Fedora 15 Alpha: Beta Finally Released!

As always, Fedora continues to develop and integrate the latest free and open source software. The following sections provide a brief overview of major changes from the last release of Fedora. For more details about other features that are making their way into Rawhide and set for inclusion in

The Purpose of the Alpha Release

This release is an installable, testable version of the code and features being developed for Fedora 15 (Lovelock).The software is going to have bugs, problems, and incomplete features. It is not likely to eat your data or parts of your computer, but you should be aware that it could.

You have an important part to play in this release. Either install or run a Fedora Live instance of the Fedora 15 Alpha release, then try using a few applications or activities that are important to you. If it doesn't work, file a bug. This release gives the wider community a set of code to test against as a very important step in the process of making a solid Fedora 15 release. You can make the Fedora 15 release better by testing this release and reporting your findings.

What's New in Fedora 15 Alpha

GNOME 3

GNOME 3 is the next major version of the GNOME desktop. After many years of a largely unchanged GNOME 2.x experience, GNOME 3 brings a fresh look and feel with GNOME Shell. There are also many changes under the surfaces, like the move from CORBA-based technologies such as GConf, Bonobo and at-spi to dbus-based successors.

Since the requirements of GNOME Shell on the graphics system may not be met by certain hardware / driver combinations, GNOME 3 also support a 'fallback mode' in which we run gnome-panel, metacity and notification-daemon instead of GNOME Shell. Note that this mode is not a 'Classic GNOME' mode; the panel configuration will be adjusted to be similar to the shell.

The fallback will be handled automatically by gnome-session, which will detect insufficient graphics capabilities and run a different session.

LibreOffice

LibreOffice is an office productivity suite that will replace OpenOffice. It will be completely open source and driven solely by the community supporting it. It has a word processor, presentation creator, spreadsheet creator, database creator, formula editor, and drawing editor.

systemd

Fedora 15 has replaced Upstart with systemd. systemd uses services files located in /lib/systemd/system for services, and /etc/systemd/system for configuration. A dozen desktop daemons [list them] have been initially converted to use systemd service files and small number of programs have been patched to take advantage of it. systemd is compatible with legacy SysV init scripts and rest of the migration will happen incrementally over time.

Dynamic Firewall

Fedora 15 adds support for the optional firewall daemon, that provides a dynamic firewall management with a D-Bus interface.

DNSSEC for workstations

NetworkManager now uses the BIND nameserver as a DNSSEC resolver. All received DNS responses are proved to be correct. If particular domain is signed and failed to validate then resolver returns SERFVAIL instead of invalidated response, which means something is wrong.

KDE 4.6

This release uses KDE 4.6 by default as the KDE Desktop environment. KDE 4.6 offers new features such as it will be HAL-free (featuring udisks/upower Solid and Power Management backends), systemd password agent, improved bluetooth support using bluedevil bluetooth framework. Also in the works is kde-integration to libreoffice and switching the default phonon backend to gstreamer.

BoxGrinder

BoxGrinder is an easy to use command line tool to create appliances (virtual images) for various platforms (KVM, Xen, VMware, EC2) from simple plaintext application files.

Ecryptfs in Authconfig

Fedora 15 brings in improved support for eCryptfs, a stacked cryptographic filesystem for Linux. Starting from Fedora 15, authconfig can be used to automatically mount a private encrypted part of the home directory when a user logs in.

Indic Typing Booster

Indic Typing Booster is a predictive input method for ibus and scim. It suggests complete words based on partial input, which can then simply be selected from a list, and boost one's typing speed for more enjoyable input.

LZMA for Live Images

By using LZMA for the live images it will allow for more packages to be shipped on the live image, allow the space constrained images to be better and for the smaller images faster to download.

LessFS

LessFS is a data deduplication project. The aim is to reduce disk usage where filesystem blocks are identical by only storing 1 block and using pointers to the original block for copies. This method of storage is becoming popular in Enterprise solutions for reducing disk backups and minimising virtual machine storage in particular.

