Fedora 21 Beta Released

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Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday November 4, 2014 @08:52AM from the onward-and-upward dept.

An anonymous reader writes: The Fedora Project has been critical to the development Red Hat Enterprise Linux — RHEL version 7 was largely based off Fedora version 19. Fedora is continuing to evolve with the announcement of Fedora 21 Beta, now available from the Fedora Project website. To make the release ready for Beta testing required addressing 50 beta blocker bugs. If the Fedora Project developers are able to keep up with the final release blocker bugs, then Fedora 21 is expected to be released on December 9th. As a result, support for Fedora 19 is expected to end around the beginning of 2015. Released back in July 2013, Fedora 19 will have been supported for over 540 days by 2015. Previously, the longest a Fedora release was supported was Fedora Core 5 at 469 days. Users of Fedora 19 will be encouraged to upgrade to Fedora 20 or 21 to continue to get critical updates.

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beta blockers? what have they smoked? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-04 08:57 · Score: 3, Funny

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
Next week: systemd announces integration of drugs.
1. Re:beta blockers? what have they smoked? by tlambert · 2014-11-04 09:44 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Next week: systemd announces integration of drugs.
  Beta blockers are for reducing blood pressure; systemd is for raising it. };-)
2. Re:beta blockers? what have they smoked? by wangmaster · 2014-11-04 09:57 · Score: 2
  
  You know what amuses me about all this systemd hate.
  Fedora was the first distro to go systemd by default back in F15. There were a few growing pains, but there wasn't the coordinated systemd hatred until pretty much recently when RHEL7 went out the door and debian said we're going systemd.
  I know Fedora isn't as popular a distro as some others but it still seems amusing to me.
3. Re:beta blockers? what have they smoked? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-04 10:19 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  And the usual complaints about systemd are hilarious hypocritical. X.org, Emacs, GCC, KDE/Gnome/Whatever, etc. all violate the "Unix philosophy" by doing far more than one thing and yet strangely the frothing-at-the-mouth systemd haters are silent when it comes to criticizing said software for the same reason. Nor have any forks of Debian been threatened over those and numerous other pieces of included software that violate the same "philosophy".
4. Re:beta blockers? what have they smoked? by unrtst · 2014-11-04 10:37 · Score: 1
  
  Fedora was the first distro to go systemd by default back in F15. There were a few growing pains, but there wasn't the coordinated systemd hatred until pretty much recently when RHEL7 went out the door and debian said we're going systemd.
  I don't know why this would be amusing or surprising. Any distro could adopt any new feature/system/etc and, while there may be criticism, the majority will not be up in arms regardless of the decision is there are still a wide variety of other acceptable distros that retain the previous feature.
  For example, if RHEL (and thus CentOS), and Suse, and Fedora, and Ubuntu, and Debian all went to Gnome 3 at the same time and did so with tight integration (ie. not simple to downgrade to Gnome 2), then everyone would be up in arms. However, if the change is staggered across different distros, and others using those have time to make well supported forks (e. Cinnamon and MATE based distros like Mint), then the backlash is kept to a minimum. IE. people will still complain, but it's useless complaining because they can easily move to Mint MATE and continue to enjoy a Unbutu-based experience with Gnome 2.
  Systemd's widespread adoption by distros is, contrary to what many may think, causing a lot of the issues. Lots of people tend to think that, if only development/management/maintenance/etc effort were not spread across these different competing projects, then so much more advancement would be made in Linux. IMO, that is a very misguided philosophy. Competition in OSS projects allows each to try things they would otherwise not try if EVERYONE used it, thus allowing significant advancements to be made; and due to similar licenses and/or devs etc, features can be cherry picked and brought to all as they are proven.
  A rough example: I used ESD (enlightenment sound daemon) with OSS (Open Sound System) when ESD first came out. I later used ARTS (analog real time synthesizer) instead of ESD, then replaced OSS with ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) and went back to ESD, and also used straight up ALSA for a while. Pulse made a lot of that flexibility more difficult. It was still possible to replace pulse, and many people did, but it wasn't as easy as swapping ESD and ARTS or OSS and ALSA (not to mention the many other similar projects like NAS and MPD).
  Another example: I used to use whatever window manager with my desktop environment that I wanted. It was all very mix-and-match, as was moving between straight startx and XDM/GDM/KDM. That's all changed quite a bit. Much of that can still be done, but it's no longer clear and obvious and trivial (AFAICT). However, we don't see Unity+Mir being pushed out as the default on all distros. Some people using ubuntu may groan, but they can use any other flavor of ubuntu they like (kubuntu, xubuntu, lubuntu, or a fork like mint + their wide selection of DM's).
  One of the issues with systemd is that, if you don't want to use it for whatever reason, where do you turn? What if one doesn't want to use systemd for init, but still wants logind and/or systemd-dbus? or just systemd-syslog? or wants systemd for init but doesn't want it for syslog/cron/dbus/etc? (uselessd may answer the latter, but I don't know of any distros using it yet). This may all be answered in time, but the wide adoption, broad feature list, tight bindings, and relative immaturity (as in age of the project) make this difficult to accept. More people involved all at once = more grumbling.
5. Re:beta blockers? what have they smoked? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-04 10:47 · Score: 0
  
