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Fedora Core 6 Released 230

Posted by Zonk from the i've-got-a-new-hat dept.
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."
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Fedora Core 6 Released More

Fedora Core 6 Released

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  • Honestly (Score:5, Funny)

    by suso ( 153703 ) * on Tuesday October 24, 2006 @12:06PM (#16561292) Journal
    I literally just installed FC5 on a machine this morning.
    • Does FC6 include Firefox 2?
      • Considering that they were both released today, I highly doubt it. They wouldn't have any time to test it. This is one of my biggest problems with Linux. They release a new version of the distro, and then a major very important piece of software comes out shortly after the distro release. Which means that unless you want to get your software from outside the distro's repository, then you are stuck with the older version. Case in point, if you wanted OO.o 2, on Mandrake up until version 7 came out a litt

        • Re:Yes, but... (Score:4, Funny)

          by cloudmaster ( 10662 ) on Tuesday October 24, 2006 @01:16PM (#16562680) Homepage Journal
          Yeah, Linux should be more like Windows. The OS comes with *no* useful software, and it's up to the software vendor to test the software on every possible install platform. I'm sure that wouldn't delay software releases for longer than the time period already present between most distro revisions.</sarcasm>
          • I'm not saying the windows model is any better, what I am saying is that I wish distro providers would put software like this into their current release when it happens. I really hope that Mandriva puts firefox 2.0 into 2007, although i'm not sure how it matters with auto-updates. I also don't know how firefox gets updated from my user account when /usr, where it is located isn't writable by my user account. Anyway, I like the way Linux handles everything, I just with the distro maintainers weren't so ag

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Znork ( 31774 )
              Major upgrades often carry incompatible changes. This entails the risk of breaking end-user documents and software as well as other dependent software within the released distribution.

              If the distribution maintainers did mid-cycle upgrades in such a fashion, it would mean that if you ever patched or updated your dist, you'd risk random things just not working anymore.

              While it would be nice, it currently just isnt possible. Maybe in the future we'll be ultra-virtualized and every application will be bundled w

    • Re:Honestly (Score:4, Funny)

      by jazman_777 ( 44742 ) on Tuesday October 24, 2006 @12:36PM (#16561922) Homepage
      I literally just installed FC5 on a machine this morning.


      Another excellent reason to use Debian. You'll never fall behind.

      • Please tell me how you'll "never fall behind with Debian".
        Do they have some magical way of updating a burnt CD/DVD that we are all unaware of? If not, then there's likely no difference from what you are talking about and simply updating your system via "yum" or the like.

        • Re:Honestly (Score:5, Funny)

          by Orange Crush ( 934731 ) on Tuesday October 24, 2006 @01:01PM (#16562392)
          Whoosh!
        • Well, Ubuntu at least makes update releases. For example, 6.06.1 had all current updates applied. It would be nice if Fedora made something similar available to new users. After a few months into a release, a 'yum update' takes a long time on a new install.

          • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

            by nath_de ( 535933 )
            Use Fedora Unity [fedoraunity.org] for respins including all updates.
            • I'm aware of that, but how is a new user going to know about it? It should be a part of the Fedora project or at least linked to from their site.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by muszek ( 882567 )
            Well, Ubuntu at least makes update releases. For example, 6.06.1

            They only did this because:
            • 6.06 is LTS (long time support) - some users (especially businesses) are expected to choose 6.06 on new machines even after 6.10 is released, because it's going to be supported for a longer period of time. So we can probably expect 6.06.2+, but no 6.10.1.
            • 6.06 had some nasty bugs when it was released.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by caseih ( 160668 )
      Change your yum sources and do a yum update. Of course you will need to wait a bit for yum mirrors to catch up likely.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ashayh ( 636057 )
      Funny, but you can do this:
      http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/YumUpgradeFaq [fedoraproject.org]

      Simply use this rpm instead of the one on that site.
      http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux /core/6/i386/os/Fedora/RPMS/fedora-release-6-4.noa rch.rpm [redhat.com]

      Dont forget to do yum update before and after.

