Fedora Core 2 Test 2 Released

Kalak writes "Fedora Core 2 Test 2, part of the project's goal to 'work with the Linux community to build a complete, general purpose operating system exclusively from open source software', has just been released - this test release 'is specifically designed for SELinux testing, as well as testing the 2.6 kernel, GNOME 2.5, and KDE 3.2.1.' Get a copy from one of the mirrors or grab a copy via BitTorrent. You probably want the binary only Torrent."

Careful - lots of experimental stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Not for production use. SELinux should create some fun errors.

Fedora News

[hey]

Maybe this is obvious -- I donno.
If you are interested Fedora, check out:
Fedora News [fedoranews.org]
(unofficial site).
Lots of good stuff there.

Gnome 2.5

[nycsubway]

I notice they're still using gnome 2.5, not 2.6. I hope they get gnome 2.6 in by the test3 release.

No

[Wesley Felter]

They can't include MP3 support precisely because Fedora is non-commercial. (Who would pay the per-copy license fees?)

UL still alive and widely used

[bigirondawg]

No, UnitedLinux was formed by Caldera, Connectiva,TurboLinux, and SuSE. SCO is obviously not an active contributor anymore, but Suse, TurboLinux, and Connectiva continue to distribute UL. UL is actually more of a brand that stands for packaging uniformity, since you download (or purchase) the UL version you want based on the vendor you choose. (i.e. You can get UL based on the SuSE, Turbo, or Connectiva dist. of Linux.)

Basically, the UL framework allows the companies to still market their product to corporations while still standardizing the Linux product and giving a (semi) unified front to the Linux world.

Re:MP3 support?

[rgmoore]

No. Fedora is trying very hard to avoid IP issues, so they've deliberately refrained from including things like mp3 decoders and DVD decoders that might get them into legal trouble. Fortunately, Fedora does have apt and yum available, so it's easy to add external repositories, like FreshRPMS [freshrpms.net] or Livna [livna.org], both of which do include mp3 players and DVD decoders. It's very convenient, and avoids a lot of legal headaches for RedHat.

Re:Gnome 2.5

[Skeezix]

They'll ship Fedora Core 2 final with GNOME 2.6, but GNOME 2.6 isn't due to be released until March 31st...

Re:Great

[MrIrwin]

I think it is more a case of RHAT branching into 2 distros, one for hacking and one for data centers (RHAT enterprise).

It would appear to fill a void that IMHO exists between Debian and Slakware.

Re:Fedora News

[prisen]

Fedora Forum [fedoraforum.org] is also a good resource, which the "unofficial" fedora.artoo.net FAQ/Forum recently merged into.

Re:ACPI and kernel

[prockcore]

I hope their gonna switch to 2.6.4 cuz last time I checked, they were using 2.6.1 and acpi for that is still broken. For some reason, the acpi people don't even support 2.6.3 any more...

When was the last time you checked? FCtest has been using 2.6.4 for a few months now.

Re:Great

[prockcore]

But do we really need Yet Another Linux Distro?

As far as I can see, Debian, Gentoo, Slackware and probably others are already

Two of those distros are younger than RedHat (fedora).

Plus none of those offer SELinux out of the box (which FCTest2 does), none of those offer xorg instead of XFree86 (which FCTest2 does).

Re:Fedora News

[geirt]

and Fedorazine [fedorazine.com]

Re:So the previous distributions weren't....

[Crispy Critters]

"So are you saying the previous distributions of linux weren't general purpose operating systems or that they weren't completely from open source software.

Many Linux distros include non open source software. SuSE's installer was not open source. I have an old Red Hat distro that includes a proprietary X server (and xfree86 as well, I believe). My memory and rpmfind sugest that Netscape 4 was included in some distros, and it certainly isn't open source.

Re:MP3 support?

[Kalak]

The commercial / non-commercial isn't the reason - it's that mp3 is a proprietary format, and Fedora is still backed by RedHat. Royalty issues for mp3 have been talked [slashdot.org] about [slashdot.org] before [slashdot.org] on [slashdot.org] slashdot [slashdot.org], and I don't see RedHat giving the nod to distributing mp3 decoders in Fedora any more than in the RedHat Enterprise distributions. It's the same as distributing the NTFS modules. New Fedora releases shouldn't effect this decision.

Just grab XMMS RPMS for Fedora from their home page [xmms.org] and let RedHat worry about what they distribute. NTFS module RPMS [sourceforge.net] are available as well.

Re:YMMV

[reaper20]

This guide [altervista.org] to moving FC1 to 2.6 covers all the bases.

I think many people just grab Arjanv's RPMs or whatever, install them, and then wonder why the system blows up in their face, there is no easy answer to moving a 2.4-based box to 2.6 without a few modifications, regardless of distro.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Huh?

[Black Perl]

'work with the Linux community to build a complete, general purpose operating system exclusively from open source software'

Wait a minute! Isn't Fedora directly derived from Redhat? And wasn't it Redhat who smugly proclaimed their superiority over certain other distros because they didn't use ANY proprietary software? Was Redhat lying to us?

No. I think it may make more sense to you if you put the emphasis in a different place:

'work with the Linux community to build a complete, general purpose operating system exclusively from open source software'

In other words, it'll be just like Red Hat except they'll be working with the Linux community more.

