Fedora 9 (Sulphur) Released

BrianGKUAC writes "Fedora 9 has been released as of 10 AM Eastern Time this morning. Release notes can be found here. Some of the more interesting new features include a new package management system, which can be used as an alternative to pup and pirut, known as PackageKit. This release also includes GNOME 2.22 and/or KDE 4.0.3, and Firefox 3 beta 5. Overall, there are a lot of improvements worth looking at, and the Bittorrent seeds are already feeding the release fairly effectively."

So

[sveard]

What smell is that? :p

You forgot the most important feature...

[eck06]

- Uses seeding with openssl

PackageKit

[brejc8]

PackageKit is actually a just a tool which sits on top of yum and does not replace it. It does replace pup and pirut though.

See PackageKit site [packagekit.org] of the release notes [fedoraproject.org].

Re:PackageKit

[tobiasly]

PackageKit is actually a just a tool which sits on top of yum and does not replace it.

Depends on your definition of yum I guess. It does/can replace yum, the command-line tool, but does not replace the yum database. The wording is misleading though.

PackageKit does not replace yum

[Tester]

PackageKit is only a front-end over yum (or any other backend), it does not replace it.

Seed, damn you!

[bignetbuy]

download pegged at 892KBps. An hour to snatch the DVD ISO!

SEED, you bums! SEED!

Re:Seed, damn you!

[Dog-Cow]

Some Debian guy removed the seed code so Red Hat would be slower!

Re:

[Yenya]

Try http://ftp.linux.cz/pub/linux/fedora-releases/9/ [linux.cz] (especially if you are in europe). We still have some free bandwidth.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[LilGuy]

I'm actually downloading at a full 1.5 megabytes/sec. Seems the speed issues have disappeared.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Now why did I ...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is sure to be a stinker of a release...

Sorry couldn't resist...

*waits for -1 mod points*

Re:

[ajs318]

Sulphur itself, in its elemental state as flowers of sulphur, is actually odourless.

However, most sulphur compounds are very smelly indeed. Thioethanol (used in stink bombs) is reckoned to be the smelliest substance in the world.

Oh, and props to them for using the "old-fashioned" spelling!

Re:

[dotancohen]

The stinkiest stuff in the world is apparently some material called "what me?" developed by the US or the French in WWII to spray on captured German officers. The idea is that they would stink so bad that their troops would be demoralized. Of course, the French got it on themselves 1 time out of 3, so the substance was not widely used. Of course, I'm quoting from memory and too lazy to google, so I could be all mistaken. Verify before quoting this.

Re:

[cerelib]

Whether you are American or not, I hope you understand the historical context. British English is a way people used to speak in the United States. Therefore, it is not out of the question for an American to call British English "old-fashioned". Furthermore,

"IUPAC adopted the spelling 'sulfur' in 1990, as did the Royal Society of Chemistry Nomenclature Committee in 1992 and the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority for England and Wales recommended its use in 2000."

[wikipedia [wikipedia.org] from cited sources]. So saying that "sulfur" is wrong is a very close-minded provincial thing to say.

Re:

[LizardKing]

Actually, for the most part US English retains the older spellings, not British English. That said, dictionaries and the codification of languages was still a novelty until the mid-nineteenth century so the differences in spelling can be pretty arbitrary.

Konsole disimproving?

[BDaniels]

I'm a sysadmin and use KDE all day long, with Konsole as my terminal. I tried the preview release of Fedora 9 and found
that the new Konsole - has less features!

The buttons for quickly closing/opening a tab are gone. Right-clicking on tabs is gone. The ability to send input to all tabs
is completely gone, not even accessible through menus.

These are features I use every day while working on servers. KDE4 adds a lot of eyecandy (and a Vista-style 'start menu' - ick),
but why remove useful functionality?

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[icydog]

IIRC, KDE said that 4.1 will have feature parity with 3.5. 4.0 is still a work-in-progress. I do agree though, I use konsole all the time and it's rather unpleasant right now. 4.0 is also missing a bunch of other basic stuff, like dragging between the two panes (files and the folder tree) in Konqueror.

