Another early look at Fedora Core 2

The first Fedora Core 2 test release was pushed out last week, so we thought we'd take a look to see what Fedora users can look forward to with the second Fedora Core release. Fedora Core has grown since the first release, literally. Fedora has grown from three installation ISO images to four, which I downloaded using BitTorrent.

I installed FC2 on two machines, a dual Pentium III Xeon machine with 1 GB of RAM and a Pentium III 500MHz machine with 384 MB of RAM. The install hasn't changed significantly since Fedora Core 1, though the install procedure no longer automatically ejects CDs -- something that has been widely discussed on the Fedora-test mailing list. The first install, on the dual Xeon machine, went flawlessly. The second install failed on the first attempt when I jiggled the mouse while Anaconda was in the process of trying to detect it. The second attempt at installation went fine.

Unfortunately, test1 does not include the much-anticipated SELinux functionality, at least not by default. The packages are included in the distribution, but the user will have to install and configure them manually. There is precious little documentation for the user to do so. The package "selinux-doc" contains only a brief README with a list of necessary components, a file with instructions for porting SELinux-aware applications to the new policy and API, and a brief Changelog. According to this post from Jeremy Katz, SELinux should be available in test2. Users who are looking forward to trying SELinux without having to get deeply involved in the actual mechanics of SELinux will have to wait a while.

Fedora still sports the familiar "Bluecurve" theme for GNOME and KDE, so there are no real surprises for users of Fedora Core 1 when GNOME starts up. FC2 uses GNOME 2.5 by default, though KDE and XFce are also available. The GNOME panel froze on me a few times during testing, which required a restart of GNOME. Evolution 1.5.3 is also a bit buggy. I wanted to import a mailbox file from an older version of Evolution, but it simply refused to open the Import dialog from the menu.

Nautilus, or at least its default behavior, has changed in FC2 -- and not necessarily for the better. The familiar "browser" interface for Nautilus is no longer the default, though the user can return to the old behavior by launching Nautilus with the "--browser" option, or by right-clicking on an object and selecting "Browse Folder." Annoyingly, the default for Nautilus is now to open a new window for each object, rather than opening the object in the same window. Users who prefer to point-and-click their way through the directory structure will find their desktop filling up with Nautilus windows in short order. This is, of course, not specific to Fedora Core, but a reflection of upstream changes in GNOME.

A number of users have reported having problems with sound in test1. Some users have noted that their sound card is detected, but sound is muted by default -- leaving the user to think that sound is completely broken. Other users have noted that their sound card, which was previously supported, simply isn't detected. Neither of my test systems has a sound card, so I was unable to verify the sound-related problems.

Another interesting feature for FC2, of course, is the inclusion of the 2.6 kernel by default. From a user perspective, however, I didn't notice any real difference in using the 2.6 kernel versus using a system with a 2.4 kernel.

Other than aforementioned glitches, the user experience for FC2 is pretty much the same as FC1. Most, if not all, of the packages in Fedora Core 1 have been upgraded -- but it feels more like a minor version upgrade than a major version release. This isn't a bad thing, Fedora users are likely to appreciate the fact that FC2 is largely familiar and full of gradual improvements rather than jarring changes.

If all goes as scheduled, the second test release should be out around March 8, followed by a third test release by the end of March. The final Fedora Core 2 release is slated for April 16, if all goes well. However, if the first test release is any indication, it may take longer for the Fedora project to fully integrate SELinux and iron out all of the various bugs present in FC2.

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