Xfce 4.8

Xfce 4.8 has a number of improvements and new features including the Xfce menu will support menu merging, allowing graphical menu editors like alacarte to work in Xfce, the task list windows can now be filtered by monitor and improved multi-head support. Also Thunar has been ported from thunar-vfs to gvfs, PolicyKit support in xfce4-session, multilib enhancements for xfce4-panel plugins and the run dialog now runs with the users full session environment.

Tryton

Tryton is a three-tiers high-level general purpose application platform under the license GPL-3 written in Python and using PostgreSQL as database engine. It is the core base of a complete business solution providing modularity, scalability and security.

RPM 4.9

RPM has been updated to 4.9 with improvements like a pluggable dependency generator, built-in filtering of generated dependencies, additional package ordering hinting mechanism, performance improvements, and many bug fixes all over the place.

Sugar 0.92

Provide the latest Sugar Learning Environment (0.92), including an enhanced activity set to provide an stable demo environment for Sugar as well as an environment for developers.

New Package Suite Groups

The Graphics suite group has been renamed to the Design group and the Robotics SIG has created the Robotics Package Suite which is a collection of software that provides an out-of-the-box usable robotic simulation environment featuring a linear demo to introduce new users.

Fedora 13 Launch!

At last F-13 is here! So ROCK IT!

As always, Fedora continues to develop (http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Red_Hat_contributions) and integrate the latest free and open source software (http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features). The following sections provide a brief overview of major changes from the last release of Fedora. For more details about other features that are included in Fedora 13 refer to their individual wiki pages that detail feature goals and progress:
http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/13/FeatureList
Throughout the release cycle, there are interviews with the developers behind key features giving out the inside story:
http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Interviews
The following are major features for Fedora 13:
*Automatic print driver installation — refer to Section 4.3, “Printing”
*Automatic language pack installation — refer to Section 4.4, “Internationalization”
*Redesigned user account tool — refer to Section 4.1, “Fedora Desktop”
*Color management to calibrate monitors and scanners — refer to Section 4.1, “Fedora Desktop”
*Experimental 3D support for NVIDIA video cards — refer to Section 4.1, “Fedora Desktop”

Some other features in this release include:-

*A new way to install Fedora over the Internet — refer to Section 2, “Installation Notes”
*SSSD authentication for users — refer to Section 2, “Installation Notes”
*Updates to NFS — refer to Section 5.9, “File Systems”
*Zarafa Open Source edition, a new open-source groupware suite — refer to Section 5.4, “Mail Servers”
*System rollback for the Btrfs file system — refer to Section 5.9, “File Systems”
*Better SystemTap probes — refer to Section 6.2, “Tools”
*A Python 3 stack that can be installed parallel to an existing Python stack — refer to Section 6.2, “Tools”
*Support for the entire Java EE 6 spec in Netbeans 6.8 — refer to Section 6.4, “Java”

Features for Fedora 13 tracked on the feature list page:
http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/13/FeatureList
A discussion putting these features in context may be found at:
http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_13_Talking_Points

Fedora 13 Review!

Fedora 13 Review!

