OSNews:

OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/18277/Proposed_Fedora_8_Features Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Fri, 11 Dec 2009 14:03:47 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com Lotsa nice new stuff http://osnews.com/thread?255988 http://osnews.com/thread?255988 The delta RPMs will be an awesome addition, considering the rate that Fedora receives updates. Although I'm no KDE fan, that KDE4 screenshot looks pretty slick as well. The only mentioned that concerns me a bit is the bootup changes. They mentioned a prettier bootup splash, like Ubuntu, but I sure hope I still have the option to hit F2 or Enter to see bootup messages, unlike Ubuntu. Ubuntu's bootup is either all graphical and tells you absolutely nothing, or if you turn it off in grub, the text boot is a mess and effectively tells you nothing. Tue, 17 Jul 2007 13:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (fsckit) Comments RE: Lotsa nice new stuff http://osnews.com/thread?255989 http://osnews.com/thread?255989 you can see messages using ubuntu's splash as well. alt f2 or some such. Tue, 17 Jul 2007 13:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (spikeb) Comments Err http://osnews.com/thread?255992 http://osnews.com/thread?255992 Err, that KDE4 shot... Is that a mockup? You know, it looks like a carbon copy of Mezzo [1], the desktop environment used by SymphonyOS.

And what really worries me is the following headline: "Bigboard Replacement for GNOME panel that uses online services via mugshot". They're not replacing the GNOME panel with that online mugshotmyspace nonsense, are they? That would be the stupidest move in desktop Linux's history.

I'm assuming that mughshotmyspace nonsense sidebar is not a replacement, but a possible addition. Let's hope so.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mezzo_(desktop_environment) Tue, 17 Jul 2007 13:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments Policykit http://osnews.com/thread?255994 http://osnews.com/thread?255994 How exactly does Policykit prevent xorg from being run as root when the description of the kit is:"PolicyKit provides a flexible framework for granting users access to privileged operations."?

Still about time xorg being run with the currently logged in user credentials and no more. Tue, 17 Jul 2007 13:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (netpython) Comments Laptops http://osnews.com/thread?255997 http://osnews.com/thread?255997 I recently saw an article here that talked about the tickless kernel. The author used the 2.6.21 kernel from F7, and then used the vanilla kernel 2.6.22. There were better results with regards to power consumption. The funny thing is, F7 still uses the 2.6.21 kernel, but rawhide, according to Distro Watch, has the 2.6.23 kernel. Did Fedora skip 2.6.22? If not, why has 2.6.22 not been migrated to F7? It seems that Fedora can improve laptop performance *right now*. Tue, 17 Jul 2007 14:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Excel Hearts Choi) Comments Pulseaudio http://osnews.com/thread?255999 http://osnews.com/thread?255999 Well that pulseaudio may be all find and dandy for people with multiple(Fedora) computers in their house...
but I would rather see them getting all the sound mixing
for single on-board(AC'97 and cousins) sound done right first.
ALSA is so buggy because many applications(ALL Java ones) use oss and cannot mix sound with alsa apps without a lot of work( for java applets maybe there is no solution).

Why not consider the new opensound OSS system(documented at www.opensound.com)? They are now opensound and I have replaced ALSA with it.
It solves some problems but doesn't integrate well
into Gnome or VMware system sounds. Ultimately there should be a kernel compiled to use it..but those are future plans.
I think this really should be watched as sound in linux is probably the worst I've seen in any unix system. Tue, 17 Jul 2007 14:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (OStourist) Comments RE: Policykit http://osnews.com/thread?256001 http://osnews.com/thread?256001 The article? doesn't say anything about running xorg as a non-privileged user. It says it allows running xorg applications that require root permissions without running them as root. To go off topic for a bit, it's been possible to run xorg as a regular user for a long time but it requires some sacrifices and a little work that apparently none of the Linux distros are interested in. OpenBSD runs and has run xorg as the _X11 user for quite some time. Tue, 17 Jul 2007 14:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (fsckit) Comments Fedora and Mandriva Side by Side http://osnews.com/thread?256002 http://osnews.com/thread?256002 Using the link above and this link [1], you can see a side by side comparison of the proposed changes for next release of Fedora and Mandriva.

