Submitted by “Not all major software versions carry the same weight. Consider the last two releases of the Fedora distribution. Fedora 7 offered little that was obvious to desktop users, despite some behind-the-scenes improvements and the opening of the release process to public scrutiny. By contrast, if Test 3 of Fedora 8 is any indication, the upcoming release, scheduled for next month, returns to the distribution’s tradition of introducing a variety of innovations. Some of these innovations, like the new firewall tool, are minor, if still welcome. Others, like the IcedTea version of Java and Codec Buddy, are flawed, but may eventually find their way into other distributions.”
While this review is overall positive, it is short and missed out quite a lot of changes in the upcoming release of Fedora 8.
Some of them like Network Manager 0.7 or Pulse audio by default where the upstream developers are also the Fedora maintainers are unique to this release though very likely to be adopted by other distributions. More information is available at
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/8/ReleaseSummary
I downloaded the Rawhide Live CD of the latest test release and I was really impressed by version 8. I was skeptical about the CodecBuddy application so I tried to play a mp3 file and CodecBuddy GUI appeared and asked me if I wanted to download a free decoder or buy one. I selected the free codec and the install screen came up and then the mp3 played. The pulse audio was very sweet and I was playing around with adjusting the sounds from several applications and blending the output together. I had CompizFusion running also and Gnome was pimped out. Version 8 will definitely turn some heads. I was reading a developers forum the other day and some of the developers were commenting how version 8 appeared more stable than 7. The user friendliness of 8 is superior to 7. The Live CD is a joy to use and worked great. I added several applications using my available RAM and they all worked perfectly. I switched Network Manager from wired to wireless and it picked up the change without any editing of configs. Smooth. Grab the latest Rawhide torrent and try the Live CD. http://torrent.fedoraproject.org/
Edited 2007-10-23 23:30
what is the free codec? does it point to a download of Lame or something?
Nope. It points to Fluendo legal codecs.
And they are not installed by default, albeit legal, because of the license policies of Fedora.
>Nope. It points to Fluendo legal codecs.
Just to make it clear: So it is not free (as in freedom) it is just gratis.
I dislike the whole Codec Buddy, at least as it is implemented now. Two reasons:
1. It is some kind of advertising for a company which develops and sells non-free software. I don’t like advertising in operating systems especially not in community based operating systems.
2. I have followed Fedoras progress to become a complete free operating system (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FreeSoftwareAnalysis). It is sad to see that now that they were almost there they have taken a step backward. With Codec Buddy they lead their users to non-free software. At the end it is no difference if Fedora includes this non-free software in their repository or if they include the third party repository (here Fluendo) so tightly in their system that for most users the non-free software just comes from/with Fedora.
Fedora distributes non-free software, even if the software is not hosted on their servers, and makes advertising for a company. Really sad, I had high hopes of Fedora.
Edited 2007-10-24 09:26
One of the options being evaluated from the legal perspective is to link to other third party repositories which might be a option for users on regions that don’t enforce software patents.
While Fedora itself doesn’t distribute those or the Fluendo codecs and never will, this now works similar to Firefox flash plugin which is easily installed but not distributed by Fedora. Of course, Fedora now packages gnash and swfdec will likely follow (since it’s recent switch to gstreamer) and these are recommended about non-free programs and should in the future get installed by default once they become a bit more stable and mature.
Hi Rahul,
thank you for your replay. I understand your argument. But my point of view is simple that this leads people (1) to non-free software despite there is also free software for this task and (2) it endorse a special commercial company.
Personal i would prefer one of these options (the order shows also my preference):
1. Mention the problem and offer to convert the file into a free format. (This would spread free formats and would reduce the dependency of the users from non-free formats)
2. Mention the problem why the software isn’t included in Fedora and than offers a option to install the free codecs (ffmpeg & Co.) with the warning that you should only use this option if you live in a country with no software patents. As alternative mention that there are companies which sell non-free codecs with a proper patent license but let the users search them by there own (maybe mention that fluendo would one possible option).
3. Explain the problem and tell people about the problem with enough hints that they can find livna repositories and Fluedo web shop so that the user can decide what he wants and than search for it and install it.
