Fedora Core 4 Test 2 is now available on the FTP first mirror and over BitTorrent, more here.
Fedora Core 4 Test 2
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I wonder how they’ll break nVidia’s binary driver this time. Will I still have to edit .rc scripts and download extra packages to get NTFS and MP3 support?
they will never include ntfs or mp3, unless thier respective owners all the sudden gpl/ the underlaying technology. personally I could care less, it gives me something to do after I upgrade.
Most of the time Fedora doesn’t break nVidia’s binary driver. It is that they always use a newer kernel than nvidia supports. Or like the time when Fedora switched from XFree86 to X.org, Nvidia lagged in supporting x.org properly. For example, right now 2.6.11 and the 2.6.12-rc kernels hard to get working (compared to older kernels). But in the next dirver releasee. They will be properly supported.
Fedora will never add MP3 format support because of some legal issues (licences and stuff). There are articles all over about this topic. Just go to google and you will see. NTFS support is in the Kernel but I guess the Fedora Team doesn’t think it’s stable enough to turn it on. File a bug report or hang out on the fedora-devl list and maybe they will include NTFS.
Exactly, because we all know how important playing quake, listening to mp3’s, and dual booting windows is when running a Linux server. But of course windows supports ext3, mp3’s and nvidia cards right out of the box, right?
As I belong to the weird people running linux on ppc I’m really interested in how good the fedora ppc support is. So, if anyone here tried it already, is it worth looking forward to the next release, is fedora going to be an real option?
is it not fedora core goal to keep there software GPL complaint? That is why MP3 and NTFS is not included. Its not like there blocking it though. there both easily installed by a simple google search.
“A”
Most of the time Fedora doesn’t break nVidia’s binary driver.
Yeah. They only did it for FC1 and FC2. You had to screw around with the boot scripts on FC3 so that it would boot with the driver installed.
But of course windows supports ext3, mp3’s and nvidia cards right out of the box, right?
Windows XP supports everything you listed except ext3 right out of the box. You only have to download Explore2fs for that.
is it not fedora core goal to keep there software GPL complaint?
My goal is to use software that provides the functions I need. So I guess I’m giving Fedora a big giant *plonk*.
I just got installing/uninstalling test 1. Inkscape didn’t install, an rpm for mp3 support didn’t work, Eclipse didn’t work (I probably needed to put a symlink some where, I don’t know), and the new GNOME buggered up my menu and messed around with the window list. I wasn’t ready to fix all that, so I decided to go back to FC3 until FC4 is final. I’m a loyal FC user to the end.
Both Ubuntu and Fedora are completely “free” distros, and release often with cutting edge kernels. Thus both have the same problems with Nvidia drivers (user has to download and config, or it doesn’t work at all with kernel release).
People are singing the praises of Ubuntu, and dismissing the fact that you have to download Nvidia drivers, mp3s, etc (truthfully, not a big deal). But at the same time, Fedora gets ripped for it.
Well, I use fedora on some PCs at work (aside from my desktop…I use ubuntu on it).
I like both, but I guess for my desktop that I use all the time I prefer ubuntu’s look and feel out of the box. And at least when I was goofing around in the pre-release of Hoary I got lots of new stuff to test. I know I can change fedora around.
Anyway, I agree w/your comment about the bashing.
People are singing the praises of Ubuntu, and dismissing the fact that you have to download Nvidia drivers, mp3s, etc (truthfully, not a big deal). But at the same time, Fedora gets ripped for it.
Thanks for the info. You saved me some downloading time. I’ll extend my *plonk* to Ubuntu too.
(wow, are you SO paranoid?)
Don’t know what imaginary version of windows do you use, but NVidia cards are NOT supported by windows out of the box. Windows just dumps you in a ugly 640×480 screen with 16 colors.
NVidia supports NVidia cards, giving you the cd with the drivers. If you don’t have the cd you are busted.
[quote]
But of course windows supports ext3, mp3’s and nvidia cards right out of the box, right?
Windows XP supports everything you listed except ext3 right out of the box. You only have to download Explore2fs for that.
