Submitted by Fedora 8 Test 1 has been released. “Fedora 8 Test one has been loosed upon the world today. Included in this release is a ‘Fedora’ installable ‘choose your own adventure’ style set of isos and trees for i386, x86_64, and ppc(64). Also included are Live images of both the Fedora Desktop and the Fedora KDE desktop.” And there are screenshots.
Fedora 8 has some cool new features. It uses the pulse audio sound server so you can manage sound playing from different user accounts. I setup pulseaudio to play Flash from websites so I can play XMMS in the foreground and still hear Flash audio. You will have to use the developer version of the Flash plugin to get pulseaudio support.
Also, you can add in missing codecs using codecbuddy which prompts you if you try to play unsupported media.
New features list: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/8/FeatureList
Well, it looks real pretty with the clouds and balloons. I’ll probably download it and give it a whirl. I’ve never really cared much for Redhat or fedora, but with every release I give it another go.
[Just for the record it’s just my feelings about Redhat and not particularly a reflection of the quality or ease of use of their products. I’ve always just there was something funny about the company.]
Well, the balloons are simply taken from the current Fedora release (Fedora 7). The actual desktop design of Fedora 8 will look different.
… Though the F7 flying high theme -should- be available as an optional theme in F8.
– Gilboa
Will the download of proprietary codec formats, using codecbuddy, be free? Or will there be some sort of charge for getting DVD, mp3, flash, windows media, real audio, etc. when using codec buddy to download?
Free, except when the feds bust down your door for playing DVD’s in Linux –
The precise details of codec buddy hasn’t been decided yet but the current plan is to explain why Fedora doesn’t play include these codecs by default and point to a Fedora page which would recommend open alternatives and also would have a pointer to the Fluendo solution where the MP3 plugin is free but you can pay for the rest if you want them.
Depending on the legal clarifications, Fedora might point to a third party repository for end users who are not in a region affected by software patents. If you are really interested in knowing all the details, there is a rather long discussion at
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.redhat.fedora.advisory-board/27…
I don’t think so.
I think you will have to pay for the codecs.
I will defiently be doing this so everything is legal.
That’s really good stuff.
But imo there is one thing I’d like to have implemented – not only in Fedora but in Ubuntu et al. as well.
Namely I want to see what I installed personally after the main installation.
There should be a programm showing you what programs and packages you installed first and what you installed later on with an export feature so that you could install the very same programs without searching around on other PCs as well.
Why I want that? Often I install a distribution and a lot of programs during its usage.
Most times I forget how the rpm-files for these programs are named. Yet some months later there is a new version of said Distribution and being on the safeside I make a clean installation but have to hunt down each programm I installed.
A list without version and distribution information but only the package-name would be very usefull in such a situation.
While there isn’t an easy way to do it, you can always compare the install log file located in root’s home directory to rpm -qa. If you need to rebuild a machine to exactly what it was when you first installed it, copy the kickstart file out.
I have been very satisfied with FC3, FC5, FC6 and now F7… It really is my distro of choice ! I will follow the alphas and betas, but wait for the gold one to install… Keep it for 6 months and then upgrade to the next one !!!
Most of the time, I chose a clean re-install because all of my stuff are sitting in 2 big extra partitions… It feels healthy to perform a nice & clean re-install every 6 month…
Fedora is the best !
An interesting thing to consider is how Fedora and the soon to be released Redhat Desktop version will fit together. Apparently Redhat is trying to get licenses for the proprietary media codecs from Microsoft. In the end, Redhat Desktop might actually turn out to be more user friendly than Fedora since it will come with media support built in. You might even be able to double-click on an MP3 file and have it play for once without using yum to install missing packages – incredible advances in the year 2007 folks (sarcasm). Of course though it will not be free, as in it will cost something and it won’t be freely distributable since it will contain proprietary binaries. It would probably also have greater stability than Fedora since it would go through more testing. I like Fedora but I have been burned several times updating the whole system and then having to downgrade parts to bring back functionality that was blown away in the update. If it was under $100.00 dollars I might consider buying it.
Edited 2007-08-07 20:15
Well, thats the thing – its value added components that Red Hat should be doing – especially for the consumer market.
Download and install Fedora if you’re happy with community support but if you want codec support and other features then the option is there for the commercially supported version.
For me, I think Fedora is a good way of keeping Red Hat honest and actually providing TRUE value to their commercial products besides screaming ‘support’. End users want something more than just support.
I hope they fix up WPA and Intel Wireless – its so terribly broken right now – I tried Fedora 7 the other day (week ago) only to find that like Fedora 6 it requires major hacking just to get things working
I’d pay $100 for a distro with support for codecs and other proprietary stuff. That’s definitely worth it to me.
They might also want to ask Ubuntu and SuSe what they’re doing with wireless, because it works better in those two distros then it does in Fedora. Though I still have to “unhide” my SSID to get it to work.
