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Fedora 12 Released

Posted by timothy on from the new-hat-for-the-holidays dept.

AdamWill writes "The Fedora Project is pleased to announce the release of Fedora 12 today. With all the latest open source software and major improvements to graphics support, networking, virtualization and more, Fedora 12 is one of the most exciting releases so far. You can download it here. There's a one-page guide to the new release for those in a hurry. The full release announcement has details on the major features, and the release notes contain comprehensive information on changes in this new release. Known issues are documented on the common bugs page."

45 of 236 comments (clear)

  1. Great work! by sopssa · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If you read the one page release notes, it seems Fedora actually knows how to try to cater to more general audience too, while still supporting the core Linux audience. I have always thought that why Ubuntu became the "standard" general OS you introduce as first Linux, as Fedora does a lot more things a lot better (and the Red Hat delivered design is imo a lot better than whats delivered from Debian)

    What was interesting was the "better than ever tablet support". I have been thinking of getting a tablet pc for convenience in bed, and Linux would actually be quite perfect OS for it since theres no need to play games. Seems they're taken things like that into account too, while Linux community usually forgets the non-techie stuff.

    1. Re:Great work! by Junta · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It is subjective that Fedora does 'a lot more things a lot better'. They certainly have distinct aims from Ubuntu and gain some benefits, but I personally find Fedora to suffer some phenomena that Ubuntu does not:

      -Out-of-the-box media/driver experience: Fedora goes purist and the out-of-the-box experience suffers for it with lack of popular codecs and optimal drivers for nVidia cards. Ubuntu caters to the user experience and takes care of this out of the box. You have to add RPM fusion repositories to make Fedora cope with this, which isn't insurmountable, but isn't out of the box.

      -Fedora is not even stable within a release cycle in terms of offered featureset. I.e. I recall gaim 1.x being replaced with gaim 2.0 one day without requiring any particular update. This is good for enthusiasts who always want the cutting edge, bad for end-users who only want change at certain times they could expect (and for documenters doing screenshots). I recall once Fedora reving the kernel revision entirely without jumping releases. This wasn't bad in and of itself, but they jumped before nVidia supported it, and my X was hosed. Ubuntu is more conservative with this, knowing it will just be 6 months before a new cycle comes anyway.

      -Fedora is 'too' comfortable with cutting edge changes, even to the point of releasing versions ahead of upstream *or* backporting code from future versions into older versions that upstream projects didn't want to do. For example, they backported things from the 2.6.32 branch to 2.6.31. The upstream kernel people weren't comfortable enough with the features to allow them into 2.6.31 or any release that aligned with their cycle, so they simply put 2.6.32 stuff into 2.6.31. This has been a longstanding tendency with RH (everyone probably remembers the gcc 2.96 debacle). BTW, this is even worse in RHEL, where they will backport 2.6.3x changes to 2.6.18, severely breaking third party kernel modules that code for the 'API' of 2.6.18 that gets broken by the massive amount of backports. Some third party even writes to newer 'apis', but wraps it with '> 2.6.26' sorts of ifdefs and thus assumes the 'old' api and RHEL will completely screw those assumptions. Ubuntu *usually* doesn't jump the gun (GRUB 2 is an example of going before the upstream declares 'ready' though).

      -I *still* can't quite put my finger on it, but something about the Ubuntu desktop feels, subjectively to me, more whole rather than merely a conglomeration of the parts. This may simply be a matter of certain tastes they appear to me, because I can't nail it down.

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
    2. Re:Great work! by icebike · · Score: 3, Informative

      Many of these problems you attribute to Fedora are also true of OpenSuse.

      Rather than take the Ubuntu approach of popping up a "Do you want to download these non-OSS drivers button" which handles it almost perfectly in every instance and frees the Distro of legal risk, both Fedora and opensuse have historically left you to your own devices, assuring the marginalization of their product.

      Opensuse now adds many one-click installs for some of these drivers. http://www.lebokov21.com/2008/01/29/opensuse-1-click-install-your-software/

      Forced into this by US legal situation, the web page based One-Click is better than nothing, but small consolation to someone stuck with an odd-ball network card.