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[SlashdotOgre]

"I'm a sysadmin and use KDE all day long, with Konsole as my terminal. I tried the preview release of Fedora 9 and found
that the new Konsole - has less features!"

They must be going for the Gnome look...

All kidding aside, I'm very surprised they went with KDE4. I've been playing around with it on Gentoo for several months now, and I could understand making it an option, but to not provide KDE3 out of the box at all (http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f9/en_US/sn-Desktop.html#sn-KDE [fedoraproject.org]) is shocking. I thought even the KDE folks were recommending waiting until 4.1. Oh well, Fedora always likes the latest and greatest.

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[CastrTroy]

I'm surprised they didn't offer both as an option. Mandriva 2008.1 has KDE3 by default, and an optional KDE4 install. You can install both, and select which one you want from the login screen. It's way too early to force KDE4 on everyone. A lot of features are still missing, and it's still pretty unstable. For the Record Mandriva 2009, plans to be KDE4 only. Hopefully KDE4 will be more mature by then.

Re:

[dfgchgfxrjtdhgh.jjhv]

fedora is always bleeding edge. it's a testing ground for redhat. if you don't like that, go for a more stable distro.

Re:

[Peter H.S.]

All kidding aside, I'm very surprised they went with KDE4. I've been playing around with it on Gentoo for several months now, and I could understand making it an option, but to not provide KDE3 out of the box at all (http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f9/en_US/sn-Desktop.html#sn-KDE) is shocking. I thought even the KDE folks were recommending waiting until 4.1. Oh well, Fedora always likes the latest and greatest.

You got it the wrong way around, why should a distro like Fedora release make a release with KDE 3.5.x when KDE 4.0.3 is available. If one needs a stable KDE and OS, stay with Fedora 8. It will be supported for quite some time yet.

Some may think that Fedora moves too fast, but a lot of people really, really wants to work with the latest and most shiniest toys, even if they are somewhat less stable.

--
Regards

Re:

[value_added]

They must be going for the Gnome look...

The day is still young, but that gets my vote for Quote of the Day.

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[93 Escort Wagon]

I'm a sysadmin and use KDE all day long...

Oh, come on, we're supposed to believe THAT? If you were a REAL sysadmin, you'd use twm at most! And you wouldn't ADMIT to having X11 installed at all! You'd talk about how console mode lets you do everything faster, and how bloated X11 is compared to X10...

Re:

[MmmmAqua]

Damn, where is the "+1, Great Sig" mod option when you need it? A flower for your sweetie would also have been acceptable.

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[Peter H.S.]

These are features I use every day while working on servers. KDE4 adds a lot of eyecandy (and a Vista-style 'start menu' - ick),
but why remove useful functionality?

Lots of KDE 3.5 features hasn't made it into 4.0 KDE yet. KDE 4.0 is bleeding edge just like Fedora 9 is.

--
Regards

Re:Konsole disimproving?

[AtomicX]

Hello - as the maintainer of Konsole I'll explain what is going on. I'll address specific points first:

> The buttons for quickly closing/opening a tab are gone.

Konsole in KDE 4.0 is orientated more around keyboard shortcuts - which I think makes sense in a terminal. (Ctrl+Shift+N creates a new tab, Ctrl+Shift+W closes the current one, although I would recommend using the normal Ctrl+D combination to exit the shell)

Enough people complained (via bugs.kde.org) that I added the 'New Tab' button back in as an option in KDE 4.1. Plus there are Firefox-esqueue close buttons on tabs and support for re-arranging tabs by drag and drop or moving tabs between windows.

> The ability to send input to all tabs is completely gone

It didn't work at the time of the 4.0 release so it got cut. It has been reimplemented in KDE 4.1 with more flexibility in response to various RFE bug reports:

http://commit-digest.org/issues/2008-04-13/files/konsole-copy-input-to.png [commit-digest.org]

It is not the case the Konsole in KDE 4.0 has 'less features' in total. The menus may look far emptier but there is actually not very much missing. In fact it has quite a few additions, mostly fulfilling a large backlog of feature requests in bugs.kde.org, which I think are very useful:

* The terminal setup UI was replaced with one which is simpler but also more flexible
* Split-view mode
* Incremental search
* Key binding editor
* Improved performance, especially scrolling in large windows

In any case, if you have a complaint then please report it at http://bugs.kde.org/ [kde.org] - I am much more likely to read about it there than on Slashdot. Plus it also allows users to vote on the issues most important to them which is helpful from my perspective trying to allocate the limited spare time I have.

