A test release of Fedora Core 2 is now available from Red Hat and at distinguished mirror sites near you, and is also available in the torrent. Fedora Core has expanded in this release to four binary ISO images and four source ISO images. This test release is specifically designed for testing the 2.6 kernel, GNOME 2.5, and KDE 3.2. Please file bugs via Bugzilla, Product Fedora Core, Version test1, Architecture i386 so that they are noticed and appropriately classified.
Fedora Core 2 Test 1 Released
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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What’s with the KDE 3.2RC1? Would it be better to test with the final release? Even if it meant delaying just a little bit more i think KDE 3.2 final should already be in there. Wotcha think?
I’m suprised to read in the intro that Gnome 2.5 would be included. I would expect Gnome 2.4.x.
Why a development release?
Because Gnome 2.6 will be already released when Fedora will come out in April. It makes sense to test as much as possible the version it will be bundled with at the end.
This is awesome. I was waiting to test out kernel 2.6 and Gnome 2.5. Having everything packaged with ALSA to boot is amazing. Fedora is going strong, the community around it is helpful and they even have AMD64 support in testing phases as well. Well done.
Fedora Core 2 includes XFCE!! W00t!!
I think its good to test with an RC1 because the software won’t change much between this test and the final release, and it gives end users a chance to add any last minute comments/bugs before KDE 3.2 is released. I think of this as an RC1 of Fedora Core 2.
Same goes for GNOME 2.5.x. I’m sure Fedora Core 2 will have both KDE 3.2 and GNOME 2.6 when it is finally released, but until then its nice to see them preparing for it and pushing this stuff out into the hands of end users before it gets released. I think there were some problems with Fedora Core 1, though I can’t remember what they were right now. Maybe this will help prevent those things from happening.
I come from a QA background, so I think QA is probably the most important part of the release process. And community drive QA rocks, IMO.
> it gives end users a chance to add any last minute comments/bugs before KDE 3.2 is released.
Good morning, KDE 3.2 was released eight days ago.
> Because Gnome 2.6 will be already released when Fedora will come out in April.
Nobody knows if it will unless Gtk+ 2.4 is finally released. They tied GNOME 2.6 to Gtk+ 2.4 and now they’re doomed.
I mean, it is nice and lite, but it seems less capable to me than any other WM or DE.
Maybe you’ll actually be able to install software from the cds this time without having any problems.
It really boils down to the fact that it gets the job done w/minimual cpu/ram usage. It runs really fast and does what some people need it to. Other people like yourself probably want a WM with more features…
I have been using fedora development for a while, and it’s a good distro. But the metacity bug is really annoying.
It manifest itself in that you click on a window border / decoration, and it doesn’t register the mouse up event as happening after the mouse down, so it thinks you want to drag resize / move with the mouse.
Details here; https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=107149
Hopefully this will be fixed soon (http://log.ometer.com/2004-02.html#11).
Where is firefox???
This distro has some weird problems with networking. On two computers on totally different networks, both with fedora core v1.90 I cannot connect and download sun’s new jdk1.5.0-beta from their website (http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/download.jsp, click download in the SDK column). I only get a timeout after a while.
This also manifests itself on other sites, eg http://www.royalmail.co.uk. Rebooting into windows on either machine running the same ip address allows the download to be performed flawlessly.
Can someone else try this to see if this is a real problem with this distro?
Hey Torgeir, please post some screenshots from gnome for the screenshot-hungry people around here.
thx.
When is Fedora 2 coming out?
The current estimate for release is April 19, 2004. See: http://fedora.redhat.com/participate/schedule/
Eclipse, Galeon, IceWM, K3b, MPlayer, LyX, Scribus, Wine, Xine
More interesting than GNOME 2.6 for which I’m sure the release will be delayed is Evolution. I read that Evolution 1.6/2.0 will not be part of GNOME 2.6 because it will not ready/stable. Now when Fedore is testing Evolution 1.5 all the time will they have to go back to Evolution 1.4.5 for release in the last days?
Hopefully they will include things like supermount/automount/dbus stuff for mounting/unmounting USB/Firewire devices on the fly !
Maybe then will even copy Mandrake who have been using ifplugd for detecting when the network cable is unplugged and plugged in again (which fedora does not do).
Hopefully they will also focus on making things easier instead of just bigger …
And finally ! Why no K3B ? Even Gnome lovers must see that this is the absolute star of CD/DVD burning apps out there ?
Is the Fedora project going to continue the fine tradition of RedHat 8/9’s BlueCurve themed KDE and Gnome? With KDE 3.2 out, and Gnome 1.6 due out eventually, I don’t see how a stripped-down version of either one is really appropriate.
Here; http://nothome.com/fedora-1.90.png
This screenshot is with normal font antialiasing and openoffice 1.1 with gnome icons, and evolution 1.5.3 (which is kind of buggy at the moment).
