Fedora 8 Released

Cat in the Hat writes "Fedora 8 has been officially released. Ars Technica has a run-down of what's new in Fedora 8, including the PulseAudio sound daemon, Nodoka visual style, and a new authentication system. 'Another major change in Fedora 8 is the new PolicyKit authentication system that makes authority escalation more secure. Instead of providing root access to an entire program when it needs higher privileges, PolicyKit makes it possible to isolate individual operations that require higher privileges and put them into system services that can be accessed through D-Bus. Another advantage of PolicyKit is that it will give administrators more control over which users and programs have access to individual operations that use escalated privileges.'"

Another one?

Two distros so released so close to one another? You'd almost think that they were working toge...
Oh. They are, aren't they? ;)

Re:Another one?

RHEL 5.1 (if you mean this as one of two related distros) is a RHEL 5 re-packed to include all bug/security fixes to date, so if you need to do a new install, there's no need to pull hundreds of updates from RHN.

Fedora 8 isn't related too much to RHEL (RHEL 5 was built on Fedora Core 6). I use only Fedora and Red Hat and I'm probably biased. However, F8 includes some neat stuff that warrants checking up by Linux users in general. It works great, too.

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Fedora 8 isn't related too much to RHEL (RHEL 5 was built on Fedora Core 6).

RHEL 6 will most likely be built on a future Fedora release, such as Fedora 9 or Fedora 10. In some sense Fedora 8 can serve as a preview of some of what's to come in RHEL.

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Using apt-get dist-upgrade blindly is indeed nuts but if you read the release notes and pay attention to what apt plans to do you are pretty safe and unlike with fedora upgrading with the package manager is the supported and reccomended way to upgrade.

Waiting for Fedora 9

Not enough reasosns to move from Fedora 7, IMHO, but to each their own. Maybe I'll wait for Fedora 9.

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Fedora 7 is horribly unstable, and I stuck with Fedora Core 6. 8 seems to be a lot more stable, and I am burning an install disc as I type this. 9 is probably going to be stable as well, and is predicted to be the basis for RHEL 6. If I were you, I woul

Re:Waiting for Fedora 9

Fedora 7 is horribly unstable,

I've been running Fedora 7 on five machines, including one publicly-visible web and mail server, and have seen no stability issues at all, other than minor problems with one update kernel which were fixed in less than 24 hours. Of course, I'm probably using different parts of F7 than those with which you have had trouble. What areas caused problems for you? And weren't they fixed in F7 updates?

Re:Waiting for Fedora 9

not enough reasons to move
did you read the notes?
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/8/ReleaseSummary#head-4f0c6fbce5ef70b1b3c850fbd9dd725ddfd48a42 [fedoraproject.org]
as someone else wrote
* custom spins
* fedora 8 on a usb key
* pulseaudio
* codecbuddy
* yum improvements (yes it's fast)
* packagemanagement improvements (change repos and more)
* gui for firewall
* online desktop
* the whole fedoraproject.org website and associated projects
* Network Manager suppose to have seamless capabilities
* New Syslog demon
* seamless bluetooth integration and laptop improvments
I can go on. I'm very excited about this release you kidding?

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On the same note, I may give it a try... if it detects my fakeraid, that would be nice (openSuSE did, but failed when initializing X for my desktop)... Latest ubuntu installed, but running two vidcards didn't work correctly, I had to remove one, and have b

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I don't think it has GCC 4.2 yet. this [vt.edu] shows gcc 4.1.

Remember that's Red Hat's GCC 4.1 branch, not stock FSF 4.1, and it has a lot of 4.2 features backported to it, e.g. OpenMP and I think recent Intel + AMD processor tuning too.

Actually Fedora are hoping to skip 4.2 altogether and use 4.3 for Fedora 9 - se

Re:I tried the live cd

You are blaming Fedora for something that isnt their fault.

1. DeVD's - RH is US-based. It would be illegal for them to include DeCSS libraries. You can get them from atrpms. Other US-based distributions arent going to have it either.

2. nvidia - actually nvidia is at fault here, they should either release specs or source for their drivers, so that they can be supported properly by Xorg. (As many other video card chipsets are) And as before, you can still add these yourself, either from atrpms or directly from nvidia.

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actually nvidia is at fault here, they should either release specs or source for their drivers, so that they can be supported properly by Xorg

As ATI has started doing with the R500 and R600 series. So far the technical docs they've released basically o

finer grained priv levels

anyone old enough to remember VAX/VMS?

talk about the old coming back in style again. but giving too coarse a set of 'root privs' has always been inferior in unix compared to the privs level VMS had.

otoh, once you start going fine-grained, its a whole orde

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>anyone old enough to remember VAX/VMS?

Ok, where's DCL for Linux?

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Ok, where's DCL for Linux?

there is one! or used to be. I once cared - but then, well, I got better ;)

I loved vms and dcl - but it had no future once DEC became compaq. worse when HP got that.

it had its run, but I'd use a unix shell on a unix box and not

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anyone old enough to remember VAX/VMS?

