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Fedora 25 Alpha Linux Distro Now Available (betanews.com)

Posted by msmash on from the linux-delights dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Today, Fedora 25 Alpha sees a release. While the pre-release distribution is not ready for end users, it does give testers an early start at poking around.
Keep in mind what an Alpha release is folks -- this is pre-Beta. In other words, it is littered with bugs, and you should definitely not run it on a production machine. There are already some show-stopping known issues -- a couple are related to dual-booting with Windows (scary). One bug can destroy OS X data when dual-booting on a Mac!

35 comments

  1. Alpha? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Isn't that architecture dead by now?

    1. Re: Alpha? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Good one...

    2. Re:Alpha? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why didn't slashdot use the d|i|g|i|t|a|l icon?

  2. Lame by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Firefox is already up to version 48.

    1. Re:Lame by unixisc · · Score: 1

      So every Fedora distro has been accompanied by 2 versions of Firefox?

  3. "One bug can destroy OS X data" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    thats not a bug, that punishment...

  4. I tried it... by 110010001000 · · Score: 2

    ...no wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.

  5. Alpha by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We need Fedora 25 for the DEC Alpha!

  6. This is news? by unixisc · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How is a distro being in the alpha stage of its development news? It would be news when it was close to release, or actually released. Until then, people would be happily using Fedora 24. This is not like a new OS that's surfacing in the market

    1. Re:This is news? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Tips fedora.

    2. Re:This is news? by paulbsch · · Score: 5, Informative

      I think the news is what's not mentioned in the headline or summary. In this release, Wayland is now preferred over X.org. I believe that will make F25 the first major distro release to make the switch?

    3. Re:This is news? by silanea · · Score: 1

      The rationalisation I could come up with is that Fedora is what RHEL will be, so if F25 brings in fundamental changes, people who need to support RHEL might want to take a look as early as possible to see where the whole thing is going to get a head start. But frankly, even as a Fedora user I do not think this is /. worthy.

      --
      Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
    4. Re:This is news? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Keep in mind what an Alpha release is folks -- this is pre-Beta. In other words, it is littered with bugs, and you should definitely not run it on a production machine.

      Thanks for clearing that up. I mean, it's not like this is a techie site or anything. Nope, no one here can be expected to either know that, or spend a few seconds looking it up. I mean, for that to work they'd need a global communications network at their fingertips - let's not be absurd!

    5. Re:This is news? by Barsteward · · Score: 1

      Possibly because it may be using Wayland as default

      --
      "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
    6. Re:This is news? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Red Hat needs the Fedora buzz to solidify their grip on the Linux userspace.

      If Fedora lose the image of being on the forefront of userspace tech development, RHs grip on said userspace weakens and some other entity (Canonical, Oracle?) could swipe it from under their feet.

      RH was quite happy to allow the Linux community to branch out as long as Linux was the newcomer and underdog of the unix world. But now most of the big unix vendors have caved, leaving RH in apparent control.

      Damn it they posted a bragging video a year or two ago where they basically exclaim "WE WON!".

    7. Re:This is news? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      > I believe that will make F25 the first major distro release to make the switch?

      Yea, they seem confident about the ability to fall back to X, if something doesn't work under Wayland. Given that the list of stuff that needs X is still huge (and even includes popular proprietary software, like the nvidia driver), it's a pretty silly choice for a default.

    8. Re:This is news? by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      This! The summary left out the one reason why random people should give a damn.

    9. Re:This is news? by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1

      (and even includes popular proprietary software, like the nvidia driver), it's a pretty silly choice for a default.

      Fedora's not going to sacrifice its users' security for some proprietary software. Talk to the vendor about supporting nouveau better.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    10. Re:This is news? by paulbsch · · Score: 1

      If this were RHEL or another distro that markets itself as stable and consistent, yes, it would be silly. Fedora, however, is quite antithetical to those distros.

      Wayland is ultimately what they want to switch to. So if it's usable by a sufficient percentage of people, it would be silly not to do this in Fedora. This will bring more testing and bug reporting. It will also cause some of the unknown/edge use cases to bubble to the top so that they can be addressed before Wayland eventually makes it's way into RHEL.