Finally, as someone who followed KDE development discussion quite closely over the last two years, it is inaccurate to say that KDE is attempting to "copy" Windows Vista or is in some large measure "inspired" by it. The menu for example was originally developed by OpenSuSE for KDE 3 - a long time before Vista was released, based on openSuSE's own research. Evidence of this can be found in some notably different design decisions compared with Vista's menu. For example, both the Gnome SLED menu and KDE's "Kickoff" have a search facility but it is located at the top of the menu rather than the button because users couldn't find it when it was placed at the bottom.

I think the view that KDE is trying to "clone" Windows, if not trolling, boils down to the use of black on the bar at the bottom of the screen. I am not involved with that part of KDE but I understand that the look of it is quite likely to change somewhat for KDE 4.1.

Re:

[chill]

Thank you for the clarifying post and your work on Konsole.

Re:

[value_added]

Improved performance, especially scrolling in large windows

Not sure what value of large you're using, but FWIW, my own opinion is that any terminal application that has a problem scrolling is a non-starter for anything non-trivial.

Re:Improved performance, especially scrolling

[UberLord]

One thing that was always snappy in GNOME was the scrolling in GNOME terminal. The main improvement when working with AA fonts (and most people are these days) iirc came from using OpenGL. As KDE4 has loads of OpenGL candy, is konsole going to take advantage of OpenGL to speed up its rendering?

Re:

[rdieter]

Many thanks for the response.
I am a little surprised that Fedora went with 4.0 as the only option.

Short version: it would be a PITA.

Longer version:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/KDE/KDE4FAQ [fedoraproject.org]

Re:

[Khaed]

I tried the preview release of Fedora 9 and found that the new Konsole - has less features!

They must have picked up some Gnome developers!

-- Khaed, who is still looking for the preferences in Gnome Screensaver.

Re:

[RiotingPacifist]

I felt KDE4.0 was very vista-like :( forunatly i have been told that by there are no objections to patching it to allow it to be kde3.5 like, personally id rather stick with kde3.5+compiz, but some of the backend changes are fairly impressive, so by the time somebody offers kde4 that looks like kde3 ill be happy to switch.

I think fedora switched to KDE4 early hopefully to give it enough users that people will start developing on its stong base to get it to feature parity with kde3.5 (in terms of little twea

Re:

[Niten]

KDE unlike the other environment, does not suck big time.

It is a sad fact of life on Slashdot, that thousands of moderators use up all their mod points without having the chance to righteously nail someone for a blatant "Troll" or "Flamebait" comment. How generous of you to sacrifice yourself for their benefit, so that at least a few of these moderators, when their points are finally spent, will be able to look back upon it all, breathe a deep sigh of satisfaction, and reflect, "I've used my time here wisely."

Beta XORG as well

[fyrie]

I can live with the beta Firefox, but the fact that they are using a beta XORG has put a kink in my plans to upgrade to F9 because NVidia doesn't have drivers ready. I'm anxiously awaiting this situation to be resolved. In the meantime I'll stick with F8 which is very stable at the moment.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Check here: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=9959d4806fa0925ec3b511c7d038fcb8&t=111460

and download the 173.08 with experimental support for xorg-server 1.4.99.901

Re:

[mauriatm]

Check here: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=9959d4806fa0925ec3b511c7d038fcb8&t=111460 [nvnews.net] and download the 173.08 with experimental support for xorg-server 1.4.99.901

Sorry but those have been available for a month now and for the most part they don't do much. If you follow those instructions you'll just get a Nvidia 2D driver. The Livna packagers have not pushed the Nvidia driver out of the development repository also.

Basically Nvidia Accelerated 3D will have to wait (compiz,etc.).