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    3. Re:Great work! by AdamWill · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well, what alternative do you suggest for introducing desired new features into older kernel versions? It's not really the case that upstream 'didn't want to' backport things from 2.6.32 to 2.6.31, it's just not what upstream does. Upstream kernel maintainers do not maintain kernel version X once it's released, they go on to work on kernel version Y, pretty much. That doesn't mean it's somehow wrong for a distribution to do it, often it's the right thing to do, and Fedora is not the only distribution that does this (Ubuntu does it too, in some cases).

      Again, for RHEL, what's the alternative? The whole point of RHEL is to provide long-term stable releases, but customers also want support for newer hardware. When RH has several thousand large customers all screaming for support for their shiny new SAN hardware that they just spent several zillion dollars on, saying 'well, we're not going to backport that driver to kernel 2.6.18' isn't really an option, and updating them all wholesale to a new kernel release probably wouldn't be the best idea in the world either. What would you suggest RH does instead?

    4. Re:Great work! by AdamWill · · Score: 2, Informative

      As far as Fedora is concerned, this is not a 'problem'. The problem is rather in distributions which rely to too great an extent on closed source drivers to provide hardware support. For instance, many Ubuntu users upgrading to 9.10 are finding they can no longer use the proprietary ATI/AMD driver for their video card and are using the free driver. Which, it seems, Ubuntu does not pay too much attention to maintaining, as many of them have problems. By contrast, Fedora considers it better that users are encouraged to use the free drivers rather than the proprietary ones, and focuses on the development of the free drivers (Red Hat pays two full time developers to work on the radeon driver). In the long run, this is better for both Fedora users and all Linux users.

    5. Re:Great work! by sopssa · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The primary example of this is yum, which is a third rate program by comparision to apt. In fact, my personal opinion is that the success of Ubuntu has been down to properly maintained and comprehensive apt-repositories. When I left Fedora, yum had nothing in the same league as these, and dependency hell was very much still with the platform.

      It's funny you say that, because that was also my problem - but with apt and debian. Also their repositories contain apps that are stupidly build and are missing features (and if you want those features, you have to compile it yourself which defeats the purpose of using a package manager to begin with).

    6. Re:Great work! by TorKlingberg · · Score: 3, Insightful

      -Fedora is not even stable within a release cycle in terms of offered featureset. I.e. I recall gaim 1.x being replaced with gaim 2.0 one day without requiring any particular update. This is good for enthusiasts who always want the cutting edge, bad for end-users who only want change at certain times they could expect (and for documenters doing screenshots).

      On the other hand, with Ubuntu you are stuck with old versions of applications until you upgrade the whole system. For application software that is unlikely to break other things, I wish it was possible to upgrade to a new major version without upgrading everything else at once. It shouldn't be pushed as an automatic or opt-out update though, only manual or opt-in.

    7. Re:Great work! by diegocg · · Score: 3, Informative

      -Fedora is 'too' comfortable with cutting edge changes,

      That's why I'm switching from Ubuntu to Fedora - I want cutting edge stuff, but not unstable enought to scare me and break all my stuff. Many fedora package maintainers are red hat programmers who are also important kernel/libc/gcc/gnome/pulseaudio/x.org hackers, they drop cutting edge stuff but it's their stuff and they fix it quickly. Ubuntu packagers however are usually just packagers. Often, Fedora maintainers test features in the distro _before_ they are merged in upstream. For example, this Fedora version includes many nice KVM improvements, the utrace kernel patches needed for Systemtap userspace probing which are not upstream, the out-of-the-tree nouveau driver enabled by default... It's certainly more unstable than Ubuntu, but it's also more interesting for my taste. Also, using fedora I help to test and stabilize features that will go later into other distros.

    8. Re:Great work! by Enry · · Score: 2, Informative

      Not much in the way of tricks (a few extra repository lines). Debian backports (and I'm sure Ubuntu backports as well) are versioned such that when you upgrade to a new Debian release, the backport is replaced with the correct version.

