lost in a maze of sound drivers and layers (jack/pulseaudio/alsa/oss/and good ol' /dev/snd). All I want is stable audio and the ability to record 96 kHz / 24 bit, which my soundcard can do, but which I can't get to work with Audacity - I get 24 bit padded to 16 bit.

I've posted to forums etc. on these issues and apparently the problems are known and being worked on. It seems to me I had the best luck with sound with RedHat 5 or thereabouts when there just wasn't as much complexity. I keep hoping the next upgrade will fix sound. I am probably going to do a fresh install of Fedora 11 when it comes out and cross my fingers.

Re:PulseAudio on Fedora ..

[ADRA]

Just a note that -may- be applicable to you, I've had issues with my 'Audigy 1' in Fedora 10. switching to my on-board card made all issues disappear. Are you sure this isn't a driver issue, or maybe an erroneous assumption on the part of the driver providers?

I wish that this is addressed, by someone, but in the mean-time no Audigy for me.

PS: The issue crept up when upgrading and it affects both ALSA 5.1 (a52enc from self-compiled sources) and 2.0 stereo out. Playing through any media player, I would get skips of either the audio or video. Once switching to the Onboard card "VIA Technologies, Inc. VT1708/A [Azalia HDAC] (VIA High Definition Audio Controller)", there has never been a skip playing back anything. That is sending raw 5.1 through mini-dins which I'd rather not use, but thats life.

Re:PulseAudio on Fedora ..

[LingNoi]

Just plug in your USB speaker and it will appear in your mixer (as long as you use pavucontrol, of course, PA's native mixer tool; the classic gnome-volume-control which we still ship is not hotplug-capable).

Interesting you mention that because my desktop with Pulse audio as default doesn't work with hot plugged usb headphones, however my laptop with ALSA does.

Oh, it appears in the PA mixer alright, now they just have to get to work on, you know, sending audio to the headphones..

Re:PulseAudio on Fedora ..

[Bazer]

From what I've heard, Fedora's version isn't any better off.

That was true only for short period after the initial F9 release. It just-works since then.

Ubuntu had integrated PulseAudio so early because Canonical didn't want to support legacy audio for the next 18 months that would take to replace the the 8.04 LTS. The second reason is that Fedora and Ubuntu are competing for the "latest and greatest" features. Turns out Fedora can get away with a few quirks but a (supposedly) stable branch of Ubuntu, can't.

Finally Fedora?

[mcrbids]

I'm a long, long time RedHat user. (Since Red Hat Linux 5.1, if you're curious) And I've always upgraded every other release or so. RedHat 5.x, 6.2 (one of my favorites) 9.0, and then the Fedoras: 1, 3, 6, and 8. (which is what I type this on now)

Every single time I've upgraded, I've welcomed the upgrade. It was better, snazzier, more stable, etc. all the way up to Fedora Core 9.

Fedora Core 9 should never have been released. It was just barely alpha quality, and so buggy that merely changing the default font size would destabilize the system! I tried desperately to get it to work for about 2 weeks before shrugging, recovering my .kde directory from a backup, and rolling back to FC8. I'm not expecting an ultra-stable release with Fedora, I know it's more 'cutting edge' but when the computer crashes too badly to get to the website to file a bug report, I'm going to cut and run.

I haven't had the nerve to try 10, though I've heard good things about it. Once bitten, twice shy, and all that.

I have *loads* of respect for RedHat, but FC9 really tarnished their good image. I hope they're a bit more cautious about what they release in the future...

Re:Finally Fedora?

[armanox]

I stayed away from 9 myself, and then found that 10 after some updates returned most sanity to the Fedora universe.

Re:Finally Fedora?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this a Fedora 9 problem or a KDE 4.0 problem?

I do

Re:Finally Fedora?

[Binestar]

I'm a long, long time RedHat user. (Since Red Hat Linux 5.1, if you're curious)

You got lucky timing. As an "earlier than that" RedHat user, the 4.2-> 5.0 libc change was a horrible upgrade path. 5 worked great for new systems, but anyone with a good working 4.x system trying to upgrade to 5 had loads of problems. If you were to have gone through that upgrade you might not have stayed with RH as long as you have =)

Re:Finally Fedora?

[Psychotria]

Every single time I've upgraded, I've welcomed the upgrade. It was better, snazzier, more stable, etc. all the way up to Fedora Core 9.

Fedora Core 9 should never have been released. It was just barely alpha quality, and so buggy that merely changing the default font size would destabilize the system! I tried desperately to get it to work for about 2 weeks before shrugging, recovering my .kde directory from a backup, and rolling back to FC8. I'm not expecting an ultra-stable release with Fedora, I know it's more 'cutting edge' but when the computer crashes too badly to get to the website to file a bug report, I'm going to cut and run.

I haven't had the nerve to try 10, though I've heard good things about it. Once bitten, twice shy, and all that.

I can certainly empathise with you. F9 is my currently installed distro. I installed F10 and was fairly unimpressed. However it wasn't Fedora's fault... it was KDE. I tried using Gnome for a while, but hated it for all the same reasons I've always hated it. So I went back to F9 and KDE 3.5.x.

I've been using F11 (alpha) for over a month now and I have to say I am quite happy with it. Except that I broke yum... but, again, that's not Fedora's fault. KDE has now become *much* more usable. I'll probably stick with F11. I'm quite excited about this release. F10 was the only generation of Fedora that I skipped... F11 brings everything back into focus for me. Not sure about their choice of defaulting to ext4 though--although I can't remember this being the case when I installed the Alpha... perhaps because I already had the partitions in place.

Re:Finally Fedora?

[H0p313ss]

I'm a long, long time RedHat user. (Since Red Hat Linux 5.1, if you're curious)

I suddenly feel very, very old.

Re:Finally Fedora?

[DiegoBravo]

> Every single time I've upgraded, I've welcomed the upgrade. It was better, snazzier, more stable, etc. all the way up to Fedora Core 9.

Did you forget the the mess with kernel/gcc/libc issues with 7.0???

Re:Finally Fedora?

[kramulous]

I used F8 for quite a while too. I also found F9 was a bitch and that was what got me trying suse.

But F10 is really, really slick. It's the stability, it's the boot times, the stability, the cleanliness, it's the stability. It's the vibe.

