Fedora 17 Released

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Posted by timothy on Tuesday May 29, 2012 @02:30AM from the sounds-like-a-movie-title dept.

ekimd writes "Fedora 17 aka "Beefy Miracle" is released. Some of the major features include: ext4 with >16TB filesystems, dynamic firewall configuration, automatic multi-seat, and more. Major software updates include Gnome 3.4, GIMP 2.8, and GCC 4.7. The full feature list can be found here. Personally, I still find Gnome 3 to be an 'unholy mess' so I'm loving XFCE with Openbox."

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Beefy Miracle by stevegee58 · 2012-05-29 02:32 · Score: 4, Funny

Good heavens, what an unfortunate name for a Linux release.
1. Re:Beefy Miracle by Junta · 2012-05-29 02:46 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  I find it amusing that as a result of this name, I think this kicked off:
  https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Future_Release_Naming
  After several tries at getting 'Beefy Miracle' in, and the leadership seemingly forced to accept it. Hence a new naming process.
  
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2. Re:Beefy Miracle by Rik+Sweeney · 2012-05-29 03:03 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Good heavens, what an unfortunate name for a Linux release.
  You think that's bad, Ubuntu 13.04 is going to be called Rampant Rabbit.
  
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  Summation 2
3. Re:Beefy Miracle by MrHanky · 2012-05-29 03:42 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Ubuntu 8.04 was a spoonerism for Hairy Hardon. Once someone pointed it out, it became practically impossible to remember the original.
4. Re:Beefy Miracle by houseofzeus · 2012-05-29 05:58 · Score: 2
  
  Luckily "Spherical Cow", which is much more sensible. won the vote for Fedora 18. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/announce/2012-April/003067.html
Beefy Miracle? by Joehonkie · 2012-05-29 02:33 · Score: 2

That is honestly the worst release name I ever heard. It sounds like a porn star nickname.
1. Re:Beefy Miracle? by Chris+Mattern · 2012-05-29 02:42 · Score: 2
  
  And the version sounds like a political cause. "Justice now! Release the Fedora 17!"
2. Re:Beefy Miracle? by Viol8 · 2012-05-29 02:44 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Unfortunately a lot of linux distro coders don't seem to know where the dividing line between wryly amusing and lame is when it comes to naming releases. The novelty of Ubuntus silly release names wore off for me personally around 5 years ago. All I want a OS so please just stick with the release numbers and don't treat me like a 7 year ago girl looking for a new cuddly toy.
3. Re:Beefy Miracle? by bill_mcgonigle · 2012-05-29 03:06 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  The most significant difference between Fedora and Ubuntu here is that in Fedora, the only time you're likely to see a release name is on a Slashdot article, and then if you look at /etc/issue*. Everybody else calls it Fedora 17. In Ubuntuland everybody calls the release by at least the noun part of the release name. For Fedora, its terribly inconsequential, and I say that as the guy who named Fedora 12.
  
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Re:another example of having lost the plot by Junta · 2012-05-29 02:51 · Score: 4, Insightful

You do realize that the Fedora leadership expressly does *not* want to be part of corporate applications right? From a business perspective, the goal is to have a research and development strategy that takes advantage of enthusiasts willingness to have a less stable environment to test and develop features and concepts that ultimately land in 'Red Hat Enterprise Linux', the most popular 'enterprisy' instance of Linux there is?

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Re:another example of having lost the plot by philip.paradis · 2012-05-29 02:51 · Score: 2

At least for the server side of things, nobody in their right mind runs Fedora on production systems anyhow.

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Re:Alt+Tab by Junta · 2012-05-29 02:53 · Score: 4, Informative

That wouldn't be 'fixed', that would be regressing for the sake of people who hate change just because it is change.
If you are terribly bothered by it:
https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/15/alternatetab/
But once you get used to it, it is a much more scalable mechanism to deal with many windows. Plenty of stuff in Gnome3 frustrates me, but this one I think they got right.