I’ve been using Fedora 13 for a few weeks now, so it’s time to relay my thoughts on the new release.
I’ve never had a good experience upgrading a Linux operating system to the new version, and usually elect to just do a fresh install but I was assured that the “preupgrade” application would meet my needs. It was a simple application but carried the unfortunate downside of not working. At the time of Fedora 13’s release it appeared that on a lot of systems including both my desktop and my laptop the application incorrectly reported insufficient space on the /boot partition of the drive and thus refused to upgrade the system. Further annoying is the fact that this bug was reported and fixed before the final Fedora 13 release, and yet appeared not to have been rolled out into the Fedora 12 repositories in time.
I assume that the issue has been fixed, since I have seen reports of many smooth upgrades on the Identiverse since; however this was a fairly major issue which could have been handled better. So in the end I resolved to do a fresh install, which went without a hitch. I was amazed at how fast the installation went and I was up and running straight off, and in this new version the first time configuration displayed properly with two screens (which were detected and configured automatically) which was one of the only problems I had with Fedora 12.
In terms of new features there is certainly no shortage. Many distributions seem to treat upgrading to a new version of software as a new feature (And there is plenty of that: KDE 4.4, Netbeans 6.8 for example) when not much innovation has gone on since the last release but Fedora certainly seems to have made an effort to introduce truly new features as well as actually improving how the Fedora software compilation works together; improvements to Pulseaudio integration, improved GNOME colour management as well as automatic print driver installation which fall together to make the Fedora desktop an increasingly complete desktop. Another notable improvement is that one can now install Python 3 in parallel with Python 2, which is a big help for developers.
My personal favourite newcomer is the advent of compositing for the open source ATI drivers (as well as the NVIDIA one as far as I’m aware), which means that Fedora is no longer limited or made inferior by being a Free desktop solution. This is what we’re after, in the end the free software movement can only succeed when we have brilliant developers creating software that is equal to or better than the proprietary equivalents.
Unfortunately there are still a few items within Fedora which really need to be adressed and I think that the main one of these is the PackageKit GUI. While it is simple and you can install software through it, it’s also lacking features and is a definite weak point in the desktop experience. There is one particularly annoying bug which has come to my attention which is that if you are upgrading software which requires a system restart then a notification will pop up asking you to restart both before and after the actual update is performed, which could cause problems to those not watching carefully.
Overall, the system is still nice and stable and the software works. The new features have really come together well for a smoother desktop experience though I think it may be easy to miss quite a few of the more subtle but essential improvements to the system as a whole.

Fedora 12: United

Fedora 12 is the latest major update to Fedora, the Linux distribution that counts RedHat as a major sponsor. Fedora is Free Software and as a consequence, it is not one of those distros that we expect to “just work” out of the box. So if you are new to Fedora, don’t expect the same user-friendliness that you’ll get with distros like Pardus, Hymera Open and Mandriva One (or even Mandriva Free). It is, however, still a decent distro. How decent? Continue reading to find out.
As is the custom here, we always start with the installer.The installer: The Fedora installer, Anaconda, is one of the better designed installers available on any Linux or BSD distribution. It is a simple but fully-featured graphical installer, with support for LVM, RAID, and disk encryption. LVM is the default disk partitioning scheme, By default, Anaconda creates just two logical volumes – swap and a main logical volume for root with ext4 as the journaling filesystem (this is in addition to a non-LVM /boot partition of about 200MB). With regards to disk encryption, no distro makes it as easy as Fedora to set up encrypted LVM. All that you need to do (to setup encrypted LVM) is just enable a check box.

If you choose to encrypted your disk, which in the case of Fedora is the same as setting up encrypted LVM, you will be asked to choose a passphrase. You will need this passphrase before booting into your Fedora 12 installation.

After installation ….
What’s good: I think the best feature of Fedora 12 is how easy it makes disk encryption (this has been a feature of Fedora since Fedora 10). Every distro should make it just as easy to configure disk encryption. Do you know why you need to encrypt your desktop, notebook, or netbook drives? Spend some time here.
Another good aspect of Fedora 12 is hardware detection and auto-configuration. For example, just as on Ubuntu 9.10 and Pardus 2009, the system will automatically configure a printer as soon as one is plugged in. This is becoming the standard on Linux distros, but a few like Sabayon don’t have this feature yet.
Fedora 12 has a very good graphical firewall client that is enabled out of the box. There are rules pre-configured for most of the commonly used network services. The graphical firewall manager has an Expert and a Beginner level. In order words, it caters to all user levels. It also has default rules for desktops and servers.