I have it on every machine of mine now.

Re:Finally Fedora?

[ichthus]

Bah! 5.0 was nice. I went from 4.1 (my first distro ever), where I had to download and build XFree86 from source to work with my Diamond Viper card, to 5.0. Granted, I didn't "upgrade". I did a clean install, and everything just worked. Well, except for my AWE32 sound card. I had to get the latest driver from good ol' Takashi Iwai for that. (Thanks man!) But, from there I went to Mandrake, and didn't come back to RH until Fedora Core 5 -- another great release.

Re:Finally Fedora?

[calc]

I seem to recall there being lots of security updates shortly after RH5 release also, and RH at that time had no way to automated upgrades, eg apt-get or yum. Which was why I stopped using it and switched to Debian.

Re:Finally Fedora?

[calc]

Yea me too. ;-) I think the first RedHat I tried out was the mothers day release in 1995.

Re:Finally Fedora?

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Just a minor nitpick. The last Fedora release to be called "Fedora Core" was FC6. Anything after that is simply "Fedora".

Therefore, Fedora Core 9 was never released.

Re:Finally Fedora?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to be pedantic, but there's no "Fedora Core 9" or "FC9". It's just Fedora 9, or Fedora - Release 9. Fedora's releases quit being "Core" after FC6. Beyond this point, they merged their repositories (including Core) into one huge repo, hence the name change. It helps for us "long time users" to be knowledgeable, and minimize confusion for the budding newbies.

Re:Finally Fedora?

[Binestar]

Yeah, as I said in my original post, 5.0 was fine as a new install (Or clean install if that's what you want to call it) but upgrading from 4 was troublesome.

Re:Finally Fedora?

[ADRA]

I can't tell you about KDE, but F10 in general has been leaps and bounds better for me in terms of HW support and application behaviour. Pulse seems to be pretty much plug and play except for the 2-3 places that you have to navigate in order to get everything wired right.

Re:Finally Fedora?

[Anonymous Coward]

You screwed up by breaking your own rule. F9 was as you say utter crap, but F10 was a dream. Everything just worked.

Re:Finally Fedora?

[zrq]

I've been a RedHat and Fedora user for a similar length of time. However I stopped updating at Fedora 8. Fedora 9, 10 and 11 all use NetworkManager to configure the network interface, which breaks so many things that have been stable and working for a long time.

I can understand the benefits that NetworkManager brings for a laptop that connects and disconnects from lots of different networks, but can anyone explain what the benefits of NetworkManager are for a desktop or server that is wired into a fixed network ?

Something I would really like to see is a Fedora install package designed specifically for a desktop or server system, which leaves out many of the bells and whistles like NetworkManager or BlueTooth and restores the install option that said 'configure network from DHCP'.

Re:Finally Fedora?

[lowen]

I successfully upgraded a server from RH 4.2 to 5.1 long ago, and while it did have a few buglets, for the most part it worked.

Re:Finally Fedora?

[colinrichardday]

I had trouble with a fresh install of 5.0 (it was my first distro) with a file in the X configuration that was in the wrong directory. I was firtunate to have had some previous experience with Unix.

Re:Finally Fedora?

[scruffy]

Fedora Core 9 should never have been released. It was just barely alpha quality, and so buggy that merely changing the default font size would destabilize the system! I tried desperately to get it to work for about 2 weeks before shrugging, recovering my .kde directory from a backup, and rolling back to FC8.

You're just an example of "regression toward the mean" and you got all your broken stuff in one upgrade. Every release from RedHat 4.2 on has broken something for me. Audio is top on the list. Before Fedora, X often required twiddling. Fonts are always quirky in some way. Sometimes it's more things, sometimes it's less, but it's always something.

Re:Finally Fedora?

[donaldm]

I originally started with Fedora 7 and have progressively updated over time to Fedora 10 and my experience has been very positive with all the distributions. There have been some glitches most notably KDE 4 (it's fine now) that came with Fedora 10 but then again you should expect this with Fedora.

Actually one of the packages that does get a mention in the article and no one here has commented on is "Presto" which utilises delta rpm's instead of whole packages to update the distribution. To the novice this does not mean all that much but if you have limited download capability (most of the world) then "Presto" is a huge improvement since what could be a 100MB or even 500MB package update, with delta rpm's the all over download could be anything from 50% (normally worst case) to 1% of the total package size. When I first put "Presto" on Fedora 10 with a "yum install presto" command it did not work since there wasn't any delta rpm's for Fedora 10. Now there is and it is impressive how much I save in downloading.

It must be noted that utilising delta rpm's is not really new since SuSE, Debian (delta packages) and even Redhat have been using them for a while now, however in the case of Fedora you always had to download the package and even then if you did not have an older version of Fedora the delta rpm repositories did not exist. This time with Fedora 11 "Presto" is installed by default.

I haven't had the nerve to try 10, though I've heard good things about it. Once bitten, twice shy, and all that.

Like any Linux/Unix upgrade, rebuild you always need to backup your original OS and data although you should be doing this already. Once you have a recoverable backup you have the option of doing an upgrade or a fresh install and possible data recovery. Personally I prefer a fresh install and recover my data but that's me. When I move to Fedora 11 (normally within a month of release) it takes me approx 5 hours, four of which is backup and recovery and most of the time I don't have much to do.

The above is a methodology I normally apply when I consult with customers. My attitude is once you decide you are going to upgrade or rebuild (preferred) there is no going back, although to keep the customer happy I can always recover if appropriate and still charge accordingly. Of course you have to do your homework first such as determining if the applications the customer has will work with the upgrade. If the applications don't work the vendor should advise on this and the proposed OS upgrade postponed until the vendor provides an application that will work.

One of the reasons why I like a fresh install over an upgrade is the fact that you are starting fresh and are not carrying over possible issues. This does take longer but IMHO it is worth it.

Re:Finally Fedora?

[donaldm]

I successfully upgraded a server from RH 4.2 to 5.1 long ago, and while it did have a few buglets, for the most part it worked.

I personally find that if you are changing from one major release to another major release you are normally better off doing a fresh install and recovery of data. For minor releases upgrades or updates are fine. Of course if you are doing this for a customer you sometimes don't have this luxury and if something goes wrong the customer is not very happy. I have seen major upgrades fail with enormous amount of time wasted escalating to customer support and them coming back to you with the recommendation that a fresh install and recovery is the best way forward. A definite case of "I told you so".

