Fedora 16: Verne (Alpha) Review

Includes GNOME 3.1, GRUB 2

Fedora 16 (codenamed Verne) Alpha has been released today. This is the first official development snapshot for the popular Red Hat sponsored Linux distribution.

Among the many features of Fedora 16 is finally switching over to the GRUB2 boot-loader on new x86 installations, better integration with the systemd service manager, a development version of GNOME 3.2, SELinux enhancements, system account changes, HAL removal, cloud computing and virtualization enhancements, and much more. See this Phoronix news posting for more details on the planned Fedora 16 feature set.

After a one week delay from the scheduled release date, the Fedora Project has released the first alpha version of Fedora 16, codenamed “Verne”, earlier today. This alpha release is expected to be the only alpha release of Fedora 16. According to the release schedule, this release will be followed by a beta on September 27th and the final release on November 1st.

Fedora 16 Alpha brings a number of new features/updates. One of the main updates is the long overdue upgrade to GRUB 2. Although GRUB 2 is not officially considered stable yet, many other Linux distributions, like Ubuntu, Linux Mint etc., have been using it for some time, and it has been stable enough for normal use. With the transition to GRUB 2, users who dual boot Fedora with another distribution that uses GRUB 2 will not have to manually add the OS in the GRUB menu.

In Fedora 16 Alpha, two choices of desktop environments are available by default as always. For those who prefer GNOME, Fedora 16 Alpha comes with GNOME 3.1.5. This version of GNOME is not considered stable and it is expected that it will be updated to GNOME 3.2 before the final release. GNOME 3.2 will fix many of the quirks and annoyances from GNOME 3. For those of you who prefer KDE SC, Fedora 16 Alpha also has a KDE version that comes with KDE SC 4.7 alpha. Like the GNOME version, it is expected to be upgraded to KDE SC 4.7 before the final release.

Fedora 16 Alpha runs on the Linux kernel 3.0. With the release of Linux 3.1 expected in a month or two, the kernel is likely to be updated to Linux 3.1 before the final release.

One feature that did not make it is the switch to Btrfs. Btrfs is a new filesystem that is currently under development. Initially, there was plan to use Btrfs by default in Fedora 16. However the plan was scrapped because Btrfs is nowhere ready for such use. Btrfs will probably be used in Fedora 17 or Fedora 18.

The Whole Story

Fedora 15 LXDE is a Fedora 15 Spin, an alternate edition of Fedora, “tailored for various types of users via hand-picked application sets and other customizations.” Presently, seven Spins have been released. These are, in order of popularity about the time I hit the Publish button, the KDE, LXDE, Xfce, Security, Games, Electronic-Lab, and Design-Suite Spins.
The Xfce Spin has already been reviewed here. This article presents a review of the LXDE spin, the first for it on this website.

Installation Process: Like other Spins, Fedora 15 LXDE is available for download as a Live CD ISO image. Unlike the main (GNOME 3) edition, there is no DVD or bfo installation image for this edition or for any other Spin.
The boot menu options allow booting into the Live environment, where installation can then be started. Installation is not possible without first booting into the Live environment. There is an option to “Boot from local drive,”
However, attempting to boot from the local disk always generates the error shown here. This happens not just with the LXDE Spin, but with all the Fedora releases, including the main edition.
All the Fedora spins share the same installation program with the main edition. Anaconda 15.31 is the version of Anaconda, the Fedora system installer, that ships with this latest release. The changes I see in this version are just cosmetic. The available disk partitioning methods are the same. Disk encryption is supported (see how Fedora protects your computer with full disk encryption).
LVM, the Linux Logical Volume Manager, is the default disk partitioning scheme. Ext3, Ext4 and XFS are the supported journaling file systems, with ext4 as the default, even for the boot partition. Fedora 15 is the first version to have built-in support for btrfs, the B-tree file System, but it is only available when installing from a DVD or bfo ISO image. (You might be interested in how to install Fedora 15 on an encrypted btrfs file system.)
Installation of the Fedora 15 Spins, and of the Live CD version of the GNOME edition, is not installation in the traditional sense, but rather, a copying of the Live image to disk. So, what you see on the Live desktop is what you get after installation.

