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Fedora 19 Beta Released: Alive, Dead, or Neither?
darthcamaro writes "Fedora 19, aka Schrödinger's Cat, is now out in Beta. There is a long list of new features in this release, including 3D modelling tools, improved security, federated VoIP, updated GNOME and KDE desktops and new improved virtual storage to name a few. '"Normally we have a good batch of features for everyone in a new release and this time around a lot of it is under the hood kinds of stuff," Fedora Project Leader, Robyn Bergeron, told ServerWatch.'"
Gnome3's interface... let's not speak of it, I prefer to not use words it deserves among civilised people.
As for Network Manager, try running it with any USB networking (direct connect, like with a phone, rather than an USB-connected ethernet card): it will kill the interface every roughly 30 seconds. Its upstream refused to fix that saying they don't aim to support every possible device.
Or, bridged setups. Or, basically anything more complex than a plain ethernet or wifi interface.
It wouldn't be bad if Network Manager accepted that it's not infallible and allowed such devices it does not support. But not, it insists it has the complete view of the system's network, everything else is wrong, and even if you blacklist a device it knows (not possible for ones it doesn't), it still says you're in "offline mode" when you use programs that made the mistake of querying NM.
If a single line, "apt-get purge network-manager", instantly fixes all problems of this kind, I'm kind of disinclined to believe that "it works pretty well".
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
I installed Fedora 19alpha on my laptop the other day, and I have to say that Fedora's GNOME desktop has really lost me. I don't expect things to change in Fedora 19beta. In my opinion, the last usable version of GNOME was version 3.4 in Fedora 17. And that's barely usable, but things get better if you use some of the plugins.
Fedora 19 will include GNOME 3.8 as the graphical desktop, and I've noted elsewhere that GNOME 3 has poor usability. (My graduate thesis is on the usability of open source software.) The developers at GNOME have continued their downward usability trend, so Fedora 19 isn't getting any better. GNOME 3 fails to meet two of the four themes of successful usability: "Consistency" and "Menus". Where are the menus? There is no "File" menu that allows me to do operations on files. There is no "Help" menu that I can use when I get stuck. The updated file manager (Nautilus) doesn't have a menu, but other programs in GNOME 3 do. The Gedit text editor (which is also part of GNOME) still has menus, but the file manager does not. When you maximize a Nautilus window, either to the full screen or to half of the screen, the title bar disappears. I don't understand why. The programs do not act consistently.
I will give a positive comment that the updated file manager now makes it easier to connect to a remote server. This used to be an obvious action under the "File" menu, but in GNOME 3 it is an action directly inside the navigation area. So that's a step in the right direction.
I've only discussed the file manager here, but I'm sad to say that this is just one example of poor usability throughout GNOME 3.8 in Fedora 19alpha. While some areas of the Fedora 19alpha desktop seem familiar, the environment contains many areas where I was left confused. Programs act differently; there's very little consistency. And the updated desktop environment seems to avoid familiar "desktop" conventions, tending towards a "tablet-like" interface. This further removes the obviousness of the new desktop, and it's familiarity.
The worst offender is the Fedora 19alpha installer itself. Maybe they fix this in Fedora 19beta, but I doubt it. Fedora used to have a very simple, easy-to-use installer. You answered a few simple questions using point-and-click or drop-down menus, then the installer did everything else for you. For example, let's say your computer was set up to "dual boot" both Fedora Linux and Microsoft Windows. Previous versions of the Fedora installer would give you the option to install over your previous Linux installation, or set up the install disk configuration yourself. The latter phrase may be more meaningful to someone with more technical knowledge, but the former is easily recognized by users of all skill levels to mean the same thing.
In the Fedora 19alpha installer, everything has changed. (Actually, I believe this changed in the Fedora 18 installer.) The installer now presents a yellow warning label that the disk doesn't have enough room. When I clicked into the disk setup tool, I was given the option to "reclaim" space, but I really didn't understand what that meant. There was no button or other option to "install over my previous Linux installation," despite the fact that this laptop only had Linux on it (an older Fedora 17 install). If I were a user with "typical" knowledge and "average" skill, I would likely be afraid to use this installer, lest it do the wrong thing.
The installer's progress bar is equally confusing. Usually, when a program displays a progress bar and a message to indicate the percent complete (such as, "Installing 50%") you might expect the progress bar to indicate the same "percent complete" as the text message. Not so during the Fedora 19alpha installation. The installer (Anaconda) displayed a message that it was installing system software, and it was "50%" complete, yet the progress bar displayed something like two-thirds complete. I quickly decided not to trust the progress bar. And it's a bad sign when your users decide not to trust your software.
I think its just cranky old sysadmins that don't like systemd. Its actually quite good and offers several benefits over the old sysvinit.
It's the cranky old sysadmins who keep the servers and internet running. What they say is often important. When someone tries to re-invent Windows Services, AIX smit and Windows Event log, they may grump, but they do so with the experience saying that it wasn't a good idea the last time either.
The problem is that many aren't "cranky old SA's" but just uninformed old gits that refuses to even read up on new technology and flat out denies that there any problems whatsoever with Linux logfiles, and the way Linux handles services (init etc).
Whenever I see systemd or Journal hate here on Slashdot, it is always just snarky remarks that almost always are totally wrong, and clearly demonstrate that they don't know what they are talking about.
Even if you never, ever use the Journal tools or access the Journal log files, systemd and Journal will enhance the Syslog files considerably, by enabling log info early in the boot process, and tagging and aggregate the logfiles.
IMHO, systemd and Journal is the best new tools for the Linux SA made in the past decade.
I really recommend reading this list of systemd myths:
http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/the-biggest-myths.html
And Lennart's "systemd for Administrators". Here is a link to the first part of twenty instalments:
http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd-for-admins-1.html
Very good stuff. A must read for any Linux SA, whether they think they dislike systemd or not.
systemd is extremely well documented:
http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/TipsAndTricks/
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/FrequentlyAskedQuestions
http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/Debugging
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/Incompatibilities
what the heck could you possibly be missing?