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What's coming in Fedora Core 3
The final release of Fedora Core 3 isn't expected until November 1, but
with the release of Fedora Core 3 test 2 (FC3t2) on Monday (a week later
than originally planned) we decided to check in and see what users could
expect from the next release of Fedora Core. We also contacted Red Hat to
see if Cristian Gafton or another representative would be available to talk
about Fedora, and its relation to Red Hat's commercial products, but they
were unable to provide a representative to speak to LWN by deadline.
This release marks the addition of the GNOME 2.8 release candidate, KDE 3.3.0, X.org 6.8.0, and the udev device model. We gave FC3t2 a try on an Athlon XP 2000 system with 1 GB of RAM. One thing we noticed was that the media check failed all of the disks we burned, but we were able to perform an install from the media without any problems. This seems to be an issue that came up during tests of FC3 test 1 as well. While bugs and glitches are to be expected in test releases, we note this particular issue so that users trying out FC3t2 do not burn through a stack of blanks in a futile attempt to burn four good disks. Users will find that the default partitioning has changed a bit since Fedora Core 2. By default, the installer will attempt to set up LVM rather than the standard "simple" partitioning most Linux users are used to. There seem to be a few bugs left in the partitioning tool, as the installer informed us we were "probably out of disk space" when attempting to install. However, when we performed an install using a standard partitioning scheme, all went well. No doubt, this will be ironed out by the time that FC3 final is released. Fedora Core 3 marks the Fedora team's second stab at SELinux, and they are asking that users give SELinux another try as well. According to Colin Walters, this release marks a scaled-back approach that should cause fewer problems while still providing additional security for "select system daemons."
Instead of the original "strict" policy which covered everything, a new
"targeted" policy has been developed which only applies SELinux
restrictions to a few select system daemons. Regular user login sessions
are unrestricted.
The initial approach to SELinux was probably a too-radical departure for many users, so we're happy to see the Fedora team taking a more moderate approach that will (we hope) build support for SELinux over time. However, the actual documentation and tools for SELinux leave a bit to be desired, as Matias Feliciano points out on the fedora-devel list. While the "targeted" policy is "mostly invisible" to the end-user, so is the documentation for users who want to customize and tweak their SELinux policy.
FC3t2 marks the introduction of the udev device model to Fedora. The udev
device model implements Despite the occasional glitch in the test release, FC3 is shaping up nicely. It's not a radical change from FC2, most of the changes are package upgrades and further refinement of existing features. The udev device model is probably one of the most major changes that users will see in FC3. It bears mentioning that the Fedora Core development process still seems to be shy on community involvement. However, Red Hat and the Fedora team have provided a usable Linux distribution with many of the cutting-edge technologies that users want to try. From that perspective, we think that Fedora has become a success. (Log in to post comments)
What's coming in Fedora Core 3 Posted Sep 23, 2004 8:32 UTC (Thu) by james (subscriber, #1325) [Link] However, community support for Fedora Extras is getting closer... (For those who don't know, Fedora Core is supposed to be, well, the core of a Fedora system, with more unusual packages maintained in Extras. See the Fedora Terminology page for details.) At the moment, fedora.us has been more or less filling this role, but largely as a separate organisation. Bringing it under the Fedora "roof" should help to formalise and unify the situation, and provide stuff like CVS access, and should provide a template for opening CVS access for Core. James.
What's coming in Fedora Core 3 Posted Sep 23, 2004 18:59 UTC (Thu) by jeskritt (guest, #4092) [Link] I found that the media check failed quite often, right from when it was introduced. Most often on the boot CD. I now just do a manual check by mounting the CDs and running rpm --checksig *rpm. If they check out ok then I assume the disc is good. I've never had any problems this way. It doesn't take long and you just have to watch/grep for "NOT OK"
Documentation, if not excellent, it's far from invisible... Posted Sep 24, 2004 1:46 UTC (Fri) by koide (guest, #22687) [Link] https://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?docid=2037...https://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?docid=2195...
What's coming in Fedora Core 3 Posted Sep 26, 2004 23:04 UTC (Sun) by Lovechild (subscriber, #3592) [Link] Fedora is far from a community project as RedHat tries to pass it on as, rather every decision is taken by RedHat employees without consulting the community - I personally think they should give up control to a board of directors, where they of course would be more than welcome to place an number of people involved with RedHat up for election - like the GNOME foundation does, no company is allowed to make up more than 30% (I think that is the number).I really like Fedora, and I think RedHat does do a fine job on the technical side of things - but it's not a community project. either make it one, or call it what it is, an unsupported version of RedHat's distro.
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