When I mentioned recovery of data, this could be tape/disk backup and recovery (could be many hours) or just a local volume manager recovery (minutes). BTW I am not just talking about Linux distributions I am talking about Unix distributions as well. Homework is essential before doing anything especially when you are doing an upgrade for a customer.

Re:Finally Fedora?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are smart you will stay one release behind in the Fedora cycle. If you want to play and experiment then by all means use the current release but for production and such, stay a release behind so they have a chance to fix bugs and stabilize.

Re:Finally Fedora?

[cowbutt]

chkconfig --disable NetworkManager && service NetworkManager stop

Re:Finally Fedora?

[Lennie]

Of course you have to do your homework first such as determining if the applications the customer has will work with the upgrade.

The joy of Linux distributions is it's possible to just put a copy of the running system on an other and do some testing and/or test an upgrade.

With certain other OS's this always seems to be hard.

Re:Finally Fedora?

[zrq]

Yep - tried that. You also need to enable and start the network service too.

service network start
chkconfig network on

even then some parts of DHCP don't seem to work as reliably as they used to.

BUT - you can only do this *after* you have completed the install. What is needed is a simple option on the install sequence that asks "is this a server". If so, don't install all the bells and whistles that are designed for a laptop, just enable the standard network services. As it is, you need to hand tweak each machine after the install. Not good for someone with a room full of machines.

I have yet to see a rational explanation of why anyone would want NetworkManager installed on a server.

Re:Finally Fedora?

[cowbutt]

I don't remember having to manually enable the network initscript on my FC10 install. And I'm pretty sure DHCP worked fine, but the reason I disabled NetworkManager was that Firefox defaults to offline mode otherwise.

Well, AFAICS, NetworkManager is useful on desktops too - if you have 802.1x enabled on your network.

But yeah, it's not quite as polished as it could be. But that's Fedora (as opposed to RHEL/CentOS) for you...

So...

[jellomizer]

Does the Fedora 11 Beta have better video then Ubutu 9.4 Beta. Hopefully they can fix the "Static" soon.

Ubuntu screwed it up

[SmallFurryCreature]

PulseAudio is the future... but it is also a bit of an X. Not a curse word, X the server. X is fantastic and has features that make other GUI's look very poor indeed. Pity that for most people 99% of it is never needed and indeed gets in the way.

Linux, and for that matter all OS'es have always had trouble with sound. For some reason the powers that be (IBM) never really thought sound was needed beyond an occasional bleep. For a long time your soundcard was made by a taiwanese firm, the type of firm that you would expect to produce dirt cheap clones of western hardware, NOT the only supplier of sound for the IBM-PC (oh okay, leaving out a lot but still).

OSS and even Alsa have problems with apps wanting to lock the soundcard to themselves. PulseAudio is supposed to once and for all end this and make it similar to X in that Pulse Audio can hook up any audio app and any soundcard, even over the network, and mix them together.

Sadly it was released before it was ready and Ubuntu especially implemented it in a really bad way. Hence it got a bad rep because a beta was put badly into a "just works" distro.

But trust me, once you get it working and you are the kind of person who has 2-3 PC's and can never remember which desktop is actually hooked up to a speaker set but just want to play music it is a very nice system.

Re:Ubuntu screwed it up

[Fallingcow]

I'm sure it's the future. The features sound great. Doesn't goddamn work right yet, though.

That's why I said, "removed or fixed" rather than just "removed". I'll accept "fixed". Awesome. I'll also accept "change reverted until PulseAudio is beyond alpha (generously, beta) stages".

Personally, I stopped having trouble with audio in Linux at least a couple years ago, so suddenly breaking it with a half-finished implementation of a new audio server is very, very annoying, especially from the "Just Works" distros. It would have been one thing if PulseAudio actually added some kind of functionality that I wanted, but there were zero new features I needed from my existing system, so it didn't. Also would have been fine if they switched it but everything I used kept working fine, but that didn't happen.

Re:Ubuntu screwed it up

[Stormx2]

I'm in the same position. All it did was stop Skype from working and fuck with flash. I had to killall firefox after watching videos in order to get sound working in other apps. Annoying as hell.

I just put a "killall pulseaudio" in my startup script, as removing pulseaudio actually removes ubuntu-desktop :|

Re:Ubuntu screwed it up

[Fallingcow]

I had to killall firefox after watching videos in order to get sound working in other apps.

You're lucky--for a lot of us, it just crashed FF. Mine would do it 9/10 times if I closed at tab with flash in it. Bizarre.

Also broke VLC, and loads of other stuff. Fixes for different apps are often conflicting and half the time they don't work. So irritating.

I'd have welcomed this if they'd done it five or six years ago when Linux audio was truly awful, but as I've said, I hadn't had trouble with it in quite a while. Like, years. Back then the brokenness wouldn't have been that different from what I already had and at least the new sound system would have been a step in the right direction, but now putting a new layer in the audio system that isn't very stable and very compatible is an enormous step backwards.

Re:Ubuntu screwed it up

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. Ubuntu didn't screw anything up. Ubuntu rarely deviates from upstream implementations, so if Pulseaudio sucks in Ubuntu, it sucks everywhere else, including Fedora.

Re:Ubuntu screwed it up

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. Ubuntu didn't screw anything up.

Wrong gayboy! WRONG!

Re:Ubuntu screwed it up

[k.a.f.]

OSS and even Alsa have problems with apps wanting to lock the soundcard to themselves. PulseAudio is supposed to once and for all end this and make it similar to X in that Pulse Audio can hook up any audio app and any soundcard, even over the network, and mix them together.

I have never understood why this auto-mixing is considered desirable. I like that an application locks the soundcard. I listen to high-quality music while I work - why on Earth would I want another application mixing something else into that? The effect of two different tracks of music sequences superimposed is virtually always hideous cacophony - no thanks. I don't need a perky jingle to inform me that a download has finished. I am actively grateful to X for preventing the browser from interfering with my enjoyment. If I wanted your web site to make noise, I'd rub my thumb against the monitor! Honestly, what is this mythical use case in which hearing different sources of digital sound simultaneously is a good thing?

