8 ms·

Fedora 16 Released

113 points by Garbage 15y ago

taudelta 15y ago
Here is a link to the downloads: http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora-options http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora-options
j_col 15y ago
The new Jules Verne inspired theme looks great.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  I love their themes. Wish it were easy to download them separately.
jtreminio 15y ago
I'm using Ubuntu, and I wanted to give Fedora a try. I can't run Docky or Avant Window Navigator :( Gnome 3 is great and all, but I really like using docks and from some google searches it seems many people have this issue!
- herrwolfe 15y ago
  Both of these run under fedora 15. Try installing from source, I have done this and it has worked fine.
  - herrwolfe 15y ago
    That wasn't very clear, sorry: Try installing AWM and docky from source and run them under a different window manager. It should work fine (XFCE is a great alternative to Gnome 3).
    - jtreminio 15y ago
      Yup, that's worked for me before... but then I'm not using Gnome 3, which I'm growing rather fond of.
RexRollman 15y ago
So how "light" is a default install of Fedora these days? The thing I don't like about Ubuntu is that they take the kitchen sink approach and install a bunch of stuff I don't believe should be installed by default, such as Open/Libre Office.
- cturner 15y ago
  I've had the same objection. Now I run installs from the server edition. You can add stuff afterwards.
- gnaritas 15y ago
  An office suite most certainly should be installed by default in a distro aimed at ordinary users. That you'd think otherwise is stunning.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - vault_ 15y ago
    Neither Windows nor OS X comes with an office suite installed by default. It wouldn't be unprecedented if a linux distro were to come without one.
    - eitland 15y ago
      For distros targetting ordinary users the office suite should come preinstalled as long as you can't buy one at Staples. That said this is also part of what makes Linux shine compared to especially Windows: Usually everything is installed and Just Works in 20 minutes after started installation. (Have been fixing peoples borked Windowses from '95 to '08 so I'm allowed to be opinionated here. : )
    - gnaritas 15y ago
      That's mostly not true, nearly every windows install from a store bought machine has trial versions of office already installed. Word and Excel are expected programs for most people.
mapleoin 15y ago
Dedicated to Dennis Ritchie! http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/16/html/Release_Notes/sect-Dedication.html http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/16/html/Release_N... Also, a StackExchange-like Fedora Q&A site was launched today: http://ask.fedoraproject.org/questions/ http://ask.fedoraproject.org/questions/
dignan 15y ago
I'm pretty curious how Aeolus is working out. It looks like an interesting technology (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Aeolus_Conductor http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Aeolus_Conductor)
- rwmj 15y ago
  New release just came out and it looks quite nice. Also new in Fedora 16 is full OpenStack support. And before people say, Aeolus and OpenStack are complementary things, they aren't "competing". Aeolus is a cross-cloud management tool. OpenStack is (to put it in very simple and not quite accurate terms) an EC2 clone. You can use Aeolus to manage OpenStack or to migrate loads between EC2/OpenStack/other cloud.
melling 15y ago
Can someone discuss the pros of Fedora? I'm mainly a Mac user these days but my Fedora 9 box is still running in the corner on a very old box. I promised myself I'd get a beefy 8-core Intel Ivy bridge system next year. I assume all my "build notes" with all my yum installs still work. All I ever hear about is Ubuntu.
- dignan 15y ago
  Well, I'd say first and foremost, it's a matter of preference. For example, some people just can't stand yum, others love it. From a technical perspective, Fedora tends to be about 1/2 to 1 release ahead of Ubuntu, by which I mean the software in Fedora now will be in Ubuntu in 3-6 months, and has less "magic". If you care about free/libre/whatever it's called today software, then Fedora tends to be a better choice than Ubuntu, since the Fedora developers tend to work much more closely with the community, whereas Ubuntu does its own thing. These days, Fedora uses Gnome 3 whereas Ubuntu uses Unity for its desktop environment.
  - pook1e 15y ago
    > These days, Fedora uses Gnome 3 whereas Ubuntu uses Unity for its desktop environment. This is what convinced me to switch to Fedora last week after using Ubuntu for years, and so far I love it (Fedora, I'll save my opinions of Gnome 3 for another thread). Using yum was very easy after having used synaptic and I was able to get everything set up on my system without any trouble.
- jqueryin 15y ago
  The main reason I chose Fedora over Ubuntu: You get more recent and frequent package updates running on Fedora or CentOS (RHEL derivatives). The secondary reason I chose Fedora over Ubuntu: I can't stand the apt-get package manager from the command line. I prefer yum over apt-get any day of the week. I understand you can install synaptic, I'd rather not have to. Yum also has the wonderful yum-plugin-priorities package for maintaining a number of repos with specific priorities and hierarchical rules for determining which packages to update from which repositories. There are also plugins for finding the fastest mirror and protected the base packages so you don't bomb an app updating: http://wiki.centos.org/PackageManagement/Yum/ http://wiki.centos.org/PackageManagement/Yum/ I also enjoy CentOS, but generally more for headless web servers.
RusAlexander 15y ago
3d linux distro by popularity in the World.
- Sindisil 15y ago
  Third by what measure? I hate to be "that guy", but [citation needed]. Seriously, if you're just quoting distrowatch, you need a new source. Even by their own numbers, Ubuntu claims to have less than Fedora, though they do seem to be gaining. [http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/operating-systems/3310952/canonical-launches-ubuntu-1110-update/?page=0,0 http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/operating-systems/331095...] [http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Statistics http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Statistics]
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
211231321 15y ago
