Fedora 21 Alpha Released

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Posted by timothy on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @02:38AM from the every-release-represents-years-of-work dept.

An anonymous reader writes Fedora 21 Alpha has been released. After encountering multiple delays, the first development version is out for the Fedora.NEXT and Fedora 21 products. Fedora 21 features improved Wayland support, GNOME 3.14, many updated packages, greater server and cloud support, and countless other improvements with Fedora 20 already being nearly one year old.

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Is this allowed? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-23 02:49 · Score: 4, Funny

*tips fedora*
How about Wayland? by Parker+Lewis · 2014-09-23 03:42 · Score: 2

Some already test it?
They're renaming the project by Nimey · 2014-09-23 03:54 · Score: 1

The next release will be called Trilby.

--
Hail Eris, full of mischief...

E pluribus sanguinem
Does it address the existing issues? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-23 04:00 · Score: 1

Does it have at least one completely working PAM and NSS combination that uses a core directory and doesn't force user caching? Or is it still shipping incomplete de Jong nslcd, broken PADL nscd, incompatible winbind modules and raw, buggy, half-completed sssd?
Does it support AoE adequately out of the box? Or does it still hang and crash at shutdown because the ethernet interfaces are shut off before the AoE volumes are flushed?
Does it have a non-GUI installer with adequate package grouping? Or is it still a devil's choice of hideously dumbed-down GUI or badly categorized CLI?
Will the support team actually treat people reporting bugs as valued contributors to the development process, or continue to openly denigrate the needs of anyone who isn't a college student running a single-user laptop?
1. Re:Does it address the existing issues? by RabidReindeer · 2014-09-23 05:56 · Score: 1
  
  Does it support AoE adequately out of the box? Or does it still hang and crash at shutdown because the ethernet interfaces are shut off before the AoE volumes are flushed?
  Well, by golly, that's EXACTLY the kind of thing that systemd was supposed to address.
  So does it, I wonder?
2. Re:Does it address the existing issues? by thecombatwombat · 2014-09-23 06:04 · Score: 1
  
  This. People get all mad at Fedora for not being something it isn't. They very vocally err on the side of including more, rather than including what works. Criticizing what doesn't work in a Fedora release, without emphasizing what does, is missing (or ignoring) the whole point of Fedora.
  As a long time Red Hat user (from before it was RHEL, and before there was a Fedora "core") I still think of Fedora as the rolling beta for RHEL. It's great to have access to, and it seems to me that since its introduction, it's really helped Red Hat step up its game. I use it as a desktop and to try new server technologies. I expect to tinker and am mostly just thankful for the opportunity.
  While Fedora's generally quite usable for lots of thing, they even say you can use "other" things for "long-term stability" right on the "About Fedora" page.
  "We believe in the power of innovation and showing off new work in our releases. Since we release twice a year, you never have to wait long to see the latest and greatest software, while there are other Linux products derived from Fedora you can use for long-term stability. We always keep Fedora moving forward so that you can see the future first."
  http://fedoraproject.org/en/ab...
  *And to the installer, I love the new installer. Simple as dirt, for anything more complicated, I use Kickstart, which as far as I know is still fully supported.
3. Re:Does it address the existing issues? by armanox · 2014-09-23 06:34 · Score: 1
  
  Actually, it would be interesting to see the response. If it's been an issue standing for several versions of Fedora (they started with systemd back in version 16 or 17 IIRC), then systemd didn't fix it!
  
  --
  I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Will it come with proprietary AMD graphics driver? by dutchwhizzman · 2014-09-23 04:23 · Score: 1

Will it come with proprietary AMD graphics driver? Will they have a rescue mode for the live boot? Can they install on a partition without having to format it? Fedora 18 had all these useful features, 20 didn't have them anymore. Next thing you know, Fedora 22 won't even have Linux anymore, just logos and an installer that gives you wayland and a browser....

--
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Will it come with... by rgbatduke · 2014-09-23 04:32 · Score: 2

Gnome 2 as an option (by whatever name) or only the insanity of windowing systems designed for finger-picking-tablets forced upon keystroke oriented users of actual computers doing real work in many windows on several desktops?
Otherwise, Centos 6 may end up being the last release I ever use. G2 may or may not be perfect, but I've got it more comfortable than five year old denim jeans and G3 sucked and continues to suck and AFAICT will continue to suck, forever, amen.
rgb

--
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
1. Re:Will it come with... by kthreadd · 2014-09-23 04:56 · Score: 1
  
  Yep, and there's even a spin that installs Mate by default.
2. Re:Will it come with... by armanox · 2014-09-23 06:37 · Score: 1
  
  As the other replies have said, MATE is fully supported. I usually use KDE on Fedora (going back to RH 6....), although lately I've gone back to the last sane DE, KDE 3.5 (in the form of TDE)
  
  --
  I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
3. Re:Will it come with... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-23 07:34 · Score: 1
  
