Fedora Core 5 Test 1 Review

[desertwind]

Fedora Core 5 Test 1 Review

Note Before:
1. This is a desktop user review. No indepth features/bugs are examined.
2. Has worked on this distro for only a few hours. So this not a complete one.

System Config
AMD Athlon XP 2200+ Processor
ASUS A7NVM266 Motherboard
160 GB Seagate Baraccuda 7200 RPM HDD
80 GB Seagate Baraccuda 7200 RPM HDD
nVidia Geforce2 MX 32 MB integrated Video Card
512x2 DDR333 MHz RAM

Installation

So, I downloaded the 6 iso's (5 Installation iso and one network boot iso). I really didn't want to waste 5 cd's for a test distribution. So i burnt the boot.iso into my RW, and decided to go for a hard disc install.

After restart, i booted with the boot cd, selected the installation type, entered the path to iso's, and waited. Alas! I got a valuable piece of information. Anaconda is under some serious changes. Hard disc installation is not supported for the time being.

Booted back into FC4, burnt all 5 cds, ready for a new start. Selected text install now.

SATA is supported natively now. After the usual Media Check and all, The installation screen appeared, and it appeared nasty. All the text seems to be garbled.

Reboot, Graphical install now.

The graphical installer pops up. On pressing next, RedHat advised me not to install this. I clicked "Install Anyway".

After the Language and Keyboard selection, it took directly into the partition screen. No searching for previous installations, No install/upgrade options, and no installation type (workstation/server/personal/custom) selection screens. And the partition screen looks a bit strange for me. It provided four options before me.

1. Remove all partitions
2. Remove all linux partitions
3. Use free space in disk
4. Custom partitioning

I selected custom, for I don't want to disturb my current distro. Next partitioning screen was pretty familiar.

After that te usual Network setup, Time Zone Selection and root password. Firewall/SELinux configuration screens seems to be dissappeared. Now i'm into the package selection screen.

I was dissappointed! This was one of the most worst package selections i've ever seen. This seems to be very basic. It provided me with some groups of packages, which can be selected. No individual package selection and customization at all. The groups are

admin-tools
authoring-and-publishing
base-x*
development-tools
dns-server
eclipse
engineering-and-scientific
ftp-server
games*
gnome-desktop*
gnome-software-development
graphical-internet*
graphics*
java-development
language-support
legacy-network-services
legacy-software-development
mail-server
mysql
network-server
news-server
office*
printing*
server-cfg
smb-server
sound-and-video*
sql-server
system-tools
text-internet*
web-server
x-software-development

of which the starred one's are selected by default. I decided to go with the default selection, additionaly selecting system-tools after the failure of a full installation attempt. (I'll be trying a full installation once again to figure out the error). Clicking next took me to a "Checking for dependancies" dialog, which really checks in detail ! It took about 5 minutes. Installation took about 25 minutes.

Rebooted in anxiety....

Booting

GRUB greeted me with the same old Blue GRUB screen. After starting the usual services The first boot configuration screen appears. Early login is not implemented yet, and the rhgb (RedHat Graphical Boot) seems to be the same old one. The Firewall and SELinux configuration is now a part of firstboot. My sound card is detected, but twice. It shows the same card twice. I selected the default one, as it worked. So the old, blue, login screen again.

Desktop

The first thing I noticed was the same old dark wallpaper. I suggest them to use some light shades for a default wallpaper. Some noticable changes striked me on a first look on the desktop.

1. The new f logo instead of the Hat.
2. No RHN-Applet (Thank GOD! at last...)
3. A new cool 3d animation instead of the old Hour Glass for mouse pointer.

I tried to caoture a screenshot by pressing the PrintScreen key, but nothing happened. I checked with the configuration, but pressing the PrintScreen doesn't seems to work. Atlast i decided to change the Hotkey for Screenshot to F12, which worked.