How can an existing FC1 user do a yum upgrade to FC2 test1 ? Any hints on how to do this?
I saw a link on Slashdot to a message on the Fedora mailing list. The Slashdot poster said that it worked for him.
I don’t have any links to give you. But, maybe that will be sufficient for you to find it, anyway.
Darren
This time with subpixel antialiasing and nautilus with spatial navigation windows open; http://nothome.com/fedora-1.90-2.png
add this in /etc/yum.comf
fedora-core2]
name=Fedora Core 1.90
baseurl=ftp://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/development
# mirror
#baseurl=http://mirror.dulug.duke.edu/pub/fedora/linux/core/development
It might be good idea if the Fedora project offered a DVD set for those lucky enought to have DVD-Burner.
This is due to the 2.6 kernel, which defaults to using TCP ECN. Some broken routers around the world doesn’t like that.
Do:
echo 0 >/proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_ecn
to turn it off, and the Java/Sun downloads works again.
Yes, this fixed the connection problem. Thx!
One of the things that has bugged me about Red Hat for a while is the ever increasing size of their distribution. For crying out loud, why can’t the basic “personal desktop” install be on one (the first!) cd?! It’s a horrible setup that they (and Fedora by association) have. Truely ghastly.
Looking at your screenshot.. that blue folder icon..is it default one? Looks nice.
I had that problem before. Turn Explicit Congestion Notification off. Type this as root:
echo 0 /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_ecn
Add this to your startup script. (/etc/rc.d/rc.local)
Does it come with Xfree86 4.4?
so… how’s the 802.11g wireless support in FC2T1? Is there any? If so, how well does it work?
Anyone tried it on a laptop? I’m curious about the new features of the kernel 2.6 on laptops. Does power management work well with acpi? Standby, suspend, hibernation?
It may be a dumb question for me to ask, but to those who have initially tested Fedora 2, would you say it’s usable and stable enough for one to move over to in comparison to, say, Ximian Desktop 2 and Suse? I know XD2 (aka gnome 2.2) (and gnome 2.4) is stable and all, but it feels so limited and it sounds like 2.5 has much more to offer (along with FC2)… So for the person who’s tested it, is it like extremely crash prone or, for the most part, workable? This is something I wonder, for the general comp person and lesser comp-known people, also… Thanks.
-Jon
2.6.1 on Dell Inspiron 3800 , no issues at all. Power management works, how good I don’t know because is most of the time powerd.Very rarely I use only the batteries.
Obviously your milage may vary – but for me, FC2-test1 is *buggy* … (I’m not complaining. I *totally* understand that this is a Test release and problems are to be expected. I get it. But here has been my experience none the less.)
Right after installation, I booted into Gnome, clicked “Computer” since it was a new thing I hadn’t seen before – Crash. Hard lock. No mouse movement, no CTRL+ALT+F1, (couldn’t ssh in because since the system was only up for 3 seconds I hadn’t yet set up my wireless NIC. And I doubt it would have worked anyway.)
Hit reset button.
Hard lock while booting.
Hit reset button.
This time it loaded. I decided to avoid “Computer” for a while. I set out to explore the system. I went to the theme preference to see if there were some less hideous themes available than the default Bluecurve. (It’s mainly the icons I don’t like. The window border is fine.)
The theme application acted flaky (couldn’t scroll up and down) and then it just disappeared. No crash message, it just went away.
Then I went back to the RedHat menu (start menu) and I couldn’t click it. Apparently the gnome-panel had froze up.
So I went to the “Start Here” desktop icon, then System Settings. Completely blank. Weird. Closed that out. Went to Applications, Sound & Video looks interesting, More Sound & Video Applications, … Sound Juicer. Cool… click it. It starts to start, but stops. Just a window frame with nothing else. Wait, wait, wait… screw it. Minimize, go to something else.
Right click Desktop, change background… wait, wait, still waiting… nothing. No errors, no options… looks like the link launched /dev/null
Instictively went to the RedHat “start” menu. Oh yeah – gnome-panel apparently crashed. Forgot about that. No wait – there is the menu. It’s back.
System Tools, System Settings, Prefrences? What the hell is the difference? I hated that about RedHat 9 and FC1 and unfortunately these tangled settings menus still haven’t been coalesced into some kind of concise, comprehensive control center/panel ala Mandrake/SuSE.
So I decide to configure my wireless NIC. …or not. If there’s a way to do it graphically, it’s beyond me. Just figuring out which settings/tools/preferences menu the NIC config tool is in takes several seconds. And since the system is as buggy as it is, I don’t feel like messing with /etc/*
Lets see what root can do. Start, Log Out, crash, crash, crash… About 3 or 4 different things crashed while logging out. And now the system appears to have hard locked again.
I’ve had enough. These test-1 discs are my new coasters.