[/quote]
Last I checked, an XP install will not allow for 3D acceleration of NVIDIA cards, you *need* to download the drivers from Nvidia. I believe this is the precise same situation as Linux. Nvidia works fine using the nv driver. Only a bit more work required for 3D accelerated drivers.
So, add that to your download list. Plus a reboot, service packs and a hit by Love.Worm.VB before you get those service packs installed.
Stop attributing more to MS than they deserve.
Don’t know what imaginary version of windows do you use, but NVidia cards are NOT supported by windows out of the box. Windows just dumps you in a ugly 640×480 screen with 16 colors.
WinXP SP1 Pro auto-detected my nVidia card when I installed it over a year ago. It had 3D acceleration and everything working. Actially, I didn’t have to use any driver disk at all. Everythin on my PC was auto-detected. Worked for me!
“Don’t know what imaginary version of windows do you use, but NVidia cards are NOT supported by windows out of the box. Windows just dumps you in a ugly 640×480 screen with 16 colors.”
For my recent installations all the nvidia cards worked out of the box (GeForce 2, and several GeForce FX versions). But they did not include hardware acceleration (this is the case with FC and the open source x.org driver too).
However the last installation (with SP2) seemed to have 2d acceleration, since it feeled “smoother”.
However the last installation (with SP2) seemed to have 2d acceleration, since it feeled “smoother”.
You can just run dxdiag to find out. You don’t have to guess.
Looks like they removed sqlite.
Any idea why. It seemed like a great thing.
I just upgraded from Fedora Core 4 test 1 to test 2 using yum. It worked! SELinux complained quite a bit so I turned it off.
Exactly, because we all know how important playing quake, listening to mp3’s, and dual booting windows is when running a Linux server. But of course windows supports ext3, mp3’s and nvidia cards right out of the box, right?
Because people with any common sense actually use Fedora on a server? Really, if it aims to be a desktop, then it should support the things people want. SuSE is really good for that.
Stop griping…
SuSE 9.3 doesn’t support MP3 out of the box either in any application except RealPlayer.
Additionally, NTFS and MP3 are patent laden and as you are aware, the number of countries where software patents are enforced is only increasing.
Complain to your congressman, MP or other appropriate legal authority, not your distribution provider…
Looks like they removed sqlite.
Any idea why. It seemed like a great thing.
The developers had a real hard time trying to fit everything on 4 cds, and they were not willing to have a 5 cd distro. (thank God). So, they had to take some stuff out. This is probably one of the things that got cut.
“Looks like they removed sqlite.”
It’s not removed. You’ll find it’s become SQLite3. If you need backwards compatibility, you need to install the older SQLite-2. Fortunately, they install to different slots, so they can coexist.
I would give instructions, but I ran “emerge sqlite” (Gentoo Portage on Fedora – not for the feint of heart)
RE: MP3s and NTFS. You only need to add two lines to the yum repository configuration, and do a yum install to get those missing features. Should take no more than 5 minutes.
Granted, this isn’t the easiest thing to do for joe user.
GNOME menus are slightly borked right now, but remember they’re GNOME 2.10 menus, not 2.8.
From what I can discern, Fedora seems to be as good as Ubuntu, and I think most people avoid it because Gentoo Ricers told everyone that RPM package management is crap (which it certainly isn’t).
If you need a stable OpenOffice, I suggest you stick with FC3. FC4 includes the latest OpenOffice 2.0 release candidates.
Does Fedora Core 4 Test 2 ship with madwifi drivers? If so, what version?
apt is very good at continuing a download. yum isn’t (unless this has changed in the last few months). when you are using dialup with a 2 hour limit, this makes a big difference. if a yum update required anything bigger than 20mb, it had to be found and downloaded with wget into the package cache. apt just picks up where it got to and carries on.
also synaptic works better than any of the gui yum interfaces i tried.
fedora seems slightly more cutting edge than ubuntu.
i think these are exciting and fast moving times for the linux desktop, and both teams are making good contibutions.