[1] http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Releases/Mandriva/2008.0/What's_New Tue, 17 Jul 2007 14:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Excel Hearts Choi) Comments RE: Laptops http://osnews.com/thread?256005 http://osnews.com/thread?256005 a 2.6.22 update is currently in updates-testing for F7, feel free to test it. Tue, 17 Jul 2007 14:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Lovechild) Comments RE: Pulseaudio http://osnews.com/thread?256006 http://osnews.com/thread?256006

ALSA is so buggy because many applications(ALL Java ones) use oss and cannot mix sound with alsa apps without a lot of work( for java applets maybe there is no solution).

Installing ALSA-OSS compatibility (one package) and adding "aoss" as a command line prefix is not that much work

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 14:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (miscz) Comments RE: Pulseaudio http://osnews.com/thread?256020 http://osnews.com/thread?256020 Actually, Pulse helps out a lot with that as well. It's the best option I've found yet for single-system mixing. Tue, 17 Jul 2007 15:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (AdamW) Comments RE: Err http://osnews.com/thread?256021 http://osnews.com/thread?256021 The text says "Bigboard is basically a sidebar for linux that partially replaces some of the top and bottom panel's functionality". Note 'partial'. So, yeah, doesn't sound like they're dropping the regular panel.

As far as actual panel replacements go, I love gimmie. Tue, 17 Jul 2007 15:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (AdamW) Comments Boot http://osnews.com/thread?256041 http://osnews.com/thread?256041 Instead on thinking more on how to embellish the boot sequence, I would like to suggest that the devs concentrate more on the boot speed and significantly increase it, it's so important for many users (especially knowing that firewire gets broken after a suspend or hibernate resume....).

Also, I really like the actual boot graphics, the problem is that it has to load X twice (one for boot another for dektop). Tue, 17 Jul 2007 15:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (chocobanana) Comments RE[2]: Pulseaudio http://osnews.com/thread?256063 http://osnews.com/thread?256063 actually that depends on your audience..if you are
trying to reach the linux beginner - and stuff like
codecbuddy seem to suggest that Fedora is trying for this goal - then saying "well start your application manually using aoss" is something that WILL send beginners back to
windoze.
But that aside, please tell me how to use aoss on Java
applets run from inside your favorite browser..
Here's another show-stopper..please tell me how
to run vmware with guest OS XP and linux host and get full sound mixing.Aoss won't help at all.
It's quite embarrassing to me but maybe i am the only person who likes to seriously multitask when using Fedora as a Desktop. Tue, 17 Jul 2007 16:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (OStourist) Comments RE: Boot http://osnews.com/thread?256069 http://osnews.com/thread?256069 Already addressed under FCNewInit:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FCNewInit

Possible steps to enhance boot startup:
- Clean up all initscripts
- Clean up /etc/init.d/functions
- Replace /etc/rc
- Make gdm/prefdm an initscript with early login
- D-Bus support Tue, 17 Jul 2007 16:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Finalzone) Comments RE[2]: Policykit http://osnews.com/thread?256073 http://osnews.com/thread?256073 With little research, here is more details about PolicyKit is under the link provided by the article

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/FeaturePolicyKit

and

http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/hal/2007-June/008815.html

The answer is under TODO list of PolicyKit package. Note it depends of dbus notification which is currently developed :
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dbus/2007-June/007874.html Tue, 17 Jul 2007 16:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Finalzone) Comments Another disappointing version http://osnews.com/thread?256083 http://osnews.com/thread?256083 Don't fancy CodecBuddy if it's only going to link to the GStreamer commercial codecs instead of the free (of charge) codecs from Livna etc.

I really don't fancy NetworkManager as the default network configurator, having never actually got it to work properly (yeah cos I really want to switch from GigE to wifi just because you can pick up a signal!) It seems to me that its only useful for people who use DHCP, unencrypted wireless (assuming your wireless device is even supported) and only one network device.

If that BigBoard is going to be like XP/Vista's default menu, then I don't fancy that either. I prefer the list of applications in full rather than the "here are the programs you used recently or we think are useful" style.

I like the way they keep referring to Rhythmbox, jees does anyone outside of the Fedora-Dev team actually use that rubbish instead of XMMS or Amarok?