Maybe Test-2 will be better.
shit, i’ll leave test 1 well alone then.
I had alot of problems when trying the 2.6 kernel with desktop lockup’s, mouse not working had to TAB everywhere, etc. It was too unstable for me to even send bug reports. I’m going to wait for the first beta before giving it a run. Test 1 to me is just “we built the RPM’s, see if it boots please”
Granted my hardware is all basically brand new, I was surprised it even booted heh
Does FC2 come with the Ximianised version of OpenOffice? Or did you roll your own build?
Yeah, it’s a test release, definitely some gotcha.
-If you can hang in there long enough to get the current updates, it seems to fix some of the bigger problems.
– Very zippy though. Noticebly.
A lot of polishing to be done, but hey that’s why it’s a test release
Kingston wrote:
One of the things that has bugged me about Red Hat for a while is the ever increasing size of their distribution.
Fedora is, of course, not a Redhat product. It’s a community product where it seems that the community simply wants to add stuff — that’s why it’s now up to 4 CD’s.
The Fedora community just happens to be one that likes a lot of stuff heaped into their distro by default. They prefer theirs to be the large luxury SUV of Linux distros. Personally, I’m the “1993 Honda Civic, stick-shift, manual windows and doorlock” type.
Ok, I guess it does sound kind of buggy… Gnome 2.5 sounds really awesome though… Anyway, I guess I’ll give it a spin. Has anyone tested FC2 with XFCE, KDE, or even gnome 2.4? It’d be nice to know so I know whether it’s just gnome 2.5 that’d be the problem or the kernel… But anyway, I’ll also give it whirl. Thanks.
-Jon
I don’t know if I like the new nautilus desktop. It seems that they are trying to make it act like a mac os 9 finder. I much prefer the older style with much easier file navigation ala a windows explorer style. I installed it on a fairly stock P4 machine with onboard sound (AC97) and it does not seem to work, although I have not invesitgated it yet. The Open Office does have some spiffy new icons that make it look much better than a stock 1.1. As far as speed, it does not seem any faster to me on the 2 Ghz machine, and the previous Fedora was among the fastest desktop distros I have tried. I will see how well it works on a P3 550 tommorow with XFCE and see if it faster on older hardware. Oh, the XFree version is 4.3 something, not 4.4.
“Fedora is, of course, not a Redhat product.”
Bullshit. It’s Red Hat, with community involvement. You look at the layout, the packaging, the logos, everything is Red Hat.
A project hosted on Red Hat’s servers is pretty much a Red Hat project, regardless of wether or not the developers are Red Hat employees.
Think about it.
Hi
most of the distro is pretty good. gnome 2.5 crashes awfully though since its in the middle of all kind of changes esp with regard to nautlius. kde and xfce is very good
regards
ram
I just got finished installing FC2 test1 on my compaq 1.1Ghz Athlon, Everything installed fine, detected all my hardware perfectly, so Installation went smooth, now my desktop experiance wasnt so great, I have had many crashes, but the whole desktop experiance was very much noticably much faster. I have a few cons about the fedora Distro though, I dont like how it doesnt include Mplayer, DivX, and MP3 support by default, but that i could live with, I think the control panel should be better organized like mandrake and suse are, Program load up times take a long time. Thats bout all i have to say for fedora core 2.
“Bullshit. It’s Red Hat, with community involvement. You look at the layout, the packaging, the logos, everything is Red Hat.
A project hosted on Red Hat’s servers is pretty much a Red Hat project, regardless of wether or not the developers are Red Hat employees. ”
Fedora core is nothing more than the old redhat linux with a new name, no more product support, and a little more community involvement. The core development team remains relatively unchanged, most of it is still comprised of redhat employees, the whole name change move was for red hat to try to seperate themselves from the free version so they could try to sell more copies of Red Hat Enterprise linux touting service and support as the benefit, since before businesses would download the base RHL free line and just pay for service rather than pay for a license for RHEL.
I still like Fedora much better than for example Mandrake. I have found the quality to be much better.
Tooooooo many of you guys are reporting crashes. This is a bad thing? NO… it’s a bleedin’ test release! Figure out what caused the crash and post it on bugzilla. God… just DON’T install test releases if you don’t plan on experiencing many crashes, especially one centered around a development release of gnome 2.6…
Another thing… quit with the “Fedora doesn’t have MP3/divx/k3b/mplayer/gophers/4-slice toaster” bullcrap. RedHat is corporate. They need to protect their hides in as many places as possible from the evil world of patents and the such. Just download freakin’ apt from freshrpms and apt-get update/apt-get install xyz… you’re all set. This is linux… you have to work for your ideal computing experience.