However the last installation (with SP2) seemed to have 2d acceleration, since it feeled “smoother”.
You can just run dxdiag to find out. You don’t have to guess.
Apparently you do not have any clue what 2D acceleration is or means. 2D acceleration is not DirectX. Hardware blit is already used by GDI.
“From what I can discern, Fedora seems to be as good as Ubuntu, and I think most people avoid it because Gentoo Ricers told everyone that RPM package management is crap (which it certainly isn’t).”
The only thing I like about Ubuntu that is significantly different than Fedora is that Ubuntu is a 1 cd distro that relies on apt-get to install/update software that isn’t in the cd. Fedora is much less reliant on yum (the Redhat Update Agent-like system is really nice, but only works in RHEL, CentOS and the like). If Fedora allowed for a 1 cd boot/install and then was able to download from the net via yum all the remaining packages I would be smitten.
Then, I would also like an RHN-like, or Synaptic-like gui for yum by default. The terminal works, but a gui makes it easier and more user friendly. It is also nice that Synaptic(in Ubuntu) gives you a list of all the software I can install(and does very nice repository management for addding/removing) so that I don’t have to know the name of the program I want to install, which is the case of yum’s terminal interface.
…Windows most certainly supports nVidia cards right out of the box. It just doesn’t support *OPENGL* out of the box. In fact the default MS driver supports Direct3D acceleration (as well as DirectDraw 2D acceleration). A lot of games support D3D these days…
I recommend you install the nVidia driver from nVidia’s website. But if you don’t plan to run any OpenGL based games, then there is no need to install nVidia’s driver…
Ah ha, but there is a 1 CD net installation version:
http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/test/3.91/i…
and before anyone complains:
boot with “linux reiserfs”
Yes, most of the Yum guis do suck, and probably don’t work in FC4 with all the API changes. Yum is also heavy on memory usage. However, it does seem to work considerably better than apt-get.
“yum -C” gets around having to download metadata each time, but yes, Yum doesn’t resume downloads as yet.
The madwifi drivers need to be grabbed from the ATrpms repository at http://www.atrpms.net/
There is no way they removed sqlite
]# rpm -q –requires yum
/bin/bash
/bin/sh
/bin/sh
/bin/sh
/sbin/chkconfig
/sbin/service
/usr/bin/python
config(yum) = 2.3.2-1
coreutils
libxml2-python
python
python(abi) = 2.4
python-elementtree
python-sqlite
rpm >= 0:4.1.1
rpm-python
rpmlib(CompressedFileNames) <= 3.0.4-1
rpmlib(PayloadFilesHavePrefix) <= 4.0-1
urlgrabber
# rpm -q –requires python-sqlite
libc.so.6
libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.0)
libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.1.3)
libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.3)
libpthread.so.0
libsqlite3.so.0
python(abi) = 2.4
rpmlib(CompressedFileNames) <= 3.0.4-1
rpmlib(PayloadFilesHavePrefix) <= 4.0-1
Do a “yum remove sqlite” and see what you get, don’t hit NO.
I meant don’t hit YES to remove all.
From http://fedora.linux.duke.edu/wiki/Extras_2fFC4Status
“As of 2005-03-12, Fedora Core Development upgrades sqlite 2.8.16 and python-sqlite from Fedora Extras despite the change in SONAME/ABI/API. In case the v2 sqlite is still needed, it could be reintroduced as sqlite2 package.
Packages in FC4 development:
* python-sqlite
* sqlite
* python-numeric
* gnome-cpufreq-applet
“
Just my opinion I spose, but Fedora Core 1 has made for an excellent server for quite some time now.
Fedora most certainly can run from one cd, during installation check “custom” and remove everything you can “min install” and it will install only using one CD, you will be left with an init 3 install but yum no supports group installs so you could do a yum groupinstall gnome or yum groupinstall kde, xfce, whatever. The syntax might not be correct but other than that it works.
mp3 will not be included now, or ever. It has been this way for years, please… get over it. You still need to download nero, winamp, yahoo messenger, registry fix, ps tools, games, etc from windows so please.. stop acting like downloading a program from the net is some rocket science problem newbies will never be able to comprehend.
