Fedora Core 6 Released

Shadowman writes "Fedora Core 6 has been released. Recommended download method is via BitTorrent. For more information, see the release notes or the Fedora homepage. Slashdot interviewed the Fedora Project Leader back in August."

Re:Release Notes Mirror & Thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

Obsolete is the wrong word. XGL is a fine bit of experiment, and it's lessons (and even code) may show up again in AIGLX. AIGLX is just a better choice because it's a bridge to an OpenGL desktop rather than a both-feet-in that cuts off lots of cards.

They mean gratis, not necessarily freedom.

[jbn-o]

Fluendo now offers a free MP3 plugin for GStreamer that has the necessary patent license for end users.

They mean gratis, not that this plugin necessarily gives you the freedoms of free software (for those of you who live in countries saddled with software patents). You could install and run this plugin but doing so would be installing non-free software on your machine. For the rest of you, the Fluendo GStreamer MP3 plugin is free software, licensed under the MIT X11 license. Richard Stallman, founder of the free software movement, talked about this during the first GPLv3 conference [archive.org] when discussing what was then known as the "Liberty or Death" clause of the upcoming GPL. The GPL strives to not only create software freedom (the freedom to share and modify computer programs) but defend it in the face of new threats like software patents (patents on algorithms used in computer software):

The need for this provision was underlined by a recent article talking about a GStreamer plugin which includes source code distributed under an X11 license, or so it says. But then when you read further you see, in fact, that that's not the whole of the license; there's a patent license involved also, and that, in fact, it's not free software at all! And this was presented as a way of making things better for our community. So you believe that a non-free program can make things better for people, that it's a step forward, as the author of the article I read did, then you might think what they did was great. But if your goal is to make sure--is to defend user's freedom, to establish a community of freedom, to spread the idea that freedom is important, than you cannot accept the idea that such a thing is a positive step. It's a surrender, not an amelioration. And so the "Liberty or Death" article of the GPL is just as important as it ever was.

I discussed this some more at the time on my blog [digitalcitizen.info].

FC's Package Manager

[Anonymous Coward]

Whenever I hear someone talking about a new distro release I think to myself, "Great, but your package manager isn't apt." Does anyone actually prefer rpm to apt?

Re:Fedora 6 patches to KDE are buggy, unpolished

[friedmud]

Completely agree.

Fedora is definitely the worst offender when it comes to KDE support. Instead of their crappy old "blue curve" theme and replacing all the KDE default apps with crappy gnome ones (File Roller anyone?) it would be much preferable for them to just leave KDE alone... just let the defaults fall where they may as they come from the KDE gods.

I use Gentoo on my desktop... so I _know_ how good KDE can be when not messed with. I use FC5 (and 6 as soon as possible) on my laptop (I like the network manager and all the suspend/hibernate/resume stuff worked immediately... all of that is sometimes non-trivial with Gentoo) and in the research lab I help run at school... and the differences between FC5 and Gentoo are huge. At school I actually have setup a whole system tree where I put hand compiled versions of lots of KDE and related software that is either outdated or broken in FC5. I also spent a good deal of time undoing the Redhat intrusion of Gnome into KDE (and of course replacing the horrible theme stuff).

But... Redhat has always been about Gnome... so we shouldn't expect much. In the end, if you're a KDE person FC5 (and it sounds like FC6) probably aren't for you. For now, I put up with it because it is doing what I need in specific cases... even if it takes a while to massage it.

Friedmud

Re:Not to troll, but...

[Phisbut]

When is the Fedora project going to start fixing its bugs instead of just pushing out bleeding edge packages?

The whole point of Fedora is to be bleeding edge, not to be 100% stable. Fedora introduces bleeding edge features, and Red Hat fixes the features, that's how it is, and that's how it is supposed to be. If you can't cope with bleeding edge features that are not guaranteed to be stable, then Fedora is simply not for you.

Ubuntu makes Fedora look like useless because those teams work hard on bug fixes.

Ubuntu aims for usability and stability, Fedora aims for bleeding edge. Different distros, different goals. Use the right tool for your job.

Re:CentOS?

[nuzak]

> 99% of configurations done in /etc/ are simple concepts that should not require looking up some random guy's BNF.

Your new version is going to have to read the old config file formats for compatibility for bob-knows-how-many years anyway, so now not only do you need to support XML, you still have to support J.Q.Random's BNF, and a converter between the XML and the old config format.

Good luck getting the glibc guys to support a new /etc/passwd format, or any of the other two dozen odd /etc files it parses. I'm not saying it's not a worthy goal, but some battles aren't worth choosing for most people.