Re:I tried fedora, had a terrible time with it

[jaylee7877]

Most rpms built for RedHat 7.3 - 9 should work without a problem in FC1 and FC2. With Linux, you can easily build binarys that will only work on one version of one distro, it takes a little more work to make it generic.

Re:Bueno

[Spoing]

My custom 2.6.x kernels work well with Fedora test 1. The only thing I really did was;

1. Update all the user space packages as decribed in the kernel README.
2. Grab the .config file for one of the Fedora binary 2.6.x kernels (in /boot if it is installed, the RPM if not).
3. Copy it to the 2.6.x kernel source directory -- where ever you put it -- and run "make oldconfig".

Tweak and modify the kernel as you see fit. Otherwise, compile as-is.

That said, there are customized parts of the official Fedora Linux kernels, so some of the .config options will be tossed out during "make oldconfig". Look for error messages to see what you'll be missing.

Live support URLs

[jroysdon]

fedoraforum.org [fedoraforum.org] has a wealth of info in the FAQs and Forums.

For the newest issues, jump on IRC: irc.freenode.net #fedora [irc]

Re:How to get my favorite package in Fedora?

[AFairlyNormalPerson]

The answer depends on if you want it included in the Fedora Extras repository or on the distribution disks. You might want to visit http://fedora.us and http://fedora.redhat.com (under participate).

Here is an extended discussion from the devel mailing list. The link is to the question; just follow the links within to read the discussion. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2 004-March/msg00539.html

-Norm

Re:Yipee

[justi9]

And a 2.6 kernel has been yum and apt-get installable on FC1 for some time as well. Y'all are silly.

Configure Fedora up2date to use a mirror

[Copperhead]

I was upset that the system pointed to download.redhat.com for updates, which is constantly being hammered. I would get 9k/sec if I was lucky, and the download was constantly freezing.

However, in looking through the messages, I found that there is a document on how to use mirror servers as a source for updates [fedoranews.org]. I'm surprised that Fedora doesn't have a system for balancing clients to different mirror servers, a la Gentoo, but now that I've picked a few mirrors, things have been a lot smoother.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I can see, Debian, Gentoo, Slackware and probably others are already

Two of those distros are younger than RedHat (fedora).

Interesting. Gentoo's the obvious one, but which one of Slackware (July '93) or Debian (August '93) is younger than Red Hat (October '94)?

(Not that I'm saying we don't need Fedora or, for that matter, Gentoo)

Re:fedora update

[RichiP]

This is a test of the distribution. This way, they get to test the ISOs, as well. You CAN apt-get upgrade or yum update your older release installation if you want to. Not everyone has an older installation and for those people, they'd rather download the new distribution rather than an old one and the upgrades.

Would've been logical if you thought it through.

Re:ACPI and kernel

[ajs]

This is still pre-release so your comments aren't too unreasonable, but just so that people understand that this isn't always the right way to look at the problem:

The way version numbering works in Red Hat (and by extension, Fedora), is that the package version number is the version of the software that the package STARTED from, but it may have little to do with the state of the software as installed.

For example, you might have openssh version 3.1 on a box, but if you look at the SRPM for that package, you will find security bug-fixes applied from all of the openssh versions between 3.1 and the current day.

The SRPM is essentially three things: A tar-ball(s) of the original source as shipped by the developers; a set of patches or add-ons that the vendor has decided to include and a Makefile-like thing that RPM knows how to read called a spec file.

Thus, FC2 might ship with Linux 2.6.4, but that doesn't mean it lacks a feature or bug-fix from 2.6.5... you have to check the patch-set in the SRPM to know that.

Every time the contents of that SRPM are updated, the RPM version changes, so you'll see something like "foo-1.2-2", where 1.2 is the version of foo that the SRPM was based on, and this is the second build from Fedora.

Re:2.6 is almost here!

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean SuSE 9.1, not Mandrake.

Re: NTFS

[Burdell]

There apparently are patent issues with NTFS, and people from Red Hat have said that multiple times (here [redhat.com] for example).

As for FAT, from what I've read the patent (patents?) doesn't cover the way Linux uses a FAT filesystem.

Re:Anyone have any experience with Gnome in Fedora

[Anonymous Coward]

Humm, here's a tip for you:

• Right click on the task bar.

• Now select 'New Panel'. Presto. Your top panel is now in place.

• Populate it accordingly.

How hard is that? No need to yank out the pre-packaged Gnome installation and install everything from scratch just because you feel it's "crippled".

Re:Careful - lots of experimental stuff

[b12arr0]

I think that's why they call it 'Fedora Core 2 TEST 2'.

Re:Not the first project to do this?

[Pros_n_Cons]

Damn my modpoints ran out just as i was reading the article =)

"think if Red Hat really had the best interests of the Linux community in mind, they would have joined the UL project at the beginning, anyway, instead of trying to "go it alone" with their own marketing and distro environment."

Do you think this has anything to do with it? A clip from a ZDnet Germany interview with Red Hat:

Were you asked to be part of the UnitedLinux team? Were there any negotiations?
We were asked to be a part of UnitedLinux team hours before their public announcement.

If Red Hat got together with mandrake, developed a standard that is 99% red hat, Calls SuSe the day before its released and says. Hurry up and be a standard, you have 9 hours! Think SuSe would do that?