So Here's the Desktop.

http://www.iup.in/show.php/431_ScreenshotDesktop.png

Applications

FC5 test 1 use the latest versions of several softwares like

Kernel 2.6.14
GNOME 2.12.1
Firefox Deer Park
OOo 2.0


Have a Look.

http://www.iup.in/show.php/432_ScreenshotAboutGNOME.png
http://www.iup.in/show.php/433_ScreenshotDeerPark.png
http://www.iup.in/show.php/435_ScreenshotOOoSplash.png
http://www.iup.in/show.php/434_ScreenshotOOoWriter.png

One of the most important feature of new GNOME 2.12 is that it hold the clipboard contents even if the application is closed.

Nautilus

Nautilus still uses the spatial view (which is a real trouble and mess for me) as default. The first thing i've done is to change it to the browser view. The path can't be entered manually now. (There must be some tweak for this). It now show "Places" instead of "Information" by default in the Side Panel.

Have a look.

http://www.iup.in/show.php/436_ScreenshotNautilus.png

Multimedia

Arghh!! Still no complete multimedia support. mp3/mpeg/wmv/avi etc are not supported natively. Even if a little trick will do for that, supporting them by default will draw more n00b users to gnu/linux. Hope patend issues will be resolved soon (Or the whole world uses Ogg format).

Totem crashed everytime i open it. So no use of that. Helix player is not able to play a single format, not even rm, so no use of that too. Rhythmbox supports only ogg for the time being. But i notice two changes in Rhythmbox.

1. The Error messages for detecting mp3 has been changed. Early it was something like "Unsupported format", but it shows "The file is not an audio stream".

2. Clicking the close (x) button minimises to the panel. For quitting the application, either I've to go through Music>Quit or by right clicking the panel icon, then quit.

gthumb now opens the Image view directly instead of the browser view, when opening an image.

Firefox

One noticable thing about Fx Deer Park is that it crashed everytime i cliked a Menu Entry. And tooks too much time to load.

File Roller

The archive manager goes back to old mode. Now "Extract Here" will extract all files into the current directory, instead of creating a new archivename.zip_Files directory. But still nor rar archive support.

System Monitor

System Monitor is now divided into three tabs against the old two. Devices is now a new tab along with Process and Resources.

Personal File Sharing & Remote Desktop

Some new additions to the Preferences are "Personal File Sharing" which has an option to share all public files over the network, with/without password protection and "Remote Desktop" which allows user to connect from/to this desktop remotely.

Add/Remove Package

Selecting this show me a message that "/media/cdrecorder seems not be a valid installation source". So i inserted the first installation disc into the drive, mounted it and tried again. But it still shows the same message.

PUP - The Package UPdater

This one of the most featured change in FC5. PUP, the Package UPdater is the replacement for the troublesome old RHN Updater. This is absed on yum and the interface seems to be very basic, and cleans. No options other than simple "select and update" is available. The first time I started it, it simply quit without any warning. But when I started it after connecting to the internet, I just worked fine. Hope that more options will be added to this one.

http://www.iup.in/show.php/438_ScreenshotPUPget.png
http://www.iup.in/show.php/437_ScreenshotPUP.png

Conclusion

Although it seems a lot similar to its ancestor, FC4, there are signs of lot of changes. Many core applications like anaconda, package updater etc, are under serious change. Several applications are to be included and several to be excluded.

Anyway, End Users are not advised to install this test release on their machines, as there is a possibliity for a lot of bugs and security flaws. Wait for the final release till February, and I'm sure you'll get a rocking solid new Fedora!

[codergeek42]

Nice. I think things like Pup and the reworked artistry are definitely steps in the right direction.

I'm not feeling so adventurous at the moment due to school and whatnot, but I'll probably give FC5test2 a good try and see what awesome new things are happening in the Fedora Development world.

Thanks, desertwind.

[teethlikelions]

nice review.

i think i'll wait till february

[Firewing1]

indeed. I have to say though, Pup is a waste of time. Just include SmartPM; it has more support, more options, more details.
As for Nautilus, try File > Open location or type "/" and maybe you get a window. I know that works in FC4 for most "Open" dialogs...
Firewing1

[teethlikelions]

how definite is the february stable fc5 release?

