Fedora 11 Leonidas To Be Released June 9

[linuxdoctor]

Just to let you guys know that the latest release of Fedora will happen next Tuesday, June 9.

For those of you who do not know, Fedora is a GNU/Linux distribution sponsored by Redhat. This new release, the 11th in the series, is called Leonidas and has lot of new features I won't go into all of them here but for those interested may see http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/.....eatureList for the list.

One of the big things noted for Fedora 11 was faster boot time (20 seconds from load to login prompt) and improved virtualization, upgrade of the filesystem to ext4, and a Windows cross-compiler system. That means that those of you who are still developing software for the crumbling Evil Empire can do so from the comfort of a real operating system rather than Windows.

Fedora has had virtualization capability since Fedora 8. With virtualization you can run copies of foreign systems, like Windows if you must, and have it look as it it were running natively on its own computer.

One of the improvements that Fedora 11 introduces is a finer grain security model. This has been seen in other distributions over the last several years, including SuSE and Mandriva, as they move to compete with higher-end Unix workstations. We see files systems with Access Control Lists (ACLs) and the partitioning of system resources in different groups depending on the application.

Despite the continual growth toward high end workstations, Fedora is continuing to expand its usefulness in smaller systems specifically the server market. Improvements to these are also noted.

One perhaps not so welcome note is the default build to support is that the default build for the x86 line of processors is what we in the Linux world call the i586. This includes the set of processors beginning at the Pentium I and their equivalents from other manufacturers. This means that older processors from the i486 and i386 (and equivalents) are no long supported. Many distributions are moving up the processor chain as well. Several years ago quite a number of distributions stopped suporting the i386 series (and equivalents). Now the i486 bites the dusts for Fedora. These have always been controversial moves but ultimately inevitable.

With the release of Fedora 11 next week, planning and development begins for the next release, Fedora 12.
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Misanthrope: someone who realizes that humans really are as stupid as they appear.
If you think I'm 'politically' incorrect you have the wrong politics.
Big business is a disease we will need to cure before we will ever achieve real prosperity.

[ruyss]

I'll probably try the live cd when it's released, I'm using Kubuntu at the moment because Fedora 10 doesn't work on my new laptop (all I get is the terminal, has something to do with restricted drivers, which aren't as easy to install on Fedora as on Ubuntu). I'll see what happens with Fedora 11, I'm hoping it works, because I've always liked Fedora better than Ubuntu.
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.// Proud to be Lifeless for more then 5 years \\.

[krt]

Thanks for the heads up, I've dismissed Fedora I'm afraid as I don't see using it as a desktop oriented distribution and obviously didn't see it as a server OS. Having said that, the last time I looked at, Fedora 10 wasn't released and besides the observation that time flies, there have been significant improvements. Glad to see NVidia problems sorted in version 10 and a few welcome additions such as Minimal Platform for version 11.
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[ruyss]

A friend of mine which has been a Fedora user for years now adviced me today to check out openSUSE or SLED. He tried out the Fedora 11 Beta and he isn't too happy about it for some reason. He's using SLED now. Since I don't want to pay for a linux distro (even though it's only 50€/year) I'll probably check out openSUSE one of these days (he's going to download the DVD for me, so who cares ).
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.// Proud to be Lifeless for more then 5 years \\.

[LP-SolidRaven]

OpenSUSE is awesome, until you have to fiddle with the graphics and sound drivers.
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Dilly dally, shilly shally.

[ruyss]

[spock]

[krt]

[LP-SolidRaven]

[ruyss]

[linuxdoctor]

Fedora 11 is out today. I've downloaded it and will burn a dvd tomorrow.

It's been two years since I last upgraded my computer system. My usual pattern is to upgrade the hardware and put on one of the latest distros. This year I'm not so inclined to upgrade the hardware. The PC has come to the point where it is plenty powerful for my needs.

In the past my pattern has been to buy new hardware every two to three years. I use my old hardware as backup in case my new one fails. In the mean-time it becomes my main name server, a print server, file server and, recently since I bought an internet capable stereo system, a media server.

This time I don't really feel the need to upgrade my hardware. My hardware is currently a 2.4 GHz AMD Athon 64 processor on an ASUS motherboard with 1Gig of RAM, GE-Force graphics card, one 80Gig hard disc and an a secondary 500 Gig hard disc. My backup computer is at about the same performance level running a Pentium 4 processor with 512Megs or RAM and 40Gig hard disc.

While machines are now running in the 3GHz range with multi-core processors, for the first time I really don't see the need for a new computer. Which means this will be the only one of two times that I will be upgrading just the software. While I never have any reticence about upgrading hardware for some reason I am much less inclined to upgrade just the OS.