Presto/DeltaRPM will be great, my ISP will prefer it to me downloading 15Gb of RPM's like I just did for my local Fedora7 mirror.

The other features I couldn't care less about really, especially the virtualisation stuff - having looked at the useless GUI for Xen/QEMU under F7/RHEL5, I think I'll stick to VMWare Server.

I'm getting a bit fed-up with Fedora - FC5 had to be the last groundbreaking version, FC6 was dead iffy and F7 is just OK, nothing special. Tue, 17 Jul 2007 17:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (simo) Comments RE[3]: Policykit http://osnews.com/thread?256090 http://osnews.com/thread?256090 Thanks for the info.

Looks promising, i hope more distros will implement policykit although it seems more effective together with SELinux or grsec. Tue, 17 Jul 2007 17:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (netpython) Comments RE: Another disappointing version http://osnews.com/thread?256092 http://osnews.com/thread?256092 yes, i would venture that a majority of gnome users use rhythmbox instead of either of the above mentioned eyesores. Tue, 17 Jul 2007 17:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (spikeb) Comments RE: Err http://osnews.com/thread?256099 http://osnews.com/thread?256099

Err, that KDE4 shot... Is that a mockup? You know, it looks like a carbon copy of Mezzo [1], the desktop environment used by SymphonyOS.

I'm Clarence Pearson and that is my screenshot of my Kuartet Desktop Project ( http://kuartetdesktop.sourceforge.net ) running under KDE 3.5. You are correct in that it was heavily influenced by Mezzo. However I stopped working on it last year due to limitations in superkaramba ( lots of CPU usage), lack of time, and Plasma development ( I'm not a plasma developer but am eagerly awaiting the API documentation to continue implementing some of my desktop ideas ).

I don't know how somebody confused my project which has been in a long period of inactivity with the recent KDE4 development, but hey I'm not knocking the free publicity :-) I should probably contact the Fedora team and let them know about the mistake. Tue, 17 Jul 2007 17:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (chillmatic100) Comments RE[2]: Boot http://osnews.com/thread?256100 http://osnews.com/thread?256100 Possible steps to enhance boot startup:
The only way to make it fast is to execute actions in parallel.
Right now boot is serial and wastes 99% of cpu speed.
Linux boot time is insanely slow.Edited 2007-07-17 17:59 Tue, 17 Jul 2007 17:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (viton) Comments RE[3]: Boot http://osnews.com/thread?256109 http://osnews.com/thread?256109 Parallelization is mentioned on the link I posted but is not a magic bullet. Quoted from the link:

The other aspect of bootup speed is parallelization. Initially, this seems like a big win. However, testing of simple naive implementations show that, at least initially, parallelization isn't a huge benefit. Generally, this is because disk seek time and other I/O limitations can dominate. Moreover, a not insignificant portion of boot time is the parts handled by /etc/rc.sysinit; this is almost entirely linear in nature (need to load modules first, then check filesystems, then clean out /tmp, etc.)

Without proper handling of dependencies from services at boot startup, parallelization is useless. Tue, 17 Jul 2007 18:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Finalzone) Comments RE[2]: Another disappointing version http://osnews.com/thread?256130 http://osnews.com/thread?256130 yeah right, as most users really give a damn what audio players look like.

and hey i use gnome, i am a fedora user after all, and most ubuntu fanboys use amarok or audacious/xmms too.

next argument. Tue, 17 Jul 2007 20:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (simo) Comments RE[2]: Another disappointing version http://osnews.com/thread?256153 http://osnews.com/thread?256153 Recently, I've been playing with Exaile, and it is excellent.

Amarok has 500,000,000 features, but is somewhat cluttered and not the best for new users. Exaile is similar to Amarok in style and layout, but seems to be a bit cleaner.