Re:Ubuntu screwed it up

[bersl2]

I've been running PulseAudio for many months now, and I've gotten most everything to work fairly well with it. ALSA requires more black magic than PulseAudio does, and that includes the fact that I had to compile PulseAudio and dependencies manually for my Slackware install.

Also, for the few apps that just would not work in the presence of PA (especially recording apps), I haven't found a way to non-destructively disable it. The only app that this mattered for (Linux version of SL < v1.22---so 99.9% of /. need not care) has been fixed. I also had problems using the ALSA pulse plugin that way, but I can get around that by using pacat and sox.

I love the ability to have program-independent volumes and on-the-fly speaker switching. I am waiting for Adobe to allow users to specify which ALSA device to use (without having to set the default) or for gnash to suck less (e.g., "UNIMPLEMENTED: Different stream/playback sound rate (5512/22050). This seems common in SWF files, so we'll warn only once."---I don't care if Macromedia/Adobe/the animation's author were Doing It Wrong: you need to support this).

Re:Ubuntu screwed it up

[Just Some Guy]

OSS on Linux and even Alsa have problems with apps wanting to lock the soundcard to themselves.

Not-so-minor correction above. FreeBSD automatically clones /dev/dsp so that any number of applications can use it simultaneously.

Re:Ubuntu screwed it up

[EvanED]

I listen to high-quality music while I work - why on Earth would I want another application mixing something else into that?

Because you want to pause your music player and watch a youtube video someone linked you to?

(Granted, this is sort of Flash's problem for keeping the card locked longer than necessary, but it's still a problem. Sound is set up crappily on the system I'm on now, and it appears that only one program can access it at once unless I manually start esd or something like that. If I want to have sound in Flash (and thus youtube), which I want fairly often, I might need to have nothing else holding the sound card when I start firefox. It's definitely the case that if I go to a page with flash, the sound card remains locked by FF until I close it. Which means if I want to start listening to other music, I have to close firefox, which at best is annoying and at worst loses state.)

Re:Ubuntu screwed it up

[Ornedan]

Playing go in CGoban (Java program) and listening to music at the same time. Way back when Java did audio via OSS and there was no mixing you either got just the clicks from the game - which are not an enterily unimportant part of the playing experience - or the music.

Or more generally, music and anything you'd expect to get audio cues from.

Re:Ubuntu screwed it up

[LingNoi]

Ubuntu rarely deviates from upstream implementations

Unless they've deviated in Debian and they do. I've had to make my own packages for Ubuntu simply because Debian compiles lots of stuff with the wrong compiler options and then these get pulled into Ubuntu.

Re:Ubuntu screwed it up

[shutdown -p now]

But trust me, once you get it working and you are the kind of person who has 2-3 PC's

So, basically, it's a currently-broken solution for the problem that only 0.01% of Linux users have?

Re:Ubuntu screwed it up

[colinrichardday]

Is X really a GUI in the sense of having a look? Would Mac fans accept the claim that Pre-OS-X GUIs looked worse than X? My understanding is that OS X uses X, if so, that pretty much just leaves Microsoft Windows as a non-X windowing system.

Re:Ubuntu screwed it up

[Clarious]

OSS and even Alsa have problems with apps wanting to lock the soundcard to themselves. PulseAudio is supposed to once and for all end this and make it similar to X in that Pulse Audio can hook up any audio app and any soundcard, even over the network, and mix them together.

AFAIK, recent version of OSS has fixed this (the one from 4front tech, not the one included in the kernel).

Re:Ubuntu screwed it up

[Clarious]

Ubuntu-desktop is just a meta package, it can be removed without causing any trouble.

And yeah, the first thing I do whenever I install a new Ubuntu system is removing it.

Re:Ubuntu screwed it up

[BertieBaggio]

Honestly, what is this mythical use case in which hearing different sources of digital sound simultaneously is a good thing?

I can't tell from your tone if you're serious or being flippant. It seems like both. However, if you're serious... In addition to sibling posts, I have several other 'mythical' use cases too:

• I sometimes like to listen to music while playing games (when I'm either passing a quick 10-20 minutes, or in a game with crap music).
• I'm normally on a teamspeak server to keep in contact with my buddies.
• Audio notifications. Okay, so you kinda covered that one, but they can be kinda useful. I won't go into this as it's a preference thing.
• Web sites (flash). Sibling has this covered, but I'll mention it too. I hate having to close my media player (and lose my place in the music) to watch a tiny wee clip.

There are undoubtedly others that I can't think of because it's after 3 AM, but you get the idea I think. If you don't want mixing, that's your preference and I have nothing against it, but there are most definitely cases where it is desirable.

I have never understood why this auto-mixing is considered desirable.

Hope this cleared that up for you then.

Re:Ubuntu screwed it up

[Anonymous Coward]

Its considered desirable because even if you don't want to actually listen to multiple applications at once you want them all to be able to work and produce sound when appropriate. IE skype and amarok both produce sound.

With mixing you hit pause click call then click play when done.

Without mixing you have to close your music app, open up skype, make the call, close skype, open up your music applicaton and reload playlist hit play.

In this use case a voip/messaging app which can take incomming messages and calls you can't even make use of the application as intended unless you can leave it running in the background waiting for calls/messages.

In short you are an idiot.

Re:Ubuntu screwed it up

[bsDaemon]

OSX doesn't use X-Window for its native apps. It does ship with an X11 implementation with the dev kit, though, so you can run X apps along side native Quartz apps. The X is just for Roman numeral 10

Re:Ubuntu screwed it up

[colinrichardday]

Thanks, I was aware that the X was ten, but I wondered if they might use the X windows system if they were using BSD.

Re:Ubuntu screwed it up

[walshy007]

unfortunately, in so far as music production etc is concerned, pulseaudio is useless, the latency incurred by running jack on pulseaudio is very nasty.

Re:Ubuntu screwed it up

[Just Some Guy]

I can't understand why anyone would want to work with more than one program at a time. Modern desktops want to display several programs on the screen at one time. Why on Earth would I want to see more than one window at once? I run high-quality applications and don't want cheesy programs to use my pixels.

Basically, I have a very unusual usage pattern and I don't understand why everyone else does things in a different way.

