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Announcing the release of Fedora 15 Beta
The clock is ticking. The days are counting down. The release of Fedora 15, codenamed "Lovelock," is scheduled for release in late May. Fedora is the leading edge, free and open source operating system that continues to deliver innovative features to users worldwide, with a new release every six months. We are delighted to announce the availability of the Beta release of Fedora 15. "I beta one American dollar that you will love this release!" Come see why we love Fedora so much. We are betting you will, too. Download it now: http://fedoraproject.org/get-prerelease?wkanF15b == What is the Beta Release? == The beta release is the last important milestone of Fedora 15. Only critical bug fixes will be pushed as updates leading to the general release of Fedora 15 in May. We invite you to join us in making Fedora 15 a solid release by downloading, testing, and providing your valuable feedback. Of course, this is a beta release, meaning that some problems may still be lurking. A list of the problems we already know about can be seen on the Common F15 bugs page, at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F15_bugs. If you find a bug that's not found on that page, be sure it gets fixed before release by reporting your discovery at https://bugzilla.redhat.com/ Thank you! == Features == Desktop enthusiasts and end users of all sorts can look forward to: * Gnome Shell and the Gnome 3 desktop. 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. * LibreOffice Productivity Suite. LibreOffice is a fork of OpenOffice, with the support of the OpenOffice.org community. All of the applications you know and love are still there, including apps for spreadsheets, document creation, and presentations. * Desktop environments a-plenty. The Xfce and LXDE spins have been updated, and the Fedora Spins SIG has other offerings tailored to a wide variety of user needs. Sysadmins will love features such as: * Appliance building. BoxGrinder creates appliances (virtual machines) from simple plain text appliance definition files for various virtual platforms, and is great for building appliances for use in a Cloud environment. * Dynamic Firewall. The dynamic firewall mode aims to make it possible to change firewall settings without the need to restart the firewall and to make persistent connections possible. Coders have lots of new development tools to try out, including: * Updates to popular languages. Python 3.2, Rails 3.0.3, and OCaml 3.12 are all included in Fedora 15. * Project tooling. Maven 3 is a Java project management, project comprehension, and build system tool. * Compiling and debugging. GDB gets an update to 7.3, and GCC 4.6 is included. (Fedora 15 has also been rebuilt using GCC 4.6!) And that's only the beginning. A more complete list and details of all the new features in Fedora 15 is available here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/15/FeatureList We have nightly composes of alternate spins available here: http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/nightly-composes/ == Contributing == For more information on common and known bugs, tips on how to report bugs, and the official release schedule, please refer to the release notes at http://docs.fedoraproject.org. There are many ways to contribute beyond bug reporting. You can help translate software and content, test and give feedback on software updates, write and edit documentation, help with all sorts of promotional activities, and package free software for use by millions of Fedora users worldwide. To get started, visit http://join.fedoraproject.org today! -- announce mailing list announce@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/announce (Log in to post comments)
Announcing the release of Fedora 15 Beta Posted Apr 20, 2011 6:13 UTC (Wed) by linusw (subscriber, #40300) [Link]
I've installed it and really like the new GNOME3 desktop and GNOME shell!
But I guess as usual there will be a round of complaints... How many hackers does it take to change a desktop shell? 100 - 1 who rewrites it and 99 who complain that the old one was much better...
(Here you can add in the usual rant about command lines being better than graphical environments, equally boring, I find myself in the "both-and" camp rather than "either-or".)
Announcing the release of Fedora 15 Beta Posted Apr 20, 2011 11:12 UTC (Wed) by cesarb (subscriber, #6266) [Link]
The main problem with these big changes is the regressions. The previous Gnome desktop was used for years, and most of the rough edges had been fixed. With the new Gnome desktop, it will take some time to get to that level.
For instance, the screen does not lock anymore when you suspend (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=694483). While I am sure this will be fixed, it was working before (on Gnome 2) and is not working anymore (on the other hand, I love that now I have a clock on the locked screen). Each person will find several of these small annoyances ("paper cuts").
I am thinking of going back to KDE for Fedora 15, since KDE's last big change was long ago enough to have most rough edges fixed, and look at Gnome again for Fedora 16. By then, I believe most regressions will have been fixed.
