Fedora 18 Beta is out

[Posted November 27, 2012 by ris]

From:		"Anna Eusebio" <aeusebio-AT-redhat.com>
To:		pr-AT-lwn.net
Subject:		Red Hat Releases Fedora 18 Beta
Date:		Tue, 27 Nov 2012 10:05:22 -0500
Message-ID:		<c2525b3a6de34808981d1251346fe890@redhat.com>
Archive-link:		Article

FEDORA BETA RELEASE FOR VERSION 18, “SPHERICAL COW”, NOW AVAILABLE

by: The Fedora Project Team

The Fedora Project team is excited to announce the beta release of its free, fully functional
Linux operating system, Fedora 18, code-named “Spherical Cow.” Fedora continues to enable users
to experience the latest in free and open source technology, integrated into a Linux distribution
and ready for free download, use, modification and redistribution.

The Fedora Project worldwide community works to advance the cause of software freedom. These
contributors hail from a variety of industries and educational backgrounds, and are dedicated to
creating a vibrant, growing community to advance free and open source software. The most
anticipated result of this community is the Fedora distribution itself, the open operating system
released by the project approximately every six months. Each Fedora release represents the
culmination of work by hundreds of engineers and thousands of contributors from many different
locations and many different walks of life.

New releases of Fedora represent the upstream for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the enterprise
operating platform delivered by Red Hat that includes ongoing support and a broad certified
ecosystem. Fedora serves as a community research and development lab, where code changes and
innovations often form the basis for other Red Hat open source projects. While not every alteration
will make it from Fedora to the corresponding release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Fedora’s role
as a rapidly moving platform for future development allows it to provide important,
community-driven updates.

Software enthusiasts are encouraged to download the beta release of Fedora 18, take it for a test
drive and help identify items that need attention before Fedora 18 is delivered for general
availability. With the beta release, the software is relatively stable, but real-world use and
reports from users helps identify any lingering bugs so they can be addressed before it is more
widely distributed.

Explore what’s new in the Fedora 18 beta, including these highlighted release features:

For users everywhere

Fedora 18 offers a brand-new version of the Gnome desktop, version 3.6, straight from the upstream
development process. Updates have also been made to the KDE, XFCE and Sugar desktop environments;
additionally, the MATE desktop is available for the first time in Fedora.
Fedora's new installer user interface enhances the anaconda installer with improvements in ease of
use and installation.

For developers

This release includes several language updates, including the move to Perl 5.16, updating the
Python 3 stack from 3.2 to 3.3, Rails 3.2 and updated D and Haskell programming environments.

For system administrators

Fedora 18 includes the final release of Samba 4, and can be used on an Active Directory domain out
of the box. An integrated, new native management software allows you to access data and server
information easily.
OpenStack in Fedora 18 has been updated to Folsom, the most recent release by the OpenStack
community. This Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platform enables the creation and management of
cloud infrastructure.
Eucalyptus 3.1, another IaaS platform, is available in Fedora for the first time, and includes the
major components of Eucalyptus.
Storage System Management CLI tools simplify the user interface by providing unified abstraction
and interface for multiple storage technologies, including lvm, btrfs and md raid.

Download the Fedora 18 beta here and please give us your feedback. The final release of Fedora 18
is expected later in the year. For more information on these and other Fedora 18 features, click
here.

The Fedora Project is a Red Hat-sponsored community project. For more information about Fedora,
please visit http://www.fedoraproject.org.

Red Hat, Inc, 1801 Varsity Drive, Raleigh, NC 27606 United States

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Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 27, 2012 18:38 UTC (Tue) by johannbg (subscriber, #65743) [Link]

"Subject: Red Hat Releases Fedora 18 Beta"

Last time I checked it was Fedora community that released Fedora.

I guess the board forgot to give the community that memo...

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 27, 2012 19:18 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

How is Fedora Board responsible for the subject LWN wrote?

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 27, 2012 19:19 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

To clarify, it is a Red Hat press release and corrections should be sent to their PR department and Fedora Board is not involved in that process directly.

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 27, 2012 19:36 UTC (Tue) by johannbg (subscriber, #65743) [Link]

It's enough that Red Hat invents position within the community and more often than not plants people not even from the community into those position and it's certainly over the line when it then claims the release for the community's hard work.

