Red Hat Fedora Core 4 Test 1 Now Available

krunchyfrog writes "The first test release of Fedora Core 4 is now available from Red Hat and at distinguished mirror sites near you, and is also available in the torrent. New features in Fedora Core 4 test 1 include previews of GCC 4.0, GNOME 2.10, and KDE 3.4, as well as support for the PowerPC architecture. Please file bugs via Bugzilla, Product Fedora Core, Version fc4test1, so that they are noticed and appropriately classified. Discuss this release on fedora-test-list. -- The BitTorrent link is already there."

Can I update FC3 to FC4 Test 1 using yum?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, can I update to FC4 test 1 using yum?
Is it even possible? Since I know everyone will advise me against this, but I just want to know ;)

Re:PPC

[tabkey12]

EVen more important as Yellow Dog Linux [yellowdoglinux.com] is moving inch by inch to a subscription model [ydl.net] for their products.

(For reference, Yellow Dog Linux is probably the biggest supplier of PPC LInux and the only supplier that sells Mac Hardware with Linux preloaded.)

Re:PPC

[commodoresloat]

All the more reason to use Debian [debian.org] on PPC. There is a gentoo port too these days. Personally I prefer OS X on this hardware, but there are still a few linux choices out there.

Download size question

[IDkrysez]

Why are the binary torrent images listed as being bigger than the sources?? Er, am I being thick, huh?

Re:GCC Version

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what you mean by that makefile making bad code thing, but gcc 4.0 sports a new optimization infrastructure. I have been experimenting with it since October, and I found it to be far superior to 3.x. Also, the compilations times are reduced somewhat.On the whole I'm quite impressed by the improvements, though I'm not sure I'd base an operating system on a compiler which is not released yet...

Anyways, Gnome 2.10, Xen 2.0 and GCC 4.0 are quite enough reason for me to download FC4 Test 1 and try it out.

Re:KDE 3.4 translations

[Vo0k]

Honestly, I'm glad I learned English, comparing to translations.

Sometimes the translations are okay or nearly okay. Sometimes they are terrible. And worst if you get used to "native" version and then when translation appears, keyboard shortcuts are remapped to match new words. I LOATHE when suddenly aumix stops responding to Q for Quit and I must read help to see that now it's K as "Koniec" (and not W for Wyjdz, Z for Zakoncz, O for Opusc which are synonyms).
I feel thoroughly lost in "translated GIMP". Suddenly finding an option becomes tricky. "SOTA Chrome" becomes "Krysztal" while "Cristal" is being renamed to something yet different, and only by remembering the position in menu I'm able to guess where it is. Sure it's about "getting used to", but then some things are simply translated incorrectly and guessing their meaning in your native language is just impossible...

Learn English. It pays.

Re:Quick RPM Version Check

[rimu guy]

Presuming you're not trolling...

But we [rimuhosting.com] will be hosting lots of servers for our customers with some RHEL4-based distro.

I want to make sure that when an update comes out from the source [redhat.com], that I am not wholly dependant on a middle [centos.org] man [whiteboxlinux.org] that not be able to or capable of a prompt update release.

I'm still testing our recompile version. If it works out, then great. Otherwise, I'm confident now that even running a non-North American Enterprise Linux Vendor [pnaelv.net] version of RHEL4 I can always compile and distribute the errata udpates I need. (Well maybe except for a few kde packages, dbus and iproute which are spitting out heinous c++ errors at the mo).

Re:Feedback on Fedora?

[BenjyD]

Good: Looks pretty, up-to-date software, bugfix releases (eg will upgrade foo 1.1 to foo 1.2 if it fixes bugs), fast, SELinux built in, lots of software available

Bad: Buggy, upgrades frequently break stuff, short release cycle with no recommended upgrade path beyond reinstalling, yum is much slower than other package managers, FC users are guinea pigs for RH.

PPC Expectations?

[nurb432]

Can i expect the PPC version to run ok on my G3 Bronze?

What sort of stuff isnt going to work? ( yes, i did RTFA, didnt see what i was looking for )

fedora 4 and filesystems

[mdew]

can users choose Reiserfs or XFS when installing fedora 4?

Hope they get more bugs sorted out before release.

[pklong]

Looking at the updates directory of core 3 there are gigs of updates in there. It didn't even install on my nVidia nForce system because of bugs in the SATA drivers in the 2.9 kernel. (It's fixed in 2.10 I believe.)

Installing the nVidia drivers (because shock horror I wanted 3D) froze then system on boot because of the rhgb red hat graphical boot thingy. The switch to udev caught me out here. Luckily I figured out what was happening and sorted it.

I also had weird sound corruption in some programs which I tracked down to arts. Turning the sound down in that sorted it but I can't find any kind of a config file, let alone a GUI application that sets a sound level which survives a reboot. I sorted it my adding an entry in rs.local.

Also why on earth don't they compile NTFS reading into the Kernel. (Captive NTFS would also be nice as an option...)

Sadly your average tech fiddler on the street would have given up with this pallava and installed Windows.

XP Installation went without a hitch and worked perfectly first time. It can even play MP3's out of the box ;)

So for all you Slashdotters out there who think a Linux install is easier than I Windows install, well it can be. Provided nothing goes wrong. Which is unlikely.

When will RPM-based distros change to .deb?

[z1d0v]

It seems that there are a lot of people starting to defend the use of the debian package for the easiness of dependencies treatment (and I'm not talking about debian folks like myself). So one might ask: will distros like Redhat/Fedora change the package manager in the future?