  What if one doesn't want to use systemd for init, but still wants logind and/or systemd-dbus?
  You don't. Just like you can't use XRender without an X11 implementation.
6. Re:beta blockers? what have they smoked? by unrtst · 2014-11-04 11:00 · Score: 2
  
  What if one doesn't want to use systemd for init, but still wants logind and/or systemd-dbus?
  You don't. Just like you can't use XRender without an X11 implementation.
  So you can, since you could use XFree86 or Xorg or Kdrive and probably others.
7. Re:beta blockers? what have they smoked? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-04 11:08 · Score: 0
  
  Reading comprehension fail. Here let me make it simpler. Your question is like asking if you can use a Qt application without Qt. Do you now get my point?
8. Re:beta blockers? what have they smoked? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-04 11:43 · Score: 0
  
  Ah, I think I get it. Just like closed-source commercial OSes - you *will* use it and you *will* like it or else you can take a hike.
  I chose Linux for some the very reasons that the systemd debacle is trying to take away from me. If I wanted no freedom and no choice, then I would just use a more popular commercial OS than Linux and be done with it.
9. Re:beta blockers? what have they smoked? by raxx7 · 2014-11-04 12:24 · Score: 2
  
  You can try and use them. But a modern X desktop on anything but Xorg's Xserver is untested and unsupported. If it works at all.
  Effectively, modern X desktops depend on Xorg's Xserver as the others (XFree86, Kdrive) lag too behind in development.
  Regarding your first question.
  A number of distributions (including RHEL6) used systemd-logind without running systemd as init.
  However, to do so with a modern kernel, you need to implement systemd' cgroup proxy functionality.
  Ubuntu has done just that, in the form of cgmanager, as they plan to use upstrart for a few more releases before migrating to systemd.
  If you don't run systemd as init, you can use the good old dbus-daemon.
  Like Xorg's Xserver, systemd provides features that developers/maintainers want to exploit.
  And those developer maintainers are not willing to put in the extra work needed to achieve their goals without those features.
  And although there's a very vocal outcry against systemd, it's not being translated into actual work to provide those features, only into complains and demands that others stop depending on systemd.
10. Re:beta blockers? what have they smoked? by juanfgs · 2014-11-04 16:50 · Score: 0
  
  If I wanted no freedom and no choice, then I would just use a more popular commercial OS than Linux and be done with it.
  by all means do it, since freedom in free software has nothing to do with your notion of "people should develop things that I LIKE" you are kind of missing the point on the whole thing.
11. Re:beta blockers? what have they smoked? by eWarz · 2014-11-04 16:57 · Score: 1
  