    9. Re:Great work! by RAMMS+EIN · · Score: 3, Insightful

      ``Again, for RHEL, what's the alternative? The whole point of RHEL is to provide long-term stable releases''

      And there you have it. It's about stability. If I write software, or a configuration file, or anything else that interfaces with YourSoftware version X, and it works today, I think it is completely reasonable to expect it to also work tomorrow. If you make a new release of YourSoftware tomorrow that doesn't work with my code anymore, it's not YourSoftware version X anymore. It's a different version.

      I don't want my distro to be pushing new versions on me that break compatibility.

      If you want to introduce new versions, that's fine. In fact, I'm all for it. Just don't replace my working software with the new software that may or may not preserve compatibility. If it doesn't preserve compatibility, I want to have to explicitly upgrade to it. Put it in the next version of the distro. Or put it in a new package which can be installed alongside the old package. But don't put it in the current version of the distro, in the same package, because then you'll have multiple incompatible versions of the same distro with the same version number.

      --
      Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
    10. Re:Great work! by zdzichu · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Being cutting edge is what I like in Fedora. As for some kernel backports -- among them are btrfs backports. Those are changes which weren't even written when .31 was released. But those changes and fixes are quite important and I'm happy that Josef merged them in .31 shipped by Fedora.

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      :wq
    11. Re:Great work! by AdamWill · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Fedora is never going to have any market share, because we're not selling anything. There isn't a market. This isn't a glib point, it's an important one. No-one's playing for a share of a dumb customer base, here. That's not what Fedora is about.

      Second Google result for 'fedora "microsoft fonts"': http://miltonpaiva.wordpress.com/2009/07/10/fedora-11-x64-%E2%80%93-microsoft-fonts/

    12. Re:Great work! by Korin43 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Last time I checked, Ubuntu is all about the PPAs now. The backports aren't very interesting. Notice that the list is very short, and the only interesting backport I saw in my quick scan was Amarok. I didn't see Pidgin, Banshee, Filezilla, OpenOffice or Netbeans (all of which are out of date in Jaunty's stable repos).

      I used Jaunty as the example because Karmic hasn't really had time to get behind.

    13. Re:Great work! by Eil · · Score: 2, Informative

      Fedora is based and distributed from the US and a "do you want to infringe on the copyrights and patents of another company" button won't cut it.

      Uh, it's not illegal in any country for a distribution to prompt the user to download and install a package. It's only illegal for them to distribute it themselves. (Hence, the button.)

    14. Re:Great work! by icebike · · Score: 3, Informative

      Clearly you don't understand how that button works or why its there.

      It is there so Ubuntu does not have to bundle drivers that are not OSS.

      It causes these drivers to be downloaded directly from the FREE website of the driver manufacturers, be it AMD, Nvidia, Broadcom, or whatever.

      No copyrights or patents violated.

      Canonical IS based in the western world last time i checked.

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    15. Re:Great work! by AdamWill · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Oh, yes? Are you a lawyer? Have you heard of the doctrine of contributory copyright infringement? Fedora's legal team has, which is why they're decidedly dicey about that sort of thing. That said, there are several proprietary drivers which are perfectly legally redistributable - NVIDIA, AMD, Broadcom's own driver, for instance. Fedora does not distribute or implement a button for these not because it would be legally problematic but because it would be at odds with the Fedora project's philosophy and goals, as I mentioned in an earlier comment.

  2. Re:Fedora? by AdamWill · · Score: 2, Informative

    Yes. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Statistics - we have seen over 2.4 million installations of Fedora 11 so far, a 20% increase on Fedora 10. Methodology is extensively discussed on the linked page.

  3. 2012 = year of linux on the desktop by Hognoxious · · Score: 5, Funny

    OMG it's going to hit us!!!!

    Oh, sorry. Wrong story.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  4. Still no IA64 support... by the+linux+geek · · Score: 4, Insightful

    At least Fedora hasn't suddenly dropped PowerPC with no announcement like OpenSUSE did, but sadly, there's still no new builds of the SPARC and Itanium versions of Fedora. I wonder if they're intentionally trying to drive people to RHEL on these platforms.