What’s not so good (or not so bad)?: Compared to Mandriva One 2010, or even Mandriva Free 2010, the range of applications available in the default repos of Fedora 12 is very limited. I understand that Fedora will “provide only free and open source software,” but some very popular free software applications are not in the default repo. For example, there are no recent media center applications. The only one there is is Elisa-0.5.35, which the a very stale ancestor of Moovida. And you won’t find XBMC, the other free software media center application.
It’s good that the firewall is enabled out of the box, and that there is a graphical interface for easy management of the firewall, but what’s not so good is that the firewall gui is not minimized to systray when the application is closed. Ok, I’m nit-picking here, but it’s not my fault. I’ve been spoiled by distros like Mandriva.

Firefox (version 3.5.5) is the only browser installed, which is just fine, but you will not be able to view any multimedia content, and it does not “speak” Java. To make matters worse, Java JRE and all the necessary multimedia plugins are not in the default repo. In light of the projects stated policy of providing “only free and open source software,” this is understandable. If you must use Fedora, and would like to make it fun to use, use instructions provided at RPM Fusion.

What’s bad: Fedora 12 brings to light one of the most annoying behaviors on a GNOME-based distro. And that is this: For every folder that you click on in Nautilus, the file manager, the system will open it up in a new window. Not so bad if you click on just one folder, but imagine drilling down five folders deep, and what you have is a riot (see the screenshot below). Most GNOME-based distros have this behavior modified. for example, on Mandriva, folders will open in a new tab. On Hymera Open, which has the best default configuration of any GNOME-based desktop distro, folders will open in situ.

On all the GNOME-based distros that have been reviewed here, Totem, the movie player, has not been able to play encrypted DVD videos. But on those distros, I have been able to play encrypted DVD videos by installing VLC. On Fedora 12, the Totem installed will not play encrypted DVD videos, and VLC is not in the default repo. By the way, VLC is Free Software.
Final verdict: Fedora has had the reputation of being an unstable distro, but this latest release feels very stable and polished. It does not have the type of graphical management tools that you’ll find on Mandriva, or the beauty of Hymera Open, but for its intended audience, it should be good enough.

http://linuxbsdos.com/2009/11/19/fedora-12-review/

June 9, 2009 9:35 AM PDT

Red Hat's Fedora 11: So easy you'll forget it's Linux

by Matt Asay

Red Hat has taken heat over the past few years for allegedly neglecting the personal computer in favor of more profitable enterprise servers. It's a fair critique: Red Hat is an enterprise software company, a decision it made years ago, and to good effect.

But anyone thinking that Red Hat has somehow forgotten consumer markets in its rush to win the enterprise need only try the final release of Fedora 11, its community-focused operating system for desktops and laptops. I've been evaluating Fedora 11 for the past week and find it polished and professional while meeting or beating Windows in key performance areas.

Reading through Fedora 11's feature list, the geek in you may get giddy seeing the use of ext4 as the default file system. Not me. I don't care about the underpinnings of the operating system. I just want it to work.

This is, in fact, Fedora 11's biggest selling point: it just works. And fast, too: from powering on to logging in takes 20 seconds or less. Beat that, Windows!

(Ironically, if Windows hopes to catch Linux in boot-up performance, it's going to have to turn to Linux, like DeviceVM's Splashtop, for help.)

This, however, is an experience I've been having with several Linux distributions, including Moblin Beta 2, Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix (reviewed here), and OpenSUSE 11.1. While none is perfect, the same is true of my preferred Mac OS X and Windows (Vista or XP). They all work, with little or no fiddling required.

In fact, as an experiment I've been leaving my Linux-based Netbook around the house and have given my children and wife free rein to use it whenever and however they want. My wife looks up actors on IMDB. My daughter writes a school paper. Not one of them has struggled to perform these basic tasks, set up the wireless, etc. Everything just works, and works in a way very familiar to a Mac or Windows user.

