Fedora Core 5 Available

Jan Slupski writes "New release day today. Fedora Core 5 CD images are now available for download (i386, ppc, x86_64) on the ftp servers or via the torrent page." Linclips also has a short screencast on some of the default functionality.

bug sorted?

[LiquidCoooled (634315)]

It appears as though FC5 contains a bug which prevents none GPL modules (read nVidia) from being used.
Has this been fixed in this one yet, or is it worth waiting a few more days for the fix to be rolled out?

(It was identified too late to be pushed to the mirrors)

Info about it is here [lwn.net].

Finally I can say what MS is saying for years

[A beautiful mind (821714)]

Bug? Naaah. Feature!

Re:bug sorted?

[osvejda (799137)]

Fixed kernel is here. [redhat.com] It's not in official updates yet.

Re:bug sorted?

[skogs (628589)]

I believe you will find that the kernel that is autocompiled beforehand will not accept the binary drivers...just like any other non-custom-built kernel that leaves out that option.

Rebuild your kernel per directions found on several sites, install the drivers per nvidia's instructions...

game. xgl. whatever.

Re:bug sorted?

[MSG (12810)]

I believe you will find that the kernel that is autocompiled beforehand will not accept the binary drivers

Normally, they do. The Nvidia drivers are broken because the spinlock macros were accidentally made GPL-only. The first kernel update will fix the problem.

install the drivers per nvidia's instructions...

It's probably better if you don't. If you read the Fedora Projects notes on 3rd party drivers [fedoraproject.org], you'll notice that Nvidia and ATI both break X in subtle ways, and may leave GL in an unworkable state, even after uninstalling them.

Re:bug sorted?

[MSG (12810)]

Those responsible are "owning up" to the mistake. It's been discussed on the testing list, and corrected packages were made available to the testers. It's a sad fact that a bug was introduced in the kernel very late in the testing process. The first kernel update will correct the problem.

Don't blow it out of proportion. Fedora Core is a distro for developers and hobbyists (which is why I use it). For that audience, this bug isn't anything more than a minor annoyance.

Poor testing

[gr8_phk (621180)]

Never mind that they don't test with proprietary drivers. They applied a patch that affected the functionality of tainted kernels - normal development practice would natrually require *that patch* be tested with a tainted kernel regardless. Throwing a patch over and saying it's OK because the automated testing didn't find a problem is like saying "it compiled - ship it".

So if I wait for 2.6.16 kernel on FC5 is that going to break with nVidia too? I saw a comment in the 2.6.16 story saying that doesn't work either (may have been distro specific).

Damn people, I understood the 4K stacks thing - make a good decision for good reason and let nVidia catch up. This utter disrespect for drivers used by a large number of people is really unacceptable. Actually, when a disto fails to test with drivers used by a large portion of their userbase, it is the user who feels the disrespect. Please don't make excuses - that's disrespectful too. Just get FC6 right.

That said, I'm downloading FC5 now ;-)

Re:bug sorted?

[typical (886006)]

Actually, this *is* a bug. It was not intentional on the part of the Fedora folks.

Of course, I don't *like* binary drivers very much, but ATI and NVidia have agreed to stick with 'em if you want 3d support on their modern cards. I have a Radeon 9250 (with the 128-bit datapath), which is about as peppy a card as you can get and still have open source drivers.

If the Open Graphics Project [duskglow.com] ever releases any hardware, unless it's $400 or something like that, I'll buy it -- it'll be fully open source.

If one vendor would release even a half-decent card and support it fully with open-source drivers, I'd buy it in a moment (binary microcode is okay, but I want everything running host-side to be OSS).

I know that few people feel this way, and most gamers are happy just using binary drivers and the current NVidia or ATI cards, but there are a group of people who feel the same way I do.

Flash is Evil! Evil, I say!

[AKAImBatman (238306)]

Linclips also has a short screencast on some of the default functionality.

That screencast is in Flash, and we all know that Flash is evil.

Thus, Fedora must be evil by extension.

Fedora is the development branch for RedHat. If Fedora is evil, RedHat must also be evil.

Microsoft is well known for being evil.

We all know that RedHat is a competitor to Microsoft.

Ergo, RedHat is the next Microsoft.

QED

(Yes, this is a joke. Laugh.)

Screenshots?

[Orestesx (629343)]

I don't believe there is any power way to evaluate a linux distro than screenshots, except for maybe it's logo.

Re:Screenshots?

[rubycodez (864176)]

the name has to sound cool, uncool names are out. Like Gentoo and Slackware: pfft, gay! Ubuntu and SuSE, those just radiate coolness. Though I also agree with logos, if the packaged set includes stickers.