Most certainly the board should directly be involved when the community is violated like that...

Perhaps in the future LWN could stick with official marketing material and announcements from the projects marketing group instead of passing on Red Hat's one...

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 27, 2012 19:40 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

If you want to request the board to involved which is not a unreasonable request, there is a advisory board mailing list for that. Currently Red Hat press releases have real connection to the Fedora Board. I don't think LWN is going to refrain from publish press releases because they contain mistakes. The news is still important.

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 27, 2012 20:42 UTC (Tue) by johannbg (subscriber, #65743) [Link]

I'm perfectly well aware of the boards mailing list and their trac instance and I never said LWN should refrain from publishing press releases because they contain mistakes.

I'm just saying they should stick to the upstream one instead of passing on corporate claiming community's work their own.

In fact I expect it to be announced then and there on the 22 but no later then 24 encase the lwn writers were to busy participating with their loved ones in the holiday irony that the thanksgiving and black friday are.

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 27, 2012 21:34 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Since you are aware, you might want to direct feedback about requests to board to those places instead of here and yes, you are indeed complaining that LWN published a press release instead of a community announcement when in fact, no such community announcement exists. If you look back on all previous releases, LWN has published community announcements.

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 27, 2012 23:53 UTC (Tue) by johannbg (subscriber, #65743) [Link]

"Since you are aware, you might want to direct feedback about requests to board to those places instead of here"

You mean the same board that I have had open ticket with over a year now to clarify the project stance against RHEL customers. An ticket which they could have copied more or less Matthews response on -devel at that time and wikify it. Thanks but no thanks...

"and yes, you are indeed complaining that LWN published a press release instead of a community announcement when in fact, no such community announcement exists."

Yes that is exactly what I'm doing and at the right place doing so and I know I responded with exactly that knowledge that no such announcement had been made that I was aware of 25 minutes *before* this comment of yours here...

Which rather begs the question how the whole marketing community, our FPM and our FPL missed that....

"If you look back on all previous releases, LWN has published community announcements."

Yes and you don't see me complaining about those published community announcements thus your point being?

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 28, 2012 0:14 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Your other board tickets are not relevant to this discussion. My point is that you are complaining at the wrong place about the wrong things but that's not new.

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 27, 2012 19:20 UTC (Tue) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

Um....we didn't write that subject line...?

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 27, 2012 19:41 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Yep. I misread that.

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 27, 2012 20:10 UTC (Tue) by johannbg (subscriber, #65743) [Link]

I very well aware that LWN is not responsible for Red Hat's subject line but you are responsible for published Red Hat's announcement instead of [1] which gives good credit to the community's hard work and users patiences instead of claiming it ( which Red Hat is doing in it's subject line )...

1.http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel-announce/2...

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 27, 2012 20:39 UTC (Tue) by jake (editor, #205) [Link]

> published Red Hat's announcement instead of [1]

The post you point to is nearly a week old, not a release announcement for the beta. Perhaps there is a better choice for a community-generated release announcement (though I didn't see one in a quick look), but what you point to is not it, I'm afraid. We generally prefer those kinds of announcements over press releases (with proper or improper subjects), fwiw.

jake

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 27, 2012 21:09 UTC (Tue) by johannbg (subscriber, #65743) [Link]

I'm not so sure where that statement is ( it's not where it should be [1]).

We have an standard operating procedure for it and Jaroslav Reznik should have filled it out ( or someone from the marketing community ) but I guess that Robyn forgot to mention/remind him of it ( he's new to FPM ) since she was to busy cooking thanksgiving for the family while attending the no/go meeting.

It comes as no surprise to me that it happened thou since the lack of communication is after all the theme of this release ;)

1.http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:Beta_announcement

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 28, 2012 7:00 UTC (Wed) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

This is an idiotic argument, please take it offline with the editors if you feel you must discuss it. For the rest of us -- LWN published a Red Hat press release, unedited, just as they publish a dozen or two items every day. End of story.

Besides, everyone knows Fedora is under Red Hat and many Fedora developers are paid by Red Hat. The Fedora developers who resent this subject line (if they exist) should work on another project.