There are a few things that can make wireless work better in other distributions. Red Hat originally developed Network Manager (along with HAL, Dbus etc) and a Red Hat kernel developer is the upstream wireless subsystem maintainer but ironically Network Manager wasn’t enabled in previous Fedora versions. Even in Fedora 7, it is only enabled by default in the live images. Network Manager didn’t support static networking at that time though other distributions did enable it out of the box.
In the next version of Fedora, Network Manager is expected to be the system wide and now supports static networking too.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/FeatureNetworkManager
The other case was the lack of firmware. Fedora 7 includes firmware which has redistribution rights unlike previous versions but there are still a number of firmware which is not really distributable but some distributions include it anyway so devices tend to work better.
Yet another reason is that Fedora doesn’t include ndiswrapper. Fedora is really focused on Free and open source drivers and ndiswrapper is a short term hack that enables proprietary windows drivers to work in Linux. Long term it reduces the incentive for native drivers and with the 4K stack support in the upstream kernel, many windows drivers won’t work properly since they require a 8k or even 16K stack in some cases.
When Network Manager gets more robust and system-wide and we get better native drivers via more folks start adopting drivers to the new wireless stack in the linux kernel that got merged recently, Linux wireless would be much better and that includes Fedora too.
Fedora 7 includes the latest wireless technology support. It have the Devicescape Wifi stack and a bunch of updated drivers.
Fedora 7 is a great GUI and CLI OS once you replace Pirut with Yumex.
Anyway, buying all the codecs from Fluendo will set you back around $38.52.
Wasn’t Fedora 7 just released not that long ago?
Now we see Fedora 8 being developed — and usable!
I think we’ve reached a point where it is no longer necessary to upgrade at every new release that becomes available. Sure, there may be some new features and minor bug fixes (and by minor, I mean negligible bugs that the users might never see or suffer from), but nothing that people actually *need* to use.
On my aging laptop, I don’t have X installed. I’m one of the Emacsites. I read and write email in Emacs, I chat over Emacs. I’m writing this comment in Emacs. Works just fine. I have some other programs that I use, too, but those don’t really require much, and the features are quite stable. And I’m still running a Fedora Core 3 clone*. It works, and really well. My wireless card works, no problems. ‘iwconfig’ such and such and I’m done. For days; my laptop is almost never turned off. To use a loaded phrase, “it just works”.
In fact, stuff *doesn’t* work when you do constant upgrades; you notice the tiny discrepancies.
I think the constant flow of new releases like this *might* (not *does*) pervert the minds of those who are less computer-literate. It gives them the wrong impression; their software is never good enough, etc. etc. I think software needs to be more meditated on before it is released, and I think the releases need to be more substantial in what they offer. Fedora does not appear to be doing this. Not many software vendors are doing this; I certainly can’t think of one off the top of my head.
Our software could be a lot better.
* http://blagblagblag.org – There have been newer releases, but I haven’t upgraded.
Browser: Emacs-w3m/1.4.4 w3m/0.5.1
no KDE 4 yet
BTW I never tried fedora, but I see their KDE is barely modified, unlike Kubuntu. Not a smart move, imho, there is a lot of stuff Kubuntu improved…
It depends on what is intended by the distribution.
Ubuntu wants to give you a Ubuntu desktop and not a gnome desktop. Also Kubuntu wants to give you a Kubuntu desktop and not a KDE desktop.
I’m pretty sure core KDE fan prefer the unmodified KDE desktop.
Hmmm, on one hand, you're right. But some modifications and addons are pretty nice, like the transparant rubberband selection stuff, merged stop-refresh button etc. Point is, KDE 3.5.x development is (almost) fully stopped, yet there are some nice patches out there to improve it. Also, cleaning up konqi by default is a good thing. KDE should’ve used the ‘simple browser’ profile by default, instead of the current, overly complex one.
Of course, that's not so relevant now, as Fedora is gonna go KDE 4…
If KDE sticks to their current schedule -and- if Fedora’s KDE-sig group valiant efforts are successful, KDE4 will be parallel installable along-side KDE 3.5.x.
Give F8’s (and KDE4’s) time-frame, it is very unlikely that KDE4 will be shipped by default in F8.
… And if it doesn’t, the KDE Packaging Project [1] will already offers KDE4 (beta) packages for all major RHEL/CentOS and Fedora releases.
– Gilboa
well, KDE 4 is on their schedule, last time I heard. I don’t know about their current status, but I guess they can pull it off… It’s a bold move, that’s for sure, but Fedora is known to incorporate the latest technology as to ensure the progress of free software. I applaud them for that.
I started on a RH desktop in 99 and I think I will go back to it when it comes out. I don’t mind paying for software as long as it isn’t the monopoly king.