Re:Ubuntu screwed it up

[sygin]

I am using the new Ubuntu Jaunty, the good news is that it now works better than ALSA. If you upgrade, make sure to remove killall pulseaudio as it will muck things up. Cheers Sygin

Re:Ubuntu screwed it up

[defaria]

Linux, and for that matter all OS'es have always had trouble with sound.

Maybe on your systems but on my various Windows boxes sound has never been a problem.

PulseAudio is supposed to once and for all end this and make it similar to X in that Pulse Audio can hook up any audio app and any soundcard, even over the network, and mix them together.

I know, understand and like X and it's ability to do remote displaying of applications. However I can count on 1 hand how many times I've had the need to produce a sound on another system...

But trust me, once you get it working and you are the kind of person who has 2-3 PC's and can never remember which desktop is actually hooked up to a speaker set but just want to play music it is a very nice system.

Don't cha just love it when a techie invents a weird situation to justify a feature. I've never had any confusion as to which set of speakers are hooked to which PC! And 99.999% of the people don't either.

Re:Ubuntu screwed it up

[kodefive]

I was going to mod you insightful, but i accidentally clicked flamebait instead. In the moderation instructions it says that there is a "Normal" moderation option just so you can change your mind before clicking "Moderate" button. However, I did not see any "Moderate" button, the moderation was instead made immediately. As a last resort, I therefore post a reply here to make my moderation go away. Stupid moderation system, I know it used to work right once upon a time...

Re:Ubuntu screwed it up

[Jay L]

Honestly, what is this mythical use case in which hearing different sources of digital sound simultaneously is a good thing?

People who listen to music and receive IMs?

Biggest problems

[0xABADC0DA]

I would use Fedora over Ubuntu any day, if not for two things:

1) Have to 'reinstall' to upgrade to next version. I know there's a way to live upgrade, but it's still 'at your own risk' right?
2) openbsd-style netcat. Seriously, why reimplement netcat and change all the options? Hobbit forever.

I have experience working with many distros, and Fedora is far better in terms of quality and security in my experience than anything else. Selinux is great... but god forbid if you have to maintaining the policy yourself. Fedora's a little harder to get codecs, but it's not a huge deal. Also they don't do retarded things like rebranding firefox.

Re:Biggest problems

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have to "reinstall" to upgrade. All you have to do is boot from the install media and chose "upgrade".

I can't believe how everyone is repeating this misconception.

Re:Biggest problems

[cowbutt]

In theory. In practice, doing an upgrade install from the install media only seems to do a reasonable job if you don't have packages from third-party repositories. I tried FC8->FC9->FC10 recently; it took ages, and the mess it left looked harder to fix than backing up /etc and doing a clean FC10 install. And I've been using RH since the 2.1 days.

Next time, I'll try using the unsupported yum method, whilst leaving my third-party repos enabled, I think.

Re:Biggest problems

[pembo13]

1) Have to 'reinstall' to upgrade to next version. I know there's a way to live upgrade, but it's still 'at your own risk' right?

Lookup `preupgrade`

2) openbsd-style netcat. Seriously, why reimplement netcat and change all the options? Hobbit forever.

I don't know. That's a bit obscure to hope it just fixes itself. Is there a bug number?

Re:Biggest problems

[Mc_Anthony]

Actually, a "live upgrade" is the preferred method for Ubuntu upgrades - and it's perfectly safe to do either over the net or from a cd.

Another benefit to Ubuntu is that they have an LTS version - which is absolutely necessary if you plan on setting up a production machine.

In the end however, if you're a decent admin, Linux is Linux and the distro you pick doesn't make that much difference (in general of course).

Re:Biggest problems

[LeneJ]

I am biased here, as I have worked with SELinux for years now, but Red Hat actually have a 4-day training course on SELinux: https://www.redhat.com/courses/rhs429_red_hat_enterprise_selinux_policy_administration/

I am doubly biased as I wrote the first incarnation of the course. (Yes, I am a Red Hat employee. Over 9 years now.)

Re:Biggest problems

[gbarules2999]

GP is talking about Fedora, not Ubuntu.

Re:Biggest problems

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just the usual Ubuntu = Linux mentality by Ubuntu users.

Re:ext4? This is madness!

[Anonymous Coward]

Madness you say?

I've been running ext4 on an arch linux server for a month now. No issues with the filesystem so far. It is also my first experience with syslog-ng and setting mark frequency to zero (disabled) took the box down.

No...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it just has exactly the same behaviour that filesystems like XFS and JFS and probably most of other unix filesystems, specially those using delayed allocation (say, ZFS). Any app that can "lose data" in Ext4 needs fixing anyway because of portability (other OS behave exactly like Ext4, and have done so for years).

To "solve" this issue Ext4 has added some hacks (basically, do a fsync in the file after a rename or a truncate) that will slow down performance (caching is faster) for some apps, like rsync, and will encourage programming behaviours that can cause data loss in badly written apps that are run in OSes that do not behave like ext3/ext4/btrfs. But hey, that's what people asked for.

realtime kernel by default

[Anonymous Coward]

Fedora is using a realtime kernel by default. (Thank you!) All audio / video performance should be better all around.

Re:realtime kernel by default

[Anonymous Coward]

erm. no. this is a total load of rubbish. no RT kernel is shipped with Fedora. Grow a brain.

Re:realtime kernel by default

[RiotingPacifist]

realtime or optional realtime (desktop)?

ubuntu 9.04 beta and fedora 11 beta compared...

[dr_wheel]

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_fedora_q209&num=1

Re:ubuntu 9.04 beta and fedora 11 beta compared...

[Anonymous Coward]

that site's pretty useless. Nice to see they realized that debug options were enabled in a beta, for once.

The entire purpose of that site is to tout Ubuntu over every other operating system because ubuntu r0x0rs on the desktop - therefore it is the best os for all use.

Re:ubuntu 9.04 beta and fedora 11 beta compared...

[RiotingPacifist]

nice benchmarks, but as a desktop user what are the pros/cons of each?

Re:ubuntu 9.04 beta and fedora 11 beta compared...

[teg]

Not nice benchmarks either, as the beta has debugging enabled. It's rather pointless - as is a couple of the other tests (especially the gcc one) when just listed as a graph.

Re:ubuntu 9.04 beta and fedora 11 beta compared...