Re:Beta XORG as well

[tuffy]

Beta NVidia drivers are available [freshrpms.net] for the beta x.org server. There's also the Nouveau drivers, which might be good enough for 2D performance.

Re:

[IBBoard]

Apparently it is possible, you just need to downgrade XOrg-server [fedoraforum.org] and downgrade mesa-libGL [fedoraforum.org] for now. Seems a bit of a shame when "new XOrg" is one of the features, but I've set the DVD downloading at work overnight tonight, so I'll see if it downloaded in the morning and then take the dive soon :) IIRC there was a similar situation with fgrlx drivers and AIGLX at one point where the only way to fix gtk-window-decorator in Compiz was with the F7 version of XOrg.

ATi seem to have been releasing drivers mid-mont

Anyone test out the Kernel Based Mode Setting yet?

[BrookHarty]

This was the feature I was waiting for, was hoping to hear more about it when Fedora 9 was released.

The article (or snippit) says Fedora 9 has kernel based mode setting..

http://www.osnews.com/story/19661/A_Preview_of_Kernel-Based_Mode-Setting [osnews.com]

Anyone test it yet?

Comes with OpenJDK and Netbeans too

[njcoder]

Fedora 9 is also one of the first linux distributions (along with Ubuntu) to include OpenJDK. Fedora also includes Netbeans.

They moved from IcedTea, which was based on the upcoming java7 to the stable java6 release. Looks like some of the stuff in IncedTea made it into OpenJDK 6.

Re:

[njcoder]

It comes with Emacs and VI too. Who really cares about another editor (NetBeans).

People that like things like integrated debugers and profiles, to name a couple of benefits. There's a big difference between an IDE and an editor.

Re:

[jrumney]

I don't know about vi, but Emacs has come with debugger integration since 1988.

Will not install on Samsung hard disks

[kriston]

Fedora 9 will not install on certain Samsung hard disks.

If your hard disk has a "/" character in its model name as reported through the ATA interface then Anaconda will fail. The Python error message reads like "ends with '/' and is not just '/'" and the kernel halts.

I have a very standard desktop Dell Optiplex that has one of these hard disks, model number "SAMSUNG HD080HJ/P".

The "/" character kills the installation.

So disappointing yet so simple to have fixed before release.

Re:

[Peter H.S.]

The "/" character kills the installation.

So disappointing yet so simple to have fixed before release.

Yeah, too bad no one with a affected Samsung HDD bothered to try one of the release candidates and file a bug report.

--
Regards

Re:

[kriston]

I actually did test them.

Something changed or regressed on the way to the final release.

Someone said "I thought we fixed that" on IRC when I asked about it.

Re:

[pmgst17]

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=442457 [redhat.com]

As for the status of the fix, I don't know.

All My Samsung drives are dead

[FranTaylor]

Sorry, can't help you. I only buy real drives now.

Who wrote this?

[Mr_Icon]

"Some of the more interesting new features include a new package management system, which can be used as an alternative to yum, known as PackageKit."

...and Linux kernel was replaced by Gnome.

Firefox 3 BETA ?

[Superken7]

Why is it so common nowadays for linux distributions to include *BETA* software (as complex as a browser can be) in their releases?
Sure, there can be some heavily tested and simple programs left as beta, but firefox? The web browser is a heavily used and substantial tool these days..

Firefox 3 Beta 5 takes my CPU usage to 100% easily, while firefox 2.x does not.

is it so hard to stick with stable, tested software ? bleeding edge is not always better.

Not to speak of KDE 4.0 :)

Re:

[Zontar The Mindless]

There's something stopping you from downloading FF2 and untarring it into your ~/bin, if that's what you prefer to use?

Re:

[Superken7]

Of course not, and that is exactly why it should be the other way around ;-) providing the stable product, while you can still try out the BETA.

Re:

[xenocide2]

Well, judging by the comments this is how Fedora rolls. The bug you state is easily the most duplicated one in Ubuntu 8.04. I was curious if Fedora fixed that before release. From your original post I may presume they did not?

Re:

[Peter H.S.]