    1. Re:Still no IA64 support... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Actually, PPC has been dropped as a primary architecture for F13. You can always get it (as well as IA64) from the development branch if they don't make an actual release for it. (Se http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora-secondary/development/ )

  5. Re:Fedora Server Hammered (of course) by SUB7IME · · Score: 4, Informative

    Or grab a torrent! http://torrent.fedoraproject.org/

  6. Huh, they're using the Nouveau driver... by Saint+Aardvark · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I notice in the release notes they're using the Nouveau driver for NVidia cards. I've been meaning to check the status of that driver for a while now -- but is this common in distros yet? (I'm a sysadmin mostly working on servers, so I'm a little out of touch. :-)

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    Carousel is a lie!
    1. Re:Huh, they're using the Nouveau driver... by brejc8 · · Score: 3, Informative

      It works, and it works amazingly well. I admin 50+ machines and I used to always install both the nvidia and ati closed drivers because users want compiz. A year ago ati cards started working out the box, now so does nvidia.

      --
      Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
    2. Re:Huh, they're using the Nouveau driver... by diegocg · · Score: 2, Informative

      According to the feature matrix, they are already done with 2D support, video playback, dual head, Xrand, KMS and suspend/resume for all the chips, which are the neccesary functions for a functional gnome/kde desktop (minus compiz), so it's not suprising that distros are starting to include it.

  7. Re:SystemTap by diegocg · · Score: 4, Informative

    I don't know how it compares to dtrace (in this wiki it appears that they have feature parity for all the important stuff), but I can tell you that it works quite well and it's very complete and it's well documented. It really deserves the 1.0 version tag.

    But in the kernel world very few people seems to use it, it seems that perf + static tracepoints have become the preferred tool for performance diagnostics.

  8. Re:Fedora? by whitedsepdivine · · Score: 2, Interesting

    They only show the number of installs. I would like to see the number from upgrades, and new install. The better statistic is how long does the average user have it installed.

  9. Re:Fedora? by icebike · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Because it fails to install on most generic boxes,

    That may be true for some values of "Generic", but this is less so than in the past.

    Historically Fedora installs insecure, requiring that you run around closing ports and shutting down daemons that were set up by default.

    Ubuntu and opensuse default to the opposite, which is all the home user really needs.

    I can not say that 12 still carries on this absurd Red Hat tradition, because I have not yet given 12 a try.

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  10. Ubuntu influence on marketing materials by ewg · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You can really see the Ubuntu influence on the Fedora marketing materials: smiling faces, happy about "software that helps you work, play, organize, and socialize." Wait, did Fedora even have marketing materials before Ubuntu?

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    1. Re:Ubuntu influence on marketing materials by RAMMS+EIN · · Score: 2, Insightful

      ``Wait, did Fedora even have marketing materials before Ubuntu?''

      They didn't need to, because they are the free version of Red Hat and Red Hat _was_ Linux in a lot of people's minds.

      But when Ubuntu came around, it quickly got so popular that it scared the big distros into getting their act together. Ubuntu's killer combo was the combination of working package management with ease of use. Nowadays, that's sort of what people have come to expect from a Linux distro, but, before Ubuntu, that was far from given.

      Unfortunately, Ubuntu seems to have lost its way. Every new release seems to introduce a lot of breakage, which in my opinion, outright destroys ease of use.

      Maybe Fedora is the way to go, these days. They also compile their software with stack smashing protection, right? I think I'm going to give it a go.

      --
      Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
    2. Re:Ubuntu influence on marketing materials by jimicus · · Score: 2, Interesting

      ``Wait, did Fedora even have marketing materials before Ubuntu?''

      They didn't need to, because they are the free version of Red Hat and Red Hat _was_ Linux in a lot of people's minds.

      But when Ubuntu came around, it quickly got so popular that it scared the big distros into getting their act together. Ubuntu's killer combo was the combination of working package management with ease of use.