  • Multimedia support (Score:5, Informative)

    by Nighttime ( 231023 ) on Tuesday October 24, 2006 @12:09PM (#16561362) Homepage Journal
    As someone always comments on Fedora's (and by proxy, Red Hat's) multimedia support, here it is from the horse's mouth:

    15.3. MP3, DVD, and Other Excluded Multimedia Formats
    Fedora Core and Fedora Extras software repositories cannot include support for MP3 or DVD video playback or recording. The MP3 formats are patented, and the patent holders have not provided the necessary patent licenses. DVD video formats are patented and equipped with an encryption scheme. The patent holders have not provided the necessary patent licenses, and the code needed to decrypt CSS-encrypted discs may violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a copyright law of the United States. Fedora also excludes other multimedia software due to patent, copyright or license restrictions, including Adobe's Flash Player and and Real Media's Real Player. For more on this subject, please refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ForbiddenItems [fedoraproject.org].

    While other MP3 options may be available for Fedora, Fluendo now offers a free MP3 plugin for GStreamer that has the necessary patent license for end users. This plugin enables MP3 support in applications that use the GStreamer framework as a backend. Fedora does not include this plugin since we prefer to support and encourage the use of patent unrestricted open formats instead. For more information about the MP3 plugin, visit Fluendo's website at http://www.fluendo.com/ [fluendo.com].

    • Bah - that's what Livna is for :) (Score:4, Informative)

      by Penguinisto ( 415985 ) on Tuesday October 24, 2006 @12:28PM (#16561768) Journal
      No, seriously: Livna works just fine for me (And I think DAG should cover it as well; can;t remember the URL offhand, though). Both Livna and DAG have yum repos that will grant all the necessary tidbits needed to complete the install (including NTFS support for weirdoes like me who have to plug in HDD's formatted in that recover others' data on occasion...).

      /P

    • Which is why I use Mandriva which can play DVDs and MP3s out of the box. What are the legal implications of Mandriva putting in this functionality? Could they be shut down?

    • 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, found

  • But does it come with... (Score:3, Funny)

    by croddy ( 659025 ) on Tuesday October 24, 2006 @12:10PM (#16561404)
    But does it come with GNU Iceweasel? [gnu.org]

  • Mandatory Zod quote (Score:4, Funny)

    by Fry-kun ( 619632 ) on Tuesday October 24, 2006 @12:20PM (#16561620)
    Come to me, son of Jor-El! KNEEL before ZOD!!

    Okay, I got it out of my system now...

    ZOD!!!!!

    • Re:Mandatory Zod quote (Score:5, Funny)

      by Kelson ( 129150 ) * on Tuesday October 24, 2006 @12:27PM (#16561758) Homepage Journal

      You should see the announcement they posted to the mailing list:

      This is the announcement of Zod. Zod permits you to call him "Fedora Core 6".

      Tremble, Earthlings, for Zod is released from the confines of testing. Zod intends to hammer the servers of the world ... starting TODAY! For those who chose the world-domination-acceptance package in your last installation, you need do nothing -- Zod is beaming itself to your computers already. If your keyboard begins to get hot, back away ... very ... slowly ...

      For the rest of you minions who failed to do Zod's bidding previously, this is your ONE AND ONLY CHANCE to redeem yourself. Go quickly! Download the torrent NOW. Obtain the ISO immediately. Zod's minions know to back up their /home directory and to begin immediate installation of the GREATEST version of Fedora Core EVER.

      When you are done genuflecting, listen carefully. Zod now delivers an important message to Zod's predecessor, the Fifth Iteration of Fedora Core, known to some as Bordeaux:

      "KNEEL BEFORE ZOD, for Zod has many improvements that convince users to upgrade and abandon you! Ph34r me! Mwahahahaha."

      Zod accepts that the Fedora Project continues to provide software and security updates for Bordeaux, as per the policy of Zod's minions. Zod chooses to permit this action to continue.

      It goes on to link to release notes and such, then adds this note:

      Massive downloading of Zod is known to melt servers worldwide, so Zod commands all who are able to use bittorrent.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by spevack ( 210449 ) *
        It's traditional for us to have some sort of "whimsical" or "funny" release announcement that accompanies all of the serious stuff. The full link to it is here:

        https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-li st/2006-October/msg00008.html [redhat.com]

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Speare ( 84249 )

        It's interesting that they chose to call this release "Zod." The traditional Red Hat maintainer of XFree86/Xorg, Mike Harris, for a long time went by the alternate nickname of "zod" on IRC support channels and the like. He left Red Hat a little while ago, and now this release bears this name. I have no idea if there was any intentional connection.