Re:Screenshots?

[Morrigu (29432)]

Version numbers. Don't forget the version numbers.

If it's not high enough, then it's not even worth booting.

Yowza

[MAXOMENOS (9802)]

We're up to *five* CD-ROMs now?

To the tune of a Dire Straits song...

[jd (1658)]

I want my.... I want my KDE....

I want my.... I want my KDE....

I want my.... I want my KDE....

Now look at them desktops, that's the way to do it

You get your DCOP from your KDE

That ain't working, that's the way to code it

Widgets for nothing and your glyphs for free.

Bow that ain't working, that's the way to code it

Lemme tell ya, them guys ain't dumb

Maybe get a glitch in your brand-new icon

Maybe get a glitchy core-dump.

We gotta install ISO 9000

Custom language packs

We gotta move those partition boundries

We gotta move that Berlin GUI

Upgrading

[Rik Sweeney (471717)]

I new to Linux and am still running Fedora Core 3. Am I right in thinking that to upgrade to FC5 I have to basically backup anything I want to keep and reinstall everything? Is there no easier way of upgrading?

Re:Upgrading

[/ASCII (86998)]

No, all you need to do is get the CDs or DVD and boot from them - you will be presented with the alternatives of overwriting the current install or upgrading it to FC5. It is a very good idea to backup your data just to be sure, but I've never had any problems going from one RedHat/Fedora version to a newer one.

Re:Upgrading

[MAXOMENOS (9802)]

It depends. I feel a little better about upgrading my system because I keep all my important data -- photos, tax records, etc -- in its own separate ext3 partition that mounts to /home.

If you've done that very basic and important step, then you can upgrade -- or even install a new system from scratch -- without fear. (There may, however, be a few hours of tweaking involved, to install printers and the like.)

The same works for Windows, too, btw -- and can save you from losing all your data when XP destro

Re:Upgrading

[LizardKing (5245)]

Err, I haven't used RedHat since FC3, but upgrading is normally accomplished by selecting the upgrade option when the installer finds an existing installation. That said, backups before major upgrades are *always* a good idea.

Re:Upgrading

[ElleyKitten (715519)]

You should backup everything you want to keep everytime you do something major to your computer (such as upgrading your OS). Actually, you should backup your stuff on a regular basis anyways.

I'm not 100% sure about Fedora, but I know other distros support upgrading while keeping all your programs and settings, so I'm pretty sure Fedora does too. The backup is just a recommendation in case something goes wrong.

Re:Upgrading

[typical (886006)]

There are three things you can do:

First, Fedora has an "upgrade" (as opposed to "install") option in the installer that lets you upgrade from the previous version. Download the CD images for FC4, burn 'em, boot off the CD, choose "upgrade", and then do the same for FC5. That's the "supported" path.

Second, it may be possible to just stuff the FC5 CDs in and upgrade directly from FC3 to FC5. Dunno.

Third (and this is probably not the best choice if you're new to Fedora), you can usually upgrade via yum. Do

Re:Upgrading

[moranar (632206)]

Yes, you made a few typos. The command is actually:

yum update

Don't worry, it happens to the best of us :P

Good for Older laptop?

[SaidiaDude (155962)]

Would this distro work for an old laptop - UMAX 233MHz 256MB 3GB? I have one lying around and was thinking about creating a wireless terminal to check email and possibly display pictures. A basic Core 4 installed fine but the UI wasnt very responsive sometimes. Thx for your help.

Re:Good for Older laptop?

[LizardKing (5245)]

NetBSD may be a better choice for older hardware, as it consumes less resources than recent versions of Linux. Note that this is not an anit-Linux troll, much of that extra resource hungriness seems to come from the added functionality rather than superfluous bloat - and despite my personal preference for NetBSD, I'm considering putting FC5 onto my PowerBook, as there appears to be support for Java on PowerPC Linux.

Re:Good for Older laptop?

[dylan_- (1661)]

A good one for older hardware is VectorLinux [vectorlinux.com]. The standard edition uses icewm and Rox filer, which is nice and fast.

selinux

[typical (886006)]

Someone on the target webpage asked how to disable SELinux. I don't really feel like making an account on that website, but you should edit /etc/sysconfig/selinux.

Some initial installation notes

[clear_thought_05 (915350)]

There are some pages: installation guide [mjmwired.net], installation notes [stanton-finley.net] which should be valuable starting points.

Fedora Mirrors

[Brian The Dog (879837)]

Am I the only one that thinks it is awesome that playboy.com mirrors the distro? They should have 'customized' it. (Special backgrounds, prepopulated bookmarks, etc.)