Edited 2007-10-24 20:29
the whole codec buddy thing panning out the way it has is just another symptom of fedora being linked to redhat.
the whole codec buddy thing panning out the way it has is just another symptom of fedora being linked to redhat.
Aw, come on. The whole Fedora/Redhat bashing thing is old, old, old. It seems as if some people are never happy with change. In the past people complained there was no easy way to add in the codecs with a GUI. Now Fedora prompts you as they are needed. It is a good compromise of making non-free software available without distributing it with Fedora. New users will love it and more seasoned users will continue to run yum install to add codecs the quick way.
Edited 2007-10-25 01:44
for the most part, being linked to redhat is a very, very good thing. this is one instance where it is a pain in the neck
1) The problem here is that converting from one lossy format to another frequently results in loss of quality and the blame would go to the Free formats from non-technical users. We would like to avoid that. Besides decompression requires running a web service and getting a patent license
2) We are evaluating this option. Unfortunately it is not yet clear whether this is legally safe to do so but if and when we get legal approval, we can do this.
3) Pretty much the same as 2)
Trust me, we did debate the pros and cons of what we are doing pretty extensively and there is understanding that what we are doing here isn’t the best choice but it is what we can go ahead with right now. It is likely there will be improvements in place in the future. This is a incremental process of educating users while providing them the benefits of choice.
One machine will go get a clean install from FC6 getting wiped straight to FC8.
Also, my workstations is running RHEL5 it will get dual booted with FC8.
Fedora gets better and better!
So innovative that it can ignore sound cards! It’s been years since I saw a distro, RPM or otherwise that wouldn’t detect the sound card.
I have an SB Audigy LS and it detected it using the Live Rawhide build. It also worked on my older soundblaster live card. No problems here. Check the bugzilla database to see if your card is unsupported.
I don’t use fedora, the reviewers sound card is the one that wasn’t detected. Please read the article.
So it is the job of the reviewers to precisely tell the readers what are the specification of the system to avoid confusion. No where in the article is located the name of soundcard.
What is your point? I was just commenting on the fact that it has been a long time since I saw Any Linux distro not detect a sound card. I don’t care what sound card it is, I found it surprising that it didn’t detect it, and that’s it.
It is probably the problem with alsa-driver which should be in the final product. Or an update afterwards.
What about an obscure sound card that is unsupported on any Linux distro and possible regression where there is an update? This is an example of YMMV therefore you should not be surprised.
You’re right, YMMV, and my mileage has been pretty good when it comes to sound cards, and I have dealt with some pretty obscure stuff in the past. Most of the problems I have had in the last few years center around video and wireless. So I was surprised, and that’s that
Given the lack of information (hardware?) and the lack of a bug report [!] link, this report means little (if any).
… If he wants his card to be detected by F8-release, he should have taken the time to post a bug report in bugzilla.redhat.com instead of just bitching about it.
– Gilboa
Edited 2007-10-24 10:03
I agree, you have to be proactive about these things.
I have to agree with Rahul. There are much more improvements then this author talks about. For examples
most wireless cards work out-of-the-box and Networkmanager, what I have seen it BEATS every netwerk manager on whatever OS. Hardly can wait
Suspend resume still does not work on my Dell Latitude D505 with FC8test3. It used to work out of the box until FC6. FC7 broke it solidly. Regressions like this in major system components are the achilles heel of linux.
Replying to myself. As a test I installed Ubuntu 7.10.
The experimental intel video driver which was installed by default (like on FC8test3) did not work. However changing to i810 fixed everything (on FC8test3 this did not work either).
I’m happier now (Ubuntu is beautiful BTW).
On PAE enabled (32-bit HIGHMEM=64G) kernels it’s trivial to notice the NX bit has been sucessfully set, aka “dmesg |grep NX”
How can you check wether the NX bit/execshield feature works on x86_64 systems?
Edited 2007-10-24 11:10
Refer
http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/FAQ_44_5875.shtm
That explains more or less how to switch Execshield on or off. But doesn’t say wether the build in hardware memory protection of some capable CPU’s is used or not.
Furthermore i have got the insight that the paxctl tool is a bit more fine grained when you want to change flags on a single binairy/librairy instead of making the whole stack executable, aka “kernel.exec-shield = 0” in “/etc/sysctl.conf”.