        ObTrivia: In case you missed the other fifty explanations, General Zod is the leader of the Krypton villains in Superman II.

  • Release Notes Mirror & Thoughts (Score:5, Informative)

    by SlashdotOgre ( 739181 ) on Tuesday October 24, 2006 @12:31PM (#16561816) Journal
    Here's a mirror of the release notes: ftp://limestone.uoregon.edu/fedora/6/i386/os/RELEA SE-NOTES-en_US.html [uoregon.edu]

    Things I'm finding interesting are:

    Section 9 (Desktop Effects) Looks like its just AIGLX, not Xgl (in fact there's no mention of Xgl).

    Section 17 (Virtualization) FC6 uses Xen 3.0.2, I know Xen was in FC5 but I haven't had a chance to play with it. The release notes mention something about it being connected with the installer, so perhaps I'll get a chance.

    Section 22 (Package Changes) Interesting removals IMHO are: mozilla, xscreensaver, gkrellm. I'm sure all can be found in the Fedora Extra's Repo or some place similar. I'm not a big fan of where some of the desktop apps are going (eg. I hate gnome-screensaver), but the beauty of Linux is it's quite simple to solve this problem.

    • Re:Release Notes Mirror & Thoughts (Score:5, Informative)

      by TheOrquithVagrant ( 582340 ) on Tuesday October 24, 2006 @12:45PM (#16562112)
      > Section 9 (Desktop Effects) Looks like its just AIGLX, not Xgl (in fact there's no mention of Xgl).

      Fully-implemented AIGLX pretty much makes Xgl obsolete. Compiz runs on top of AIGLX now, and compiz is shipping with Fedora. That means all the "bling" normally associated with "Xgl" is available.

      > Section 17 (Virtualization) FC6 uses Xen 3.0.2

      Xen 3.0.3 was released on the 17th, in time to get included. The release-schedule slippage had a silver lining.

    • I couldn't find anything about this in the release notes, but have they yet taken care of my biggest pet peeve with regards to rpm based distros yet? That peeve being: having to install from a static set of packages, then having to update 200-300 megs of packages immediately following - even via a network (internet) based install. I've always hated installing this way, the redundancy is inane, and I can't image having to do it on a dial-up. Spending an hour installing a system, then spending another hour up

      • Re:Release Notes Mirror & Thoughts (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward

        "Spending an hour installing a system, then spending another hour updating that system is maddening."

        Try Windows.

        ;)

      • When I went from 4 -> 5 I ran the yum update the night before to make sure everything was up-to date (nice but not 100% nescesary) then installed 1 RPM & ran yum upgrade. Worked like a charm at work - was ugly at home following a brownout halfway through the upgrade.
        For fresh installs, I suppose you could build a network installer CD based on yum. Not sure if I would want to download & install everything over the net though....
        • live CD ... check
        • mount /dev/hda /mnt
        • mkdir ... check
        • chroot ... ch

      • That peeve being: having to install from a static set of packages, then having to update 200-300 megs of packages immediately following...One of my favorite parts of apt based installs is that you can get the updated packages right from the get go.

        That has less to do with RPM vs. APT (which isn't really a valid comparison, as rpm is the equivalent of .deb and/or dpkg, while yum is a more, er, apt comparison to apt) and more to do with the installer only looking in one place.

        To half-answer your question,

        • ...Since yum is capable of sorting out which packages to grab from the release repo and which to grab from the updates repo, I would expect it's taken care of this problem. (Unless they do the install in two steps, one for the core system, one for updates, extras, etc., which would be annoying and possibly silly.)


          That's what I'm referring to, because that's how it's been.

          • Found this in the Release Summary [fedoraproject.org]:

            Arguably the most useful new feature in Fedora Core 6 are the improvements that have been made to Anaconda, the Fedora installer. At install-time, the user can specify third-party repositories, and if the install is network-aware, Fedora can reach out to those repositories and pull in additional packages. The obvious use case is accessing Fedora Extras, marking Fedora Core 6 as the release that tightens the integration between Core and Extras at install-time.

