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Fedora Core 6 Released

Posted by Zonk on Tue Oct 24, 2006 11:05 AM
from the i've-got-a-new-hat dept.
Businesses Red Hat Software Software Linux
Shadowman writes "Fedora Core 6 has been released. Recommended download method is via BitTorrent. For more information, see the release notes or the Fedora homepage. Slashdot interviewed the Fedora Project Leader back in August."
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[+] Fedora's New Test Lead Plans Changes 32 comments
lisah writes "According to a NewsForge article by Bruce Byfield, new Fedora test lead Will Woods has a laundry list of changes he plans on making to enhance the Fedora testing process. 'There's always someone who will comment that Fedora is just Red Hat's beta test for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL),' says Woods. 'It's not true, and I want no one to have cause to say that ever again.'"
[+] Fedora Welcomes Women to FOSS 339 comments
nman64 writes "The Fedora Project, the project behind the Fedora Core Linux distribution, has introduced Fedora Women, a program to reach out to women who are interested in using and contributing to Fedora Core. This follows in the footsteps of LinuxChix, Debian Women, and Ubuntu Women and is part of a larger trend to support women in the FOSS world. At present, women are believed to make up only about 1.5% of the FOSS community. Is that finally set to change?"
[+] Interviews: What's Fedora Up To? Ask the Project Leader 295 comments
Fedora Project Leader Max Spevack offered himself up for this interview because, he said, "I look at stories like [your] posting Ubuntu to Bring About Red Hat's Demise and many of the comments about Red Hat and Fedora seem very rooted in the world of several years ago, when the RHEL/Fedora split took place." This is a chance to clear the air, and get an up-to-date look at what Fedora is up to these days. So ask away; we'll send 10 of the highest-moderated questions to Max and (hopefully) publish his answers later this week.
[+] Interviews: Fedora Project Leader Max Spevack Responds 135 comments
Max Spevack writes: "Hi everyone. I'm looking forward to answering all of the questions, but before I start diving into that, I guess it would be useful to give a little bit of perspective about me and my role within Fedora and Red Hat, because it will offer some context around the things I have to say."
[+] Fedora Core 6 Review 205 comments
luna6 writes to tell us that they have posted a pretty thorough review of Fedora Core 6 with the installation procedure and even a few work arounds for the couple of bugs encountered during the process to help users get up and running smoothly. From the article: "To sum up Fedora Core 6, I will say that once you have it set up properly FC 6 runs very impressively. I had the impression that FC 6 may have been rushed, just because of the handful of minor bugs that appeared. The mixup of arches, i586 & i686 was weird and the first system update having a update conflict was a glaring error, even though it was easy to fix. Setting up the Nvidia drivers was way more problematic than it should have been. I should also note that Mandriva 2007 worked from the start with AIGLX and their 3D drake worked flawlessly. With that stated once the minor problems were fixed, Fedora Core 6 worked as well as any Linux distro I have tried and the visuals were second to none. Well except the default icons...but we have something to look forward to in FC 7 now don't we?"
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Fedora Core 6 Released 50 Comments More /

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  • Honestly (Score:5, Funny)

    by suso (153703) * on Tuesday October 24 2006, @11:06AM (#16561292) Homepage Journal
    I literally just installed FC5 on a machine this morning.
    • Does FC6 include Firefox 2?
      • Considering that they were both released today, I highly doubt it. They wouldn't have any time to test it. This is one of my biggest problems with Linux. They release a new version of the distro, and then a major very important piece of software comes out shortly after the distro release. Which means that unless you want to get your software from outside the distro's repository, then you are stuck with the older version. Case in point, if you wanted OO.o 2, on Mandrake up until version 7 came out a litt

        • Re:Yes, but... (Score:4, Funny)

          by cloudmaster (10662) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @12:16PM (#16562680) Homepage Journal
          Yeah, Linux should be more like Windows. The OS comes with *no* useful software, and it's up to the software vendor to test the software on every possible install platform. I'm sure that wouldn't delay software releases for longer than the time period already present between most distro revisions.</sarcasm>

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by muszek (882567)
            That's not exactly true.
            Apps are _sometimes_ backported, but only when they appear at current_stable+1 repositories. That doesn't happen very often.
            Edgy (6.10, to be released in a few days) has FF 2.0, but only because they started with beta. Breezy (released a year ago, iirc few weeks before FF 1.5) didn't have FF 1.5 - it had 1.5.0.7. It wasn't even backported from Dapper repos (there were too many dependencies... for example gnome help was (maybe still is) rendered via FF). So unless you wanted to

        • Fedora 6 patches to KDE are buggy, unpolished (Score:5, Interesting)

          by billybob2 (755512) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @11:43AM (#16562064)
          The modified version of KDE that ships in Fedora 6 is really buggy and unpolished. There's been talk for two years about placing KDE in Fedora Extras [fedoraproject.org] so that it will be better supported by the dedicated KDE community, but Redhat seems to keep refusing the help and treating KDE apps as second-class citizens.

