Number 9, number 9. Fedora 9 Preview has been cleared for takeoff! [LWN.net]

Number 9, number 9. Fedora 9 Preview has been cleared for takeoff!

Posted Apr 19, 2008 16:16 UTC (Sat) by gravious (guest, #7662) [Link]

Thanks for the heads up. I've noticed audio 'pops' (not sure how to describe them and thus
googling has been a fruitless task) when Pulseaudio grabs the audio device either at startup
or after a period of idleness. This isn't a bug report, just an observation.

More on topic. I've been following Fedora Rawhide after a number of years snug in Ubuntu's
arms and it was frighteningly unstable initially but it is very close to upstream sources
which is exciting and yum/pup/pirut/whatever aren't as bad as I remember them though they're
still nowhere near Ubuntu's version of dpkg/apt-get/synaptic/yada with the trigger patches and
what have you.

One perplexing puzzle I have with Fedora 9 is that gdmsetup seems to have vanished and I can't
work out how to automatically log in as my default user. You'll probably say that this is a
bad idea but to be honest if somebody has access to your machine they can log in easily as
root using grub can't they? The gdm documentation is out of date I believe.

For me the 'Year of the Linux Desktop' has been and gone :) It is interesting that Fedora
avoids OpenOffice by default. As a result I've briefly flirted with Abiword and Gnumeric and
they're both great apps. I'd imagine they don't have the breadth of file support that
OpenOffice has, especially when compared to the Novell Suse version, say. Shoot me down if I'm
wrong.

Finally: I had to set Selinux to permissive mode because it was interfering with npviewer.bin,
Pulseaudio, Skype and a couple of other things that escape my memory right at this moment and
I couldn't fix the problems even though I followed the advice of the Selinux troubleshooter so
I eventually gave up and turned it half-off. Yeah I know, I suck. I lose. I can see why some
folks are enamoured with AppArmor. *ducks*. Regarding Skype: I know that it's proprietary but
it just gained webcam support and at least they have a native Qt/Alsa/Xv/V4l version, no? I
know some of you think that I'll go to hell for using it but I don't care!

I'd like to say thanks to all who contribute to Fedora. "Thank you."

Number 9, number 9. Fedora 9 Preview has been cleared for takeoff!

Posted Apr 19, 2008 17:13 UTC (Sat) by michich (subscriber, #17902) [Link]

Yeah, pup/pirut are very simplistic tools. They're gone in F9 anyway, replaced by PackageKit.
And have you seen yumex?

The new gdm has been heavily rewritten, and gdmsetup hasn't been completed for it yet.

I don't remember if OOo is installed by default or not, but it's certainly available.

Number 9, number 9. Fedora 9 Preview has been cleared for takeoff!

Posted Apr 19, 2008 22:25 UTC (Sat) by gravious (guest, #7662) [Link]

Okay :) pup/pirut were here until not so long ago! They've been took away. Oiks. I've noticed
PackageKit. It's got style and it's goals are laudable. I see this *Kit trend with Gnome -
cute.

yumex: I recognise it from one of my colleague's desktops. I'll check it out. Heh, I just did
a 'yum search yum'. Never thought about doing that before.

Whoa - crikey! 'yum install yum-fastestmirror'. Why isn't this installed by default? I wish I
had discovered this six months ago.

OOo is not installed by default. I think the reason may be political. Though that remark could
be way off the, er, mark. Both Abiword and Gnumeric are very Gnomic, no? OOo _is_ certainly
available. 'yum install openoffice.org-writer openoffice.org-calc openoffice.org-impress
openoffice.org-base' which would approximate to what is installed by default in Ubuntu yields
a total size download of 123MB. And it wants to install Tomcat. I am _allergic_ to Tomcat - I
had to configure it one time too many in work.

Number 9, number 9. Fedora 9 Preview has been cleared for takeoff!

Posted Apr 19, 2008 23:13 UTC (Sat) by skvidal (subscriber, #3094) [Link]

Open office is not on the live CD b/c if we included it then the livecd would not fit on a CD
any longer :)

Nothing political - just trying to get under the cd size-barrier.

Number 9, number 9. Fedora 9 Preview has been cleared for takeoff!

Posted Apr 19, 2008 18:49 UTC (Sat) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

You mention the triggers support in dpkg fork in Ubuntu but note that RPM has triggers for a
long time. While it isn't used much in Fedora, it can be quite handy indeed. Similarly RPM
also supports multi-lib and file based dependencies. 

GDM in Fedora is a new rewrite 

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/NewGdm

It supports nice features like smoother interaction, power management and accessibility even
from the login screen and others. There are still some missing pieces however. 

For voice and video support, you might want to consider Empathy which just recently gained
these features. Also SELinux issues are quickly handled in fedora-selinux list and bugzilla.
General issues with the pre releases can be discussed in fedora-test list too. 

