Fedora 9 Preview Cleared for Launch

According to a post made yesterday to the Fedora announce mailing list, a Fedora 9 preview has been cleared for launch. "This is a Preview release, it is fairly close to what the final product will be like. This is the most critical release for the Fedora community to use and test and report bugs on. This is the last major public release before the final GOLD Fedora 9 release on May 13th (we hope). [...] Live images, KDE Live images, CDs and DVD options are available. http://torrent.fedoraproject.org has a section marked 'F9-Preview.'"

Re:Differences

[QuantumRiff]

the Apt/RPM is a huge difference. I used to love Fedora, and (still) run RHEL at the office on our servers. RHEL is fine, as I don't play and experement and try new things on it, but Fedora got to be a real pain in the ass with RPM Dependancies. I would find an RPM of something I wanted to install, it required me to first find and install another RPM, etc. Sometimes one of the dependant RPM's would not install, because I had a newer/older version for another program. Apt-get has worked flawlessly for me, and the HUGE pool of apps that just work has made it so I almost never have to search for .DEB files. I think the only change I had to do was add google's APT repository to Ubuntu, and it keeps picasa and google-earth up to date.

If the RPM system gets a huge makeover, I would probably play with Fedora again. It may have already been done, I switched to Ubuntu at 6.04.

Re:like it, but

[fyrie]

I do need to add that I do agree with the OP in the sense that it would be great if there was a way right out of the box to automatically go and download this type of stuff, maybe with a disclaimer saying that they aren't sanctioned as free that would be a CYA for Fedora.

'looks' good

[linuxbeta]

some screenshots over at The Coding Studio [thecodingstudio.com]

Re:like it, but

[thermian]

I'm sorry, but I highly doubt that a person "new to linux and uninformed of such things" would install linux.

Yes, and they never will until it becomes so simple that a person with little or no knowledge can do it.

This is what I'm getting at. Those people are in microsofts pocket, and will be until a fully media capable linux distro can be installed easily, without detailed knowledge.

People can, and do, install newer verions of windows who fall into this catagory. It's them, the ones who want to upgrade, that we should be attracting.

Release Candidate?

[IBBoard]

I'm a bit confused about the "final release" thing at the moment. I was going to wait for the RC ("22 April 2008 - Release Candidate 1" according to the schedule [fedoraproject.org]) and possibly install that, but now they're saying

This is the last major public release before the final GOLD Fedora 9 release on May 13th

which implies the Release Candidate might not be a 'release' as such, just a specially tagged nightly build.

Oh well, I guess at least it'll get the spit-and-polish it deserves. I just need to wait until May to install it now.