          Some of the Fedora 6 changes (like taking away MP3 playing capability from KDE music players) are justified on a legal basis, but other changes (like using a 4-year old window decoration and widget styles) are at best the result of ineptitude or at worst a deliberate attempt to make KDE look bad and outdated.
          • Really, have any of you actually used Fedora's KDE? The parent is correct, at least for releases up to FC5 (haven't tried FC6).

            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              by Anonymous Coward
              It wasn't flamebait, just paranoia. FC uses the same default theme style for both GNOME and KDE (called "Bluecurve" in FC5, at least). Don't like the default? Pick another.

              The missing default support for formats (such as MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3) that rest on shaky FOSS distribution grounds has nothing to do with Fedora's KDE. Of course it's exluded from the GNOME apps too, and it's as easily fixed with KDE as it is with GNOME. Add your favourite 3rd party RPM repositories and use yum.

              There is no anti-KDE consp

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by friedmud (512466)
            Completely agree.

            Fedora is definitely the worst offender when it comes to KDE support. Instead of their crappy old "blue curve" theme and replacing all the KDE default apps with crappy gnome ones (File Roller anyone?) it would be much preferable for them to just leave KDE alone... just let the defaults fall where they may as they come from the KDE gods.

            I use Gentoo on my desktop... so I _know_ how good KDE can be when not messed with. I use FC5 (and 6 as soon as possible) on my laptop (I like the network

    • Re:Honestly (Score:4, Funny)

      by jazman_777 (44742) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @11:36AM (#16561922) Homepage
      I literally just installed FC5 on a machine this morning.


      Another excellent reason to use Debian. You'll never fall behind.

      • To avoid this, check out the schedule [fedoraproject.org] - though of course this should be easier to find from the Fedora site's front page...

        • Been there - done that!

          It would be better if this link was at the download sites for Fedora Core.

          It's a bit like finding out that the bus/train schedules have been cancelled only when you are trying to get home in the evening, because the company only put the notices on one side of the station doors.

  • Multimedia support (Score:5, Informative)

    by Nighttime (231023) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @11:09AM (#16561362) Homepage Journal
    As someone always comments on Fedora's (and by proxy, Red Hat's) multimedia support, here it is from the horse's mouth:

    15.3. MP3, DVD, and Other Excluded Multimedia Formats
    Fedora Core and Fedora Extras software repositories cannot include support for MP3 or DVD video playback or recording. The MP3 formats are patented, and the patent holders have not provided the necessary patent licenses. DVD video formats are patented and equipped with an encryption scheme. The patent holders have not provided the necessary patent licenses, and the code needed to decrypt CSS-encrypted discs may violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a copyright law of the United States. Fedora also excludes other multimedia software due to patent, copyright or license restrictions, including Adobe's Flash Player and and Real Media's Real Player. For more on this subject, please refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ForbiddenItems [fedoraproject.org].

    While other MP3 options may be available for Fedora, Fluendo now offers a free MP3 plugin for GStreamer that has the necessary patent license for end users. This plugin enables MP3 support in applications that use the GStreamer framework as a backend. Fedora does not include this plugin since we prefer to support and encourage the use of patent unrestricted open formats instead. For more information about the MP3 plugin, visit Fluendo's website at http://www.fluendo.com/ [fluendo.com].

    • Bah - that's what Livna is for :) (Score:4, Informative)

      by Penguinisto (415985) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @11:28AM (#16561768) Journal
      No, seriously: Livna works just fine for me (And I think DAG should cover it as well; can;t remember the URL offhand, though). Both Livna and DAG have yum repos that will grant all the necessary tidbits needed to complete the install (including NTFS support for weirdoes like me who have to plug in HDD's formatted in that recover others' data on occasion...).

      /P

    • Which is why I use Mandriva which can play DVDs and MP3s out of the box. What are the legal implications of Mandriva putting in this functionality? Could they be shut down?

      • Re:Multimedia support (Score:4, Informative)

        by pyros (61399) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @12:56PM (#16563452) Journal
        That depends on how they include the functionality. If they include unlicensed software, then U.S. ditribution of Mandriva (hosting ISO images on servers in the U.S., retail outlets selling boxed CD sets, etc) could be halted.

    • Fluendo now offers a free MP3 plugin for GStreamer that has the necessary patent license for end users.