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Re:another example of having lost the plot by slackware+3.6 · 2012-05-29 02:53 · Score: 4, Informative

Red Hat is the corporate application. Fedora is the comunity project that gets funding from RH.
Re:another example of having lost the plot by LordLimecat · 2012-05-29 03:07 · Score: 3, Insightful

No, because CentOS would be a far better choice.
Re:Who cares about your taste? by slackware+3.6 · 2012-05-29 03:10 · Score: 4, Interesting

The KDE option is their for those that don't like Gnome3.
Now I drive Dodge trucks so should I whine and bitch about Chevys and what an unholy mess their electrical systems are?
And Timothy there are many different desktops if you don't know how to install a different DE use Ubuntu and STF up.
Re:who comes up with these codenames? by uncle+slacky · 2012-05-29 03:15 · Score: 2

Oh, the huge manatees...

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Re:Alt+Tab by Lussarn · 2012-05-29 03:48 · Score: 4, Insightful

Either you do a window-based DE or an application based, Gnome 3 went for application based. I happen to like it, a lot. this includes alt-tab behavior. If you happen do not like application based, then you should probably not try to turn Gnome 3 into one, there are other choices for you.
I think Gnome 3 is the best thing that happened to the *nix desktop for a long time. The navigation is fast if you know how to use it. I do use a few extensions, like static workspaces (altough I think this is included in 3.4). It also happen to be quite fast, running it on my ion2 netbook, no problem. Have never used a composition desktop before, they where all to slow. Gnome 3 changed that.
Gnome developers have always had cojones and done things which may not look to be the right thing, in the end they come out winning, this time should not be an exception.
Besides the name and the Desktop... by hey · 2012-05-29 03:56 · Score: 5, Informative

... which is always fun to talk about. Fedora is really pushing the state of Linux forward more than any other distro.
systemd for faster boot and starter reactions to changes (eg USB device plugged in). Moving every thing to /usr to make the filesystem more sane.
Single window gimp! And lots more.
1. Re:Besides the name and the Desktop... by Tynin · 2012-05-29 05:48 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  What about BTRFS as boot device support? Any word on that?
  Considering I was able to in Fedora 16, I would assume so.
  
  mount | grep btrfs
  /dev/sda4 on / type btrfs (rw,relatime,seclabel,nospace_cache)
  /dev/sda2 on /boot type btrfs (rw,relatime,seclabel,nospace_cache)
  /dev/sda5 on /home type btrfs (rw,relatime,seclabel,nospace_cache)
2. Re:Besides the name and the Desktop... by mickwd · 2012-05-29 07:17 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Moving every thing to /usr to make the filesystem more sane.
  Meaning that the system no longer supports /usr in a separate filesystem: http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/separate-usr-is-broken.
  Of course, you can still use /usr in a separate filesystem from / if you boot with an initrd, but you now almost need half an operating system (busybox, rescue shell and utilities, perhaps support for lvm and/or RAID) just to boot your real operating system.
  Why would you want /usr on a separate filesytem? Perhaps you want it in LVM, so you can resize it easily if necessary (maybe to make room for installing a new desktop environment, for example), but don't want you root file system in LVM. Perhaps you want to periodically fsck /usr on boot, and fall into single-user mode if it fails. Perhaps you want /usr (which is a read-mainly file system) on a small SSD, and all other file systems (which are written to more frequently) on spinning disk storage. Perhaps you want to mount /usr over NFS. Not that I can still see many people doing this but it seems a pity to prevent something that has worked fine in the past - and in these days of "running applications in the cloud" it seems Linux will no longer run applications in the local network (ie. NFS-mounted /usr).
  Seriously, read the level of professionalism and maturity on that page. This is the level or maturity to which Linux slowly seems to be sinking. As a long-time Linux user and supporter I find this deeply disappointing.
  And what's the reason for all this? Because the udev developers can't wipe their own a{r|s}es, put their house in order, and properly sort out which files go where (or at least sort out what needs to be done to mount any necessary non-root filesystems, mount them, and then continue with any programs/scripts which use them). Instead, all of that gets pushed out to initrd (ie. oh no it's hard, let's give it to someone else to do). Seriously, they're like a bunch of 8-year-olds bragging to their friends that they won't clean their bedrooms, even when mummy thinks they should.
Re:Very unfortunate name by 0racle · 2012-05-29 04:16 · Score: 2

Or back in reality, actually known as 'Fedora 17.'