      The only amazing thing about that was it took RedHat so long to get their act together. rpm needed some way of searching package repositories for years. Mandrake had urpmi and Debian had apt-get years before RedHat had anything comparable.

    3. Re:Ubuntu influence on marketing materials by AdamWill · · Score: 2, Informative

      EPEL is pretty good in the RHEL/CentOS/Fedora world, but nowhere near as large and well-maintained as Universe, IMHO.

      You're conflating things you shouldn't conflate. RHEL has an intentionally restricted package set; it's restricted to what Red Hat can commit to offer very detailed support for (not a problem Canonical has with Universe or Multiverse). Fedora's package set is entirely different from RHEL's, and EPEL has no relevance to Fedora, you would not use an EPEL repository on a Fedora system.

  11. More Torrents == Faster Fedora12 Downloads by SgtChaireBourne · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yeah, tried several--same problem. Finally found one that worked via FTP.

    Once you get it, help others get Fedora. Bandwidth schedulers can help if you're concerned about that. The demand will be there for a few days as people get it for work. Home users will try on the weekend, so if you can, help out by leaving your torrent up for a week or so.

    64 bit x86:

    Others:

    Sources:
    Fedora 12 source CDs
    Fedora 12 source DVD

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    Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
  12. Re:heres hoping by CannonballHead · · Score: 3, Insightful

    theyve fixed pulseaudio while they were at it.

    fixed that for you. :)

  13. Re:heres hoping by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    There are no bugs in pulseaudio, the only problem with pulseaudio is you don't love it enough. If everyone could just get to know pulseaudio, to see it for what it truly is rather than just what you read about it, then I think you will find that pulseaudio not only manages your sound, but saves the environment, fixes the economy, cures cancer, and creates world peace.

    You would have to be insane not to use pulseaudio, however that requirement will not be a problem for me...

  14. Re:Dead platforms.... by LordNimon · · Score: 2, Informative

    PowerPC is doing very well in the embedded space, thank you very much. Freescale just released an 8-core CPU that runs Linux very well. I admit that Fedora 12 may not be a good distro for embedded devices, but you're spreading FUD when you put PowerPC in the same category as SPARC and Itanium.

    --
    And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
    To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
  15. Re:Fedora? by armanox · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Fedora by default sets up the Firewall (IPtables) to block everything other then SSH and NFS4 IIRC. The daemons can be a mess - I know I don't need Bluetooth services on any of my systems. Fortunately disabling services is simple.

    --
    I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
  16. Multi-touch in Windows 7 by westlake · · Score: 2, Informative

    Multi-touch is not supported by windows yet.

    Kindle goes multitouch on Windows 7

    Dell SX2210T - multi-touch, Windows 7 ready, full HD monitor

    Windows 7 could hasten touch-screen computers

  17. gparted and ntfs-3g on live cd? by Culture20 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Does the Live CD have gparted and ntfs-3g yet? It's kind of silly having to use Ubuntu Live CDs to partition prior to installing Fedora.

    1. Re:gparted and ntfs-3g on live cd? by AdamWill · · Score: 2, Informative

      the installer has a partitioning tool (which is actually based on libparted, as it happens). why would you need ntfs-3g to do partitioning? you only need it if you actually want to mount the partition and write to it.

    2. Re:gparted and ntfs-3g on live cd? by BassMan449 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I don't know about gparted but I doubt ntfs-3g will ever be included by default because of IP restrictions. Fedora has always been very careful about anything with IP attached and doesn't include it in the repos. You have to get it from RPM-Fusion.

    3. Re:gparted and ntfs-3g on live cd? by Stickster · · Score: 3, Informative

      I don't know about gparted but I doubt ntfs-3g will ever be included by default because of IP restrictions. Fedora has always been very careful about anything with IP attached and doesn't include it in the repos. You have to get it from RPM-Fusion.