  Have you really tried to use gnome 3, and actually tried to learn how to work with it? I admit, that it looks tablet-ish, however it is really poweruser friendly. Press the menu-key (The windows key) and then start typing to launch applications. Have the tracker extension installed, then you can open files in the same easy manner. There are alot of providers to let you have this quick-search functionallity for a kinds of functionallity. I actually use my mouse a lot less with GNOME 3, than with gnome 2.
4. Re:Will it come with... by rgbatduke · 2014-09-23 07:59 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  I spent around a year with it on at least a few of the systems I use. But I have G2 hotwired to cycle windows, open xterms, switch desktops, and fully use its autohide bars which are already laid out with everything I need and little that I don't. I do most of my work in either a browser or xterms, but I have that work in many different subjects with several windows open per subject spread out over 6 desktops that are a keystroke away. G3's window switching mechanism when I used it was arcane and enormously slow in comparison.
  The real problem is that while a fork was perhaps needed, they did it wrong. G2 was close to perfect for what it was designed to do -- if nothing else its flaws were all flaws we all had worked around, and it had/has (I'm still using it, personally) some really nice features. Forking off a tablet version of Gnome is just peachy, but it should have been a TABLET VERSION fork, not an abandonment of the mainstream, widely deployed G2 in favor of a tablet friendlier interface that was enormously clunky on a non-tablet desktop or even laptop.
  Sometimes there is change because it is needed, sometimes there is change for the sake of change. I sadly think that G3 is ten parts of the latter for one part of the former. Change involves pain either way, but at least one can see some advantage to doing so.
  What exactly are the advantages -- not the places where yeah, with work and possibly more slowly you can make it function but actual advantages -- of G3, in particular advantages that one couldn't have implemented just as easily as new features of G2 without necessarily breaking old features that were heavily in use?
  I'm not seein' a lot of those. I can launch any application I want under G2 with a key combination, for every application I ever launch, and don't even use that feature any more for anything but xterms because I use a lot of those to do work in. Window )cycling and desktop switching, though, those I use all of the time. Miniapps and application bar launchers, I use those. I don't care about animation. I don't need finger swipe screens. I don't need to have to work to find applications listed in a neat sorted order, or to have to change "views" to access certain features. I login (rarely), pop a single instance of firefox up, and from then on most of what I do is either browser based or xterm based, and I can pop an xterm up with Ctrl-Alt-P in far less than 1 second on the fly, then cycle up through a whole stack of windows with Ctrl-Shift-F to the one I want, then jump to desktop 6 (F6) to set up some music, then back to desktop 3 (F3) to work on something I'm writing, and then...
  Maybe I can do all of this (and preserve the macros etc) in Mate. I suppose I should give it a try, maybe in a VM or something. Heck, maybe I'll install a full fedora VM to try it again -- I think I have the room. I used to use Fedora all the time before G3, but it was a serious show stopper.
  rgb
  
  --
  Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
5. Re: Will it come with... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-23 08:31 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  I hear ya! Well written. This is exactly how I use my system. I now use XFCE 4.11 copr for Fedora-20. Highly stripped an G3 removed. Never looked back.
  My next Fedora will be 22 or whatever they name it. I hope they still offer Xfce Spins by then, so I can go directly to Xfce.
  G3 is bulky and they recently spread all type of settings everywhere.
  Now you have menu entries for apps close to the activities of your GShell. Then buttons in the Window decorator itself (usually a round thing in a button) and menu entries in the apps menu. Spread in 3 places. Also print has been hidden under settings flags. Also buttons have no margin anymore and placed in the corners. G3 is a horror!
  Sorry I stay woth Xfce. If that fails too one day, I switch to Windows.
Re:no systemd by kthreadd · 2014-09-23 04:53 · Score: 1

Well, that's constructive. It has Systemd, it was one of the first distributions to jump on it nearly three years ago. I guess that means you don't want to use it and hasn't for the past couple of years.
Re:no systemd by armanox · 2014-09-23 06:30 · Score: 1

I would put it on mine, because it's not a better solution. There again, I work with guys that use FreeBSD and AIX over Linux (and Gentoo is their Linux of choice when forced to go Linux). We are not moving anything to RHEL 7 anytime in the foreseeable future due to systemd and similar changes.
That said, I still have to know how systemd works, and it's a pain for me to work with.

--
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Re:Will it come with proprietary AMD graphics driv by armanox · 2014-09-23 06:35 · Score: 1

Will it come with proprietary AMD graphics driver?
They can't due to legal reasons (that pesky GPL).

Will they have a rescue mode for the live boot? Can they install on a partition without having to format it? Fedora 18 had all these useful features, 20 didn't have them anymore. Next thing you know, Fedora 22 won't even have Linux anymore, just logos and an installer that gives you wayland and a browser....
I wonder if there is still a text install mode, like in days of old....

--
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Re:no systemd...or Gnome3 by kthreadd · 2014-09-23 09:25 · Score: 1

Well, the idea was to improve it. I for one think it's an improvement. I suggest you try it and if you still don't like it there's always Mate or Xfce. But I really think you should check out Gnome 3.14 first, there's been a lot of change since the early releases.
conflicting by Livius · 2014-09-23 09:57 · Score: 2

Aren't 'alpha' and 'release' contradictions in terms?
(Yes, I know 'alpha' actually is a kind of release, but it's not a release to the public at large.)
Re:Will it come with proprietary AMD graphics driv by muep · 2014-09-24 05:36 · Score: 1

Will it come with proprietary AMD graphics driver?...Fedora 18 had all these useful features, 20 didn't have them anymore.
Just as a small correction, Fedora has never shipped a release that includes the proprietary Catalyst drivers by AMD.