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Fedora 12 Alpha released
<insert witty comment that I'm up far too early to generate myself here> Fedora 12 "Constantine" Alpha release is available! What's next for the free operating system that shows off the best new technology of tomorrow? You can see the future now at: http://fedoraproject.org/get-prerelease What's an Alpha release? The Alpha release contains all the features of Fedora 12 in a form that anyone can help test. This testing, guided by the Fedora QA team, helps us target and identify bugs. When these bugs are fixed, we make a Beta release available. A Beta release is code-complete, and bears a very strong resemblance to the third and final release. The final release of Fedora 12 is due in November. We need your help to make Fedora 12 the best release yet, so please take a moment of your time to download and try out the Alpha and make sure the things that are important to you are working. If you find a bug, please report it - every bug you uncover is a chance to improve the experience for millions of Fedora users worldwide. Together, we can make Fedora a rock-solid distribution. https://bugzilla.redhat.com Among the top features for end users, we have: Better webcam support - Out of the box support for a lot of new webcams has been extended further than ever. Empathy as default IM client - Empathy is an instant messenger client replacing Pidgin, featuring better integration with the GNOME Desktop. GNOME 2.27.90 beta and KDE 4.3 - The latest code from the two main desktop environments and their many bundled supporting applications are part of this release. GNOME 2.27.90 is the latest GNOME version as of the Alpha release; GNOME 2.28 is planned for the final release. Network Manager Mobile Broadband - By providing a database of preconfigured mobile broadband providers, supporting more hardware and permit to scan GSM networks, NetworkManager makes the use of mobile broadband much easier. Better Free Video Codec - The latest technology is found in the improved, free Ogg Theora video encoder, codenamed "Thusnelda." Encoded video at very high definition now can meet or exceed the expectations of the most demanding viewer and material. PackageKit improvements - PackageKit now has plugins to install applications from a web browser, and from the command line if a user tries a command from a package not yet installed. PulseAudio improvements - The PulseAudio volume control applet has been extended to support profiles, input switching and easy speaker setup. Better power management - This release offers better power management features regarding CPU, disk and network I/O. For developers there are all sorts of additional goodies: NetBeans 6.7 - NetBeans 6.7 is the most recent version of Sun's IDE. PHP 5.3 - PHP 5.3 has been integrated as the popular web language. Eclipse 3.5.0 - The latest release of the popular, open, and extensible development platform is included. SystemTap - Updates to this debugging capability include better documentation, tools, and examples; support for kernel tracepoint and modern gcc debuginfo ("dwarf") output; and Eclipse support for launching traces and graphing results. Peek under the hood and there is still more: Better IPv6 in NetworkManager - NetworkManager has been extended to fully support IPv6 configurations through the GUI. Automatic Bug Reporting Tool - This release provides ABRT, a service that automatically reports application crashed to Fedora, without requiring the end user to have any special knowledge on error reporting. RPM XZ payload - All the software packages in Fedora have been switched from Gzip to the more efficient XZ (LZMA) compression method, to save space on mirrors and reduce download times. x86 optimized for Atom - The 32 bit version of this release will be compiled for i686 with a specific optimization for Intel Atom processors used in many netbooks. GRUB ext4 support - Fedora 11 included Ext4 by default, however GRUB in that version did not support Ext4 and hence required a separate boot partition formatted as Ext3 or Ext2. This release includes an updated version of GRUB with Ext4 support. Bluetooth Service On Demand - In order to support Bluetooth devices, the Bluetooth background service was started by default in previous versions of Fedora. In this release, the Bluetooth service is started on demand when needed, and automatically stops 30 seconds after last device use, reducing initial startup time and resources. KVM improvements - Many improvements in KVM virtualization are found in this release: reduced memory consumption and improved performance, NIC hotplug, better disk I/O, modern PXE booting, support for flexible network configurations, and much more. And that is only the beginning. A more complete list and details of each new cited feature is available here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/12/FeatureList For more information including common and known bugs, tips on how to report bugs, and the official release schedule, please refer to the release notes: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_12_Alpha_release_notes Thank you, and we hope to see you in the Fedora project! -- Jesse Keating Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature! identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating -- fedora-announce-list mailing list fedora-announce-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-announce-list (Log in to post comments)
Fedora 12 Alpha released Posted Aug 25, 2009 15:55 UTC (Tue) by james_w (subscriber, #51167) [Link]
Why aren't the using Apport instead of creating ABRT? It seems like needless duplication to me.
Thanks,
James
Fedora 12 Alpha released Posted Aug 25, 2009 18:58 UTC (Tue) by quintesse (subscriber, #14569) [Link]
DOn't know, this is the only comment I found about Apport on the ABRT home page:
"it's almost what we want, but it needs some improvements/changes to work with our infrastructure and to integrate with tools used in Fedora/RHEL (e.g. *Kit tools) "
For me I just hope it will work correctly with the newly integrated crash handler in KDE4.
Perl Posted Aug 25, 2009 17:13 UTC (Tue) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]
Are there plans to update perl to 5.10.1?
Perl Posted Aug 25, 2009 21:15 UTC (Tue) by lkundrak (subscriber, #43452) [Link]
I think (and hope) so. There's a plenty of time till the release and that would really be a no-risk update.
Fedora 12 Alpha released Posted Aug 25, 2009 17:44 UTC (Tue) by eparis123 (guest, #59739) [Link]
So, -fomit-frame-pointer (which is usually a debugging diaster) is no longer in Fedora CFLAGS?