Hell I'm old enough to remember punch-cards.

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To be fair here, it has never been an 'all or nothing' model. Don't forget setgid. For example, most mail related programs run setgid with the corresponding programs setgid rather than setuid.

One reason for the simplified security model in Unix was ex

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Which points to the underlying reason why VMS didn't take off like Unix. It had features to burn, and pretty good documentation, but no community such as existed for unix, bsd and linux.

Even with decus the agenda was mostly controlled by DEC, and directed

Fedora 8 release summary and announcements

There are a few "official" links that people might find useful:

Release Summary -- http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/8/ReleaseSummary [fedoraproject.org]

Release Notes -- http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f8/en_US/ [fedoraproject.org]

Fedora Project Leader's release announcement -- http://lwn.net/Articles/257644/ [lwn.net]

And of course the downloads at http://torrent.fedoraproject.org/ [fedoraproject.org]

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I am running it right now...well actually the Live distribution. My DVD iso has not yet finished. Not bad. I have been running Fedora 5 for awhile and it is time to get with program and update. Maybe over Thanksgiving.

GNOME, KDE, and other custom spins

For folks who are downloading, http://fedoraproject.org/get-fedora [fedoraproject.org] is the best starting point to the GNOME, KDE, and other spins.

Fedora 8 running on USB keys

Red Hat Magazine posted a HOWTO explaining Fedora 8 booting from a USB key [redhatmagazine.com].

It is one of the more interesting features in Fedora -- users can build their own customized spin of the distro, and then run it on a USB key. Totally custom and portable.

Yet ANOTHER sound server?

This is getting ridiculous.

And Linux audio STILL has a problem with blocking IO! So now I get to have networked audio in a few PulseAudio-aware apps, while my softphone won't ring and my calendar alarm is mute because some web page in the background uses Flash.

Re:Yet ANOTHER sound server?

PulseAudio emulates all the other systems with LD_PRELOAD libs so that they are all PulseAudio-aware. This means that your 1998 softphone that uses exclusive open() on /dev/dsp will function, with the magical policy of PulseAudio.

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No, the problem is that ALSA also exhibits audio blocking by default, too. Many applications use ALSA directly, and some of those block audio even when nothing at all is trying to use OSS.

Adding another userspace soundserver will just compound the confusio

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Once developers realize that PulsaAudio is on *every* modern system

Yes, but isn't DSP supposed to be on *every* modern system? Then wasn't ESD.. no.. i'm sure it was ALSA.. no wait, wasn't it aRTS?

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I assume you are talking about some programs using OSS, which actually has little to do with PulseAudio. With Linux boxes you are generally best off searching out at least Alsa when possible. OSS...is just about as bad as esd.

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No I am talking about ALSA.

And anyway, if the presence of OSS-using programs blocks the newer architecture, then nothing's been fixed. You can't expect users to learn these details about apps and juggle them to keep their soundcard accessible.

I have a syst

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Polypaudio might be your eventual savior. Polypaudio was made to be a drop in replacement for the very very old enlightenment sound daemon. esd was used so that multiple sound sources could be played at the same time on OSS. You might want to research alsa

Re:Yet ANOTHER sound server?

Thankfully, it does appear that PulseAudio is the One True sound server that we can all finally agree on. It emulates esd, OSS, and ALSA, so legacy apps like Flash and your smartphone work. It supports hotplug of audio devices, including networked ones (using Zeroconf even). It supports synchronized output between multiple devices, even when those devices use different sampling rates or have out-of-sync clocks (it resamples automatically). It has a zero-copy low latency architecture, taking advantage of the latest high resolution timer and real-time scheduling capabilities in new Linux kernels (when available), and it supports latency measurement for sound/video sync even when high latency is unavoidable (such as over a network). It has a modern user interface that provides per-application volume sliders like Windows Vista, and allows on-the-fly routing of audio to devices, including "saving" audio streams to another device if the device they are using is unplugged.

The guys behind PulseAudio really "get it". They even decided to drop their typically-awful open-source project name "PolypAudio" in favor of the infinitely better "PulseAudio", for wider acceptance. You've got to give them points for that; the GIMP could learn a thing or two from them.

Re:Yet ANOTHER sound server?

Oh, and I forgot to mention that PulseAudio has aspirations to become "Compiz for audio", providing earcandy effects such as surround-sound positioning for on-screen events (so sounds from a window on the left of the screen come from the left speaker, etc) and muffled sound from background windows (so the Flash ad in Firefox's background tab doesn't blast your eardrums and the new-mail notification doesn't sound over the movie you're watching full-screen).

Fast torrent this time

For past Fedora releases I've had slow torrent downloads (and I'm not even on Comcast). This time I downloaded at nearly full bore the whole time. I don't know why that is, but thank you seeds.

