“The Fedora Project announces the third release of the Fedora Core 5 development cycle, available for the i386, x86_64, and PPC/PPC64 architectures. Beware that Test releases are recommended only for Linux experts/enthusiasts or for technology evaluation, as many parts are likely to be broken and the rate of change is rapid.” The final release is planned for March 15th. Release notes will be uploaded soon, and download locations are listed in the release announcement.
What are people’s experiences with Fedora Core in 64bit mode? Is it a real pain recompiling random games/apps which are 32bit? Or is the dual 32/64 bit libs setup pretty easy to use? I’m trying to figure out whether I should switch from 32 to 64bit when I do my next hw upgrade.
I have found no advantages to running 64bit at this point.
You don’t need to recompile anything that is 32bit in order to make it work in 64bit Fedora. The 64bit version also provides 32bit libraries that make it possible to run 32bit programs along with other 64bit software. In 98% of cases it is transparent to the user, so if you want to run for example Quake4 on 64bit Fedora you just launch the setup script as you would in a 32bit OS. Most of the Open Source sofware is already 64bit compatible and are packaged for 64bit architeckture. You can get them easily with yum via extra’s and 3rd paty repositories like FreshRPMs. There are only three cases when you might need to use 32bit versions – Flash plugin, Java plugin and win32codecs (WMV, Quicktime, RealVideo). For those (which are avaialable in 32bit versions only since they are proprietary software and the vendors refuse to release 64bit versions) you will have to install 32bit Firefox and MPlayer becuase 64bit versions cannot load 32bit plugins.
I’m waiting for release notes…
Bittorrent file is not spread enough yet, is there somebody who know ftp server for DVD version download? I’ll appreciate it.
Anyway, somebody who tried both FC5 and Ubuntu Dapper, can you tell what do you think (+&- of both)?
Thanks
are there software repositories which are compatible with FC betas? I would like to install FC on my laptop (cant install older ones due to lack on drivers for everything), but dunno if the repository richness is comparable with debian’s/gentoo’s .
I mean afaik there is no mp3 support etc, is it actually true?
FreshRPMs repository has a development version available from which you can install gstreammer-plugins-ugly that will enable support for mp3s. To add freshrpms repositorycreate a new file freshrpm.repo and place it in /etc/yum.repos.d/ The content of the file should be as following:
[freshrpms]
name=Fedora Core $releasever – $basearch – Freshrpms
baseurl=http://ayo.freshrpms.net/fedora/linux/development/$basearch/freshrp…
#mirrorlist=http://ayo.freshrpms.net/fedora/linux/$releasever/mirrors-freshrpms
enabled=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-freshrpms
gpgcheck=1
Ah, interesting. Thank you for information.
I am useing FC5 x86_64 and Dapper i386, Dapper Amd64 lack of mutimedia support,and does’t integrate 32bit smoothly so I use i386 version. It install/run 32bit apps more smoothlyer in FC5. IMO,FC5 more eye candy than Dapper, FC5’s bubble theme is very cool! But what sucks is FC5 does’t has Tango icon theme official support.Apps start up a bit fast in FC5 x86_64 that Dapper i386,I think also faster than Dapper amd64(I ever used it).But FC5 also lack of mutimedia support,so do FC1-FC4. third party repos not ready for FC5 now. One cool thing in Dapper is that mplayer add CVS feature which GUI is GTK2 base.
Edited 2006-02-20 20:07
FC5’s bubble theme is very cool!
Yes, its very cool, but from a usability and accessability point of view, it could have been better.
The bubbles on the desktop are about the same size as icons. This makes icons hard to see to the visually challanged.
There is nothing wrong with patterns on the desktop, as long as they are much bigger than icons, folders, or other things the user need to interact with. In fact, a pattern it can provide spatial refereces that makes it easier to remember where you put things.
We can’t stop people from putting whatever backgrounds they like on their desktops, but what’s there by default should take things like this into account.
I’m a debian junkie and fedora hater. I really felt at home with ubuntu and wanted to stay. Fedora’s releases(especially the installs) have always been flaky for me.
Sadly, I’ve been using fedora and I probably will be for a while. I just killed my brezzy/dapper ubuntu installs.
The killer fedora features for me are the autmoatically setup and tested IPSEC install, and the automatically setup LVM install. Fedora is pushing the neat new(ish) tech faster and making it accessible to the lazy user. This seems to make their final releases a bit unpredictable at times, but I always tend to migrate toward bleeding edge betas anyway.