Desktop: The LXDE desktop is a very simple and highly configurable desktop environment. Memory footprint is small and CPU usage is minimal. A new installation of takes up less than 2 GB of disk space, far less than a new installation of other Spins. The menu features all the necessary application categories except the Games category. Like the Xfce Spin, there are no games installed.

The file manager is PCManFM, named after the author’s online moniker. I find it a lot more fun to use than Thunar, the file manager on the GNOME and Xfce desktop environments. There is support for tabbed-browsing. Clicking on a folder opens it in place, rather than in a tab. Though not in this release, directory browsing on the side pane has been implemented, and should be available in a stable release soon.

When dual-booting with other operating systems and distributions, you can mount and browse their partitions. Out of the box, you can even read and write to ntfs partitions, that is, you can access your Windows files and folders from the file manager.

If you click on an image file in the file manager, the system will attempt to open it in GXine, the default media player, and even after changing the default behavior to open all image files in GPicView, the installed image viewer, the system would still attempt to open them in GXine. GPicView, by the way, is one of the best image viewers I have used. It has more features than the default image viewer on the Xfce spin.
The system will popup this dialog window when a video DVD is Inserted.
And this if it is an audio CD. The problem is that for some reason, the default application, GXine, is unable to play audio or video media, and the problem does not seem to lie with it because after installing Rhythmbox and Totem, I still could not play any audio or video media.

Attempting to configure a printer brought up this dialog window, and adding a printer was not an automated process. I found that using the printing utility (Administration > Printing) was a lot more involved than using the printing service’s Web interface (localhost:631). (Most distributions will auto-detect and configure a connected printer.)

Installed and Available Software: Some of the main applications installed by default are:

• Firefox 4
• Pidgin Internet Messenger
• Sylpheed, one of the best email clients
• Gnumeric, a spreadsheet application
• Osmo, personal organizer
• Abiword
• Gxine
• LXMusic, a music player for LXDE

There are, of course, many more applications that you can install using yum, the command line package utility, or Yum-Ex, the graphical package manager.

Fedora-15 Review and Features

The Fedora Project released the final Fedora 15 "Lovelock" distribution, the first Linux distro featuring the controversial new GNOME 3 desktop. Other Fedora 15 features include Linux 2.6.38, a dynamic firewall, the SystemD configuration utility, and new applications including LibreOffice and Firefox 4, says the project.

There do not appear to be many notable changes to Fedora 15 since the beta was released last month. As promised, this appears to be the first shipping Linux distribution to offer GNOME 3, a major overhaul to the leading Linux desktop environment that has received far more brickbats than bouquets from the Linux community since its April release.

f it's any consolation to the GNOME Foundation, however, Canonical is getting just as much grief over Ubuntu 11.04's new Unity desktop. While the criticisms are varied and distinct, a general theme for both new environments is that the designers went overboard on trying to reach out to novice users, limited ease of configuration for more experienced Linux users.

Fedora users who agree with the GNOME 3 critiques can instead switch over to the rival KDE 4.6 (see image below), as well as the lightweight LXDE and XFCE 4.8. The latter features "a new panel, Thunar enhancements and more," says the Fedora project.

Fedora 15 builds upon Linux kernel 2.6.38, and adds Systemd as the default configuration utility. SystemD, which replaces SysVinit and Upstart for system and session management. helps produce a faster boot experience, says the project.

Other new features include a dynamic firewall feature, and a cloud-oriented BoxGrinder appliance builder. New applications are said to include Firefox 4 and the new OpenOffice.org clone LibreOffice 3.3.

Early feedback: thumbs up for SystemD, power management

First-look feedback on the final can be found at Ars Technica where Ryan Paul seems pleased, and even had some nice things to say about the much-maligned GNOME 3. Paul also takes a deeper look into the SystemD init system, and while he declines to pass judgment, he is certainly intrigued with its possibilities.

Meanwhile, at ZDNet Stephen Vaughan-Nichols is far more critical of GNOME 3, although he praises other Fedora 15 touches including the new LibreOffice, the dynamic firewall, and a nicely improved RPM 4.9.0 package manager. He also tested Fedora 15's touted power management improvements, and found them to be significant, delivering roughly 10 percent more battery life on a notebook computer.