RPM hell is BS, I haven’t had an rpm problem (outside of a development releases) in years. Certainly since fedora and yum grab everything for me. If someone knows how rpm works before they package it (ie not made by a 13 y.o.) then it will work.
” I wonder what the Ubuntu fans think of Fedora”
Its a fine distro, has a great version of Gnome, has a good community, and is much stronger in many areas (SE Linux). Yet personally, there aren’t nearly enough FC3 rpms in the repos I find…
“Yet personally, there aren’t nearly enough FC3 rpms in the repos I find…”
What packages are you missing? I do alot of network/perl hacking and most of my never heard of scripts are in there. It’s pretty hard to imagine software people could want that isn’t on the 4 CD’s or included in one of the 10 repo’s. So again what packages are missing? perhaps you can submit one to extra’s or dag.
I have been making two folders in my $HOME for half a decade; Two folders called RPMS and SRC, those two folders hardly have a thing in them these days, a couple of themes in SRC and a yahoo client I like called gyachE, maybe a few other things here and there and thats it.
RPM is alot better these days tring a redhat desktop(fedora core3) was a great idea. I tried core4 and found it very buggy so I moved back to core3 and I will move to core4 when it goes stable and rpm/apt repo’s like dag, freshrpm and dries support the extra apps i need. So if the last redhat desktop you used didnt have yum or apt give it another go
http://stanton-finley.net/fedora_core_3_installation_notes.html is a nice setup solution for someone new or revisting fedora
Hey nice link (http://stanton-finley.net/fedora_core_3_installation_notes.html)
The chick is pretty hot too which can’t hurt with newbie geeks =)
Is it fixed in Test 2?
Seems to work fine with SCSI and Dell/Intel embedded graphics on a PowerEdge 1300. I’ve been using Core2 and Core 3 for a while as home desktops.
I’m always skeptical until the final release, however. Early Core 3 wasn’t terribly robust for me, if I recall. But, Core 3 Final has been great (once I installed mpg123).
> Is it fixed in Test 2?
I don’t think so:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=149137
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=151577
Either Adrian Likins is too busy or he is on a vacation ;-).
So far I didn’t get mp3 support working with gstreamer in FC4 Test/Rawhide. I tried recompiling the gstreamer-plugins-extras that I have installed for FC3 but while the compile and installation went all right gstreamer seems to take issue with libmad. Doe anybody know a way to get mp3 (and dvd playback for that matter) working in FC4 Test/Rawhide?
“Fedora most certainly can run from one cd, during installation check “custom” and remove everything you can “min install” and it will install only using one CD, you will be left with an init 3 install but yum no supports group installs so you could do a yum groupinstall gnome or yum groupinstall kde, xfce, whatever”
That is ugly. I want 1 cd (the boot.iso or cd1 image, whatever). I want to have it select all the packages I want for a complete desktop(as much as I can achieve from a Fedora 3 install now. Then I want to, instead of asking “Please insert disk 2” to be given the option (assuming network connection, configured nic, etc) to download and install the rpms over the internet. Then apply all available updates.
Why is this so hard to do? It seems like the easiest and most efficient way to operate. Fewer cd images need to be maintained and less wasteful in terms of CDs being burned. Plus, the install process ends with the most up-to-date desktop available.
I would also like the ‘add/remove packages’ app that has been in Redhat since atleast 7.3 (similar to the GUI for selecting packages in the install process) to be rpm/network aware and have listings of many/all applications categorized into the appropriate folder structure… So when I click games, there would be all the “game” rpms available from my yum repositories, all point to a rpm with a nice text description that I can click and download install… Also seems easy enough and it would be a VERY NICE gui for yum.
I am excited about the final release of FC4! I want to use it but am too chicken since I use my linux box to do my daily work using FC3.
People are always complaining about the missing MP3 RPM’s and why all the properietary applications like realplayer 10 are missing. Bah, this is all hot air. It takes two seconds to pull up a shell, and type yum install myApplication!