I just wonder how can a crash dump be usefull without minimal debugging symbols.
Fedora 12 Alpha released Posted Aug 25, 2009 18:25 UTC (Tue) by shalem (subscriber, #4062) [Link]
???
-fomit-frame-pointer has not been in Fedora's cflags for as long as I've been a Fedora contributor which is since Fedora 1
where do I disable SELinux Posted Aug 25, 2009 19:40 UTC (Tue) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]
Can anyone tell me how I can disable SELinux forever?
(I'm also not able to view .flv movies even though I installed the rpmfusion-free codecs. Xine and vlc just do nothing, and totem gives me "Internal data stream error". But maybe this will fix itself when SELinux stops thinking there's a DOS attack problem.)
where do I disable SELinux Posted Aug 25, 2009 19:45 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
I hope you do report bugs
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SELinux/FAQ#How_do_I_enable...
where do I disable SELinux Posted Aug 25, 2009 21:15 UTC (Tue) by lkundrak (subscriber, #43452) [Link]
I don't think that is a correct solution. Or, do you just chmod -R 777 / when you have trouble with file modes? I don't think so.
And there's good news even if you think you can't fix the policy -- the new sealert is able to file the bugs for you!
where do I disable SELinux Posted Aug 26, 2009 1:37 UTC (Wed) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]
When I was new to GNU/Linux, in '97 or '98, I do remember making liberal use of chmod 777 :-) I also logged in as root for more than a year. Bit by bit I found time to tinker and understand why and how not to do this.
I might get comfortable with SELinux in the future, but today I have to focus on getting a crashed system back to a point where I can do my day's work. Thanks for mentioning sealert. When I encounter it or look for it, I'll remember that it was recommended.
where do I disable SELinux Posted Aug 26, 2009 8:06 UTC (Wed) by ebiederm (subscriber, #35028) [Link]
Some things are just a bad idea, and selinux seems to be one of those.
where do I disable SELinux Posted Aug 26, 2009 17:51 UTC (Wed) by markhb (guest, #1003) [Link]
I'd say selinux is a good idea in a data center, or on a machine with untrusted users (particularly with a sysadmin trained in its arcana). I disabled it on my 3-user home server behind a hardware firewall because it made the UserDir Apache directive not work.
Of course, Red Hat / Fedora could do a better job of patching some of the upstream documentation to account for the differences from the norm SELinux creates.
where do I disable SELinux Posted Aug 26, 2009 12:46 UTC (Wed) by compte (guest, #60316) [Link]
You have to install the source files from external Xine project and install or copy the xine dir to the same dir you installed Fedora's xine files (/usr/lib/xine/plugins/), if not mistaken.
Fedora 12 Alpha released Posted Aug 25, 2009 22:47 UTC (Tue) by qg6te2 (guest, #52587) [Link] This release includes an updated version of GRUB with Ext4 support.More accurately, this is a forked version of the ancient GRUB 0.9, because GRUB2 developers are too lazy to release a stable version. It's been in development since 1996.
Fedora 12 Alpha released Posted Aug 26, 2009 6:41 UTC (Wed) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]
What happened to ol' good LILO?
Fedora 12 Alpha released Posted Aug 26, 2009 7:23 UTC (Wed) by Darkmere (subscriber, #53695) [Link] LIJokes aside, most distributions moved away from it because it had a tendency to screw up fatally in cases of borked configurations or where a user had put a bad commandline in (all) the kernels/Default settings. Mostly it was just the lack of debugability.
Fedora 12 Alpha released Posted Aug 26, 2009 16:31 UTC (Wed) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]
I've just moved my main system BACK to lilo.
Basically because I've NEVER been comfortable with grub, been forced to rely on YaST's "auto" modification of the settings, and been forced to mess about putting the boot partition on drive 0 when linux is on drive 1, etc etc.
For me, lilo "just works". Yes I understand the problems other people have with it, but I just find grub is an impenetrable nightmare.
Cheers,
Fedora 12 Alpha released Posted Aug 26, 2009 17:24 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
agreed.
I've had trouble getting lilo to work on a new box once in a while (I've been using linux for 14 years or so), but once I figured out the problem it has been very reliable. when I do get an error (due to a disk failure or corruption) I can track it down.
grub is too much 'do what I mean' for me.
Fedora 12 Alpha released Posted Aug 26, 2009 23:45 UTC (Wed) by quotemstr (subscriber, #45331) [Link]
How long will it take for some distributors to get together and collaborate on a fork Grub 0.9?
Fedora 12 Alpha released Posted Aug 27, 2009 6:59 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
It is more likely that everyone will move to GRUB 2. Fedora has a preliminary plan on doing that in the next release
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Grub2
Fedora 12 Alpha released Posted Aug 26, 2009 8:32 UTC (Wed) by RobWilco (guest, #40828) [Link]
Hello,
I am trying to get the information of which version of grub is included in fedora 12. Is it the old grub with a new patch or is it the latest grub being accepted by main distros?
Cheers,
Fedora 12 Alpha released Posted Aug 28, 2009 23:22 UTC (Fri) by Tet (subscriber, #5433) [Link]
Sadly, I'm struggling to get any enthusiasm for this. It's been 13 years since I switched to the Red Hat world, and I've largely stayed there ever since. But recent versions of Fedora have been so horrendously broken that I'm seriously thinking F11 will be my last Fedora install, and I'll need to look for a new distribution :-( I used to recommend RH/Fedora to anyone and everyone. Now I can't do that in good conscience any more.
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