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."

Not the first project to do this?

[bigirondawg]

One of the goals is to "work with the Linux community to build a complete, general purpose operating system exclusively from open source software"

Pardon me, but isn't that what UnitedLinux was supposed to do? And doesn't UL have far more vendors participating than Fedora?

Re:Not the first project to do this?

[aeoo]

You mean "UnitedLinux" started by Caldera?

Is UnitedLinux still alive in a more than a symbolic way?

So the previous distributions weren't....

[millahtime]

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. Was say redhat 9 not general purpose??? Isn't FreeBSD general purpose and all open source??

What defines general purpose???

Exciting stuff going on at Fedora

[capz loc]

I installed Fedora Core 1 when it first came out and I was very impressed. It included some stuff that wasn't in RH9, including a very pretty graphical boot. If Fedora continues on the path that it is on now, it could become a worthy competitor with SuSE and Mandrake on the home user front.

The community projects like Fedora and Debian tend to innovate more than distros that are managed by companies because they can get away with the "if it breaks, you keep both pieces" warantee. Distros used in enterprise scenarios (generally) offer a more stable product, at the cost of innovation.

fedora update

[Anonymous Coward]

this makes me wonder. why would an upgrade require a bittorrent? a new iso? a reinstall? why cannot you just apt-get upgrade? proof of debian's superiority?

Re:ACPI and kernel

[Anonymous Coward]

How can that be if 2.6.4 has only been out since 3/11/04 [kernel.org]?

How about giving Fedora its own topic/icon ?

[phoxix]

Because Redhat != Fedora.

Sunny Dubey

Re: NTFS

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing that's clear is that RedHat is focused on Unix Customers, not Windows Customers. They probably just don't wanna support NTFS, none of their customers dualboot, and it's not really all that useful for a migration anyway.

Re:Exciting stuff going on at Fedora

[Anonymous Coward]

The community projects like Fedora and Debian tend to innovate more than distros that are managed by companies because they can get away with the "if it breaks, you keep both pieces" warantee. Distros used in enterprise scenarios (generally) offer a more stable product, at the cost of innovation.

Please show me a company managed Linux distro that is more stable than Debian Stable. I'll promise to try it.

Re:No

[Minna Kirai]

FAR more importantly, I don't recommend that anyone attempt to "keep up" with other platforms that violate patents.

That's an unrealistic viewpoint. There are just TOO MANY software patents out there for a developer to worry about avoiding them until the patent-holder initiates action. ("Willful ignorance" is the official policy of the Linux Kernel developers, who've had some formal legal advice on the matter)

For example, both Debian and Red Hat are violating patents by shipping GNOME, so should they stop that too on the off-chance of an enforcement?

2.6 is almost here!

[ChiralSoftware]

It's in this new Fedora release, it's also in the Mandrake 10 "community" release (I just got my DVD last week) and it's in the upcoming Mandrake 9.1 [amazon.com] release, which you can pre-order from Amazon even though you can't actually find it by searching in Amazon. Too many choices! Oh and OpenBSD 3.5 is coming, too.

Re: NTFS

[ChrisJones]

Maybe they just don't want to pay to do all the due diligance required to make sure they are legally covered from Microsoft turning round and sueing.

The stability problems related mostly to write support, you could read NTFS partitions ok, but the writing code was unusable for a long time. This isn't some secret conspiracy nobody will tell you about, it's just bloody complicated filesystem code, it's not easy at the best of times, and when you're reverse engineering something it's a whole bunch harder. Cut them some slack.

If you want to know why it's not suitable for shipping, maybe ask the people who make it, they will most likely be highly intimate with a) the quality and stability of the codebase, b) the legal implications of their work.

IANAL, so I pass on the FAT question, I had wondered that myself when the licensing was announced. I didn't read into it enough to see what was in/excluded though. Research is left as an exercise for the reader ;)

Re:The email announcement

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, chill out. It's certainly funny (well, enough to make you smile, anyway), but not THAT funny.

Re:MP3 support?

[Trogre]

The question is, with superior free [xiph.org] codecs [sourceforge.net] out there, would you really want to go back to mp3?

Re:Exciting stuff going on at Fedora

[ArsonSmith]

Please show me a company managed Linux distro that is more stable than Debian Stable. I'll promise to try it

Or more up to date than Debian Sid. Or a better compromise of the two than debian testing.

Re:ACPI and kernel

[Wesley Felter]

Backports are evil for exactly the reason you describe. Luckily Fedora has a policy of avoiding backports wherever possible.