      They mean gratis, not that this plugin necessarily gives you the freedoms of free software (for those of you who live in countries saddled with software patents). You could install and run this plugin but doing so would be installing non-free software on your machine. For the rest of you, the Fluendo GStreamer MP3 plugin is free software, licensed under the MIT X11 license. Richard Stallman, found

  • But does it come with... (Score:3, Funny)

    by croddy (659025) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @11:10AM (#16561404)
    But does it come with GNU Iceweasel? [gnu.org]

  • Mandatory Zod quote (Score:4, Funny)

    by Fry-kun (619632) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @11:20AM (#16561620)
    Come to me, son of Jor-El! KNEEL before ZOD!!

    Okay, I got it out of my system now...

    ZOD!!!!!

    • Re:Mandatory Zod quote (Score:5, Funny)

      by Kelson (129150) * on Tuesday October 24 2006, @11:27AM (#16561758) Homepage Journal

      You should see the announcement they posted to the mailing list:

      This is the announcement of Zod. Zod permits you to call him "Fedora Core 6".

      Tremble, Earthlings, for Zod is released from the confines of testing. Zod intends to hammer the servers of the world ... starting TODAY! For those who chose the world-domination-acceptance package in your last installation, you need do nothing -- Zod is beaming itself to your computers already. If your keyboard begins to get hot, back away ... very ... slowly ...

      For the rest of you minions who failed to do Zod's bidding previously, this is your ONE AND ONLY CHANCE to redeem yourself. Go quickly! Download the torrent NOW. Obtain the ISO immediately. Zod's minions know to back up their /home directory and to begin immediate installation of the GREATEST version of Fedora Core EVER.

      When you are done genuflecting, listen carefully. Zod now delivers an important message to Zod's predecessor, the Fifth Iteration of Fedora Core, known to some as Bordeaux:

      "KNEEL BEFORE ZOD, for Zod has many improvements that convince users to upgrade and abandon you! Ph34r me! Mwahahahaha."

      Zod accepts that the Fedora Project continues to provide software and security updates for Bordeaux, as per the policy of Zod's minions. Zod chooses to permit this action to continue.

      It goes on to link to release notes and such, then adds this note:

      Massive downloading of Zod is known to melt servers worldwide, so Zod commands all who are able to use bittorrent.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by spevack (210449) *
        It's traditional for us to have some sort of "whimsical" or "funny" release announcement that accompanies all of the serious stuff. The full link to it is here:

        https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-li st/2006-October/msg00008.html [redhat.com]

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Speare (84249)

        It's interesting that they chose to call this release "Zod." The traditional Red Hat maintainer of XFree86/Xorg, Mike Harris, for a long time went by the alternate nickname of "zod" on IRC support channels and the like. He left Red Hat a little while ago, and now this release bears this name. I have no idea if there was any intentional connection.

        ObTrivia: In case you missed the other fifty explanations, General Zod is the leader of the Krypton villains in Superman II.

  • Release Notes Mirror & Thoughts (Score:5, Informative)

    by SlashdotOgre (739181) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @11:31AM (#16561816) Journal
    Here's a mirror of the release notes: ftp://limestone.uoregon.edu/fedora/6/i386/os/RELEA SE-NOTES-en_US.html [uoregon.edu]

    Things I'm finding interesting are:

    Section 9 (Desktop Effects) Looks like its just AIGLX, not Xgl (in fact there's no mention of Xgl).

    Section 17 (Virtualization) FC6 uses Xen 3.0.2, I know Xen was in FC5 but I haven't had a chance to play with it. The release notes mention something about it being connected with the installer, so perhaps I'll get a chance.

    Section 22 (Package Changes) Interesting removals IMHO are: mozilla, xscreensaver, gkrellm. I'm sure all can be found in the Fedora Extra's Repo or some place similar. I'm not a big fan of where some of the desktop apps are going (eg. I hate gnome-screensaver), but the beauty of Linux is it's quite simple to solve this problem.

    • Re:Release Notes Mirror & Thoughts (Score:5, Informative)

      by TheOrquithVagrant (582340) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @11:45AM (#16562112)
      > Section 9 (Desktop Effects) Looks like its just AIGLX, not Xgl (in fact there's no mention of Xgl).

      Fully-implemented AIGLX pretty much makes Xgl obsolete. Compiz runs on top of AIGLX now, and compiz is shipping with Fedora. That means all the "bling" normally associated with "Xgl" is available.

      > Section 17 (Virtualization) FC6 uses Xen 3.0.2

      Xen 3.0.3 was released on the 17th, in time to get included. The release-schedule slippage had a silver lining.