Why is it so common nowadays for linux distributions to include *BETA* software (as complex as a browser can be) in their releases?
Sure, there can be some heavily tested and simple programs left as beta, but firefox? The web browser is a heavily used and substantial tool these days..

Nowadays? Linux distros have always (since RH 5.0 at least;-) ) included beta-quality software simply because their audience demanded it. Some distros are of course more bleeding edge/conservative than others.

The newest Fedora release are for people who wants the latest software available. If one wants a more stable Fedora release, get the previous release like Fedora 8; it has KDE 3.5.x, FF 2, etc.

That a distro like Fedora includes Firefox 3 Beta is also mean extra beta testers so perhaps a bug or two get

Re:

[Khaed]

Yeah, isn't Debian about the only distro that makes a release using only thoroughly "stable" code?

Re:

[Black Art]

Why is it so common nowadays for linux distributions to include *BETA* software (as complex as a browser can be) in their releases?
Sure, there can be some heavily tested and simple programs left as beta, but firefox? The web browser is a heavily used and substantial tool these days..

What part of Redhat do you not understand?

Redhat has always shipped beta code in their distros. You don't remember the time they shipped a beta version of GCC and pissed off much of the Gnu people because of it?

Redhat 3 beta 5 has worked fairly well for me. I am not seeing the CPU spikes you are seeing either. Are you sure it is not one of the flash replacements causing the problem and not Mozilla?

Sulphur story

[BytePusher]

I thought the name Sulphur was kind of... lame, so I decided to see what the name was about. The truth is, it was the least bad of all the names voted upon.
 
The logic behind it is thus:
Some more suggestions

  "sulphur"
  "mayonaisse"

(like werewolves they react badly with silver)
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-December/msg01194.html [redhat.com]
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/Names [fedoraproject.org]
The other options were:
vote_count , name
                62 , Sulphur
                54 , Bathysphere
                43 , Chupacabra
                39 , Mayonnaise
                32 , Dragicorn
                29 , Woodwose
                23 , Tourette
                13 , Asperger
                13 , Barmanou
                10 , Chingachgook
                  6 , Kingsport Town
                  5 , Marfan

https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-January/msg00012.html

Re:

[knarfling]

I, for one, am really, really glad they didn't choose a couple of those names.

"Hey Asperger!! When was the last time you took a look at Chingachgook?"

"I can't have Chingachgook at my place. The walls are thin, and my Mom might hear."

Release schedules

[jensend]

One thing which the Ubuntu and Fedora releases show is that having regularly scheduled releases does not always work out for the best. Both have shipped with a primary browser still in beta (FF3 is a big leap ahead, but it still has some issues to be shaken out), and Ubuntu will be doing long-term support for an outdated GCC version which misses out on a lot of improvements while Fedora uses a brand new .0 compiler. Seems like both projects might have had better releases a month or so later.

Re:

[esocid]

It still encourages a good rolling release of new packages rather than letting things stagnate. Not saying newer is always better, but things will be fixed within a few weeks and regular package releases to solve any bugs, as well as support for newer technology. This is coming from someone partial to fedora, since I've used it since core 4, and I've never really had an issue with anything, with the exception of getting my wireless card on my laptop to work, but everyone knows what a bitch that is to solve.

Re:Release schedules

[Black Art]

One thing which the Ubuntu and Fedora releases show is that having regularly scheduled releases does not always work out for the best. Both have shipped with a primary browser still in beta (FF3 is a big leap ahead, but it still has some issues to be shaken out), and Ubuntu will be doing long-term support for an outdated GCC version which misses out on a lot of improvements while Fedora uses a brand new .0 compiler. Seems like both projects might have had better releases a month or so later.

No matter what you do, some major component is not ready. If it is not KDE, it is Gnome or xorg or Apache or Firefox or whatever.

There are a bunch of components in this release that were ready in time. Perl 5.10.0 is one that will make a difference. (Especially if your code uses regular expressions heavily.) There is also a new code base for TeTex. A new version of OCAML. Many things have been upgraded here, not just the unstable bits.

Every release has this problem, not just Fedora 9.

And the alternative is?

[FranTaylor]

Well, the alternative is to make everyone march to some sort of schedule, which not even Microsoft can do.

