Fedora 12 Alpha Released - Jesse Keating

[bob]

Since today's the release date for Fedora 12 Alpha, the name of the Forum's been changed from Rawhide to Fedora 12 Alpha-Beta. "Rawhide" will re-emerge once Fedora 12 becomes final. Here's the official notice:

(see below - better editing. )

[Gödel]

And, here's the announcement in a format that is actually readable

Fedora 12 "Constantine" Alpha release is available! What's next for the free operating system that shows off the best new technology of tomorrow? You can see the future now at:

http://fedoraproject.org/get-prerelease

What's an Alpha release? The Alpha release contains all the features of Fedora 12 in a form that anyone can help test. This testing, guided by the Fedora QA team, helps us target and identify bugs. When these bugs are fixed, we make a Beta release available. A Beta release is code-complete, and bears a very strong resemblance to the third and final release. The final release of Fedora 12 is due in November.

We need your help to make Fedora 12 the best release yet, so please take a moment of your time to download and try out the Alpha and make sure the things that are important to you are working. If you find a bug, please report it - every bug you uncover is a chance to improve the experience for millions of Fedora users worldwide. Together, we can make Fedora a rock-solid distribution.

https://bugzilla.redhat.com

Among the top features for end users, we have:

* Better webcam support - Out of the box support for a lot of new webcams has been extended further than ever.
* Empathy as default IM client - Empathy is an instant messenger client replacing Pidgin, featuring better integration with the GNOME Desktop.
* GNOME 2.27.90 beta and KDE 4.3 - The latest code from the two main desktop environments and their many bundled supporting applications are part of this release. GNOME 2.27.90 is the latest GNOME version as of the Alpha release; GNOME 2.28 is planned for the final release.
* Network Manager Mobile Broadband - By providing a database of preconfigured mobile broadband providers, supporting more hardware and permit to scan GSM networks, NetworkManager makes the use of mobile broadband much easier.
* Better Free Video Codec - The latest technology is found in the improved, free Ogg Theora video encoder, codenamed "Thusnelda." Encoded video at very high definition now can meet or exceed the expectations of the most demanding viewer and material.
* PackageKit improvements - PackageKit now has plugins to install applications from a web browser, and from the command line if a user tries a command from a package not yet installed.
* PulseAudio improvements - The PulseAudio volume control applet has been extended to support profiles, input switching and easy speaker setup.
* Better power management - This release offers better power management features regarding CPU, disk and network I/O.

For developers there are all sorts of additional goodies:

* NetBeans 6.7 - NetBeans 6.7 is the most recent version of Sun's IDE.
* PHP 5.3 - PHP 5.3 has been integrated as the popular web language.
* Eclipse 3.5.0 - The latest release of the popular, open, and extensible development platform is included.
* SystemTap - Updates to this debugging capability include better documentation, tools, and examples; support for kernel tracepoint and modern gcc debuginfo ("dwarf") output; and Eclipse support for launching traces and graphing results.

Peek under the hood and there is still more:

* Better IPv6 in NetworkManager - NetworkManager has been extended to fully support IPv6 configurations through the GUI.
* Automatic Bug Reporting Tool - This release provides ABRT, a service that automatically reports application crashed to Fedora, without requiring the end user to have any special knowledge on error reporting.
* RPM XZ payload - All the software packages in Fedora have been switched from Gzip to the more efficient XZ (LZMA) compression method, to save space on mirrors and reduce download times.
* x86 optimized for Atom - The 32 bit version of this release will be compiled for i686 with a specific optimization for Intel Atom processors used in many netbooks.
* GRUB ext4 support - Fedora 11 included Ext4 by default, however GRUB in that version did not support Ext4 and hence required a separate boot partition formatted as Ext3 or Ext2. This release includes an updated version of GRUB with Ext4 support.
* Bluetooth Service On Demand - In order to support Bluetooth devices, the Bluetooth background service was started by default in previous versions of Fedora. In this release, the Bluetooth service is started on demand when needed, and automatically stops 30 seconds after last device use, reducing initial startup time and resources.
* KVM improvements - Many improvements in KVM virtualization are found in this release: reduced memory consumption and improved performance, NIC hotplug, better disk I/O, modern PXE booting, support for flexible network configurations, and much more.

And that is only the beginning. A more complete list and details of each new cited feature is available here:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/12/FeatureList

For more information including common and known bugs, tips on how to report bugs, and the official release schedule, please refer to the release notes:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora..._release_notes

Thank you, and we hope to see you in the Fedora project!
Retrieved from "https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_12_Alpha_Announcement"

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedor...a_Announcement

[kulbirsaini]

Looking forward to test it on VirtualBox. I hope booting time will not be 2 minutes for this

[planetf1]

Looks like it may take a while for mirors to update? Picked a few from the page references above, and either got permissions problems, or file not found... (just for i386 live). Bit-torrent working though.

[bob]

I'm running @ 396 steady downloading the DVD direct from http://fedoraproject.org/get-prerelease about at 34% so far.

[scottro]

Seems as if you have to go through the link on the project page, otherwise you get permission denied--at least that's what I found .

Also, the somewhat annoying fact that even if you uncheck everything, including base, it still requires more than one CD. So much for putting the first CD on a USB and installing that way.

On to try net.iso. (boot.iso, at this point, is not offering the askmethod option.)

[bob]

Oh well, there goes my attempt. Anaconda ends with an error so it's bugzilla time.

think i'll wait for the beta

ok i just tried the LiveCD, i got no sound, funny tho, i get sound in Ubuntu9.10 though

[NBZ]

Just tried the x86_64 live CD and could not install - anaconda error when querying devices or something.

i can see this being another wonderful release

[060456F]

Fedora developers would in fact make Fedora 12 be better than the previous releases. This is still the Alpha. I would definitely try this. Fedora 12 is scheduled to release on 10th of November 2009.

Originally Posted by 060456F

Fedora developers would in fact make Fedora 12 be better than the previous releases. This is still the Alpha. I would definitely try this. Fedora 12 is scheduled to release on 10th of November 2009.

diont bet on it being released on the 10th buddy, Fedora releases are well known to have a week or 2 week delay.

from the look of it, still has Anaconda problems

Question is, is it Anaconda or this new wonderful X-server

all i know is, it picks my Monitor up as some unknown monitor name that i have no clue on who they are, it should be picked up as being a Asus but no ..actually i should reboot into the LiveCD an take a screenie of the name of the monitor that it picks up. should be a Asus

ok to my report before of not getting sound, i do get sound now, i must of did something with pulseaudio for it not to gwet any sound, thats awesome then.

[RahulSundaram]

Hi,

Be it Anaconda issues or Xorg problems, do make sure that bugs are reported in bugzilla

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora...ng_Bug_Reports

Bugs reported here essentially go to /dev/null

[bob]

Tried both the DVD and Live CD and filed a bugzilla 519427 when both failed. Interestingly, SELinux seemed to fight my installation efforts at every turn. Fun!

[ryptyde]

Installed the LiveCD to a usb flash device and booted from an Acer Aspire One and decided to install. From clicking the install icon to a working hd desktop took 16 minutes. Added the rpmfusion repos to get some extras and also installed the "gnome-shell" and tried it for a bit. Sound works although it was muted initially.

This AAO had F10 beta and updated to final now to see how F12 alpha progresses. Oh yeah I notice the "idiot light" for wifi works.