Now… my own personal comments. 4 CDs? That’s crap… I dont understand why organizing packages across 4 CDs is so difficult. Anyone care to enlighten me? IMHO, all the desktop user stuff should be on the first CD: Gnome (of course), OO.o, Evolution, Mozilla (yeah… they really need to jump on the firefox bandwagon), Gaim, Rhythmbox/XMMS… that’s just about it. Of course all the default services should be in the first CD as well. I understand that 00.o is 150-odd megs in binary form, so maybe i’ll accept that being on disc 2. Apt should also be installed by default, that way right out of the box you can apt-get all the other stuff as you need it. No need to waste system install time.
I pray important people in the fedora core team read OS News 😀
— eric
Love it. Can’t wait until the final comes out. If you feel like helping out you should try it and report the remaining bugs. Really it’s only minor stuff I have noticed so far, nothing big, and it is very responsive. Just having some problems updating with up2date and apt-get… I upgraded from Fedora Core 1. Really nothing big GUI wise that I have noticed that has changed. I am just having some problems getting DVI to work with my dell 1901 monitor, I gotta go report it. few crashes nothing minor, well go try it for yourself. bye.
Any mirrors (with acceptable speed) avaialable?
You want speed? Use bittorrent…
http://torrent.dulug.duke.edu/
I’ve got it in Azureus and it is downloading at near 250KB/s… I’m never using FTP sites again…
The openoffice version is the default one from fedora, I haven’t done anything with it.
It’s ximianized in that it has gnome icons. Apparently a version using the native widget framework with gtk+ will be included later. See http://people.redhat.com/dcbw/
More infor is usually available in the fedora news bulletins. http://fedoranews.org/colin/fnu/
Here’s the details about XFree v4.4; http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2004-January/msg01…
Well, if you’re behind a firewall/router, it doesn’t help you much
I have a Linksys router/firewall and I can use Bittorrent with no prob.
Are there any updates or changes in boot up ot shutdown GUI? And can someone post some screenshot up??
> Eclipse, Galeon, IceWM, K3b, MPlayer, LyX, Scribus,
> Wine, Xine
Galeon is, from what I hear, in a state of advanced maintenance slump.
wine, xine, k3b, and mplayer are easily available via yum/apt, and it’s likely either a codec or licencing issue.
lyx and scribus I know next to nothing about
Personally I’d rather see blackbox get included than icewm. I much prefer it’s extremely minimalist approach to that of the other forks. However, if one included blackbox, one would have to also include fluxbox/openbox/waimea or the bitching would NEVER cease! Why not E for that matter?
eclipse sounds interesting but also looks like far more than I need as a code hacker. Vim and bluefish are more than sufficient for my needs.
The last thing I want is for FC to turn into a kitchen-sink distro with 8 damned *binary* ISO images, let alone 4 binary/4 source rpm (eek it’s happening already!). It’s bad enough when people come online to #fedora and ask whether it’s completely necessary that they download all three ISO’s for FC1 or not. =:P
> One of the things that has bugged me about Red Hat for a
> while is the ever increasing size of their distribution.
> For crying out loud, why can’t the basic “personal desktop”
> install be on one (the first!) cd?! It’s a horrible setup
> that they (and Fedora by association) have. Truely ghastly.
On the one hand there’s the guy clamoring for all these extra packages to be included with the distro (eclipse, k3b, mplayer, LyX, scribus, icewm, xine, yada-yadda), and on the other hand there’s those like you who want minimalist.
It’s quite possible the ‘personal desktop’ install requires a little more than just the first cd’s worth of stuff, which also has to get the kernel and all the other booting junk out of the way too, not just the userspace apps.
Get some bandwidth and a faster CD burner for goshsakes.
Or better yet, clamor for a repackage of the ISO’s on a DVD which should make all the ‘single disk’ people happy at the same time as gouging their wallets for a new drive (which ALSO keeps their geek mode happy as they then have to get under the hood with the new hardware) =:P
This distro has some weird problems with networking. On two computers on totally different networks, both with fedora core v1.90 I cannot connect and download sun’s new jdk1.5.0-beta from their website (http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/download.jsp, click download in the SDK column). I only get a timeout after a while.
This also manifests itself on other sites, eg http://www.royalmail.co.uk. Rebooting into windows on either machine running the same ip address allows the download to be performed flawlessly.
Can someone else try this to see if this is a real problem with this distro?
cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp/ecn . If it’s 1, you have ECN turned on, which will make a lot of routers on the Internet ignore you.
echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_ecn to fix it.
“Get some bandwidth and a faster CD burner for goshsakes”
I’ve got both actually. My gripe is the fact that they’re not doing things right; by forcing those who are lacking one or both of what you so helpfully sugested to download a massively bloated distribution when what they want should be on the first CD.
Simple things that would make life for it’s would-be users simpler. The extra software would still be there for those who want it.
Think about it.
> lyx and scribus I know next to nothing about
LyX is a graphical LaTeX editor and Scribus a DTP application.