Fedora 7 Released

fedoraman writes "Fedora 7 has been released. With Xorg 7.3, KDE 3.5.6, GNOME 2.18, and version 2.6.21 of the Linux kernel Fedora 7 comes with all the latest and greatest open source desktop software. Fedora 7 drops the traditional 'Core' nomenclature, since it includes both what used to be termed the Core and Extra components by default. Fedora 7 is also the first release to be constructed with Fedora's revolutionary new build system, which is designed to improve the ease of developing derivatives and Fedora-based software appliances. As usual, extensive documentation and release notes are available. Torrents are also available and ISO images can be downloaded from mirrors around the world."

Not quite correct. Still nice.

[c0l0]

It's not Xorg 7.3 that's packaged with Fedora, but Xorg 7.2 with the xorg-server 1.3.0 release. It still features very interesting software, like, for example, noveau [freedesktop.org], a free reimplementation of NVIDIA's hardware-accelerated 3D-drivers (still work in progress, of course), as well as a kernel patched with the all-new and highly anticipated mac802.11 [intellinuxwireless.org]-subsystem that whould yield much better compatibility and performance for all things WLAN. I also like this idea of "Revisor [heise.de]", an application easily allowing for building customized bootable (install-)media with specific packages only.

Can you say Xen?

[jmorris42]

> Is there a good reason they seem to think they know better than Linus and all the other devs working hard on the standard kernel
> or is it just an ego trip for the developers at these distros?

Yes, there are lots of good reasons. We can start with Xen. All of the big distros support it but it isn't in the mainline kernel tree. So right there you blow away the ability to run the mainline kernel without breaking things. The list goes on from there. The latest device drivers that haven't yet made it upstream, bug fixes that are working their way upstream, etc. There are lots of other good reasons why a distro kernel gets patches.

SUSE, like RHEL is longterm stable. That means bug fixes and security issues get patched into the same base kernel that originally shipped with that version of the distro because revving the whole kernel would be a nightmare.

That said, Fedora does have a policy of trying to stay close to the upstream kernel, pushing their patches upline wherever possible and not being afraid to revv the whole kernel in the lifetime of a 'stable' release. But when it comes down to big patchsets like Xen that they really want to ship but that neither Xen nor Linus appear interested in seeing merged they don't really have much of a choice. Longterm, just as an interested bystander, I'd suspect Xen to disappear from Fedora once KVM gets stable enough to totally replace it for the non-enterprise workloads Fedora is aimed at.

Re:Slashdotted already!

[stoomart]

Check here. [redhat.com]

Fedora use a hacked kernel?

[jd]

Ummm.... The short answer is yes. The long answer is that there are a gigantic number of patches, but they seem to miss out on a lot of the key patches out there and I'm not impressed with some of the stuff they've included. In order to do a lot of useful things, I've got to roll my own kernel, but because the patchset provided with FC is so convoluted, I can't use any of their patches. Which means I lose all the functionality that actually is provided and actually is useful.

What I'd like is for Red Hat to build better diffs, develop some alternative scheme for merging in new code, or get as many of their patches rolled into the -mm tree as possible, then use the -mm tree exclusively. It may not be a true vanilla kernel, but at least -mm is openly maintained, heavily used, popular and actively folded into the mainstream.

One nice thing about Fedora7 is the buildtools

[crush]

The complete build process is FL/OSS!

The tool for taking all the RPM packages and composing them into an installation tree is pungi [fedoraproject.org]. It's FL/OSS.

The tool for taking source from CVS and turning it into packages is Koji [fedoraproject.org] and it's completely FL/OSS too

The tool for producing updated packages is bodhi [fedoraproject.org] and is FL/OSS

Be happy. The Fedora Project yet again has made major contributions to FL/OSS which can be enjoyed and improved by everyone. It means that Fedora is completely independent of Red Hat (apart from Red Hat's very generous donation of hardware and developers) and that anyone that wants to can easily produce a specialised "spin" of Fedora suited exactly to their own needs. That's one of the main innovations that Fedora is pursuing with the above: instead of being stuck dependent on the choices of a distributor you can benefit from the patched sources, even their packaging, yet diverge when needed. This should be the goal that every distribution follows, and the only thing that is similar in terms of flexibility is Gentoo, but that IMHO fails to provide an easy path for those that are happy with a distributor making the decisions for them.

I'll freely admit to being a Fedora and Red Hat fan, but I hope that the significance of the release of these build tools is not overlooked by people using other distributions.

Re:What's the story with Extras?