For one thing, the logistics are much more complex. To upgrade an existing system I have to first make backups of everything that I intend to keep. Simply switching hardware makes that easy. My old hardware would just become all the aforementioned servers plus the file server for my old files. If I needed something, I knew where to get it. With doing backups you always risk forgetting something.

Another option is to simply replace the main hard disk and put it into the backup system. I've got several of them that I can use, all of them larger than the main disk in that computer. In fact, I've just talked myself into that solution. That would be the simplest. I can put that hard disc into the backup server and put the new distro onto a 160Gig hard disc that I have lying around at the moment. That way if I don't like what I see, I can simply put back the old disc.

The other reason I am reluctant to buy a new computer system is because I'm in the process of consideration for the purchase of the Neo Freerunner. That unit in itself would cost as much as a new hardware system and I don't feel like buying both. If I decide not to buy the Freerunner then that option will still remain, but in the meantime, I've got money only for one but not both units.

In any case, switching the hard disc on the main unit seems to be the simplest solution. That would be the equivalent of new hardware.

Thanks for listening guys.
_________________
Misanthrope: someone who realizes that humans really are as stupid as they appear.
If you think I'm 'politically' incorrect you have the wrong politics.
Big business is a disease we will need to cure before we will ever achieve real prosperity.

[Jacky]

Core 2 Duo machines nowadays are still at the 2.4GHz to 2.66GHz range, they were hardly at the 3GHz range.

And, I read, I didn't listen. =\
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[linuxdoctor]

The AMD Athlon X2 Dual Core comes in a 3 GHz model.

See http://products.amd.com/en-us/.....;f11=False

Intel's Quad Core Q9650 Processor is 3GHz.

See http://processorfinder.intel.c.....Spec=SLB8W
_________________
Misanthrope: someone who realizes that humans really are as stupid as they appear.
If you think I'm 'politically' incorrect you have the wrong politics.
Big business is a disease we will need to cure before we will ever achieve real prosperity.

[linuxdoctor]

Ok, I've installed Fedora 11 Leonidas and have had it running now for the last couple of days. I rather like it, actually.

One thing I completely forgot about was the number of custom applications that I run all of which have to be recompiled. I also forgot that the previous distribution was running in i386 mode and not in the Athlon 64 mode of the processor. The previous distro (Fedora 9) didn't wouldn't install on my hardware so I was running it in i386 mode. Fedora 11 does run in x86_64 properly (or so it seems after two days). So, now I have to recompile all the custom stuff that I run and custom configurations of packages that come with Fedora.

The Fedora project decided a couple of years ago not to include any proprietary drivers (including firmware) or support for proprietary file formats in their standard distributions. While you can still get these things separately they are not included on the stock CD or DVD. One example are software and libraries for MP3 file formats. MP3 is proprietary and, in some cases, requires users and distributors to pay a license fee.

In order to use these packages I need to separately compile an install a number of packges.

Some examples of projects that I need to recompile include:

Audacity. Because of the proprietary file format issue, Fedora's Audacity distribution does not support all of the file formats that it can support. This requires that I locate and download a number of libraries and compile and install them separately including libmad and libmp3lame. An interesting issue is that the last version of libmad was from 2004. The makefile for the system includes a deprecated option to gcc (-fforce-mem) which prevents the library from compiling. Removing this option allows it to compile properly.

XEphem. This is a nice free astronomy package for Unix systems. There is a Windows version too. The package uses the old Motif libraries and includes sources for its own version of the Motif interface libraries as part of the linux version. Unfortunately, it is incompatible with the x86_64 and will not compile. However, by incorporating lesstif, a free Motif clone, and changing one of the make files accordingly allows it to compile. Not, however, until an error in one of the files (which has a const char * being assigned to a char *, an error rather than a warning in the newer gcc compilers) is corrected.

GNU Prolog: I have some custom optimisations in the finite domain constraint engine.

These are just the start. That is another reason, completely forgotten, why I was somewhat reticent about upgrading to Leonidas. I guess it became a sub-conscious dread knowing the work that would be required. If I had simply upgraded to Leonidas i586 I wouldn't have this problem, but now that I've done the did and unleashed the full power of the Athlon 64 processor I was committed.

I've wanted to do it in any case. I just wasn't looking forward to the work the scale of which I managed somehow to forget.
_________________
Misanthrope: someone who realizes that humans really are as stupid as they appear.
If you think I'm 'politically' incorrect you have the wrong politics.
Big business is a disease we will need to cure before we will ever achieve real prosperity.

[Jacky]