Announcing the release of Fedora 15 Beta Posted Apr 20, 2011 12:54 UTC (Wed) by jarrett.miller (guest, #60765) [Link]
Sorry but there is more wrong with gnome3 thank just paper cuts type bugs.
For example they really screwed over anyone with a very large monitor. I have a 30" display and launching applications is now a real chore. I have to go all the way to the upper left to active activities, then down slightly to the right to select applications, then all the way over to the right side of the screen to get the the menu categories. Then to the center to locate my application within its category.
Using Gnome3 makes me feel like my mouse is running a marathon. I can certainly see how Gnome3 would be great for small screens or tablets but for big screens its just really a big hassle and I don't think polish is going to fix it. It's just not a UI that is meant to be run on a large display.
Oh well I suppose I will just have to move to a different desktop.
Announcing the release of Fedora 15 Beta Posted Apr 20, 2011 13:37 UTC (Wed) by cesarb (subscriber, #6266) [Link]
> I have to go all the way to the upper left to active activities
Hint (which IIRC I found on a comment to another LWN story on Gnome 3): press the "Windows" key (or equivalent; my EeePC has a key with a house icon). It has the same effect of hitting the Activities hot corner.
Not that it helps with the rest; you still have to select applications, then go to the menu categories, and so on. I think the interface was designed to be used with the search; you can hit the "Windows" key, start typing, and hit enter to go to the selected result (I just tested; I had never used the search on that screen before, I just guessed it would work that way).
Announcing the release of Fedora 15 Beta Posted Apr 20, 2011 13:57 UTC (Wed) by spaetz (subscriber, #32870) [Link]
Ohh, thanks for the "Win key" hint. Works great with the Apple cmd key on Macbooks too. As for immediately starting to type, that was also not obvious to me that this would be possible.
I usually dislike them, but here putting a blinking caret in the search field from the beginning would have been an intuitive hint.
Announcing the release of Fedora 15 Beta Posted Apr 20, 2011 16:49 UTC (Wed) by dbnichol (subscriber, #39622) [Link]
There are some other hints here:
Announcing the release of Fedora 15 Beta Posted Apr 20, 2011 19:43 UTC (Wed) by Zizzle (guest, #67739) [Link]
You know it's a usability win when a cheat sheet is required :)
Announcing the release of Fedora 15 Beta Posted Apr 20, 2011 20:06 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
It always helps to know the tips, tricks and shortcuts regardless of how usable the environment is. Look at the amount of those for any major operating system GUI.
Announcing the release of Fedora 15 Beta Posted Apr 20, 2011 20:10 UTC (Wed) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link] Right, because "usable" is exactly the same thing as "obviousness to a completely new user".
Announcing the release of Fedora 15 Beta Posted Apr 21, 2011 0:02 UTC (Thu) by rodgerd (guest, #58896) [Link]
So, whenever people complain about missing tunables or functionality, the story is "STFU troll, only nerds want that, GNOME is for ordinary people!"
But now delving into cheatsheets or obscure command-line tools to get things working is expected behaviour because people need to make some effort to get their environment working?
I wish GNOME 3 would make up its mind.
Announcing the release of Fedora 15 Beta Posted Apr 21, 2011 11:29 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
Ordinary users wouldn't go for the kind of tweaking or keyboard shortcuts that is explained in the cheatsheet. Power users would benefit from it, extensions and tweak tool. Don't see a conflict there.
Have you seen "for Dummies" series? Posted Apr 22, 2011 6:58 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] I don't see any contradiction. Ordinary people rarely change defaults yet they still require cheat sheets (heck, most books the aforementioned "for Dummies" series are giant chat sheets). Where is the contradiction? I'm not big fan of GNOME Shell BTW, but this is different story.
Announcing the release of Fedora 15 Beta Posted Apr 20, 2011 14:37 UTC (Wed) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]
Yes, it seems like they've incorporated Gnome-Do like features into the main shell.
About time, I say.
Now, to move it into applications....