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 29, 2012 23:40 UTC (Thu) by johannbg (subscriber, #65743) [Link]

" Besides, everyone knows Fedora is under Red Hat"

Now what gave you that notion ah right subject line like that...

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 30, 2012 0:34 UTC (Fri) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

Question,

You guys have received previous pr emails from RH concerning fedora releases in the past prior to this right?

Have previous emails used similar subject constructions. I'm particularly interested in the email sent concerning the F17 release if you received one.

I just want to verify if this is indeed a pattern of behavior or a just a one time mistake, a mistake that has been publicly apologized for already actually. So this isn't a witchhunt, but more of a bracketing of the problem space.

-jef

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 27, 2012 18:58 UTC (Tue) by amory (guest, #87262) [Link]

It crashes in qemu with:

qemu-system-x86_64 -boot once=d -enable-kvm -net nic,vlan=0,model=virtio -net user -drive file=fedora18,if=virtio,cache=unsafe -smp 2 -m 1024 -cdrom /var/tmp/Fedora-18-Beta-x86_64-Live-Desktop.iso

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 28, 2012 3:03 UTC (Wed) by aliguori (subscriber, #30636) [Link]

It crashes or QEMU crashes? Either way, please report in the appropriate forum (either fedora-devel or qemu-devel).

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 28, 2012 5:44 UTC (Wed) by amit (subscriber, #1274) [Link]

Does adding '-usb' to the qemu command line help?

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 28, 2012 9:30 UTC (Wed) by amory (guest, #87262) [Link]

Yes, thanks.
But it looks crappy:
http://s10.postimage.org/w67jd2ynr/2012_11_28_102754_1050...

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 28, 2012 9:38 UTC (Wed) by amit (subscriber, #1274) [Link]

The usb bug is due to fprintd

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=810040

The garbled display is tracked in

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=864567

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 28, 2012 18:44 UTC (Wed) by drago01 (subscriber, #50715) [Link]

Look crappy is due to cirrus as video card ... use -vga std or -vga qxl

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 27, 2012 21:12 UTC (Tue) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link]

I've been running the alpha, and it works great for me. Here are some Fedora 18 notes, including where I ended up using gnome-tweak-tool.

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 27, 2012 21:23 UTC (Tue) by Ben_P (guest, #74247) [Link]

I tried the alpha and it looked like they removed all options to setup mdadm (softraid) from the install program?

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 27, 2012 22:31 UTC (Tue) by cesarb (subscriber, #6266) [Link]

From what I have heard, they rewrote the install program. So it is probably not that they removed it, it would instead be that they did not add it back yet.

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 28, 2012 3:16 UTC (Wed) by AdamW (guest, #48457) [Link]

This is correct (though I think the function theoretically existed in Alpha, you may just not have found it). It's certainly possible in Beta, though there are one or two bugs.

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 28, 2012 13:41 UTC (Wed) by Ben_P (guest, #74247) [Link]

Thanks to both parent comments. IIRC the installer didn't give me the option to install to running and/or pre-configured softraid targets either. Can anyone confirm that's fixed in the beta?

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 27, 2012 22:30 UTC (Tue) by cesarb (subscriber, #6266) [Link]

No need for nmap; netstat -lp as root is enough.

Fedora has come with rpcbind (and lockd IIRC) enabled by default for several releases. It is the only daemon I always disable, since I am not using NFS.

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 27, 2012 23:22 UTC (Tue) by zlynx (subscriber, #2285) [Link]

Isn't it started on-demand by systemd? If so, firewalling it off would be enough to stop it from running.

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 28, 2012 12:13 UTC (Wed) by davidstrauss (subscriber, #85867) [Link]

Or disabling the socket unit for the service.

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 27, 2012 22:23 UTC (Tue) by nicku (subscriber, #777) [Link]

I've installed F18 on six desktop machines a couple of weeks ago, both at work and at home, and am very happy with it. I used yum to upgrade from F17. My son is happy with the current Gnome shell; I use XFCE.