Lastly, you are quite welcome. Keep providing us more feedback esp on the mailing lists where
developers interact often.

Number 9, number 9. Fedora 9 Preview has been cleared for takeoff!

Posted Apr 20, 2008 13:46 UTC (Sun) by gravious (guest, #7662) [Link]

Hi there,

Multi-lib clearly rocks. I avoided Fedora 64-bit because of the pain I had with Ubuntu 64-bit.
I will re-install and try it out when F9 hits the mirrors because I feel like my Athlon 64 is
going to waste :)

Ah, the new GDM looks cool. If I may be so bold though, I consider the lack of a GUI tool to
configure GDM a regression. Maybe the new inproved GDM should have been held back by one
release until all the pieces were in place? An internet search reveals that I am not the only
one wondering what happened. It's not a big deal. I was just surprised and I have been forced
to learn a bit more about Gconf than I wanted to!

I will follow F10 using the mailing lists and Bugzilla as you suggest.

Number 9, number 9. Fedora 9 Preview has been cleared for takeoff!

Posted Apr 19, 2008 20:04 UTC (Sat) by dany (subscriber, #18902) [Link]

Hi,

don't worry you dont suck! Not only you is turning off SELINUX, even experienced admins, who
need to install commercial software do the same.

Not so long time ago, there was article pointer about selinux here at lwn (and i think source
was from ibm developer webpage).

Well, it was so bloated, that I could't understand those "simple" examples.

Your ego should be ok now :-)

Number 9, number 9. Fedora 9 Preview has been cleared for takeoff!

Posted Apr 19, 2008 20:19 UTC (Sat) by dany (subscriber, #18902) [Link]

Just to be complete, I found that SELINUX article.

http://lwn.net/Articles/269372/

Number 9, number 9. Fedora 9 Preview has been cleared for takeoff!

Posted Apr 19, 2008 20:40 UTC (Sat) by michich (subscriber, #17902) [Link]

That article was about how a security expert would implement a custom security policy. It was
not about everyday life on a SELinux enabled system. :-)

Number 9, number 9. Fedora 9 Preview has been cleared for takeoff!

Posted Apr 19, 2008 22:48 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Serge started the article with a quote talking about simplifying 
administration. I finished it wondering how hellish complex the 
administration could have been beforehand if *that* made it simpler...

Number 9, number 9. Fedora 9 Preview has been cleared for takeoff!

Posted Apr 20, 2008 0:36 UTC (Sun) by michich (subscriber, #17902) [Link]

Serge probably had a different meaning of "administration" in mind than 
you. He meant the kind of administration where you actively take 
advantage of SELinux and confine your custom applications by writing MAC 
policies for them. You do this by adding SELinux types, roles and rules. 
If you find it too difficult, then don't do it. You can simply run your 
application unconfined, while leaving at least all the usual daemons in 
their confined domains.

But writing completely new SELinux policies is not what the vast majority 
of administrators have a need to do (but if they do, they can start with 
the SELinux Policy Generation GUI tool).

Number 9, number 9. Fedora 9 Preview has been cleared for takeoff!

Posted Apr 19, 2008 20:36 UTC (Sat) by michich (subscriber, #17902) [Link]

Here's some documentation how to configure gdm. Automatic login works for me after I put these lines into /etc/gdm/custom.conf:

[daemon]
TimedLoginEnable=true
TimedLogin=michich
TimedLoginDelay=10

Number 9, number 9. Fedora 9 Preview has been cleared for takeoff!

Posted Apr 20, 2008 13:25 UTC (Sun) by gravious (guest, #7662) [Link]

Thanks michich. Perfect.

Number 9, number 9. Fedora 9 Preview has been cleared for takeoff!

Posted Apr 22, 2008 15:13 UTC (Tue) by wtogami (subscriber, #32325) [Link]

> Finally: I had to set Selinux to permissive mode because it was
> interfering with npviewer.bin, Pulseaudio, Skype and a couple of 
> other things that escape my memory right at this moment and
> I couldn't fix the problems even though I followed the advice of
> the Selinux troubleshooter so I eventually gave up and turned 
> it half-off.

Reminder: You are using a nightly snapshot.  Things will break, get fixed the next day.

In this particular case selinux-policy broke a few days in rawhide.  It was fixed in
subsequent updates, however the previous break was such that an upgrade wouldn't automatically
fix it.  New installs are fine however.

getsebool -a |grep nsplugin
allow_nsplugin_execmem --> on
allow_unconfined_nsplugin_transition --> off

Make sure these two booleans are set this way to make nspluginwrapper work.

Regarding skype, I dunno.  It works for me with defaults.

Number 9, number 9. Fedora 9 Preview has been cleared for takeoff!

Posted May 12, 2008 5:59 UTC (Mon) by gravious (guest, #7662) [Link]

Awesome. Thanks.