Announcing the release of Fedora 15 Beta Posted Apr 21, 2011 1:59 UTC (Thu) by AdamW (guest, #48457) [Link]
That's not really much to do with GNOME 3; it's been working throughout the F15 / GNOME 3 cycles, and just happened to break a few days back. It's not a GNOME 3 regression, just a random bug.
Announcing the release of Fedora 15 Beta Posted Apr 20, 2011 7:47 UTC (Wed) by AlexHudson (guest, #41828) [Link]
I have this on two machines already and it's been a good alpha and incredibly stable on the run up to beta. The only machine I don't have it on is nvidia-based, not sure if it will work for F15 final but nouveau has made massive progress since F13.
Announcing the release of Fedora 15 Beta Posted Apr 20, 2011 9:49 UTC (Wed) by kragil (subscriber, #34373) [Link]
The Alphas worked fine, but the beta doesn't seem to like my 8800GT. It seems kind of fragile.
Announcing the release of Fedora 15 Beta Posted Apr 20, 2011 10:26 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
Might be hardware specific. Bug report?
Announcing the release of Fedora 15 Beta Posted Apr 21, 2011 11:44 UTC (Thu) by shalem (subscriber, #4062) [Link]
Hi,
You're likely hitting a recently introduced and even more recently fixed kernel bug, any kernels >= 2.6.38-2.10 and < 2.6.38-2.14 have this issue. Try upgrading your kernel to this one:
Regards,
Hans
Announcing the release of Fedora 15 Beta Posted Apr 25, 2011 13:24 UTC (Mon) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link] That particular hang (or something equivalent, see Fedora's bug 684907) is in fact quite old. But yes, it is now fixed. Both this machine (nVidia GT218 [GeForce 310M] (rev a2)) and my Samsung NB210 netbook work with Gnome shell (not fallback) now.
Announcing the release of Fedora 15 Beta Posted Apr 21, 2011 11:05 UTC (Thu) by MisterIO (guest, #36192) [Link]
I really like this version of Fedora, but only after forcing the fallback mode. Unfortunately with gnome-shell it's just one stupid problem after the other. Probably nothing major, probably I'm just too lazy, but to me it just seems annoying! The last problem I encountered is the default way to handle when I try to start another instance of an already running application. It just sends me to the already running instance. I'm certain that somewhere I'll find a way to start a new instance, but frankly I'm already bored of all these new supposedly better flows/functions/'ways to handle old well established interactions'. I won't move from the fallback mode till I find somewhere at least a tiny example of something(that matters to me) that can be done better on gnome-shell. At the moment the only result I can see from using gnome-shell is that I have to learn new ways to do old things for no apparent reason/benefit.
Announcing the release of Fedora 15 Beta Posted Apr 21, 2011 11:26 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
You can right click on the icon in your dash or applications menu and click on new window or click on the icon while pressing the control key.
https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Tour
It takes about a week to ten days to get used to changes. Whether you find it appealing after that time is a matter of personal preference and what you are used to.
Announcing the release of Fedora 15 Beta Posted Apr 21, 2011 23:52 UTC (Thu) by jonabbey (subscriber, #2736) [Link]
I miss being able to create a launcher button for my own shell scripts and Java applications by right-clicking on the Gnome Panel in Gnome 2. I've not figured out any way to add anything custom to Applications or the Favorites bar yet.
Otherwise, it's pretty.
Announcing the release of Fedora 15 Beta Posted Apr 22, 2011 0:15 UTC (Fri) by MisterIO (guest, #36192) [Link]
Maybe I misunderstood your problem, otherwise it's alt+right_click.
Announcing the release of Fedora 15 Beta Posted Apr 22, 2011 0:28 UTC (Fri) by jonabbey (subscriber, #2736) [Link]
I believe you have misunderstood what I am seeking to do. I understand that I can run a GUI application from the command line, and as it is running I can manipulate the icon in the favorites bar, but I have not found a way to place an icon in the favorites bar to launch a script I want to run.
That is, I have a shell script which fires up a bunch of gnome terminals, each starting or reconnecting to a screen session. I had a launcher button in Gnome 2 that would launch this, but I find no way to do it in Gnome 3.