Mwo??? Available at Facebook?

http://mirror.facebook.com/fedora/linux/releases/ [facebook.com]

I wonder how long ballmer will be throwing chairs because one of his favored investments is giving away/make freely available an operating system he'd like to suffocate.

He is probably going to have a cozy little chat with one young Mr. Mark Zuckerberg. But, he'll start out easy. Won't throw REAL chairs in his office, but maybe lawn or bean-bags first.

Mark: (seeing chairs break the speed of light for the first time...) DUDE! Aurora Boralis, up close!

Finegrained security

...PolicyKit makes it possible to isolate individual operations that require higher privileges...

I'm not sure I like that one too much. Finegrained security models have always been a bloody nightmare, one way or another, and very often don't get used/are switched off, resulting in the opposite effect of that intended. Look to Vista to see why it sn't a good idea - users feel their are being bugged by constant dialog boxes asking them to confirm that it is OK to do trivial tasks, or asking for administrator passwords etc. People just want to get on with life, so this is a huge irritation - it may be true that all you need is to spend a little time and effort on setting it up, but people in general are not security minded and meticulous. This is, by the way, why Windows became so popular despite the huge problems with security and stability - a PC was almost an appliance that allowed you to use the internet and write documents, you just turned it on and used it.

Vista isn't the only example of finegrained security, only the latest and perhaps the one that has succeeded in pissing off most people. Oracle has it's own, very finely grained model, which I have never seen used seriously; and then there is RACF on IBM's mainframes, not a joy to work with either, IMO.

I think the basic UNIX security model is just about as much as most people want to bother with.

Re:

The new system is replacing userhelper, so there will be the same number of (or likely fewer) password popup prompts - not more. See the wiki [66.102.9.104] (google cache) for details.

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They copied a bunch of stuff Windows has had for years (policy) or just got (advanced audio).

Hard to say what is a logical progression and what is copying. I mean, AppGuard (Suse) is not much different from having policies, and that has been around for a while now. Improving audio as a default is just a good idea, period. What disappoints me is t

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What disappoints me is that every time I choose a Linux OS to install on my systems, another brand comes up with some cool tricks that I wish I had.

So why not dynamically resize your drive partition{s} to include some free space with GParted [wikipedia.org] and then dual-boot? [wikipedia.org]

You could also tri-boot with two partitions for stable "keepers" and a third as a "scratch install" space, just for testing... 'Bout 20GB o

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They copied a bunch of stuff Windows has had for years (policy) or just got (advanced audio).

Do you mean the advanced Windows audio that decreases network performance by up to 90%? [slashdot.org] Oh wait, that was supposed to be a feature! [slashdot.org] My bad ;)

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I know, don't feed the .. well you know..

this is not a copy of any Microsoft or Apple function. This is closer to Trusted Solaris and ppriv command. that allows users to be given access to services and at what level they are usable, IE the OS is at ADMIN L

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Yeah, it's never a copy of anything. It's all pure innovation.

Re:I'm having problems with GNOME.

I installed it earlier today, but I'm having all sorts of problems with GNOME. Right after I first started using it, a bunch of different programs starting dumping core. I don't think it's my PC, since it was working fine with Ubuntu for the past 8 months. I switched to KDE, and all of the programs there work. None have crashed. So I'm thinking that the version of GNOME bundled with FC8 is just unstable.

GNOME is the default on Fedora, so that would be a catastrophe for them. Before we jump to conclusions, we should check one thing: did you verify the checksums on your CD after you burned it? Perhaps there were errors; this can mess up an installation.

Re:All Hail Choice!

Just think of how good it could be if you could actually PAY people to put in the effort to make things right?

You mean something like MS does?

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Just think of how good it could be if you could actually PAY people to put in the effort to make things right?

mmm? A lot of distros do pay developers. I don't know about Fedora but Ubuntu for example has people on payroll to fix bugs and get things working

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Red Hat has many employees paid to work on Fedora. The changes in artwork from release to release are an indication.

Re:All Hail Choice!

Red Hat pays many of their developers / admins to work full time or part time on the Fedora project. They have a vested interest after all -- much of Fedora eventually makes its way into RHEL.

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It would become like Vista. Isn't that great? :D

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Just think of how good it could be if you could actually PAY people to put in the effort to make things right?


Uhh, no thanks. I've already done that and guess what, the software was STILL crap, but I got a huge impression of a misplac

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Wait, seriously?!

RC means Release Candidate. In most sane systems, this means that it's the build they intend to be the final build. It's first build with all the debugging flags turned off, which is what differentiates it from a beta.

Once a Release Candid

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Once a Release Candidate has few enough bugs left open against it, then it becomes the final build.

      In Microsoft language this is called "Service Pack 3".

Dang! I just got Gutsy Gibbon configured....

(Well, I'll be done once AT&T dialup in San Jose actually accepts my authentication credentials and I've checked that the wireless will pass traffic after associating with the office WiFi LAN...)