The idea of Fedora is to push things along. If you are writing software or need the new features, yay!

If you are more happy with stability, CentOS is what you are looking for. Same stuff, but older and more stable.

I just

[esocid]

installed fedora 8 a few weeks ago. guess i'll have to recompile my kernel if it's a new one, not sure since I haven't checked if it is 2.6.24 or not. i guess it's a good thing i'll most likely forget to do it for another month and wait for some new packages to appear.

Recompile kernel?!?

[FranTaylor]

I haven't had to recompile a kernel in years! What is your problem?

Does YouTube work?

[rrohbeck]

Remember, YouTube no workee, wifey not happy.
Or something like that.

Re:

[Brebs]

Yes, YouTube works. With SELinux on.

Re:Beta software in a production release?

[wizardforce]

Firefox 3 is set to be released in June, the next Fedora release will be much later, the same decision was made with Ubuntu Hardy which is a LTS release so it would make some sense to have the latest browser version as it's not too far from the actual release date for FF3. but assuming you don't like FF3, there is nothing stopping you from installing FF2 instead, your FF profile works fine on both anyway.

Re:

[CastrTroy]

Why not error on the side of stability then, and ship Firefox 2. For everyone who really needs to have Firefox 3, they are free to install it themselves.

Re:

[RiotingPacifist]

Because FF3b5 is much more stable than FF2. plus as somebody else pointed out its not a production OS.

Re:

[Quattro Vezina]

No, FC9 Beta was not a production OS.

FC9 final is a production OS.

Production OS != Enterprise OS.

Re:

[dotancohen]

Why not error on the side of stability then, and ship Firefox 2. For everyone who really needs to have Firefox 3, they are free to install it themselves.

Because then they'd have to support it. In the case of LTS Ubuntu, that's 3 years, and Mozilla will not be supporting Fx2 for the next 3 years. Now was a really bad time to release an LTS, or at least, have Firefox as the included browser in an LTS. For similar reasons regarding KDE[3|4] Kubuntu 8.04 is not LTS.

Re:

[CastrTroy]

But currently Firefox 3 is still in Beta, and now they will have to support that. Also, who's to say that Firefox 2 won't be supported in 3 years. Firefox 1.5 is still being supported. For that matter, who's to say that Mozilla will even be supporting Firefox 3 in 3 years?

Re:

[jensend]

Mozilla stopped supporting Firefox 1.5 [mozilla.org] in May 2007- 7 months after 2.0 was released. I'd imagine support for the 2.0 branch may be a bit longer than that but it certainly wouldn't be more than a year. FF3 may not be supported in 3 years but by the time it isn't getting security updates from Mozilla Hardy Heron will be close to EOL anyway.

Re:

[dotancohen]

But currently Firefox 3 is still in Beta, and now they will have to support that. Also, who's to say that Firefox 2 won't be supported in 3 years. Firefox 1.5 is still being supported. For that matter, who's to say that Mozilla will even be supporting Firefox 3 in 3 years?

Betas getting upgraded to release versions is a security issue, thus a mandatory upgrade. Canonical will not have to support the beta Firefox any more than telling the customer to upgrade to the latest secure version and then dealing with whatever issue remains.

Re:

[mweather]

Disable the compatibility check in FF3. It'll make most extensions work. The only one I use that doesn't is del.icio.us, which has a beta for FF3 that works like a charm.

Re:

[init100]

the same decision was made with Ubuntu Hardy which is a LTS release

And if Red Hat follows their established pattern, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 will be based on Fedora 9.

Re:

[MSG]

While no plans have been announced, I've heard that basing EL 6 on Fedora 9 or even 10 is unlikely. Look for EL 6 to be based on Fedora 11 or 12.

It looks EL 5 will be enjoying a very long lifetime as the platform of choice for EL shops. I'm happy with that.

Re:

[shentino]

Firefox...Sulphur... ...Yup, this release is going to bomb

Re:Beta software in a production release?

[ettlz]

Funny thing though, it never crashes.

You should tinker with the kernel features more. ;)

Re:Marketing 101

[creepynut]

"AssTard", you make an excellent point! Thank you for your input!