Likewise, if I run a custom Java application (from the command line or from Java Web Start), I get a (generic) icon in the favorites bar showing that it is running, but if I attempt to cause that to be added to the favorites bar as a permanent item, the resulting item does not function properly.
Even if I get a (non-working) icon added to the favorites bar as with the Java cases above, I find no way to manually set a custom icon, and the icon specified in the JAR or JNLP file is not honored.
It almost seems like the system would like me to make my own Gnome application (with a pyGTK script?) as a wrapper so that I can get a non-Gnome application started and made available in the favorites bar and Applications activity area.
Unless there's some fancy application definition editor (and instructions on how to use it) that I'm not finding?
Announcing the release of Fedora 15 Beta Posted Apr 22, 2011 1:50 UTC (Fri) by MisterIO (guest, #36192) [Link]
I admit I have no idea of what you're talking about. I thought you just wanted to create a launcher on the panel(to do that, as I said, alt+right_click on the panel, then "add to panel", then "custom application launcher"). If it's not that, I'm sorry but I can't understand your problem.
Announcing the release of Fedora 15 Beta Posted Apr 22, 2011 2:23 UTC (Fri) by jonabbey (subscriber, #2736) [Link]
Ah. The alt-right click behavior you describe does not work in the copy of Fedora 15 beta I have on my system.
I did do an update from Fedora 14 to Fedora 15 beta, and I'm not using the fall-back mode, but I just don't see what you're describing.
We are talking about the Gnome 3.0 Shell, yes?
Announcing the release of Fedora 15 Beta Posted Apr 22, 2011 3:37 UTC (Fri) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
That's only present in the fallback mode, not the shell.
Announcing the release of Fedora 15 Beta Posted Apr 22, 2011 4:57 UTC (Fri) by MisterIO (guest, #36192) [Link]
Ah, ok, I thought they had left at least that functionality in common bewteen the two modes(actually my mind messed up the space-time and merged the phase when I was still testing the gnome-shell with the phase when I found out that with the alt button I could still add things to the panel(in the fallback-mode), the result was a new dimension where I was adding things to the panel in gnome-shell).
Announcing the release of Fedora 15 Beta Posted Apr 22, 2011 15:15 UTC (Fri) by AdamW (guest, #48457) [Link]
You need to create a .desktop file for your script, put it in /usr/share/applications , and run update-desktop-database; then it should be available in the Applications view and add-able to the dock.
I don't know if there's any plan to 'shortcut' this in future, but for now it'll do the job. (For the format of a .desktop file, look at the other files in /usr/share/applications, it can be pretty simple).
Announcing the release of Fedora 15 Beta Posted Apr 22, 2011 15:17 UTC (Fri) by jonabbey (subscriber, #2736) [Link]
Perfect, that's just what I wanted to know.
Is this documented anywhere? I couldn't find any documentary links upon googling 'Gnome Shell', apart from the cheat sheet which does not mention this.
Announcing the release of Fedora 15 Beta Posted Apr 22, 2011 15:18 UTC (Fri) by ABCD (subscriber, #53650) [Link]
If you don't want to mess with /usr, you can also create the same file under ~/.local/share/applications/ (create the directory if it doesn't exist).
Announcing the release of Fedora 15 Beta Posted Apr 21, 2011 12:38 UTC (Thu) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]
Do you use gnome-do? If not, you'll find gnome shell to be much nicer than what you currently use, if only for launching apps. I'm pretty excited that gnome-do (well, the functionality anyway, not the app) is integrated into the shell. High time, IMHO.
Announcing the release of Fedora 15 Beta Posted Apr 21, 2011 14:07 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
gnome-do functionality is not in the shell. There are some similarities but it doesn't remember which commands you typed before and prioritize that when searching for instance.. I use synapse myself for that.
Announcing the release of Fedora 15 Beta Posted Apr 22, 2011 11:59 UTC (Fri) by compte (guest, #60316) [Link]
My EeePc can only use the fallback version of Gnome which is rather limited, I cannot even add items to the desktop (though they appear in the Desktop folder). I have been using LXDE but has many errors, like half of the app icons not appearing and not way to add them graphically. I submitted a bug LXDE related to bugzilla and was told it was a known problem since F13.
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