I use FC3 all day long to document psychology work, maintain a web server, and write to a mysql database while running RealPlayer 10, Firefox, Nautilus, Open Office 2.0 in the background. It works like a charm. Too much kavetching going on here. If you want a super easy to use newbie distro that costs money switch to Linspire!
” I’m just so tired of listening to all these sofa jockies critiquing stuff they know virtually nothing about.”
Just because I use linux does not mean I enjoying hacking C together. Just because I have a reasonable feature request from a company I have supported and software I have used for many years does not mean I am a ‘sofa jocky’ that knows virtually nothing.
I know what I am talking about to the level I am talking. I am not a coder. I do what I am good at, programming for linux is not one of those things. But a UI designer doesn’t need to know how the kernel works, or study gnome source code to see a flaw or lacking feature. That is what it is. Redhat has this great install/uninstall application since atleast version 7 that lets you install RPM files from cd. You use it when you install and post-install. Now, why is it so hard, in the development of yum interfaces, to merge an EXISTING application with yum so that you are installing from the network instead of from a cd. You show me where the impossibility is, genius.
It is a good idea. It is a logical idea. It is a practical idea. If I had the skills, I would have written when it was first blatantly obvious that Yum and add/remove applications(whatever the hell that app is actually called) should be merged together in 7.3.
All I am talking about here is equivalent to Synaptic for RPMs with a bit of a different layout. Your grumpiness is really uncalled for.
Just goes to show how bloated Fedora Core really is. Do the minimal install and you don’t even get Gnome? Why isn’t there a distro that comes on just one CD? Oh wait, Ubuntu.
http://www.ubuntu.com/
Just goes to show how bloated Fedora Core really is.
Just because Fedora Core includes more packageds in 4 CD that some some people assume it is bloated. Did you know Debian (on which Ubuntu came from) uses 12 CD for maximal installation? Does Ubuntu include KDE , development packages on a single CD? It is clear Fedora Core is aiming to be a general purpose OS.
Do the minimal install and you don’t even get Gnome?
Care to define “minimal install”? Obviously you didn’t know that you can browse a distro without using a desktop manager, did you?
Why isn’t there a distro that comes on just one CD? Oh wait, Ubuntu.
Linspire, Knoppix, Xandros to name a few. Please do more researchs instead of complaining.
….then FC4 must be a really good distro, I can’t wait to upgrade from FC3!
Seriously, all this article has been about so far is lack of MP3 support (plenty of distros have that issue, and it’s not hard to solve); that the NVidia driver is too old to work with the bleeding edge kernel in FC4; and the NTFS driver is too unstable to turn on by default.
Oh and why compare to Ubuntu? If you’re a Gnome fan, then Fedora is unbeatable, I tried Warty, and Gnome on there was a joke – more like FreeBSD. The Bluecurve work from RedHat is excellent – it standardises the GTK and QT apps to look the same.
Just because Fedora Core includes more packageds in 4 CD that some some people assume it is bloated. Did you know Debian (on which Ubuntu came from) uses 12 CD for maximal installation? Does Ubuntu include KDE , development packages on a single CD? It is clear Fedora Core is aiming to be a general purpose OS.
Pretty much my point. Even a “Personal Desktop” install puts 100’s of unneeded packages on the harddrive.
Care to define “minimal install”? Obviously you didn’t know that you can browse a distro without using a desktop manager, did you?
Custom.
WinXP SP1 Pro auto-detected my nVidia card when I installed it over a year ago
You have an old nVidia card then and you also did not get the current driver.
Seriously, if you have ever reinstalled a computer that did not come with a recue disk you will know that in most instances you need the video driver disk. If not you get the most ridiculous screen redraw speed.
and there will be more discussion about mp3, look here:
http://www.mp3licensing.com/help/developer.html
This is the site from Thomson (the mp3 patent holder) that should answer any questions that anyone has about the issues surrounding mp3. There is no surprise why Redhat does not include mp3 codecs.