  I finally figured out why my blood pressure shot up to critical, near stroke levels....systemd. ;) Let's just say it has made my life a bit more than...interesting...;)
12. Re: beta blockers? what have they smoked? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-04 17:32 · Score: 0
  
  I thought the whole point of free software was freedom and choice.
13. Re:beta blockers? what have they smoked? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-04 20:57 · Score: 0
  
  Personally I don't know anyone who uses Fedora, yet even my mom uses Debian derivatives, but that is just anecdotal evidence. But before the systemd became a forced selection on Debian and others, people could just switch their distro out of Fedora, so perhaps it was the freedom of choice that kept the complaints down.
14. Re: beta blockers? what have they smoked? by juanfgs · 2014-11-04 23:50 · Score: 0
  
  It is freedom, but freedom of choice doesn't exist, except in someone's lala' land. Specially when your "freedom of choice" implies developers doing things that they don't want to just to please you. That's solipsism.
15. Re:beta blockers? what have they smoked? by RabidReindeer · 2014-11-05 00:35 · Score: 1
  
  You know what amuses me about all this systemd hate.
  Fedora was the first distro to go systemd by default back in F15. There were a few growing pains, but there wasn't the coordinated systemd hatred until pretty much recently when RHEL7 went out the door and debian said we're going systemd.
  Well, some of it was simply that I had better things to do with my time than upgrade Fedora.
  When I did, that's when I encountered systemd.
16. Re: beta blockers? what have they smoked? by jc79 · 2014-11-05 11:08 · Score: 2
  
  Yep. Nobody is forcing you at gunpoint to use a systemd based distro. You can always roll your own. THe software is free and out there. Nobody is going to take the source code for SysV init from you. You have complete and utter freedom to use whatever software you want. Just don't expect your favourite distro to bend over backwards just to please you.
17. Re:beta blockers? what have they smoked? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-06 12:24 · Score: 0
  
  What got me riled regarding systemd was logind and Gnome depending on it for GDM.
  This sets a nasty precedence where a user facing program depends on having a specific init sitting below, where before any init would do as long as it loaded the proper daemons into place.
18. Re: beta blockers? what have they smoked? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-06 12:30 · Score: 0
  
  How damn hard is it to give systemd the option to run in a minimal fashion on top of another init, just as a cgroup manager and intermediary for logind etc?
19. Re:beta blockers? what have they smoked? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-06 12:35 · Score: 0
  
  Emacs is a end program, not a intermediary between kernel and user space (no matter how many joke about it being a OS in search of a editor). Parts of Gnome and KDE can be used as long as GTK/Qt and some base libs are installed. Xorg is just about the only example that somewhat fits, but even then it can live on top of any init and kernel, this allowing choice both above and below it. Systemd insist on the Kernel below being Linux.
Re:have they removed systemd yet? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-04 09:20 · Score: 0

If you call me, I'll put a dick in your face.
The theme of the release by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-04 09:21 · Score: 0, Funny

Sh*t that Lennart broke!
"Blocker bugs" - just ignore them like Ubuntu by Animats · 2014-11-04 09:23 · Score: 1, Informative

At least they acknowlege the concept of "blocker bugs". Those doesn't seem to bother Ubuntu. See "Bug #1274672: Fresh install of 12.04.3 fails to upgrade to 14.04" You can't upgrade Ubuntu because of a packaging problem related to Xorg. Ubuntu developers tried to deny the problem, which has a few thousand hits on Google. Finally somebody installed the old version in an empty virtual machine and demonstrated that, even after a completely clean install, the upgrade wouldn't work.
(There's a workaround. Completely install Xorg and the GUI, and, from the command line, do the upgrade. Then re-install the GUI. Really. Wonder why Linux can't make it on the desktop? It's stuff like this.)
1. Re:"Blocker bugs" - just ignore them like Ubuntu by Animats · 2014-11-04 09:38 · Score: 1
  