Re:Fedora Mirrors

[Secrity (742221)]

Playboy.com also mirrors Firefox, Thunderbird, Apache, FreeBSD, and CPAN. Playboy uses FOSS in it's operation and wants to give back to the community by providing mirrors.

Re:Fedora Mirrors

[JollyFinn (267972)]

Yeah. You can always say that you downloaded 3.3GB off stuff from playboy.com today, and didn't have to pay a dime.

what's included

[b17bmbr (608864)]

silly question, but I'd like to know what kernel version, hardware support, etc. is included. perhaps a link would have been nice. but, i dumped fedora a while ago for ubuntu.

Kernel version

[jd (1658)]

Fedora 5 comes with Kernel 2.6.15 with Red Hat patches. The latest official kernel is 2.6.16, which includes some important bugfixes. At the time of writing this, Fedora Core does NOT have 2.6.16 in the development tree, so it may be a few days before this upgrade is available.

Just as a personal note, I compile my own kernels, using the vanilla kernel patched with Andrew Morton's patches first, then with whatever of Red Hat's will still apply cleanly. Andrew Morton's -mm patches adds a lot of extremely useful functionality, for me, so that's my patchset of choice. (There are some nice real-time patches out there, too, but they're generally not compatible with other patchsets, making them a pain.)

FC5 mirror

[Yenya (12004)]

The Fedora Download page, which is according to the announcement message supposed to redirect you to one of the mirrors, does not work - it redirects to ftp://download.fedora.redhat.com [redhat.com] which is (of course) busy. So let me allow to advertise my mirror - if you are in Europe, I have still about half a gigabit of bandwidth free at

ftp://ftp.linux.cz/pub/linux/fedora-core/5/ [linux.cz]

-Yenya

Upgrade via yum is easier

[Cosine0 (466566)]

Just download and install fedora-release.xx.rpm
Next, "yum upgrade"
And you don't even have to reboot...

Re:Upgrade via yum is easier

[NoExec (920959)]

That sounds quite appealing! Here is a page with more detailed instructions. [brandonhutchinson.com]

Cent OS - Free RedHat

[gatzke (2977)]

Remember, you can get the free version of RedHat from CentOS

http://www.centos.org/ [centos.org]

No silly annual payments just to get support.

I personally use knoppix / debian since RedHat started charging for support.

People need to know CentOS is out there.

Bought on DVD

[by Anonymous Coward]

If like me you don't have broadband, you can get it from budgetlinuxcds.com on DVD for only $5

Re:MP3's?

[r_cerq (650776)]

It won't be "fixed", it's like that by design. Check http://fedora.redhat.com/About/ [redhat.com] (Why can't Fedora play mp3 files?)

Re:MP3's?

[Nighttime (231023)]

Short answer is no.

From http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ForbiddenItems [fedoraproject.org]

MP3 encoding/decoding support is not included in any Fedora application because MP3 is heavily patented in several regions including the United States. The patent holder is unwilling to give an unrestricted patent grant, as required by the GPL. Other platforms might have paid the royalty and/or included proprietary software. Other Linux distributions not based in a region affected by the patent might ship MP3 decoders/encoders or they might have included proprietary software. However, Fedora Core cannot and does not ship MP3 decoders/encoders in order to serve the goal of shipping only free and open source software that is not restricted by software patents.

Fedora Suggests: If possible, use patent unrestricted formats such as Ogg Vorbis (a lossy audio codec that has better quality than MP3), or FLAC (a lossless audio codec).

Re:MP3's?

[pyros (61399)]

The problem isn't distributing a codec, the problem is you can't legally have a GPL implementation in a jurisdiction where the patents on those formats applies (like the US). In the example of MP3, the patent holders grant free license for ditributing a decoding implementation, I believe. But that's not liberal enough to be compatible with the GPL, because the license could be revoked.

Re:Fallacy

[Crispy Critters (226798)]

"For a start both Ogg and FLAC are encumbered by patents just like every other compression technology out there."

Then why does the Ogg Vorbis FAQ [vorbis.com] say, "it is completely free, open, and unpatented"?

Why does the Flac FAQ [sourceforge.net] describe it as an "open patent free codec"?

Please explain in what sense they are encumbered.

Re:Fallacy

[crush (19364)]

Mp3 was excluded for one reason. Dogma. It has nothing to do with Fraunhofer being beligerent, because if it did, don't you think Ubuntu or others would have excluded mp3 support by now. No. It has to do with Red Hat, and now the Fedora Project, trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, i.e. trying to get the world to move away from mp3, and towards FOSS alternatives.