Obligitory screenshot:
http://www.vivaolinux.com.br/imagens/artigos/comunidade/exaile.jpg Tue, 17 Jul 2007 22:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (SEJeff) Comments Features in all of the big 4 new distros http://osnews.com/thread?256155 http://osnews.com/thread?256155 For those who would like to compare them side by side, here is a decent set of links to read through.
http://linuxupdate.blogspot.com/2007/07/proposed-fedora-8-features.... Fedora
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/gutsy/ Ubuntu
http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Releases/Mandriva/2008.0/What's_New Mandriva
http://lwn.net/Articles/233614/ OpenSuse new features

Edit:
Changed opensuse as to not point to a pdf.Edited 2007-07-17 23:01 Tue, 17 Jul 2007 22:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (SEJeff) Comments RE: Pulseaudio http://osnews.com/thread?256199 http://osnews.com/thread?256199 "
ALSA is so buggy because many applications(ALL Java ones) use oss and cannot mix sound with alsa apps without a lot of work( for java applets maybe there is no solution).
"

Link? Google doesn't seem to return anything useful.
AFAIK, some products (Older skype, vmware) continue to use OSS simply because it's legacy code that semi-woks.
If Alsa has bugs, someone should report them (or better yet, help fix them) instead of using the almost-deprecated OSS.

"
Why not consider the new opensound OSS system
"

At least to me, ALSA is far less buggier then OSS, and unlike OSS supports mixing and multiple speaker setups.

- Gilboa Wed, 18 Jul 2007 06:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (gilboa) Comments RE: Another disappointing version http://osnews.com/thread?256201 http://osnews.com/thread?256201 "
Don't fancy CodecBuddy if it's only going to link to the GStreamer commercial codecs instead of the free (of charge) codecs from Livna etc.
"

Gee. Maybe this [1], this [2] and this [3] has something to do with it.
You know what, contact Fraunhofer [4] and get him to exempt Fedora (and Feodra-based distribution) from the need to pay licensing fees and Fedora will auto-install MP3-codecs by default, OK?

[1] http://www.mp3licensing.com/patents/
[2] http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070222-8910.html
[3] http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/02/26/HNmp3lawsuits_1.html
[4] http://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/fhg/iis/EN/bf/amm/index.jsp Wed, 18 Jul 2007 06:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (gilboa) Comments RE: Lotsa nice new stuff http://osnews.com/thread?256214 http://osnews.com/thread?256214 Remove "quiet" or change it into "verbose" in /boot/grub/menu.lst. Wed, 18 Jul 2007 09:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (zdzichu) Comments RE: Features in all of the big 4 new distros http://osnews.com/thread?256217 http://osnews.com/thread?256217 excellent post! thanks for the info

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 10:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (spikeb) Comments RE[2]: Pulseaudio http://osnews.com/thread?256228 http://osnews.com/thread?256228 http://www.jmonkeyengine.com/jmeforum/index.php?PHPSESSID=e67723be5...

That's one thread..the fact that there is no direct bug link seems to me to point to ALSA being simply dead on this issue. But it's not dead in the how-to forums.

You are right that someone SHOULD fix the problems of buggy apps but noone seems to be doing that.
In an integrated OS like FreeBSD or Mac OS X such issues are critical!

Maybe you should read www.opensound.com..
It is NOT the old OSS and does FULL sound mixing and multiple speakers. I use it now and it works better
in Fedora than ALSA for most things(but needs kernel integration for perfect setup) Wed, 18 Jul 2007 12:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (OStourist) Comments RE[3]: Another disappointing version http://osnews.com/thread?256235 http://osnews.com/thread?256235 Wow, you are a really boring person. Try backing your argument up with some facts instead of just trolling.

You don't know what 'most users' want. You just presume it's the same as you.Edited 2007-07-18 12:35 Wed, 18 Jul 2007 12:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (PJBonoVox) Comments RE[3]: Pulseaudio http://osnews.com/thread?256265 http://osnews.com/thread?256265 ... AFAICS the problem is java related and -not- ALSA related.

And as for OSS being better, well, too little, too late.
OSS should have been GPL'ed long, long ago.
Too much effort was spent in getting ALSA's support matrix look like it does now. I doubt that anyone will be willing to switch back to OSS.

- Gilboa Wed, 18 Jul 2007 17:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (gilboa) Comments Bigboard in FC8 http://osnews.com/thread?256382 http://osnews.com/thread?256382 cant say i like that idea think i will be making the switch if Fedora devs go with that idea,, Thu, 19 Jul 2007 03:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Sabz) Comments RE: Bigboard in FC8 http://osnews.com/thread?256488 http://osnews.com/thread?256488 I assume it is something you can turn off/on. Thu, 19 Jul 2007 15:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (justinc) Comments