Re:

[TBerben]

Don't you mean 'output'?

Re:Hope my issues with Fedora are solved

[Otter]

I have the same printer (as you say, it's touted for having good Linux support) and followed the instructions in a Gentoo forum thread to ignore the driver CD and just use CUPS. That worked perfectly, FWIW. (Of course, getting it supported by my Mac took maybe 5 seconds, but so it goes...)

Re:

[X0563511]

Your Mac uses CUPS. Pop open your Mac and go to http://localhost:631/ [localhost] and you will see.

Not Fedora's Fault

[FranTaylor]

It is not Fedora's fault that Samsung has such crappy driver support.

You never even mentioned if you tried another distribution. Did you? Did you determine whether it's a Fedora issue or a CUPS issue? Did you file bug reports?

Anyone who complains about Linux problems but does not fill out bug reports is just an asshat as far as I am concerned. You are willing to leech from the efforts of others but you are not willing to make a contribution when the opportunity is right in front of you. Blah.

This particular printer was also advertised as having OSX driver support, but the driver is not available in the US unless you lie to their web site and tell them you are from Australia. Tell Samsung to get off their butts and make sure their printers work right in Linux AND OSX.

Re:

[init100]

Anyone who complains about Linux problems but does not fill out bug reports is just an asshat as far as I am concerned. You are willing to leech from the efforts of others but you are not willing to make a contribution when the opportunity is right in front of you. Blah.

Especially since writing a bug report isn't exactly hard. It does not involve coding, just describing in plain text what hardware you have, what you did and what happened (and possibly how you expected it to work).

Of course, Joe Average may be too lazy to do even that, and instead ventures onto some forum to bitch and moan about how much the distro, or Linux, sucks.

Re:

[Jay L]

Anyone who complains about Linux problems but does not fill out bug reports is just an asshat as far as I am concerned

Clearly, you have never actually tried practicing what you preach.

Last summer, I decided to start being a Proper Open Source Netizen. Whenever I ran into a problem with open source code, I'd go file a proper bug report, including a fail case whenever possible. Unfortunately, it turns out that there's an infinite regression there; in order to properly troubleshoot a bug in one package, you'

Re:

[mrbanzai]

So what you're saying is that this OS is essentially worthless for normal users. Correct? And I suppose that's fine. Let's just not pretend Joe Windows can install this and be on his way, like he would with something like Ubuntu or Xandros.

The same issue would have been encountered with Ubuntu and Xandros. The grandparent attempted to use the provided Samsung drivers, which do not function correctly in Linux. CUPS happens to have a functioning driver, but you have to configure it for a different printer model for it to work.

Fedora has functioned wonderfully as an OS for normal users, my grandparents included. There are always some usability issues when compared to Windows, but those are generally to be attributed to driver support mo

Re:

[dedazo]

I know it would be an issue with any distro. I know that there is hardware that works and hardware that doesn't. That's true even for Windows.

My comment was really aimed at the GP's assertion that anyone who doesn't fill out bug reports is an asshat, and is therefore leeching the valuable work of others. You either give away your valuable work and face the fact that not everyone is going to know or even want to file your bug reports, or you freaking charge for it. Either way, calling potential users "assh

Re:

[FranTaylor]

Who are you kidding? I have half a dozen random junk PCs, x86, x86_64, PPC, and Fedora installs on all of them without issue.

Anyone can fill out a bug report, even normal users. No programming skills are necessary.

Yes, yes, yes. And more too. Fedora is not for everyone and it makes no claim to that. I run Fedora on my laptop because it has better hardware support for that particular model than Ubuntu. I run it on my desktop because I need it for the software I work with. I run it on my server because

Re:

[Peter H.S.]

I will recount my I had trouble with the last Fedora Distro.
I bought myself a second hand Samsung ML-2510 printer that Samsung touted as "supported" under some Linux kernel version and later.

You are not the only person that seems to have trouble with the binary drivers, look here:
http://www.openprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=Samsung-ML-2510_parallel_with_Samsung_PPD [openprinting.org]
http://www.openprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=Samsung-ML-2510 [openprinting.org]

There seems to be some workaround though, so it should work.