Since I don't use a RPM-based distro for a long time, I also feel the urge to ask: how is the dependencies treated nowdays?

The Big Question...

[CastrTroy]

The big question is, does it support MP3 out of the box (off the CD?). This was one of the major things that turned me away. I know it's easy to fix, but that isn't the point. It's 2005. They'd better have MP3 support.

Re:When will RPM-based distros change to .deb?

[codeguy007]

Simple answer No definitely not. Though Synaptic is nice, apt cannot handle multilib dependencies like FC x86_64 provide. Yum is getting a graphical frontend (yumex) as well that though not working 100% is looking pretty good and in some ways is a lot nicer than Synaptic.

Re: yum (Was: Feedback on Fedora?)

[pp]

yum should be quite a bit faster in fc4test1, they've recently added a new xml parser (cElementTree) for the metadata which whips libxml2 ass (in fact, it's not much slower than reading plaintext in :))

Re:KDE 3.4 translations

[anpe]

I wish I had mod points. You're right, both sides are needed.
Not just because of the importance of keeping languages alive
I just read an article that correlated the use of a local language (as opposed to english mostly) with the vitality of the local research.
That is, the more you use your own language for research the more your research field is "creative" in your country.

FC4 v Ubuntu Hoary

[lewiz]

Not a comparison but a series of questions. I installed FC3 prior to Hoary as it specifically had an Internationalization Project. I very quickly discovered that it did, but getting foreign input working (say Japanese) without running the whole thing in Japanese was not straightforward.

This didn't seem to be lost on just me either, many people seem to have written it off as a result.

Hoary wasn't instant but the process of installing the input method and adding two lines to my .gnomerc was very straightforward and almost certainly faster (better?) than sorting the same on FC3.

So, I'm curious to know how FC4 handles:

Foreign input,
Wireless support (Atheros/Madwifi),
Alternative packages (I know this should be straightforward but I had a lot of trouble trying to install the madwifi stuff without updating the rest of my system to those packages in that repository).

In fact, now that I remember... FC3's up2date was slow and very buggy. Has this been fixed?

Re:Hope they get more bugs sorted out before relea

[imemyself]

I don't think the legal issues can be that serious because pretty much every other distribution out there supports MP3 with their audio packages, and quite a few support NTFS. I think its more of RH not wanting to admit their wrong.

Regardless I'll go happily along with SuSE. It has new packages, great hardware detection and is usable as an everyday desktop.

Re:KDE 3.4 translations

[swillden]

the more you use your own language for research the more your research field is "creative" in your country.

Interesting, but I suspect the causality runs the other direction. That is, if the study of a given field is very active in a given country there is sufficient cross-pollination of ideas nationally to make international discourse less necessary, making local language publishing more attractive.

Isn't fedora for suckers?

[ylikone]

I mean, why would anybody want to run an OS which is just a test platform for the real, non-free product? I mean, the days of redhat being the obvious number one choice for servers is gone in my opinion... I personally wouldn't think of letting FC getting anywhere near my servers. And why would I want to pay for RHE when I can just install a great and stable product like Debian or Slackware? I don't need RH support or their upgrade hassles and I'm sure as hell not going to pay for them.

/sorry if this sounds like a troll, but I'm serious

Re:Bug-free Linux distributions

[tilleyrw]

For a stable Linux distribution, you should experiment with Debian.

• New programs first enter Debian testing. Be careful using this as there may be unknown errors.
• After becoming more stable, packages move into Debian unstable. This is a fairly solid set of packages but unknown problems may exist.
• After more testing and declaration of stability, packages move to Debian stable. This distribution is slightly outdated, but extremely stable.

I run Debian unstable as my desktop and can count the number of problems I've had in the past year with my hands behind my back (i.e., none).

The best feature of Debian is the way is the fabled system update feature: apt. This simple tool allows you to update all packages on your system with one simple command; "apt-get update;apt-get upgrade". This command updates the database of available packages and then upgrades all packages on the system.

I won't even touch on how this simple tool can be extended via rules to only update certain packages, packages from a certain source, packages for a certain bit of software (i.e. the KDE desktop), etc.

If you've never used Debian, a bit of time spent learning the various features would be time well used. I've used Corel Linux, Mandrake, Red Hat, and when I tried Debian I knew I had found my Final Distro. No more "RPM-Hell" for me!

Thank you, Bob

Re:Bug-free Linux distributions

[tilleyrw]

No. Plain and simple. No.

Yum is a hack for RPMs. At their base, their very format invites dependency problems. Red Hat has simply studied this problem and found a hack that deals with most problems.

The Debian format, .deb, was designed to overcome the perceived problems with .rpm. It achieves this with stunning success.

Re:When will RPM-based distros change to .deb?

[Coryoth]

So you love Apt or yum. Great. Apt does not mean .deb. Apt can still do its normal great things using rpm formatted packages, so clearly the greatness comes from the tool, not the package specification.

The fuure of package maangers, like Smart [smartpm.org], make this even clearer. Smart is like apt (but has better dep resolution algorithms) except it supports pluggable backends - that means currently Smart supports .deb, .rpm, and even slackware .tgz. It can manage those from apt repositories, yum repositories, urpmi repositories, re-carpet channels, whatever. You can even do a mix and match between formats and repository types if you want (though that, of course, can get messy).

The point is that package management and dependency solving are largely independent of package formats (as long as the format contains some dependency information). We can have a global package manager that works everywhere and doesn't care which package format it happens to be working with.

Jedidiah.