I think if there's any "dogma" on display it's yours. Red Hat is a company incorporated in the USA and is legally liable for any infrin

Re:MP3's?

[Kjella (173770)]

This answer is valid to April 2010: No, and it won't. I think we can safely say at this point that ogg isn't taking over mainstream and that once it is freed, ogg will go back to a very very little niche. It'll simply take another four years.

Re:MP3's?

[Listen Up (107011)]

For years I have used The Unofficial Fedora Faq located at http://www.fedorafaq.org/ [fedorafaq.org] to install all of the software missing from the Fedora Core downloads.

I agree with everything on that page, except for Java support. I develop Java and suggest that anybody who wants to develop serious Java applications use the official Java JDK from Sun. Otherwise, everything else is spot-on to help make Fedora a serious Linux desktop distribution.

Re:[off topic] GPL v3 and Linux distribs

[/ASCII (86998)]

Distributions don't change the license of the programs they contain. So if the kernel remains GPL2, then the kernel shipped with Fedora will also be GPL2. Basically all Linux distributions ship with programs using a whole bunch of different licenses. The parts of a distribution that are mostly distribution specific can use any license. I seem to remember that Yast, the Suse setup tool used to be closed source.

Re:Redhat Naming

[AKAImBatman (238306)]

I never understood why Redhat chose Fedora.

Fedora is a hat. You see the "Red Hat" logo? The type of hat the guy is wearing in the logo is called a Fedora [wikipedia.org]. Given that the hat is named after a Frech play, I don't think that anyone is really worried about what it means in Portugese.

Fedora is on a fast development cycle

[winkydink (650484)]

If you prefer something that looks like RH but evolves at a more stately pace, may I suggest CentOS [centos.org]. This is RHEL built from the the Open Sources.

Re:Probably the worst beginner's distribution

[AKAImBatman (238306)]

FWIW, Red Hat has always liked to be on the Bleeding Edge of Linux, but in their own way. (e.g. If GNOME 2.x isn't ready to ship, make quick patches around the problems and ship it.) This tended to get them into a lot of trouble, because their OS would have all kinds of idiosynchrasies and inconsistencies that other distributions didn't exhibit.

RedHat decided to address the matter with the Fedora branch. Fedora is a perpetual beta of RedHat's enterprise product. By releasing this beta, RedHat is able to get

Fedora is a hobbiest OS

[skogs (628589)]

This is a hobby OS. It is the developement tree for RHEL. What is so hard to figure out here? It is not a beginner distro, it is a testing ground for new ideas and functions. The entire point is to test things, and separated by name so that people like your professor cannot sue RedHat when something doesn't work as it should.

Point release version numbers don't really apply to something that is perpetually beta. There are dozens of Fedora based distros...ever notice that they all make changes/mods for better security/hardwaredetection/userinterface/etc..

I know this is a flame, and some fedora fanboys will mod be down for this and flame me, but please...do look around> this is a perpetual beta. If you want the 'good stuff' pay for it, or download something that has another couple of steps of tweaking built in.

Re:Fedora is a hobbiest OS

[Nermal (7573)]

While it's true that Fedora is a proving ground for new technologies, it's a mistake to say that it is in "perpetual beta". Rawhide, the development branch of Fedora, is in perpetual beta. Fedora Core is the stable branch of Rawhide. If it's not stable then something is wrong. So while on the one hand Fedora is not intended to be enterprise-grade and I'm not necessarily disagreeing with the GP, on the other it does have its own test process and its own devel/stable release cycle.

Also, Fedora doesn't have point releases because point releases are old-fashioned. There's no need to wait for bug fixes to accumulate before making them available anymore because tools like Yum can be used to make them available immediately. New features are added every six months or so in a new major version, but it serves the same purpose as what used to be called a point release. The only difference is in the numbers.

Re:Zen

[Shawn is an Asshole (845769)]

You currently can't run Windows under Xen as Xen requires the OS to be modified to run under it. Until the new CPUs with virtualization are out you can't use Xen to run Windows.

Right now, though, there is a good free (beer) alternative: VMWare Player [vmware.com]. I've been using it with a Win2k guest and it works great. A bit sluggish on Athlon XP's (2500+) and lower, but it feels almost native on an Athlon 64 (3200+).

To create a disk, install qemu and use the following command to create the disk:

qemu-img create -f vmdk disk.vmdk 15G

To create your *.vmx file use VM Builder [dcgrendel.be] (it's a webapp).

Open the VMX file in VMWare Player and install Windows normally.

To install VMware Tools, just download an old version (tar.gz, not the rpm) of the Workstation or the betas of the Server. There is a "windows.iso" file in the archive that has everything you need.