Anyway, http://www.openprinting.org/ [openprinting.org] is a good place to start regarding printing support.

--
Regards

Re:Hope my issues with Fedora are solved

[techno-vampire]

Guys, it's [still] pathetic in the Linux world and progress is very very slow.

I see: you had trouble installing a printer that came with wrong instructions and an install CD that didn't work the way it should so Linux itself is bad. Has it occurred to you that the OEM may have given you the wrong instructions, or possibly instructions that only work for some other distro? Nah, it couldn't be...

Re:

[FranTaylor]

My wife is jamming away just fine on my Fedora laptop and she is no developer. She has been a Mac user forever and she just picked up my laptop and starting using it instantly. Now she has it all tricked out the way she likes it. She actually likes it better than her Mac except for the lack of Garage Band and iTunes.

Re:

[mauriatm]

Fedora 8 had PulseAudio as well. However Fedora 9 seemed to work much better. I have Flash, Sound and Realplayer (i.e. another mozilla plugin) working perfectly in Fedora 9 x86_64. Some notes here: Fedora 9 Guide [mjmwired.net].

Btw, the "core" has been dropped (FC9 -> F9).

Re:

[Black Art]

I have it working. It is a bit obtuse, but it works on x86_64.

You need to install the nsplugin code for both x86_64 and i386. You also need to make sure that the i386 version of pulseaudio gets installed. (yum install pulseaudio.i386)

Before you install flash, make sure /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins is created. (It will try and install files there but will not create the directory if it is missing.)

After all that is installed, install the flash-plugin. You also might want to install realplayer and helix at t

Re:FedoraSoft

[Peter H.S.]

It's been a long time since I've heard any excitement about Fedora. The Linux buzz has moved on while RedHat lives in it's own little world, no longer cutting edge and as stuffy as Microsoft...

Well, Mr. Frosty Piss, I really do think you have followed Fedora that closely; stuff like LVM, selinux tend to appear in Fedora before any other distro. This release has KDE 4.03, PackageKit, kernel modesetting, EXT4 (preview), OpenJDK 6 etc. If you don't find that stuff exciting hand over your geek card.

Me, a personally doesn't give a damn about "buzz", I want a nice solid but modern distro that is free as in free speech, and Fedora is just that.

Btw. next time you bad mouth Red Hat, which seems to be popular though lame attitude among certain people, just remember which Linux vendor who has contributed the most to make Linux what it is today, and how much Red Hat still contributes to core linux technology. And Red Hat has never, ever waivered in its support of Free, OSS software, and eg. released some proprietary closed source software as part of their distros,

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Regards

proprietary software in RHL

[Crispy Critters]

"Red Hat has never, ever waivered in its support of Free, OSS software, and eg. released some proprietary closed source software as part of their distros"

Er, Peter, would you like to see my copy of RHL 4.something with a proprietary X server on it? I believe it was something like MetroX. Netscape 4 was also available as part of RHL for a while (looks like at least 6 and 7).

Not saying this to attack RH; their distros are the only ones I ever use.

Re:

[Peter H.S.]

My choice of words weren't good since release can mean two things. What I meant was that Red Hat never has produced and released any closed or non-free software produced by Red Hat self on their distros. I believe that e.g. former SuSe had proprietary software made by them as part of their distro, AFAIK Xandros still does something similar. Several other Linux distroes tried to make money that way by producing proprietary software features other distros couldn't copy because of the licence or lack of source

Re:

[Micah]

Ah yes, RHL 4.1, the same distro that included the proprietary Red Baron web browser!

Re:

[Peter H.S.]

Well, my first "Troll" moderation.

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Regards

Re:

[hawaiian717]

You should be able to respin on other platforms. Running Fedora 8 on i386, Revisor gives me the option of building Fedora 6, 7, or 8, CentOS 5, or Rawhide media, for i386, x86_64, or PPC. It actually defaults to Fedora 7 i386.

Not that it actually works as sometime in the past month or so, something broke [redhat.com], but that's another issue entirely.