Cant wait for the Final .. but what i dont get is the hype about Ubuntu? i never used it, nore do i intend to, makes me laff when someone says Fedore Core is Bloated, . if they wanna see bloat, look at some other distro’s .. i wont name, since i’ll be looked at flaming them
Pretty much my point. Even a “Personal Desktop” install puts 100’s of unneeded packages on the harddrive.
List?
Care to define “minimal install”? Obviously you didn’t know that you can browse a distro without using a desktop manager, did you?
Custom.
Example?
Of course it makes sense and is planned, and has been for along time, check the bugs/RFEs here:
http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/config-tools/redhat-config-packag…
I guess it’s just not on the top of the list for now.
I am running FC2 PPC, and have upgraded some of the packages to the development stuff at fedora.
It’s running fine for me, on my PB G4, including Audio (once I added some modules to load).
Not really played with the power saving, or wireless though.
Fedora sucks cause it doesn’t come on one CD. So I tell them it does and they say okay but gnome doesn’t come on one cd haha. It is obvious how excellent a distro fedora is when the worse these fanatics can come up with is no mp3 and i don’t know what a boot.iso is.
Thanks for the ubuto link though, i’ve never seen that before, especially in a fedora thread </sarcasm>
The problem is really that Fedora isn’t marketed enough – perhaps on purpose so as to not detract from Red Hat’s commercial offerings.
The complaints here have been nothing but a lack of understanding by their authors.
Anyone interested in starting a Fedora wiki for users?
If you like Fedora but prefer a single CD installation, try FoX at http://www.foxlinux.org
It’s basically a Fedora-based with KDE 3.4 as its main Desktop.
Maybe there are other 1-CD Fedora-based distro out there but this was the latest of such distro I tried out. Nice!
Ok, I gotta just ask one question? How cheap are Ubuntu users? Downloading a CD takes about an hour. CDRs cost a few pennies and DVDRs cost 50 cents. So why would it matter if something is 1 CD or 4 CD/1 DVD?
Look at it this way: With Fedora, if I have a high speed work connection and a slow dial-up at home, I can burn the cd’s at work (or have some friend give me a copy), and be happily installing 99% of the files locally. With Ubuntu, after the initial install, I’ll spend three days downloading the files. FUN!
Here is a word of advice, stick with Fedora/RedHat. They are the best Linux distro (period). I don’t know what distrowatch says, but everywhere I’ve been, people are running either Fedora or RedHat.
we really do have double standards when it comes to a ‘desktop os’
we will spit on the floor at any linux distro without Oo or somthing equivilent! mac, has a demo of MS office (although some now come with iWorks) Windows has…. no, you got it ,nada!
Graphics drivers, another example, macs are the only ones that come with them enabled in full 3d (why? cuz they know which card you can have in which machine)
On windws we expect to install a driver for this and this and this, and it is fine. You have to do the same on linux, and people whinge!
Ok, I gotta just ask one question? How cheap are Ubuntu users? Downloading a CD takes about an hour.
Dude, I have DSL and sometimes it takes me 8+ hours to download the 4 CDs. and their rsync mirrors never work for me.
CDRs cost a few pennies and DVDRs cost 50 cents. So why would it matter if something is 1 CD or 4 CD/1 DVD?
Some people don’t have DVD burners. For home, I like to get the Fedora DVD but at work, some servers only have cd-rom drives.
With Fedora, if I have a high speed work connection and a slow dial-up at home, I can burn the cd’s at work (or have some friend give me a copy), and be happily installing 99% of the files locally.
A lot of people can’t download from work either because of bandwith limits or the network admin watches for bandwith useage for suspicious activity! Sometimes when bandwith useage spikes for a couple of hours for one computer sometimes network admins think its a virus or something.
I am not a fedora hater. I use it at work and at home. I’m just saying that some of your assumptions are wrong.
Fedora sucks cause it doesn’t come on one CD
Buy a CD/DvDRom an burn the images to DvD ,, will be on 1 SINGLE DVD THEN stop ya whinging, even mandriva has what 3 CD’s