Vaughan-Nichols also liked Fedora's implementation of Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environments (SPICE) virtual desktops. Following a tradition of the Red Hat-sponsored Fedora featuring cutting-edge technology that later appears in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), RHEL will be getting SPICE soon.

Detailed Features List:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/15/FeatureList

Download:

http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora

Fedora 11 Review: What to expect from it

With about two weeks for the final release I hear many talking about Leonidas. I hear ext4, faster boot speed, new volume control and a lot of things which I could not comprehend. So I read the Feature List page in the Fedora project wiki and decided to come up with features that one might want to look up before installing 11 on to the system. As usual I’ve been using 11 from beta stage and have update it all this while. It is stable, in fact I have not experienced any bugs . Talking of bugs, I hear they even have a new bug reporting system for the non geeks which will send reports automatically. Lets have a look at the features most prominently advertised first and then go to the less popular ones.
20 Second Startup: This says it all, but the 20 second start up is just to the login screen. But what it doesn’t say is the amazing way it boots up to the login screen. I have never seen this on any other distribution. It starts very smoothly giving the user a blue screen and it does not flicker a bit and smoothly changes to the login screen. My words don’t give it any justice, really the experience is as refined as a Mac OS X even better.
Ext4 file system and brtfs: There is a lot of noise about the Ext4 file system being the default not only in Fedora but also Ubuntu. So what’s the big deal about it. For the start ext4 can support disks of 1 exabyte and a single file can go upto 16 terabytes. On an ext3 the maximum disk size can be 16 TiB and the maximum file size 2 TiB and has a faster file system check so the server market should reap benefits from it. For the rest, we should notice generally better performance, and benefit from things like persistent preallocation when using updated torrent clients, etc. I have definitely seen a big difference in speed using a ext4 system. Brtfs may become the default file system for Fedora in a future release. It is the answer to ZFS in Solaris. It is definitely not suitable for day to day use but if you want to see the future file system add icantbelieveitsnotbtr at the installation prompt and you should be able to format your partition using brtfs. For more details about brtfs go to their wiki.
Volume Control: When I installed the beta looking at the feature list was impressed that I could connect my bluetooth head set and configure it with simplicity. But the installation didn’t get the job done. It detected my Jabra Headset, that is all. Then after a few updates, I was bowled!
All I had to do was pair it with my system and POP it shows up in the volume configuration. Simply brilliant. There are still a few bugs, like it detects it as a mono system but by the release day I’m sure it will be done or one will find a fix in the due course. The volume can be centrally managed here thanks to the pulse audio system. And if you do run into trouble setting your volume refer to my post on Volume / Sound problem in Fedora 11.
Firefox 3.5 & Thunderbird 3: I love Firefox but it loads pages slowly. It is annoying at times how slow it can be. Using my brother’s mac I saw the gulf yawning in between the speed of safari and firefox. I was planning to change to opera when along came 3.5. It has a new JavaScript engine and loads pages a lot more quickly than 3.0. It is actually impressive. You can expect your browsing a lot quicker. That’s something I like about Fedora. They bring the latest of the software in a release. You don’t have to wait for another release to get it into the main repository. Firefox 3, OpenOffice 3.0, Firefox 3.1, Gimp 2.6, all of them put into the appropriate release. For us who like to be in the bleeding edge of the software end, Fedora should be the choice. Thunderbird 3 is also included, not in the Live CD but you’ll find it in the repository. It also has a lot of improvement over 2 which you can find here.
GNOME 2.6 and KDE 4.2: Of course you get the latest of the desktop environments also. KDE 4.2 is something to look out for. They have done a lot of improvements and is finally worth using. The GNOME users may not experience much of new features but for the Volume control. They haven’t left out XFCE, fedora comes with the latest release, 4.6.
Presto: This is a plug-in for ‘yum’. It enables delta rpm support in Fedora. Delta rpm is an rpm file which stores the difference between versions of a package. For example updating the open office suite would nearly take a 100 M download, using deltarpms you can save more than 60 % that is you’d download only about 40M. It is not enabled by default so you will have to ‘yum’ it.yum install yum-presto
I installed the plugin and updated my system. Just see the output I got:yum update
Loaded plugins: presto, refresh-packagekit
[text omitted]