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rpm, yumm & package managers by unixisc · 2012-05-29 05:02 · Score: 2

One thing I'm wondering - how improved is their package management? As I've noted in the past, apt-get is far more advanced, and on the BSD side of things, so is PBI. So has Fedora/Red Hat done anything to enable packages in rpm format to be more easily installed, as in not run into dependency hell?
Also, how does Fedora compare w/ other rpm based distros, such as Mageia, Mandriva, PCLinuxOS and so on?
1. Re:rpm, yumm & package managers by domatic · 2012-05-29 05:29 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  It isn't the packaging tools that make Debian and the BSDs more consistent in package installation. If anything, RPM has more advanced features than either debs or ports. The Debian and various ports repositories have standard practices for naming, versioning, dependencies, and integration that are adhered to year after year. It is concern for the long term integrity of these package repositories AS A WHOLE that make them easy to deal with. But bullet point differences between Deb and RPM? Not so much.
  Debian based distros also tend to limit themselves in how they diverge from the Debian Mothership and periodically resync in any case. I routinely port source packages between Ubuntu and Debian all the time. Since the naming and dependency maps don't diverge much, I mostly succeed at doing this. On the other hand, a SUSE SRPM isn't likely to port easily to Fedora absent a lot of low level surgery on the package metadata. Each RPM distro tends to be an island universe. Deb based distros all have Debian for a parent or grandparent hence the high compatibility at the source level.
  For that matter RHEL and spinoffs like Centos and Scientific mostly achieve this as well though the experience is mostly like using Debian Stable without the option of (easily) backporting SRPMS from newer distros.
2. Re:rpm, yumm & package managers by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-29 06:07 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  People who still ask this question tend not to have used yum/rpm in about a decade.
Re:Alt+Tab by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-29 05:04 · Score: 2, Informative

For me, switching between 2 or 3 xterms or browsers and another app window is a very common scenario. I will continue using a window manager with proper window management.
Re:No Unity? by tjwhaynes · 2012-05-29 05:35 · Score: 2

I still miss 'window title search' and 'show all windows for an app' that I had in compiz.....
Window title search: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/317/window-display/ shows the matching windows in the Overview as you type.
Show all Windows for an app: Maybe I'm missing something but I use Cycle through the apps with Alt-TAB, Cycle throught the windows for an app with Alt-AboveTAB. Which means to cycle through the windows for the current app, one press of Alt-AboveTAB shows the set. I use the cursor keys in Alt-TAB to navigate as well - not sure that is in Vanilla Gnome 3.4.

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Why use openbox with xfce anyway? by Marrow · 2012-05-29 06:22 · Score: 2

Plain old xfce works just fine without any trickery. Except for the creation of custom icons. That requires a few more steps than I like, but I'll live. Its very very stable.
Please... by AdamWill · 2012-05-29 07:14 · Score: 4, Insightful

...don't turn yet another Fedora release thread into a GNOME Shell argument, people. It's just a desktop. We have lots of them.
If you don't like GNOME, don't use it. You can pick GNOME, KDE, Xfce, LXDE or Sugar right from the package customization screen of a Fedora 17 DVD install, or you can download any one of those desktops as a live spin at https://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora-options#desktops or https://spins.fedoraproject.org/ .
If you don't like GNOME, don't use it, but that doesn't mean you can't use Fedora, or that Fedora is bad.
Re:Who cares about your taste? by Kompressor · 2012-05-29 13:28 · Score: 2

Chevys and what an unholy mess their electrical systems are?
Not enough can be said on this topic.
Signed,
A Chevy Colorado Owner

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