  (Correction: uninstall Xorg and the GUI)
2. Re:"Blocker bugs" - just ignore them like Ubuntu by donaldm · 2014-11-04 10:00 · Score: 1
  
  While I can't comment on Debian based Linux distributions I have found Fedora with GUI's like KDE (my preferred GUI), Gnome, Xfce etc to be a very good desktop and been using it Professionally as one for over 6 years. Personally I have never had a problem installing Fedora (since Fedora core 7) and it usually runs fine. As for upgrades I never do them I always do a fresh "overlay" (keep the original file-systems and only install in the systems ones) install since it is actually quicker and easier to do.
  
  There's a workaround. Completely install Xorg and the GUI, and, from the command line, do the upgrade. Then re-install the GUI. Really. Wonder why Linux can't make it on the desktop? It's stuff like this
  I have never had an issue like this with Fedora (the discussion is Fedora not Debian based Linux) and that is going back to the late 1990's. As for the Desktop I would have to assume you are aware of what is commonly called the "Microsoft Tax".
  
  --
  There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
3. Re:"Blocker bugs" - just ignore them like Ubuntu by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-04 10:19 · Score: 0
  
  I have never had an issue like this with Fedora (the discussion is Fedora not Debian based Linux) and that is going back to the late 1990's. As for the Desktop I would have to assume you are aware of what is commonly called the "Microsoft Tax".
  What? OP was illustrating a comment on the recognition of blocker bugs, commending Fedora for doing so, and reprimanding Ubuntu for not doing it. He wasn't turning this into a discussion of Debian-based Linux.
  I don't know how you could have had a solid record with Fedora since the late 1990's as it wasn't first released until Red Hat split the development arm from RH at version 9 in 2003 when they first released Fedora.
  And, Linux not making it on the desktop has nothing to do with the "Microsoft Tax". It's got everything to do with the learning curve, as well as installation and administrative complexities.
4. Re:"Blocker bugs" - just ignore them like Ubuntu by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-04 10:35 · Score: 0
  
  As for the Desktop I would have to assume you are aware of what is commonly called the "Microsoft Tax".
  Paying less is a tax?
5. Re:"Blocker bugs" - just ignore them like Ubuntu by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-04 11:15 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Geezus, you're an idiot. How long did you search before found a bug bash Ubuntu with?
  1. The bug report is from January and 14.04 was still in Alpha. Guess what? Alpha software is fucking buggy, just ask your Fedora friends.
  2. The upgrade problem had to do with only those systems that had Ubuntu's hardware enablement stack enabled. Most don't.
  3. Ubuntu's official policy for LTS to LTS upgrades is to wait until xx.xx.1 version is released. 14.04.1 was released near the end of July. Upgrading 12.04.5 with HWE to 14.04.1 was a fucking cinch.
  Leave it to Fedora fucks to bash another distribution to try and deflect the fact that despite the support of Red Hat, Fedora devs still can't meet their delivery deadlines.
6. Re:"Blocker bugs" - just ignore them like Ubuntu by iggymanz · 2014-11-04 11:45 · Score: 2
  
  So why didn't you first go to 12.04.5 and then to 14.04 with no issues like you were supposed to. Instead you whine about jumping from a weird start point. The biggest blocker bug is between your ears. Linux made it as my desktop years ago, it's obvious what your problem is.
7. Re:"Blocker bugs" - just ignore them like Ubuntu by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-04 14:58 · Score: 0
  
  Q: How do you upgrade DOS 5 to Windows 10?
  A: Always backup DATA & do a FRESH Install.
  Q: Why does Windows update Crashes/Locks my PC?
  A: Because it's Windows. Just use Linux.
8. Re:"Blocker bugs" - just ignore them like Ubuntu by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-05 00:12 · Score: 0
  