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 28, 2012 3:15 UTC (Wed) by AdamW (guest, #48457) [Link]

This is rumor control, here are the facts!

tl;dr version: RH always sends out a press release about Fedora releases. But usually, Fedora sends one out *first*, and LWN would usually run the Fedora announcement. This time, we screwed up and didn't send out a Fedora announcement, so the press release from RH was the first thing LWN got, and they printed that.

Long version follows:

Red Hat PR always sends out a press release when a Fedora release is done. This isn't at all new for F18. Those of us RHers in Fedoraland do kind of regret the fact it tends to result in a flood of news stories saying 'Red Hat announces Fedora XX...', but it seems really hard to stop this happening. Note that the RH release is worded much better than it used to be, based on suggestions from Fedoraland people: it now explicitly says "by: The Fedora Project Team" and "The Fedora Project team is excited to announce the beta release of its free, fully functional Linux operating system, Fedora 18, code-named “Spherical Cow.” (i.e. it doesn't credit or even mention Red Hat, as it used to).

What happened differently in this case is not that RH sent out a press release - as noted, that always happens - but that Fedora neglected to send out its own release announcement. The Fedora announcement usually comes out some hours before the RH one and so most Linux sites carry the Fedora announcement; only very enterprise-y and general tech-y sites, which only take RH's PR wire and aren't plugged into Fedora announcements at all, usually run the RH release.

Unfortunately, Dennis Gilmore (who'd usually have sent out the announcement) was out today, and Kevin Fenzi (who ought to have been the backup) was at a FAD. All the rest of us thought someone was else was arranging to cover the release announcement, and it turns out no-one was. Just a SNAFU, nothing more sinister. We're now trying to throw together an official Fedora announcement quickly.

Don't panic, everything is fine, and the facehugging aliens absolutely will not be able to escape from containOHMYGODITBURNS

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 28, 2012 11:07 UTC (Wed) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]

Does Red Hat generally use such a subject line or not? It feels a bit strange to read "Red Hat releases" instead of maybe "Red Hat sponsored project releases Fedora 18 beta". My suggestion still is a bit awkward though.

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 28, 2012 12:07 UTC (Wed) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]

I imagine that the idea of a lie-to-children applies. Press releases, even when they're not deliberately deceptive, often simplify things to avoid the "too technical for our audience, reject" response from editors. As a result what the press release actually _says_ is often technically a lie, but the sort of person who cares would know better anyway.

Spending half the subject line explaining that your company is announcing something done by a project that is technically independent of the company, - well, that's just going to reduce the chance anybody runs the story. Also if people are picking up the story because of the words "Red Hat" (after all RH is a big tech company now like Oracle, some of the places that run this material may still feel the need for a sidebar explaining what "Linux" is whenever they mention it) then removing those key words means less coverage.

So I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Red Hat release normally says exactly what we read above.

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 28, 2012 17:19 UTC (Wed) by AdamW (guest, #48457) [Link]

Y'know, somehow I read that mail five times without catching the subject line.

I don't recall precisely what it read before, but in the past the RH mail used to talk more about 'Red Hat' than it does now - it's been changed to refer to 'the Fedora project' consistently based on feedback from Fedora folks. I can only guess that the 'Red Hat' in the subject line is an oversight, but I'm not involved in the details of that process, so I'm speculating.

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 28, 2012 21:05 UTC (Wed) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]

I liked what tialaramex said, meaning: this is good to ensure the PR will be read. No real clue though, just wondering and curious about the process behind+reasoning that goes into a press release.

Any way to upgrade the system?

Posted Nov 28, 2012 16:53 UTC (Wed) by proski (guest, #104) [Link]

I downloaded Fedora 18 Beta DVD and tried to upgrade my Fedora 16, but I could not find the upgrade option anywhere. The startup text screen only has "install". The graphical installer shows an exclamation sign over the disk menu. I could not find any way to select upgrade or even look at the existing partition table in the installer.

Any way to upgrade the system?

Posted Nov 28, 2012 17:28 UTC (Wed) by AdamW (guest, #48457) [Link]

Upgrading is no longer done via the installer. This was going to be mentioned in the release announcement, but, you know :)

For F18 fedup is now the One True Way to upgrade (well, you can still do it with yum, which as always is unsupported but in practice appears to work quite well). You run it from your current system and it downloads packages then reboots to trigger the upgrade, much like preupgrade did, but it's all new code that does not go through anaconda. Note F18 Beta is its first public release, so exercise caution.