[Anonymous Coward]

ubuntu 9.04
NEXT>>>
beta
NEXT>>>
and fedora
NEXT>>>
11 beta
NEXT>>>
com
NEXT>>>
pared

Re:ubuntu 9.04 beta and fedora 11 beta compared...

[Eil]

"ubuntu 9.04 beta and fedora 11 beta benchmarked..."

Fixed that for ya.

Also, the article pretty much boils down to "Fedora 11 Beta is slower in a lot of areas which might be because they have a bunch of debugging stuff enabled, but really we're not sure. Anyway, enjoy the meaningless bargraphs."

Vixta.org

[apsantos]

Hi, we are proud to anounce the new release of Vixta.org, called Vixta Aero Dock 3D. could some one give us feedback about the challenge: - Fedora 10/11 vs Vixta Aero Dock 3D (Fedora based distro) because in my modest opinion i still prefer Vixta! thanks for feedback, apsantos

Wrong focus

[Britz]

I don't care if it boots in 20 or 30 seconds, kernel based mode setting (so it flickers a bit, XP also does this), ext4 (more testing plz) or any of that.

For my server Samba 4 would be interesting with Active Directory and some other goodies for Windows clients, but I guess this will take a while. Maybe some better management tools for virtual machines.

But on the desktop I would love to finally be able so sync my phone without jumping through hoops. Same with using a webcam. And I would love to run Office 2007 SP1 on it, since I could try converting some machines at work to Linux. This would make my live a LOT easier.

I guess I don't care all that much about Linux (the kernel) anymore. I care about apps. And good integration of them and polish. But wasn't that what distros were for?

Re:Wrong focus

[pembo13]

I don't care if it boots in 20 or 30 seconds

Apparently quite a few people do.

kernel based mode setting (so it flickers a bit, XP also does this)

Well, I mean "we" are tring to be better than that though, right?

ext4 (more testing plz)

That's been in Fedora testing for quite some time. So I would leave that decision up to them and not assume they weren't testing it.

management tools for virtual machines

Better than virt-manager i take it?

to finally be able so sync my phone without jumping through hoops. Same with using a webcam. And I would love to run Office 2007 SP1 on it, since I could try converting some machines at work to Linux. This would make my live a LOT easier

That's a bit beyond the scope of a distribution though, no?

Re:Wrong focus

[Anonymous Coward]

I would love to finally be able so sync my phone without jumping through hoops.

I don't know why you have "hoops" to jump through - my phone works just great.

Same with using a webcam.

I've got a Logitech Orbit9000. The "hoop" I had to jump through was "plug it in".

Of course, I'm using Slackware, so YMMV. Maybe you need to try a more user-friendly distro? (ie. something that has KDE 3.5 by default.)

And I would love to run Office 2007 SP1 on it, since I could try converting some machines at work to Linux.

And the fact that MS goes out of their way to ensure that Office doesn't run on Linux is Linux's problem how, exactly?

Re:Wrong focus

[EEPROMS]

Just run codeweavers (pre hacked version of wine) or wine (do your own hacks) to get Office 2007 running on Linux

Re:Wrong focus

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds to me like you want to be running Windows, not Linux.

Re:Wrong focus

[shutdown -p now]

I don't care if it boots in 20 or 30 seconds

Apparently quite a few people do.

Apparently so. On a completely unrelated note, apparently, quite a few people still cannot make suspend-to-RAM or suspend-to-disk work in Linux on their hardware...

to finally be able so sync my phone without jumping through hoops. Same with using a webcam.

That's a bit beyond the scope of a distribution though, no?

Not at all. It's up to the distro to correctly hook up all the low-level machinery to achieve the "plug and play" feel that GP requests. In particular, if his phone and cam need some additional software and/or drivers, that layer should be able to detect the device, and and download and configure all the needed stuff from the distro repositories. Vista can do this, and it doesn't even have a decent package repository otherwise...

Re:Wrong focus

[shutdown -p now]

And the fact that MS goes out of their way to ensure that Office doesn't run on Linux

Do you have specific references to back this statement (which seems to imply that Office tries to detect WINE, etc). Or are you just spreading FUD?

Re:Wrong focus

[pembo13]

quite a few people still cannot make suspend-to-RAM or suspend-to-disk work in Linux on their hardware

Does that work reliably on any open hardware platform? (Windows, Linux, BSD)

Re:Wrong focus

[shutdown -p now]

I've yet to see a PC on which it didn't work in XP, and I've seen a lot (and don't we all?).

Re:Wrong focus

[CorporateDrew]

This previous post echoes the overall problem with trying to use Linux as a home/personal desktop system for the masses.

Server side, everything is close to ideal. There are thousand here who can tell you what's superior about Linux as a server OS (and do so every day).

On the desktop side, there's just something missing. Yes, I'm talking about pretty GUIs and driver support, but it's more about taking the desktop paradigm to the next level. Why has Linux clearly architected what so many of us believe is a better server platform, but not really wow'd the general populace on the desktop side? (I'm not talking to you who have used Linux as a desktop OS for many years and have learned to work around its limitations. I'm talking about the average Joe user.)

I've got 60,000 PCs 90% ready to take to some Linux desktop distro, but it's the last 10% where is where Microsoft is still superior that's holding me back. I haven't taken a look at Leonidas, and maybe I should, but the complaints in this thread talk about sound issues and Ext4 flaws that put Firefox config files in jeopardy.

When will the Linux community build a desktop distro that wows the pants off of average Joe user?

Re:Wrong focus

[gbarules2999]

When will the Linux community build a desktop distro that wows the pants off of average Joe user?

When the average Joe user actually knows what an OS is and cares about which one they run. You may be waiting for a while, there.

Linux already has the anti-virus, and the simple, easy-to-learn GUIs and awesome software management. It's more a matter of first telling people what that all means, and then second telling them how to use all of it intelligently.

There is nothing to "work around" if you're smart and don't install the beta releases of a Fedora release (which is known to throw all the new tech into it at once to see what happens). Go with Ubuntu 8.10, and soon 9.04 will be released (the Beta is running very well). For Ubuntu, it's just a matter of teaching the users how to use sopme of the stuff that makes Linux different.