      Actually, ntfs-3g was a ground-up design, and is part of Fedora, and included in most installs. If you have an existing Windows partition on NTFS, you don't need any special utilities or a third-party disc. You can simply resize the partition using the built-in functionality in the installer, and then install into the freed space. There's even an easy "Shrink existing system" option in the installer to make it clearer to those who aren't experts on partitioning mumbo-jumbo.

      That aside, thanks for the understanding about legal encumbrances. We make it a point to treat all users as potential remixers and redistributors of our distribution, and want to ensure we're not passing any legal problems off to them.

    4. Re:gparted and ntfs-3g on live cd? by smoker2 · · Score: 2, Funny

      It's nice to see someone who knows something post for a change. I have F9 and I never had to install "out of band" rpms to get ntfs working.In fact my FC4 install seems to write to NTFS partitions fine. But you have to bear in mind we are surrounded by ubuntu losers here, those who are only linux users because it was sold to them in an attractive manner. The rest of us are here because it was the right thing to do. They are here because it was the trendy thing to do.

  18. Re:Dead platforms.... by jmorris42 · · Score: 2, Informative

    > Check IBM and other hardware vendors for PPC and Power CPUs.

    And how many people are going to run Fedora on a stack of blades? The only reason Fedora PPC still exists is because RH sells enough RHEL to those customers to justify it.

    > Do you know what CPU is in the Wii and XBox360?

    Do you know that Fedora doesn't run on either of those platforms? And even if you could break the hardware DRM, the lack of drivers, etc. and shovel it on the hardware, the resources suck on both. The Wii is pitiful and the Xbox is underendowed enough in the ram dept that Fedora would be an unpleasant experience.

    > Have you used Fedora recently?

    F12 is downloading currently at home on my F11 desktop. I'm typing this on a Thinkpad X31 running F11. Fedora sucks. The other choices suck more, especially since I have invested over a decade in RH based distros and know how to work around their suckage more. Now get the hell off my lawn ya punk kid!

    > It has come along ways since 1.0, and 2.0 where it required a lot of resources.

    What the hell are you babbling about? FC1 and FC2 were slim petite distros compared to F11. Anaconda did have some serious bloat back around that time which pushed the minimum ram to install up beyond what you needed to actually use the machine after the install, but now you can't really use a machine that was current in the F1 timeframe without upgrading pretty much everything in the box.

    > What you are saying is like, why do people care about Gnu/Linux, when there is OpenSolaris, and OpenBSD.

    No. What I am saying is that until we decide to stop trying to chase Apple and Microsoft's taillights and instead try to make Linux the best *NIX in the world we are doomed to bloat. If you don't like that and want to actually use older hardware you currently have no choice other than to use an unbloated traditional UNIX such as NetBSD or OpenBSD.

    The comment about Solaris should have been simple enough to understand. Seriously, how many people are buying current SPARC64 hardware to run anything but Solaris on? And because the number buying SPARC hardware has been pitiful for years there isn't much old stuff to repurpose anymore until you go back to truly ancient gear.

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  19. Re:Will this become RHEL/CentOS 6 by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 2, Informative

    Our RedHat account manager indicates that RHEL6 will probably be based off F11 with some parts (likely the KVM bits) of F12.

    yeah, RHEL 6 activity started branching a few months back.

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    My God, it's Full of Source!
    OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
  20. Re:1GHz Pentium 3 with 512MB of RAM by AdamWill · · Score: 2, Insightful

    'lightness' is a function of the software you have installed, not the distribution you're running. A 'light' distribution might make it easier to achieve a 'light' package load out and, yes, there are a few dependency choices a 'light' distribution might make differently, but it's nothing really deal breaking. You could run Fedora - or another 'big' distribution, like Mandriva or Ubuntu - perfectly well on such a system, if you make sensible application choices. You might want to look at LXDE as a desktop, Midori as a browser, claws or something of its ilk as a mail client...look for lighter applications than the typically omnivorous Firefox, Thunderbird / Evolution and so on.

    (having said that, I ran Mandriva with GNOME and Evo / Firefox all the way up to GNOME 2.12 on a system with 192MB of RAM. It did require a bit of patience at times. :>)