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedUp#How_Can_I_Upgrade_My... for more details and instructions.

Any way to upgrade the system?

Posted Nov 28, 2012 21:56 UTC (Wed) by dashesy (guest, #74652) [Link]

But I am not yet fed up with my F16, with a bit of Cinnamon it tastes just right.

Any way to upgrade the system?

Posted Nov 29, 2012 0:49 UTC (Thu) by zlynx (subscriber, #2285) [Link]

I hope that they put more testing into this new fedup program than preupgrade had.

Preupgrade almost always failed to work for me because it would ignore critical GRUB and kernel options. Like, say, where the root partition is or that without reboot=k the kernel crashes.

Any way to upgrade the system?

Posted Nov 29, 2012 20:55 UTC (Thu) by AdamW (guest, #48457) [Link]

As of now, it has very minimal testing, because the thing is literally still warm from the sausage factory - it's only actually been capable of successfully completing an upgrade, any upgrade, for about two weeks.

That's only temporary, though. The point of fedup is to write One True Upgrade Mechanism that works properly, which (we hope) will unify maintenance and testing. preupgrade used to get minimal maintenance and testing because we had ISO-based upgrades, and so long as those worked, there was less motivation to fix preupgrade - plus preupgrade was a pretty big hack job anyway. Since fedup is now the One True Way, it ought to get all the testing and maintenance focus.

So right now I wouldn't bet a penny to a dollar that fedup would work on your setup if it involves a non-standard grub config, but if you try it, and file a bug telling us exactly what color the explosion is, the chances are much higher that it'll be fixed than they would've been with preupgrade :)

Pointless as you cannot currently use fedup with Fedora 16 or lower

Posted Nov 29, 2012 15:12 UTC (Thu) by southey (subscriber, #9466) [Link]

See the FAQ above the provided link! I had hoped that we had finally gotten past this requirement of needing the prior release installed.

Pointless as you cannot currently use fedup with Fedora 16 or lower

Posted Nov 29, 2012 20:52 UTC (Thu) by AdamW (guest, #48457) [Link]

It's a temporary thing. To be frank, fedup is being thrown together just as fast as possible - it's the main reason Beta was late. We shipped Beta as soon as fedup hit a basic level of workability, pretty much. You still have to point it at its initramfs image, it doesn't have a GUI, and it doesn't display upgrade process by default, and all the testing we gave it is that it successfully upgrades a stock F17 install. It is very much still a work in progress. The intent is that you'll be able to do multiple version upgrades with fedup in the long run, I believe.

Pointless as you cannot currently use fedup with Fedora 16 or lower

Posted Jan 16, 2013 0:38 UTC (Wed) by cry_regarder (subscriber, #50545) [Link]

Still not available for fedora 16 at time of fedora 18 release.

Any way to upgrade the system?

Posted Nov 30, 2012 17:26 UTC (Fri) by meyert (subscriber, #32097) [Link]

So what is the official way to upgrade my two computers that have no DVD drive? Download the data twice on each computer? I would like to use the DVD image as base for the upgrade process. Currently there seems to be no good way upgrade multiple computers to the release images.

Any way to upgrade the system?

Posted Nov 30, 2012 19:47 UTC (Fri) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]

Download the iso, fedup --iso rather than fedup --network.

Any way to upgrade the system?

Posted Nov 30, 2012 20:08 UTC (Fri) by meyert (subscriber, #32097) [Link]

mhh. the help text says '[TODO] installation image file' and when I try to use this option it crashes.

Any way to upgrade the system?

Posted Nov 30, 2012 20:26 UTC (Fri) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]

Hm. Yeah, looking more closely that may only be partially implemented at the moment. It's definitely the planned mechanism for your usecase.

Fedora 18 Beta is out

Posted Nov 29, 2012 6:25 UTC (Thu) by jcm (subscriber, #18262) [Link]

Just a quick note that we're close to the ARM beta. We're just closing down a couple of remaining issues, doing some testing, and we hope to have the ARM images out next week.