    11. Re:This is news? by lsllll · · Score: 1

      Until then, people would be happily using Fedora 24.

      I, for one, am not a happy Fedora 24 user. Having used Fedora since Fedora 3 on my desktop, I'm about to switch to CentOS. Too much playing in Fedora has broken many things. Take DNF, for instance. Not sure why we changed away from Yum. I haven't had this many dependency failures in a very very long time. I said this before on SD, but the last good version of Fedora was FC18 or FC19.

      --
      Is that a roll of dimes in your pocket or are you happy to see me?
    12. Re:This is news? by unixisc · · Score: 1

      I meant Fedora 25 is only significant for Fedora 24, and maybe RHEL users. It wouldn't be news to anyone else outside the Linux world

  7. Thanks for explaining by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Keep in mind what an Alpha release is folks -- this is pre-Beta. In other words, it is littered with bugs, and you should definitely not run it on a production machine.

    If you need alpha release explained to you, you should probably just go back to the politics section.

    1. Re: Thanks for explaining by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It was very useful. No wonder all software seemed so crappy when tried to have the alpha-male release.

  8. Wow, a new low for "news". by Ecuador · · Score: 1

    Unless the news was "careful if you dual boot with Win or, especially OS X, DON'T install the latest Fedora Alpha", this should not be here. I can see how a release of a major Linux distribution might be considered news, although Fedora alone has 2 releases per year, so we have to be a bit limited in how we define "major" distros, otherwise slashdot would be just a Linux distro release listing. But posting an alpha release, of the aforementioned 6-month release cycle is way too much! Unless, as I said, it was for the warning, because data loss is a bit too much even for an alpha (we are not talking about a brand new OS here).

    --
    Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
  9. I really wish to try it, but .. by guacamole · · Score: 1

    where can I find a DEC Alpha workstation these days?

    1. Re:I really wish to try it, but .. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      http://www.ebay.com/itm/AlphaServer-1000A-5-333-PB76B-FA-DEC-Alpha-NICE-DEAL-/291725305745?hash=item43ec2ee791:g:UP4AAOSwdU1W~UBu

    2. Re:I really wish to try it, but .. by KozmoStevnNaut · · Score: 1

      I got one of those puppies for free around 12 years ago, along with seven 36GB drives and three 18GB drives. It was noisy as all hell, and the only way to manage the RAID controller was by using a boot floppy with the configuration program on it.

      The SCSI RAID controller could only handle partitions up to 32GiB, so the five-disk RAID5 got split into several partitions, and I had a RAID1 using 18GB drives for the system files.

      It ran NetBSD quite will for a while, functioning as a file server, IRC machine, just all-round for messing around. I sold it about 6 months later, and I probably got a lot less for it than I should have. But I was young and dumb, and I had gotten it for free. I hope it's still chugging along, wherever it ended up.

      --
      Eat the rich.
    3. Re:I really wish to try it, but .. by lsllll · · Score: 1

      I took one of these at work when they were throwing them away. Sat in my basement for a while and I finally decided I wasn't going to mess with it. Took it apart and junked it. I still have the fan from that thing.

      --
      Is that a roll of dimes in your pocket or are you happy to see me?
  10. Good RIDDANCE to X11! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Welcome, Wayland! We've needed you for about twenty years now!

    201... uhh, 2017, year of the Linux desktop! Linux, uh, finds a way!

  11. RedHat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So, Red Hat enterprise server 8 alpha is released!

  12. Functionality degradation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Every new version of Fedora shows more and more functionality removed.

    WHY, pray tell, have removed advanced DNS settings from NetworkManager GUI? Why has the Boxes GUI lost almost half of configurable options?

    Fedora: The Dumbed Down Segfault Distro Alpha for RHEL

  13. Whats new? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "distribution is not ready for end users, it does give testers an early start at poking around. .... it is littered with bugs, and you should definitely not run it on a production machine. "

    Isnt that what all Fedora releases are?

  14. Betanews - groan by itomato · · Score: 1

    Without timothy in my exclusions list, looks like I gotta check off manishs. This is the twelfth betanews.com submission from Manish this month.

  15. Not my hatsize by zwarte+piet · · Score: 1

    Kinda liked fedora 4 though