[spevack]

Core and Extras have been merged into a single repository, so those names no longer exist. But what you are looking for DOES exist. It's all there in the "Everything" version of Fedora. That's an install tree that we provide at (for example):

http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux /releases/7/Everything/ [redhat.com]

Was already 404ed

[stoomart]

The release notes page was already hosed before this hit slashdot. Go here. [redhat.com]

Re:Anybody knows

[gdek]

Check out Red Hat Magazine:

http://www.redhatmagazine.com/2007/05/31/remixing- fedora-7/ [redhatmagazine.com]

Un-hacked kernels (Slackware)

[spaceyhackerlady]

So it's not that Redhat/SuSe/Ubuntu "know better", it's that the distributions work on kernel stability a lot more than the kernel devs. This is NOT anything new. The days of thinking you should go get "the latest kernel from Linus" and just expect everything to work properly went away years ago. Did I used to go re-compile my kernel from the vanilla source? Sure. Do I do it anymore? Hell no, and without a good reason to I never will. If you want that sort of thing, pick a distribution that values the vanilla kernel. Otherwise stop griping.

Slackware (my favourite distro) uses utterly vanilla kernels. Want a new one? Download it from kernel.org, untar it, build it. No sweat.

I consider building a custom kernel to be an integral part of an installation: all the distro kernel does is bootstrap building the production one. All my systems run kernels that are a precise match to the hardware and my needs, with no superfluous junk. No superfluous security holes, either.

...laura

Re:One nice thing about Fedora7 is the buildtools

[crush]

Even if you're not interested in using Koji locally for your own purposes and just want to find out what the status of your favorite package is you can look at it on Fedora's Koji server. Click a package name on the left and you can see what patches have been applied according to the cnangelog and whether the package is being rebuilt, or waiting on review or whatever. It's superb.

Re:Does it use a "hacked" kernel?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it's the *job* of a distro to make choices about what to include, and to adapt what they include to meet that distro's particular goals. That's not an ego trip.

That said, for the most part Fedora's mantra is "upstream". If you read the devel list, they frequently push away patches to the kernel that are not upstream.

Re:One nice thing about Fedora7 is the buildtools

[crush]

That would be here [fedoraproject.org]

Re:ISO images? not so much

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, mirrors aren't just symlinks!? They don't automagically update themselves? Imagine that.

Sorry CD Users

[Kainaw]

Fedora 7 is released with a DVD iso. If you need the set of CD isos, sorry. You'll have to wait to see if anyone is nice enough to create them in the future. You can try to use the rescue cd and a network install, but again, you'll have to wait until the bandwidth opens up enough for that. So, either upgrade your computer or stick with FC6.

Re:Yay! Fedora 5 is now...

[L-s-L69]

With respect you're an idiot. Fedora is NOT designed or distributed as a stable plateform with long term support, if you want that from a Redhat type install use Enterprise or CentOs. Fedora *is* however the cutting edge of Redhat development and I use it across all my (personal) servers and PCs/Laptops ungrading when nessesary.

Re:Sorry CD Users

[Anonymous Coward]

They have Live CD's now. You can find them at the bottom of the Fedora 7 torrents on their torrent page

Re:Sorry CD Users

[Waffle Iron]

1. Download the DVD ISO into one computer on your LAN
2. Mount the ISO filesystem image on a loop device
3. Turn on an FTP daemon to serve up the DVD files
4. Tell the 17 computers to do an FTP-based install over your lan

I've done this. It's faster than a DVD or CD install because you don't have to deal with an optical drive's abysmal seek latency. And no swapping CDs for hours.

Re:WOW Xorg 7.3?!

[xenocide2]

Allow me to introduce you to two very fun programs, "which" and "find". Which prints out where a program in your path is. This is useful when you install a new version and cant seem to run it, or for Paul to tell his coworker where he installed something. Find will search a specified tree for the properties you want, like perhaps the name of the file and executable permission.

Re:One nice thing about Fedora7 is the buildtools

[xenocide2]

Debian and Ubuntu use buildd [debian.org]. It's not as pretty as the 5 seconds I spent looking at Fedora's tool, but it gets the job done. Ubuntu uses a tool written and run by Canonical, the largest and most integrated sponsor of Ubuntu. It's also closed source, with strange promises that it will be open eventually. That said, launchpad does a hell of a lot more than monitor buildd servers. It's also a far better distro bugtracker than bugzilla is, a project planning tool etc.

Re:Bizarre Install Failure on my Thinkpad

[armanox]

That's not actually FC7's fault. That's a "feature" of kernel 2.6.21 - libata now asigns all ide drives to /dev/sd*. I suppose that you might be able to use udev to solve that issue though.