            It doesn't

      • Spending an hour installing a system, then spending another hour updating that system is maddening.

        If this is a big problem, why not maintain a local cache of the updates?

  • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Funny, I just installed a MythTV backend server using FC5, and it was an absolute dream. It's running on paired SATA using LVM over RAID-1, so it's not your most standard configuration, and it works like a charm. Granted, it's a backend server, so I have no idea how good the X setup stage is, but for my purposes, FC5 was a very good experience.

      BTW, for the record, I run Debian on all my other machines, but the Debian packages for Myth are no longer being maintained, so FC5 was my only option.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by turbidostato ( 878842 )
      "The vast majority of experiences that I and every other person I have met with Fedora have been profoundly negative on some level." /TROLL MODE ON
      That only means that you and almost every other person you know is dumb enough not to read documentation about the tools they try to use. /TROLL MODE OFF

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

      Plain simple: never.

      It is not as if it were a deeply hidden fact; it's even on the fundational papers
    • I'm guessing one of Fedora's single main problems is rpm. I haven't used Fedora myself, but I did use RH 7, 8, and 9...I'll never forget how relieved I was to move to Linux From Scratch.

      rpm has a number of features which IMHO should not have been implemented at all (subpackaging being the most egregious in the list, although the macro format would be close) which are used on a routine basis. The specfiles are consistently of a hideous standard from what I have seen as well...they are utterly incomprehensi

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by d3xt3r ( 527989 )

        I'm not exactly sure that all of the complaints about RPM really stack up. RPM by itself is not inherently broken. It's actually a solid format for distributing source and binary software.

        I think a number of the early complains about RPM stem from Red Hat's initial lack of a solid package dependency resolver and downloader like apt for Debian. In recent years this has been addressed by the likes of Yum [duke.edu] and the very promising Smart [labix.org] package managers.

        I have yet to see a trully perfect package management

    • Re:Not to troll, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Phisbut ( 761268 ) on Tuesday October 24, 2006 @01:50PM (#16563344)
      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.

    • I was initially skeptical of Fedora and stayed on Redhat 9 until FC2 came out. Since then, I've used each release of Fedora on a multitude of systems including desktops, servers, laptops (including my Powerbook G4) and I've had relatively little trouble with it. Yes, there were issues like getting the nVidia drivers to work with the first build of FC5 and so on, but nothing that I haven't faced with other Linuxes.

    • Fedora doesn't even do Core 5.0, 5.1, 5.2 then 6.0.

      A while back someone made an interesting observation about the Red Hat and Fedora release cycles. Every 6-10 months they'd release a new version, and every 3 or 4 releases was a major departure from the previous one.

      Red Hat 6.0, 6.1, 6.2
      Red Hat 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3
      Red Hat 8, 9, Fedora Core 1
      Fedora Core 2, 3, 4
      etc.

      Red Hat 8 was a big departure from Red Hat 7.3, but RH9 and FC1 were more refinements than major changes. Then FC2 jumped to the 2.6 ker

    • Yeah...I'm going to agree with this. I've been a RH user from their very first distro, and they used to be great, but with great reluctance I'm going to switch now. My impression is that the RH quality is definitely down and steadily falling.

      I don't know exactly why, but I don't agree with other commenters that it's just a matter of FC being on the "bleeding edge." RH was far closer to the bleeding edge in the early days, and yet they did better. Perhaps there's a fine line between being daring and inno

    • severely burned on version 3.0 (had it kernel panic in the middle of a demo, trying to run Tomcat of all things!)

      FWIW, I regularly see messages on the tomcat-users mailing list from people having trouble with seemingly-routine things. Almost always, if they're running Linux, it's FC. I don't know if there's something wrong with the Java port or what, but it caught my attention after just 2-3 weeks on the list. Usually they recommend CentOS (or Ubuntu if the person's developing on their own machine).

      Just

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by heffel ( 83440 )
      Funny you should say that. I migrated from Ubuntu to Fedora because Fedora supported my hardware *better* than Ubuntu.

      The hardware in question is 64 bit HP ZV6000 series laptop. The included ATI XPRESS 200M video card is problematic under Linux (at least it was when I got the laptop about a year and a half ago). Ubuntu would not run X at all. Fedora worked "out of the box" (with the VESA Driver, but still...).
      • I'm going to have to back you up on this one.