  Fresh install of 12.04.3 fails to upgrade to 14.04" You can't upgrade Ubuntu because of a packaging problem related to Xorg. Ubuntu developers tried to deny the problem, which has a few thousand hits on Google. Finally somebody installed the old version in an empty virtual machine and demonstrated that, even after a completely clean install, the upgrade wouldn't work.
  Dist upgrades aren't officially supported until the .1 version. So it's not that surprising if it didn't work in the 14.04(.0) version
  - Peder
9. Re:"Blocker bugs" - just ignore them like Ubuntu by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-05 05:39 · Score: 0
  
  It was how they handled the bug, by denying its existence and not even attempting to fix it until someone slapped them in the face and said "Here, I did the work for you"
10. Re:"Blocker bugs" - just ignore them like Ubuntu by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-05 06:51 · Score: 0
  
  See "Bug #1274672:
  Fresh install of 12.04.3 fails to upgrade to 14.04" You can't upgrade Ubuntu because of a packaging problem related to Xorg. Ubuntu developers tried to deny the problem
  I don't see that from the link you provided. In fact, in comments #6 and #7 the problem is identified, acknowleged and assigned to someone.
  (You could argue it's a shame it hasn't been fixed, but 14.04 was in heavy development at the time so some issues (for instance regarding upgrade paths) are to be expected. They will in most cases be sorted out by the time they make the next LTS version available for upgrade from the previous one which as pointed out in other comments in this thread was in July. I am not familiar with this particular bug though, so I can't say whether it is still blocking upgrades or not)
11. Re:"Blocker bugs" - just ignore them like Ubuntu by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-05 07:30 · Score: 0
  
  Liar. Ubuntu never denied its existence (it was marked "Confirmed") and it became a non issue in post Alpha releases.
Re:Why be a guinea pig for Red Hat? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-04 09:25 · Score: 1

Screw Red Hat
Sorry, no. When you actually look at the delta between Red Hat and Fedora it's pretty easy to understand the separation. Red Hat sucks on the desktop; library and kernel versions are ancient, whereas Fedora is very current; if it doesn't build on a recent Fedora it is probably a terrible piece of work. On the other hand, Fedora would be a real horror show in an enterprise environment that requires stability, while any given release of Red Hat offers 10 years of production support and binary compatibility.
Red Hat isn't wrong to do it this way. Your anger belies your ignorance.
Re:Why be a guinea pig for Red Hat? by donaldm · 2014-11-04 09:36 · Score: 1

From the Fedora home page "Fedora is sponsored by Red Hat".

There is a big difference between "sponsoring" and "owning". Sure some of the features of Fedora get incorporated into a commercial release of Redhat Linux but because Fedora is open source those same features can be incorporated into other Linux distros.

You will always find that commercial releases of a Linux distro are at least one to two years behind a stable release and a development release can be a couple of months to a year ahead of a stable release. As for Rehat making a separate distro (supported up to 10 years) to Fedora I fail to see that this is a problem.

--
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
Re:Why be a guinea pig for Red Hat? by juanfgs · 2014-11-04 09:41 · Score: 2, Insightful

And to be fair, Fedora is rock solid as a workstation. At least for me it has been the least complicated distro to install, upgrading one time per year on my desktop and each 6 months in my laptop.
You have to get used to change, but if you are a developer not concerned with learning a few new things every year it's ok.
It should receive some more love on the desktop side, it's getting unintuitive for beginners.
Support Cycle by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-04 10:11 · Score: 0

Compared to RHEL's support cycle of ten years, I mean jesus christ your counting support life in DAYS.
About time by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-04 10:20 · Score: 0

Having to bootstrap new Fedora 20 installs because they can't handle the network cards of the newer Haswell chipsets with their old 3.11 kernel has been an annoyance lately.
About time by AdamWill · 2014-11-04 11:23 · Score: 1