It's not hard, or worse, it's just different. It's up to the user to decide whether it's better or worse. Hopefully a tutorial mode is created by one of the major distros soon; that would be pretty nice.

Re:Wrong focus

[AnibalOjeda]

If you dont like fast boot on your desktop is a personal thing. I love this, i hate to wait a minuut for a system to star, im a fast computer user & i like computer to be fast (evenbooting) linux booting fast on home desktop is the right direction to go.. off course we've got sunpend & a terrible hibernate that doest work right. But i like to turn my pc off once in a while. About syncking your phone, just getan android & you will never need a cable to sync you phone contacts.. you are right about polishing & integration, that why distros are for, thats why Ubuntu kick every other distro asses big time.

In Defense of Pulseaudio

[drinkypoo]

Ubuntu did a shit job of implementing audio configurations. This boggles the mind because even while they were implementing it you could simply read PerfectSetup to learn everything you need to know. I did this on both Gutsy and Hardy with 100% success (not an exaggeration.) I am now running Intrepid on HP Elitebook 8730w and pulseaudio is part of the solution. I haven't gone through PerfectSetup yet, but that's coming. Save your hatred of pulseaudio, it's misplaced. It is the job of the distribution to properly configure the software for the user.

Re:In Defense of Pulseaudio

[ChunderDownunder]

Having read "The Perfect Setup" - all those config files in your home directory? That is waaaaaaaaaay too complicated.

We, the people, just want a plug and play solution to detect the hardware, set some reasonable defaults and provide intuitive gnome wizards (or kde 4.x if you prefer) to configure the rest.

I hear it'll be the year of the Linux Desktop soon. :( I could list other non plug and play bugbears... It's 2009; the days of hand-editing umpteen configuration files for I/O devices should be over.

Re:In Defense of Pulseaudio

[drinkypoo]

Having read "The Perfect Setup" - all those config files in your home directory? That is waaaaaaaaaay too complicated.

That's why I said it's the distribution's job to do all that stuff. Ubuntu didn't, which is why I said they did a shit job. If they had, everything would have worked fine, which is why I said it's not pulseaudio's fault. And you are a bozo, which is why I had to explain my comment (which wasn't that complicated) all over again.

Re:ext4? This is madness!

[Inner_Child]

Mother-in-law doing the cooking?

Why not Focus on Fixing FC10?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, If this seems trollish but I've just spent the last week trying to get our developers working FC10 VMWare images.

I used to Redhat 5.1 was may first introduction to Linux back in 1998 and I stuck with RPM based distros until around 2004. This week I had to pick up FC10 (x86_64) because it's the supported build platform for a project the developers are were are contracted to use. I can't tell you how disappointed I am in FC10. We all know FC == RHEL Beta. Does that mean FC11 == RHEL Alpha? If so, you can keep it.

The bugs/features I've found so far in FC10:
- 700+ updates required post FC10 install with desktop and devel. packages installed.
- The default network config (NetworkManager) won't allow the ethernet device to activate on boot even when you enable it in the gnome management app. I found it necessary to turn to enable the network service and set it to start using 'chkconfig --levels 35 network on'
- vmware-guestd segfaults random with VMWare 6.5.1 ( I realize this is probably a VMWare Bug)
- No yum based binary NVIDIA support without installing third party yum repositories.
- When installed natively on a Dell T5400 virtual terminals don't work in init 5.
- More difficult to setup an in-house yum mirror when compared to debian/ubuntu/apt-mirror

There are more annoyances but I don't have my notes in front of me. The other newish OS I tried recently was Ubuntu server (granted an apples to oranges comparison) but the only bug I found with Ubuntu was the QLogic qla2xxx firmware won't load from the default initrd because a symlink is missing from /lib/firmware to /lib/firmware//. So far in the last four+ years my work servers have gone from FC3->Debian->Ubuntu. For a gnome based desktop I'd take Ubuntu over Fedora any day. If for no other reason than FC is a constant reminder of how frustrating FC10 is to configure and how frustrating getting RHEL updates to non-internet or RHN connected computers can be. Now get off my lawn.

Re:ext4? This is madness!

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to have a japanese mother in law... Her cooking was excellent and awesome... Well still is, it happens that I was her favorite choice for her daughter... So she and her other daughters invite me for dinner once in a while. Also, I had an italian mother in law... But for a little time, great lasagnas over there, her daughter was crazy tough.

geesh

[Danzigism]

is it just me or is anyone else getting tired of people saying that linux isn't ready for the desktop because their windows applications won't run , or that X or Y network protocol doesn't communicate well with Windows active directory and file and print sharing? I'm personally sick of people looking for a way they can emulate their Windows network and environment in Linux. It is kind of sickening how much time is devoted just so we can hack Windows crap to work in Linux.

Yes it is neat that it works, but we should be focusing on innovating Linux like we did with the whole idea of package management, insane desktop effects, the ability to run hundreds of different WMs, and of course the people who make alternative native software suites like openoffice.org, the gimp, Ardour, etc.. etc.. Of course these alternatives need some work, but we won't get anywhere if we keep trying to hack Linux so it can be more like Windows.. that is not the point of this operating system.. We shouldn't be trying to make comparisons with Windows and Linux as if they apples vs apples. Becuase Linux is a totally different fruit that should be used for totally different purposes in its own manner.

Re:geesh

[wintermute000]

No you miss the point.
They want it to work 'as easily' as windows.

FOr some things its a straw man, the linux way is just as easy or even easier, its just they're too used to the windows monoculture and cannot conceive an alternative.

FOr some other things its absolutely spot on. Why does an average user have to understand iptables and smb.conf files just to 'map a shared drive'. (this may have changed with FC10 and up, I stopped using Fedora on desktop since around F8). Why do they have to jump through hoops just to get flash and xvid - and the proprietary argument is another straw man. Hint: USERS DON'T CARE and ubuntu seems to have no issues giving them one package to install that sorts out flash, mp3, xvid and truetype fonts.

The amount of time it took me to get an F8 install fully 'desktop ready' compared to ubuntu 8.10 is abysmal. I can spend 5 minutes post install on ubuntu and wow people. Fedora, takes way longer to get all that 'normal' stuff working, then also I'm forever answering questions about how to do XYZ and they seem to not have those questions if I point them at ubuntu......

