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Linux

Fedora 19 Released 202

hypnosec writes "The Fedora Project has officially announced the release of Fedora 19 'Schrödinger's Cat' today. New features for the open source distribution include the developer's assistant, which accelerates development efforts by providing templates, samples and toolchains for a different languages; OpenShift Origin, which allows easy building of Platform-as-a-Service infrastructure; node.js; Ruby 2.0.0; MariaDB; Checkpoint & Restore, which allows users to checkpoint and restore processes; and OpenLMI, which makes remote management of machines simpler. The distribution also packs GNOME 3.8, KDE Plasma Workspace 4.10 and MATE Desktop 1.6."
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Fedora 19 Released

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  • by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Tuesday July 02, 2013 @04:13PM (#44170393)

    Damn. Now I'll never know if my system is up or down w/o opening the case.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    I'm not going to click the link; I don't want to risk killing it.
    I'm better off not knowing.

  • >> Schrödinger's Cat

    Thus testing the character parsing and storage of half the blog sites left on the Internet. (With an apostrophe and an umlaut.)

    • by amorsen ( 7485 )

      More importantly, testing the character parsing and handling of both the installer and multiple other parts of the distribution. Whether it was a good idea to pick a challenging name is probably dependent on the observer.

  • by Jim Hall ( 2985 ) on Tuesday July 02, 2013 @04:29PM (#44170519) Homepage

    I've said it before, and I'll said it again: Fedora's GNOME has really lost me. I've been a longtime Fedora user, and I still like the distro, but I'm giving GNOME a pass in Fedora 19 and going back to Xfce.

    Fedora 19 includes GNOME 3.8 as the graphical desktop, and I've previously noted that GNOME 3 has poor usability. [blogspot.com] The GNOME developers have continued this poor usability trend in GNOME 3, which fails to meet two of the four themes of successful usability: Consistency and Menus. Where are the menus? There is no "File" menu that allows me to do operations on files. There is no "Help" menu that I can use when I get stuck. The updated file manager (Nautilus) doesn't have a menu, but other programs in GNOME 3 do (Gedit has menus, and is part of GNOME). Also: when you maximize a Nautilus window, either to the full screen or to half of the screen, the title bar disappears. I don't understand why. The programs do not act consistently.

    I will give a positive comment that the updated GNOME file manager now makes it easier to connect to a remote server. This used to be an obvious action under the "File" menu, but in GNOME 3 it is an action directly inside the navigation area. So that's a step in the right direction.

    The updated GNOME desktop environment seems to avoid familiar "desktop" conventions, tending towards a "tablet-like" interface. This further removes the obviousness of the new desktop, and it's familiarity.

    So it's not really that "Fedora has lost me," but the GNOME desktop. I consider Xfce to have much better usability than GNOME. While I haven't done a formal usability study of Xfce, my heuristic usability evaluation is that Xfce meets all four of the key themes: Familiarity, Consistency, Menus, and Obviousness. The menus are there, and everything is consistent. The default Xfce uses a theme that is familiar to most users, and actions are obvious. Sure, a few areas still need some polish (like the Applications menu, and some icons) but Xfce already seems better than GNOME.

    Additionally, if you are technically capable, you can dramatically modify the appearance of Xfce to make it look and act according to your preferences. At home, I've modified my Xfce desktop to something similar to Google's Chromebook (see example [blogspot.com] and instructions [blogspot.com]). It works really well and I find it is even easier to use than the default Xfce desktop.

    • Based on your post, it sounds like Xfce doesn't fit your needs either. Otherwise, why try and make it look and act like a Chromebook?

    • by sconeu ( 64226 )

      This release has the foot (they still use a foot, right?) bringing up a screenful of tiled shit that behaves like a touchscreen.

    • Well, File menus frequently don't let you do operations on files either. *Firefox* has a 'File' menu. Which has "Work Offline" and "Quit" on it. How are those actions on Files, exactly?

      The reason for the inconsistencies you identify is very simple and I know for a fact it has been explained to you *multiple* times before, so I conclude that you are acting in bad faith by posting as if you had no idea about it, but for the sake of the rest of the audience, I'll explain it again: the GNOME applications are in

      • by Jim Hall ( 2985 )

        The reason for the inconsistencies you identify is very simple and I know for a fact it has been explained to you *multiple* times before, so I conclude that you are acting in bad faith by posting as if you had no idea about it

        No, but I can only comment on the state of things today.