A Fedora community member releases periodic respins of Fedora stable releases; they're not official releases and they don't go through QA but FWIW I'd trust the guy if I needed a respun image in a pinch. http://jbwillia.wordpress.com/ is his site, you can find the spins at https://alt.fedoraproject.org/... .
Beta? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-04 14:25 · Score: 0

I ditched Fedora 10 years ago because their releases were beta quality.
I have happily moved on to other distros.
1. Re:Beta? by jones_supa · 2014-11-04 18:03 · Score: 1
  
  Actually from Fedora I get least the beta feeling. They have a good amount of developers working on the components and fixing bugs, and they at least pretend to have some kind of real quality assurance.
2. Re:Beta? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-05 05:29 · Score: 0
  
  Try FreeBSD. Many of the devs are System Admins who run "Current"(alpha) on production servers. Talk about eating your own dog food. The goal is to have non-breaking changes. It's like Linus made a Linux distro, without all the yelling.
Re:have they removed systemd yet? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-04 15:05 · Score: 0

So what's your number?
Re:Why be a guinea pig for Red Hat? by Gavagai80 · 2014-11-04 18:54 · Score: 2

There's less difference between sponsoring and owning when Red Hat employees do a lot of the Fedora work.

--
This space intentionally left blank
There is X even on MS Windows by dbIII · 2014-11-04 23:01 · Score: 1

Rubbish, there is XWin32 and many others. If some rare edge cases of gnome3 don't work on it then that's more likely a sign of not fully tested new parts of gnome3 than a lack of support for a "modern X desktop".
Re:Why be a guinea pig for Red Hat? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-05 02:36 · Score: 0

Great sense of humor.
Fedora is the only distro that show you "We really have users!"
FUCK FEDORA!! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-05 04:57 · Score: 0

Yeah, I'm gonna be modded down just for the subject but I'd been using Fedora since 2004-ish and at this point I cannot believe I stuck with them so long. They're just as bad as Ubuntu in that the people in charge don't listen to the actual users, and really love making decisions without consulting or telling anyone first, or at all sometimes. The best example I give of that is when RedHat decided that they should pull the Elliptical Curve Cryptography routines out of openssl and didn't say a word about it. This wouldn't have mattered if there weren't also the problem that Bitcoin and related crypto-coin clients rely on the ECC routines and they're fundamentally broken without them. If you dig deep you'll find that someone finally figured it all out and started fixing openssl last year but by that time it'd already been a problem for at least 2 years. It seriously took 2 years for someone to finally track down the problem because RedShat decided to keep it quiet, and then it took another few months to fix it because their build system makes it next to impossible to "remove"(actually NOT remove) the code cleanly.
I'm simplifying a lot of this because it's been almost a year since I had to deal with that bullshit. I migrated to another distro that was not controlled by Canonical or RedShat and makes very few decisions without the users' knowledge(they've got issues but not nearly as bad).
Goodbye forever Fedora. I would appreciate it if you never call or text me again. Failure to comply will result in an emergency protective order.
Bonus: Captcha = unrest
Re:have they removed systemd yet? by jc79 · 2014-11-05 11:13 · Score: 1

Fedora Server: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki...
It's still got systemd in it, but you can always choose to use a different distro. That's the great thing about Free software.
Re:have they removed systemd yet? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-07 12:30 · Score: 0

For now...
As long as systemd keeps sprouting tentacles, the task of avoiding them becomes more and more difficult.
Fedora 21 Beta Screenshots by linuxscreenshot · 2014-11-15 03:27 · Score: 1

http://www.linuxscreenshots.or...
Re:Why be a guinea pig for Red Hat? by rubycodez · 2014-11-16 03:59 · Score: 1

Wrong, they should have one distro. Other superior distros show how. Alternative new kernel version could be in the repository, for example, as can alternative newer versions of scripting languages,etc as seperate package sets. Not following this strategy is why people have fled Red Hat in droves in the server space.