    • I couldn't find anything about this in the release notes, but have they yet taken care of my biggest pet peeve with regards to rpm based distros yet? That peeve being: having to install from a static set of packages, then having to update 200-300 megs of packages immediately following - even via a network (internet) based install. I've always hated installing this way, the redundancy is inane, and I can't image having to do it on a dial-up. Spending an hour installing a system, then spending another hour up
  • The vast majority of experiences that I and every other person I have met with Fedora have been profoundly negative on some level. Version 1.0 was nice on my machine, and 2.0 didn't slip far, but 3.0 and especially 4.0 were just total piles of dog shit for everyone I have known. I watched as an entire CS class composed of people who ranged from total newbies to gentoo and debian rabid partisans couldn't get it installed on hardware that RHEL and SuSE 10 had not 1 iota of a problem working with. My girlfrien

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by turbidostato (878842)
      "The vast majority of experiences that I and every other person I have met with Fedora have been profoundly negative on some level." /TROLL MODE ON
      That only means that you and almost every other person you know is dumb enough not to read documentation about the tools they try to use. /TROLL MODE OFF

      "When is the Fedora project going to start fixing its bugs instead of just pushing out bleeding edge packages?"

      Plain simple: never.

      It is not as if it were a deeply hidden fact; it's even on the fundational papers

    • Re:Not to troll, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Phisbut (761268) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @12:50PM (#16563344)
      When is the Fedora project going to start fixing its bugs instead of just pushing out bleeding edge packages?

      The whole point of Fedora is to be bleeding edge, not to be 100% stable. Fedora introduces bleeding edge features, and Red Hat fixes the features, that's how it is, and that's how it is supposed to be. If you can't cope with bleeding edge features that are not guaranteed to be stable, then Fedora is simply not for you.

      Ubuntu makes Fedora look like useless because those teams work hard on bug fixes.

      Ubuntu aims for usability and stability, Fedora aims for bleeding edge. Different distros, different goals. Use the right tool for your job.

      • Good lord, I thought the Gentoo Handbook was bad. If a distro isn't meant for experienced users then it shouldn't require this crap.

  • Who cares? (Score:3, Informative)

    by slashdotmsiriv (922939) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @11:45AM (#16562098)
    Ever since I installed Kubuntu i threw a black stone to the dark days of Fedora Core Installations ... Since then i can completely install linux systems on any laptop and PC without writing a single script and without having to compile my own kernel modules.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by loconet (415875)
      Agreed. I used to be a long time Red Hat user but dropped it as soon as they stopped support for their desktop version. I moved to Suse and then Ubuntu (besides trying dozen of other dists and bsds). Although I had never used Linux as my primary desktop OS (it has however been my primary application server at work and home for years), thanks to Ubuntu's ability to take away the headache of spending countless hours fetching for obscure modules, compiling unsupported libraries, etc, in order to get my hardwar
  • Is there any reason to care about Fedora now that we have CentOS?

    Also, I spent the day mapping configurations between Debian and RHEL. It was not fun.

    Could someone please, pretty please, come up with some kind of XML file to abstract everything commonly found in a linux /etc, then write conversion tools for each OS to move from XML to /etc files?

    Then we could have one configuration tool for the XML file, instead of having to use hundreds of tools (system-config-foobar, dselect reconfigure foobar) or learn h

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Limecron (206141)
      > Is there any reason to care about Fedora now that we have CentOS?

      Huh? Most desktop Linux users like running the latest and greatest which is clearly not what CentOS is intended to do. That's why Fedora and the Ubuntus exist, for desktop users to have all the latest versions before they're completely tested.

      Not to mention that Fedora is essentially the test bed for RedHat, which is what CentOS carbon copys itself from. So essentially, if you use CentOS, you need people to use Fedora to ensure your co

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by nuzak (959558)
      > 99% of configurations done in /etc/ are simple concepts that should not require looking up some random guy's BNF.

      Your new version is going to have to read the old config file formats for compatibility for bob-knows-how-many years anyway, so now not only do you need to support XML, you still have to support J.Q.Random's BNF, and a converter between the XML and the old config format.

      Good luck getting the glibc guys to support a new /etc/passwd format, or any of the other two dozen odd /etc files it parse

  • Before I get all excited... (Score:3, Funny)

    by MC Negro (780194) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @01:00PM (#16563548) Journal
    It's actually been released, right?

    • Yes, they're sure. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Kelson (129150) * on Tuesday October 24 2006, @11:23AM (#16561672) Homepage Journal
      Torrents are up. The Fedora websites seem to be down (fedora.redhat.com) and overloaded (fedoraproject.org), but if you can get the latter to load, it does announce "Download Fedora Core 6"

      Through the magic of Bittorrent I'm downloading the official release faster than their server can manage right now.
    • Here is an interesting article from Linux Weekly News: Who maintains RPM? [lwn.net] Makes you wonder about the future of that package format. Unfortunately, it would not be an easy thing for Red Hat to switch to apt or anything else, we'll probably have multiple incompatible package formats for a long time to come.

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