To actually answer your question. Dapper and the FC tests seem to be at comparable levels. The Kubuntu version dapper is sucking right now but the plain ubuntu is well on its way. Although The last kernel has been flaky with lots of users needing to migrate back. I have no specific complaints about the FC tests yet.
Please don’t flame me for mentioning flaws of betas. I know what they are.
You can construct your own release notes (kind of :-)) from the announcement and the Important Warnings (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FC5Test3CommonProblems) page. To summarise:
Notable Features
* Xen, now with x86_64!
* Package selection within the installer has been reenabled.
* Rebuilt again on later gcc4.1 snapshot for performance and security
* Hibernate should be functional on a wide variety of hardware again
(use pm-hibernate to test)
* PPC Install CDs are bootable once again
* Unified SRPM set instead of one per arch
* Lots of bugfixes from Test 2 release testing
* 1600+ Extras packages conveniently available via yum
Notable Bugs (incomplete)
* Evolution crashes when attempting to print (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=177546)
* grub-install doesn’t work on dmraid devices (don’t do that, use grub cli)
* SRPM isos contain no SRPMS. Fixed in rawhide (although no isos are spun for rawhide)
Edited 2006-02-20 22:02
This is a really nice distribution. But I really thing that shipping it on 4 CD-ROM disc’s are 3 to much. If I have a choice I never use them anyway. Only when I install the system.
I’ve heard that you only have to use the first one. The rest is for extra packages that you can install during the installation if you want.
Can anyone else confirm?
It depends of the customization of installation. If you use the default, you need one or two CDs. You can opt to do minimal installation i.e only choose base by enable “customize now”.
FYI, you can also do online installation if you have a decent speed with a broadband connection.
I bought a new Athlon64 X2 machine last christmas and i run Debian Amd64 on it.
I don’t specially like the approach of Fedora, SuSE, MDK and many other distros of the mixed lib32/lib64 system.
I think the chroot/dchroot solution of Debian (and Ubuntu) is much cleaner (and less prone to mixing stuff that is not supposed to be mixed) although i can see that this solution is less immediate to the new user.
I am 100% happy with my AMD64 Sid machine: i know now someone will come out saying “oh but you don’t have OO.o, win32 codecs and blah blah” but I really recommend it to anybody with a 64bit machine.
Btw, don’t expect miracles of speed. Many applications have really no idea on how to use the 64bit extensions, they just build correctly. Which is something that took windows a couple of years to do
(come on just joking…)
how come this has been releaased today an not wednesday as expected
>how come this has been releaased today an not wednesday as expected
just to spite you of course.
>just to spite you of course
Nice answer, try using your head an answer it
it’s called humour, you should try it sometime.
why does it matter that they released it 2 days early (especially when it was running late)?
it doesnt matter, just wondering ,
-We don’t accept returns based on spite.
-Well, then I return it because I don’t like it
Seinfeld…
haha, if its released too late, complain.
if it’s released early, complain.
It was already a week later than the original schedule, they made it a litle bit before the revised schedule. Good.
The devs release it via BitTorrent a few days before the “official” release so that people can start downloading and (hopefully) seeding it, and so that once the “official” release announcement is made on Wednesday, the load on the download servers is much reduced.
Yes, its very cool, but from a usability and accessability point of view, it could have been better.
Get real man – it is a desktop image! Right-click in Gnome and select change desktop background. Takes two seconds.
Get real man – it is a desktop image! Right-click in Gnome and select change desktop background. Takes two seconds.
You miss the point. It doesn’t matter if it takes one, two or three seconds to change it. The question is, why should they need to in the firt place.
It should be perfectly possible to create themes that look OK, or even very cool, that still satisfied the needs of all people, handicapped or not. The alarming thing is that they doesn’t seam to have given it a thought. If we want free desktops to succesfully compete with Apple and, to some extent, Microsoft that little extra polish is important.
I see ALI/ULI chipset board still locks up tighter than a drum off that kernel, oh well guess im stickin to fc4 2.6.14, and headin over to bugzilla.
>Latest version of release notes are available from here.
>(not yet uploaded, will be soon.)
Should probably read “(not yet written, will be when we get to it)”
If we want free desktops to succesfully compete with Apple and, to some extent, Microsoft that little extra polish is important.
Who’s *we* here? I like desktop linux just the way it is right now using Gnome and Fedora. I find it much more useable than Windows desktop GUI. The fact that it is not exactly setup for newbs doesn’t bother me. Where there are little O’s in the background that could be mistaken by a blind person is not quite polishing the UI. Features like real transparent composite windowing and integration with a desktop search engine like Beagle are more of what I would consider polish for a linux desktop.
cannot download fc5t3?