[Finalzone]

Originally Posted by Firewing1

indeed. I have to say though, Pup is a waste of time. Just include SmartPM; it has more support, more options, more details.
As for Nautilus, try File > Open location or type "/" and maybe you get a window. I know that works in FC4 for most "Open" dialogs...
Firewing1

Pup is a frontend of "yum update". It was not designed to use all yum option.
Did you know it is possible to create a plugins for yum using python? For example,
you can make a downgrade command which basically use "rpm --oldpackage -Uvh package".

[Jman]

Note that both the installer and pup are basically new software, both (re)written to use yum to update, and still will have more features and improvements.

Originally Posted by teethlikelions

how definite is the february stable fc5 release?

Not at all, this could slip at any time. The schedule is only a guide.

Usually the release is fairly close to the target though.

[mbokil]

"Nautilus still uses the spatial view (which is a real trouble and mess for me) as default. The first thing i've done is to change it to the browser view."

I do that change also. I wonder how many people switch it back. If more people swith it back then use it in spatial mode doesn't it make sense that they change this default action?

I think that is one funny issue with Gnome still. I don't care about a perfect mapping of spatial relationships in my folders I just want a fast file browser with the usual features of bookmarks, cut, copy, paste, move, etc.

[Firewing1]

Originally Posted by Finalzone

Pup is a frontend of "yum update". It was not designed to use all yum option.
Did you know it is possible to create a plugins for yum using python? For example,
you can make a downgrade command which basically use "rpm --oldpackage -Uvh package".

No offence to devs, it's cool 'n all, but i still say SmartPM is a better choice. It's next generation; it has mirror support, it can bridge apt, yum, and pretty much any other PM out there, it shows a desc. if what's installing, a "Change Review", "Fix all problems" to fix broken / duplicate packages, reinstall packages on right click, priorites, it's amazing.
It, too uses PyGTK (Python + GTK) for interface and the yum plug in.
Firewing

[ieuuk]

it's looking good... i cant get fc5 running on my pc at the moment but i'll probably update my core 3 server to core 5 in feb and have a big jump.

cheers all

[Chen]

I support firewing1. SmartPM is the best choice.

[Finalzone]

Then someone should bring Smartpm in Fedora Extras repository. Any taker?

[codergeek42]

Originally Posted by Finalzone

Then someone should bring Smartpm in Fedora Extras repository. Any taker?

It's been discussed on the mailing lists, but no one seems to want to maintain it in Extras: msg00924.html, msg00783.html

[Finalzone]

Originally Posted by codergeek42

It's been discussed on the mailing lists, but no one seems to want to maintain it in Extras: msg00924.html, msg00783.html

You just provided a page that explain why downgrade is not an option:

Are you here to argue semantics or are you here to have a constructive
conversation?
The issue is about "known" vulnerabilities and "expected" problems
based on how scriplets are designed to work.

Vulnerabilities get fixed with upgrades as they are discovered and
developers respond. Its pretty clear to anyone willing to be rational,
that software updates are inspired to deal with "known"
vulnerabilities. Tools that takes the thought out of downgrading into
a known insecurity from a more security state does those users a
disservice. This of course is not the strongest argument that can be
made against downgrading, since notification about security issues
could be incorporated either from the changelog difference or from
seperate notification text to inform the users of the risk.

The stronger argument against this behavior is about how rpm packages
are actually designed and tested. How much testing does anyone do with
regard to downgrades? Is there any packager out there that creates
upgrades to fix issues regarding downgrading?
I'll go out on a limb and suggest that the number of maintainers who
do spend any time on making sure downgrades work smoothly is
vanishingly small. We know this situation gets absolutely no testing,
and gets absolutely no maintenance and as a result tools should not be
automating the process when the results are ill-defined.

Therefore, downgrading a package provides a security risk due to known vulnerability from old packages.

[Firewing1]

Originally Posted by codergeek42

It's been discussed on the mailing lists, but no one seems to want to maintain it in Extras: msg00924.html, msg00783.html

I would. I'm slightly busy right now, but I've made a RPM for the SmartPM base and then i can just re-package the ATRPMS rpms. When i'm not so busy i'll sign up.
Firewing1