Not trying to start a fedora vs ubuntu flamewar, and I know the two distros are for different jobs. I always prefer to run 'server' type apps in Fedora and my nice familiar RH environment. But I am replying to your comments above.

Depends when you upgraded to 5.0

[roystgnr]

IIRC they had major problems in the initial release, but the first couple weeks of updates fixed them. Similar situation with 6.0, I believe.

And then after that Red Hat and Fedora were both pretty stable (surprisingly so for the latter's "bleeding edge" philosophy), right up until Fedora 9...

At least Fedora 10 works. It's not up to their usual standards (my home PC lost surround sound for some reason I haven't found time to look into), but after 9, having it function at all was a huge relief. My personal experiences with 9 included a fresh laptop install that barely worked, and a few attempted upgrades at work that were literally rendered unbootable thanks to critical missing libraries.

no, that was GOOD

[r00t]

It really sucked when most of the users could never have more than one application using audio simultaneously.

I love that. Audio apps should not be stomping all over each other. If everything gets mixed together, it becomes a mess. I curse the fucking thing, and probably unplug the speakers.

BTW, two ways to do it: traditional (first app wins) and stack-based (second app wins, first app goes to /dev/null until the second app quits)

Thus my bug report: "audio from different apps gets jumbled together -- MAKE IT STOP!!!"

Re:no, that was GOOD

[ion.simon.c]

If everything gets mixed together, it becomes a mess.

I think that you are one of the few people in this world who *don't* want multiple apps to be able to use the sound system simultaneously. I suppose that you don't use any of the scads of cards that work correctly with ALSA's software mixing?

Re:no, that was GOOD

[r00t]

My hardware, just some plain USB speakers, hasn't been reliable since the first day people started fucking around with audio. Plain old OSS worked very well.

Right now I can't even get audio at all. It has something to do with idiotic ALSA developers who explicitly prevent USB audio from being device 0, on the erroneous assumption that every computer MUST have non-USB audio and NOBODY would EVER want to use USB as a primary audio device.

So I guess that means software mixing doesn't work. Problem is, unmixed audio doesn't work either. ALSA sucks ass.

So I suffer in silence... literally.

Re:no, that was GOOD

[ion.simon.c]

My hardware, just some plain USB speakers, hasn't been reliable since the first day people started fucking around with audio.

Since the late 19th century, then?

It has something to do with idiotic ALSA developers who explicitly prevent...

It sounds like this is unrelated to your "I only want one sound stream to be able to play on my speakers at a single time." rant. Why are you switching gears?

Plain old OSS worked very well.

I have an audiophile friend who adores OSSv4. It sounds like it would be really good for it to be introduced to Linux. Regardless... why don't you go back to using OSS? OSSv4 works in *BSD. You might like BSD-land.

Re:ext4? This is madness!

[Anonymous Coward]

You wish you had one...

you said "pause", not "mixing"

[r00t]

Because you want to pause your music player and watch a youtube video someone linked you to?

Hey, I think that's great. The music player gets muted until the youtube video is done playing.

That's not what PulseAudio does. PulseAudio mixes, which is just retarded. It's adding latency and burning CPU time to make a hideous cacophony.

Even when not mixing, you suffer resampling error.

No thanks.

Re:you said "pause", not "mixing"

[EvanED]

Hey, I think that's great. The music player gets muted until the youtube video is done playing.

Except that's not what happens for me. What happens for me would be much better described as "the music player gets muted until you close Firefox." Whether this is a configuration problem on my end on behalf of Firefox, Flash, or the sound service I don't know, but I don't have root, so it's not something I have much hope of fixing.

And this is one of the bigger problems with locking something like the sound card: all it takes is one poorly-behaved program and the system just fails horribly.

Re:you said "pause", not "mixing"

[r00t]

Flash keeps running in your browser after the first time it gets used, forever burning CPU time.

I've no doubt it keeps the sound device open, which is bad behavior. Flash may even be playing silence.

A big improvement would be to provide a user interface to let people see which device has claimed the audio. Users could then complain to the right place. Better yet, provide a way for users to disconnect bad software.

Re:you said "pause", not "mixing"

[EvanED]

Better yet, provide a way for users to disconnect bad software.

I would say that such a mechanism would be essential for a "lock the soundcard" model to even have a chance at being non-shitty.

Or, you could just mix sources, which is the more general solution anyway, since you can always manually pause whatever source you aren't listening to, and it will both solve this problem and, say, let me listen to music while playing a game that has intermittent sound.

Hi ho hi ho back to alpha I go.

[Anonymous Coward]

Installer crashed at the end trying to eject the DVD, apparently didn't write the root password.

Boot to rescue mode, set the password and reboot, get ttys respawning too fast and system wedged.

This is on a bog standard Dell Optiplex 620, x86_64.

Re:ext4? This is madness!

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you get an invitation from Gordon Ramsey?

Is the Red Team or the Blue Team going to prepare your dinner?

A Hung System?

[mgkimsal2]

For example, on a hung system where a poweroff like that might happen, your Firefox config file could be lost.

But, on a William Hung system, you might lose your 'shebangs'. That might be data loss we could all live with.

Re:A Hung System?

[Anonymous Coward]

#!/bin/sh

Pentium III support?

[guacamole]

Would this distribution be appropriate to run on a PC with a Pentium III (1000) processor PC?
It currently runs 6.

Re:ext4? This is madness!

[Anonymous Coward]

Mother-in-law doing the cooking?

a slashdotter? married?

humm

[AnibalOjeda]

YAFBR (yet another fedora-bug release)

Why are they breaking RPM?

[Anonymous Coward]

So can someone please explain why, for the first time in over a decade, Red Hat has gratuitously broken the RPM package file format?

http://orcorc.blogspot.com/2009/03/oh-my-goodness.html

Re:Why are they breaking RPM?

[cowbutt]

It's not gratuitous; it's because MD5 and SHA-1 are no longer safe to use. See this FC11 feature note for more info. Note that FC11+ RPMs can still be converted to cpio format using rpm2cpio and unpacked using cpio.

Preaching to the choir here

[SmallFurryCreature]

While I agree, that would upset all those people who can't understand just why apps want to lock the soundcard, just a few days ago someone used this as a rant against linux. That apps lock the soundcard (which actually doesn't happen anymore on most distro's)