        I tried putting Ubuntu LTS on my girlfriend's laptop months ago. That was their heralded stable release. The install went okay at first, but one update on the apt repos turned the system into an unrecoverable mess. It even somehow managed to install Xubuntu packages without asking (all I did was a simple apt update in aptitude).

        After being scared shitless by what happened, I tried Fedora Core 5 and crossed my fingers. System install was smooth, full update, n
    • All:

      I'm going to post this because I think it's going to be helpful.
      Fedora is my favorite distro, even though it's frustrating.

      The main reason why it's frustrating is because Fedora doesn't bother to update their release images once they hit "gold", which is when the distro gets into real testing, and then the bugs start showing up. They're already moving towards the next release.

      But I love how many choices of repositories I get for prepackaged goodies for Fedora (Livna, RPMForge, FreshRPMS, PlanetCCRMA, et

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by WilliamSChips ( 793741 )
        Good lord, I thought the Gentoo Handbook was bad. If a distro isn't meant for experienced users then it shouldn't require this crap.

  • Who cares? (Score:3, Informative)

    by slashdotmsiriv ( 922939 ) on Tuesday October 24, 2006 @12:45PM (#16562098)
    Ever since I installed Kubuntu i threw a black stone to the dark days of Fedora Core Installations ... Since then i can completely install linux systems on any laptop and PC without writing a single script and without having to compile my own kernel modules.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by loconet ( 415875 )
      Agreed. I used to be a long time Red Hat user but dropped it as soon as they stopped support for their desktop version. I moved to Suse and then Ubuntu (besides trying dozen of other dists and bsds). Although I had never used Linux as my primary desktop OS (it has however been my primary application server at work and home for years), thanks to Ubuntu's ability to take away the headache of spending countless hours fetching for obscure modules, compiling unsupported libraries, etc, in order to get my hardwar

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by binner1 ( 516856 )
        I cut my inlaws over to Ubuntu this past (Canadian) Thanksgiving weekend. They're happy so far. I only had to install gtk-gnutella and a few other comfort type apps on top of the default install. I transferred all of their old data from their ntfs disk (left intact in the event that they hated ubuntu) and they're good to go.

        I guess I did have to grab the mplayer codec package to satisfy a few of their media dependencies too...

        The cutover was eased by the fact that I've had them doing:
        a) running with limi

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by LDoggg_ ( 659725 )
      Are you suggesting that using Fedora requires you to write scripts and compile kernel modules?

      I call bullshit.
  • Is there any reason to care about Fedora now that we have CentOS?

    Also, I spent the day mapping configurations between Debian and RHEL. It was not fun.

    Could someone please, pretty please, come up with some kind of XML file to abstract everything commonly found in a linux /etc, then write conversion tools for each OS to move from XML to /etc files?

    Then we could have one configuration tool for the XML file, instead of having to use hundreds of tools (system-config-foobar, dselect reconfigure foobar) or learn h

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Limecron ( 206141 )
      > Is there any reason to care about Fedora now that we have CentOS?

      Huh? Most desktop Linux users like running the latest and greatest which is clearly not what CentOS is intended to do. That's why Fedora and the Ubuntus exist, for desktop users to have all the latest versions before they're completely tested.

      Not to mention that Fedora is essentially the test bed for RedHat, which is what CentOS carbon copys itself from. So essentially, if you use CentOS, you need people to use Fedora to ensure your co

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by nuzak ( 959558 )
      > 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 parse
    • Is there any reason to care about Fedora now that we have CentOS?

      I use CentOS on a couple servers now. My desktops are primarily Fedora Core 5 with a recent OpenSuSe and Ubuntu additions. FC5 has Xen which works really well. SELinux works better in FC5 than in CentOS. More choice in the Extra repository than with CentOS. It's a PITA to put FC5 on a server mainly because of the one year lifespan. There's Fedora Legacy, but it's going through some issues at the moment. CentOS4.4 tracks RHEL4U4, so has a coupl
  • Is this the best way to download firefox 2.0, with the fc6 distro?

  • Before I get all excited... (Score:3, Funny)

    by MC Negro ( 780194 ) on Tuesday October 24, 2006 @02:00PM (#16563548) Journal
    It's actually been released, right?

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