        [...] for the sake of the rest of the audience, I'll explain it again: the GNOME applications are in the process of being revised to meet new design guidelines. This process is not complete yet; until it is, you'll see inconsist

        • by AdamWill ( 604569 ) on Tuesday July 02, 2013 @06:26PM (#44171321) Homepage

          "I don't understand why. The programs do not act consistently."

          (emphasis mine)

          You implied very clearly that you did not know why this was the case, and that it was some kind of intentional thing. You *do* know why it's the case, because it has previously been explained to you, and you know that it is not the intended state of affairs but merely an artifact of a long-term transition in design, yet you continue to criticize it as if it were the former rather than the latter.

    • by RedHackTea ( 2779623 ) on Tuesday July 02, 2013 @06:10PM (#44171205)
      Actually, Nautilus and the other GNOME applications listed do have a menu. At the top bar in the left corner next to the "Activities" is a little image of the currently focused application. If you right click on it, it brings up the normal menu that you're used to. It's not very intuitive at first... After using Fedora 19 (Beta) for the past few weeks now, I can tell you that GNOME 3.8 has fixed most (if not all) of the stability issues that I used to encounter in Fedora 18. It runs smoother and faster for me. However, the dreaded "tracker" program and the initial installer are still bitches. Fedora fixed the Add and Update Software applications, but now GNOME has broken the Printer application (if use it on a LAN, it will present you with an authorization popup repeatedly for every computer). But internally, I am happier with hostnamectl and SELinux now; Fedora has appeared to fix some of the annoying issues in Fedora 18 at least. Lastly, I suggest LXDE over Xfce :D
      • by Jim Hall ( 2985 )

        Actually, Nautilus and the other GNOME applications listed do have a menu. At the top bar in the left corner next to the "Activities" is a little image of the currently focused application. If you right click on it, it brings up the normal menu that you're used to. It's not very intuitive at first...

        That's an interesting UI decision. I would argue it fails the Obviousness criteria.

        Here's an example: I use a laptop, with a 22" desktop flat-panel monitor as my second display. For me, it works well to run Chro

        • I think there are a few upstream bugs about the problem of using the global menu with apps on secondary displays, it's recognized not to be a great experience at present.

    • by dbIII ( 701233 )

      and I've previously noted that GNOME 3 has poor usability

      While you and I may think gnome 3 sucks dogs balls some of the people using it are noting how happy their dog is :)

      The common desktop idea didn't catch on because some people are more productive with what others think is weird (eg. xmonad) or just like something that others view with revulsion on sight (Win8 Metro).

      Personally I like MATE better, but don't use it since it does weird stuff with VLC (can't see the drop down menus). I'd heard enlighten

    • I second your views on Xfce. I can put someone in front of it and they don't need UI training. Things just work as expected.
    • I think that's really more of a GNOME 3 complaint than a Fedora complaint. I've just spun up a Debian Wheezy install on my main system, since I'm fleeing Ubuntu (stuck with 10.04 LTS until the desktop updates stopped coming). I've been trying to like GNOME 3, but I'm about ready to shitcan it. I'm using the "classic" mode at the moment (I found that I flat-out hated the new, not-so-improved interface), but even in classic mode there's still a whole lot of dumbing-down that I find simply infuriating.

      Example:

  • I approve of the code name of this release
  • The endless Gnome 3 vs 2 discussions are all very well (I ditched Fedora because of it), but in the end let the voters decide:

    Apparently in 2010 Fedora was the 2nd most used distro (from http://www.pcworld.com/article/2021273/another-year-another-totally-different-top-10-linux-distros.html [pcworld.com]).

    In 2011 it was 3rd. In 2012 it was 4th.

    And looking at the latest Distrowatch page hit rankings (which is what that article was using):
    http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity [distrowatch.com],
    it now is 5th.

    • The endless Gnome 3 vs 2 discussions are all very well (I ditched Fedora because of it), but in the end let the voters decide:

      Out of interest, why ditch a distro because you don't like some of the defaults? Switching desktop environment is pretty trivial, there are plenty of others packaged for Fedora.

      And looking at the latest Distrowatch page hit rankings (which is what that article was using):
      http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity [distrowatch.com],
      it now is 5th.

      Dunno about anyone else, but I use certain pieces of software because they happen to do a good job for what I'm using them for, not because they are popular. I don't really see any merit in ranking distros by popularity. Also, Fedora is primarilly a bleeding-edge testing distro, so I wouldn't necessarilly expect it to be as popula

1 1 was a race-horse, 2 2 was 1 2. When 1 1 1 1 race, 2 2 1 1 2.

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