This is the state of "desktop" Linux today: it really has nothing left to prove. It took years to become user friendly, but it has arrived, helped along by the world's move to browser-based computing. At this point, the only thing that Fedora and the other Linux distributions can do is embrace and extend the Windows or Mac computing experience, because they've largely matched them (especially Windows).

Perhaps it's not surprising, then, that Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth has targeted the Mac as the "desktop" operating system to beat, with plans to do just that.

In fact, my only real complaint with Fedora 11 is that it doesn't yet have a Netbook-focused "spin." I'm not alone in seeking a "Fedora Netbook Remix," but Fedora Mini, as it's called, is not yet ready for prime time.

In the meantime, yes, Fedora 11 provides support for cross-compiling Windows applications directly on Fedora Linux using the MinGW environment, and yes it provides the latest and greatest in open-source software likeFirefox 3.1 for Web browsing.

Just don't expect it to be weird/geeky anymore. Those days for the Linux "desktop" are gone. It still needs some spit and polish but, again, so does Windows. The Mac is the closest any 'desktop' operating system gets to being both beautiful and super user friendly. Linux, however, if Fedora 11 is any indication, isn't far behind.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

Red Hat's Fedora 11: So easy you'll forget it's Linux

Red Hat has taken heat over the past few years for allegedly neglecting the personal computer in favor of more profitable enterprise servers. It's a fair critique: Red Hat is an enterprise software company, a decision it made years ago, and to good effect.

But anyone thinking that Red Hat has somehow forgotten consumer markets in its rush to win the enterprise need only try the final release of Fedora 11, its community-focused operating system for desktops and laptops. I've been evaluating Fedora 11 for the past week and find it polished and professional while meeting or beating Windows in key performance areas.

Reading through Fedora 11's feature list, the geek in you may get giddy seeing the use of ext4 as the default file system. Not me. I don't care about the underpinnings of the operating system. I just want it to work.

This is, in fact, Fedora 11's biggest selling point: it just works. And fast, too: from powering on to logging in takes 20 seconds or less. Beat that, Windows!

(Ironically, if Windows hopes to catch Linux in boot-up performance, it's going to have to turn to Linux, like DeviceVM's Splashtop, for help.)

This, however, is an experience I've been having with several Linux distributions, including Moblin Beta 2, Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix (reviewed here), and OpenSUSE 11.1. While none is perfect, the same is true of my preferred Mac OS X and Windows (Vista or XP). They all work, with little or no fiddling required.

In fact, as an experiment I've been leaving my Linux-based Netbook around the house and have given my children and wife free rein to use it whenever and however they want. My wife looks up actors on IMDB. My daughter writes a school paper. Not one of them has struggled to perform these basic tasks, set up the wireless, etc. Everything just works, and works in a way very familiar to a Mac or Windows user.

This is the state of "desktop" Linux today: it really has nothing left to prove. It took years to become user friendly, but it has arrived, helped along by the world's move to browser-based computing. At this point, the only thing that Fedora and the other Linux distributions can do is embrace and extend the Windows or Mac computing experience, because they've largely matched them (especially Windows).

Perhaps it's not surprising, then, that Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth has targeted the Mac as the "desktop" operating system to beat, with plans to do just that.

In fact, my only real complaint with Fedora 11 is that it doesn't yet have a Netbook-focused "spin." I'm not alone in seeking a "Fedora Netbook Remix," but Fedora Mini, as it's called, is not yet ready for prime time.

In the meantime, yes, Fedora 11 provides support for cross-compiling Windows applications directly on Fedora Linux using the MinGW environment, and yes it provides the latest and greatest in open-source software like Firefox 3.1 for Web browsing.

Just don't expect it to be weird/geeky anymore. Those days for the Linux "desktop" are gone. It still needs some spit and polish but, again, so does Windows. The Mac is the closest any 'desktop' operating system gets to being both beautiful and super user friendly. Linux, however, if Fedora 11 is any indication, isn't far behind.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.

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]