I can't make up my mind. I used to use ubuntu as my primary OS, but I am familiar enough with linux that I can run any distro (I used to run Gentoo and Archlinux, but at some point of time I realized I actually like the sink included stuff so I switched back to ubuntu, now I experiment less). When I bought my new laptop (Acer Aspire 5742G) it came with two graphics cards, one intel onboard and one dedicated nVidia 540M. Their is a tech, nVidia optimus, which is supposed to switch between these two depending upon my performance needs. But linux (I mean the kernel linux not a specific distro) does not really do that because of some driver issues. So my battery performance drops like 50% and the laptop heats up a lot, which is bad. I tried CPU scaling, I tried that bumblebee package but nothing worked. For now I am working out of windows 7 home edition which came pre-installed. And I must tell you, there isn't much of a difference(in usability and stability that is, battery backup increased 2x). I may switch to windows full time because switching back to linux doesn't have much merit right now. I am thinking of trying out Fedora but I need to know if it would solve the problem before I go through the hassle of installing it. If anyone else has this kind of laptop and notes similar battery life for each distro and which is actually the battery life the laptop should have, then please tell me. Edit: Grammar and explanation.
- andrewl-hn 15y ago
  What about running Linux inside a virtual machine when you do UNIX work? That would certainly add up some CPU overhead (how many is that these days - 10%?) but I doubt that graphics chip would kick in unless it's really needed. I hope you can get your laptop run Linux with a little less overhead that way.
  - 211231321 15y ago
    The thing is, I don't really need linux. I started using it since XP was okey and Vista sucked. I needed change and Linux provides room for lots of experiment. We have good WMs and we have a wide range of types. All of that was fine and dandy when I was 15 and loved to experiment. But now I don't really want to experiment much. I just want a stable OS which works great with my laptop. Should integrate well and all the buttons on my laptop should work with it (like I have only one button for both wifi and bluetooth, on windows it brings up a dialog box with options for turning them on or off, in ubuntu there is this [00,01,10,11] sequence. Its annoying). I am a student and majorly do C programming for microcontrollers. All that works good, sometimes better [looking at you TI MSP430 launchpad debugger] on windows. So the only purpose of having a linux installation is that I am habituated in last 5 years.
mdaniel 15y ago
Also, please don't forget that Fedora is available via BitTorrent: http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora-all http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora-all
- codeine 15y ago
  If you're running Fedora 15, you can also upgrade using yum: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Upgrading_Fedora_using_yum#Fedora_15_-.3E_Fedora_16 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Upgrading_Fedora_using_yum#Fed...
  - flink 15y ago
    Yes, you can upgrade that way but it's not recommended (see the warning @ the top of that page). That upgrade method isn't really tested and may or may not work depending on your system. You'd be much better off using PreUpgrade (making sure you update your system first) [1] or the install media. If you don't want to burn a DVD or CD, you can make a bootable USB stick with the iso [2]. [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_use_PreUpgrade http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_use_PreUpgrade [2] http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/16/html/Installation_Guide/Making_USB_Media-UNIX_Linux.html http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/16/html/Installat...
leif 15y ago
I am now a Productive Member Of Society, which means two things: I have a macbook air (from my job), and I have little free time. In the past, seeing a release like this would mean picking the least-used partition on my computer, doing a full install, and using it for a week before deciding what I had before was better, or not doing that. This time around, here was my experience: 1. Download the ISO 2. Open up VMWare (oh shit, there's a new version! oh shit, you have to pay again...forget it) 3. Make a new VM, boot the ISO 4. GNOME 3 won't work. Hmm, well I probably need VMWare Tools installed. 5. Try to install VMWare Tools. CD tray's locked. Guess I have to do a full install first. 6. Do the install (defaults everywhere). 7. Reboot into system. GNOME 3 won't work, of course. 8. Click "Install VMWare Tools". A window pops up with a tar.gz. That's silly, okay, extract it, see a folder with a perl script called "something install something". 9. Open a terminal, sudo perl whatever-installer.pl. 10. Hit enter a bunch of times. I have to run some config script, would I like it launched for me? Sure. 11. Can't install, I need make and gcc. WTF? 12. sudo yum install make gcc. Nope, the package manager's locked. 13. Where's update manager? Maybe I can kill it. Nope, that opened it, ok, 35 updates. It just got released, what the hell? Okay don't do that yet. 14. How about Add/Remove Programs? Hmm, there's a Programming category. Click it. Window goes gray. 15. Flip over to a web browser. Browse for a bit. Send an email. 16. Back to Fedora. Still gray. 17. Close window, delete VM, delete ISO, remove from torrents. My ratio's only 18%. Oh well. 18. Write stupid comment on HN. 19. Dinner time.
- rjbond3rd 15y ago
  My experiences have been completely opposite. Didn't GNOME 3 just silently go into fallback mode? I've been running Fedora 16 beta VM's for many weeks (on VMware and VirtualBox running on a Linux host).
  - leif 15y ago
    It does go silently into fallback mode and it looks awful (IMHO). If I remember correctly, so does non-fallback mode though. My problem is mostly with the fact that make and gcc are not installed on a Linux system by default, and that the software installer just hangs and offers no explanation.
RusAlexander 15y ago
if someone don't know, a new Fedore codename is Verne

113 points by Garbage 15y ago

Here is a link to the downloads: http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora-options http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora-options

j_col 15y ago

The new Jules Verne inspired theme looks great.

rbanffy 15y ago
I love their themes. Wish it were easy to download them separately.

jtreminio 15y ago

I'm using Ubuntu, and I wanted to give Fedora a try. I can't run Docky or Avant Window Navigator :( Gnome 3 is great and all, but I really like using docks and from some google searches it seems many people have this issue!

herrwolfe 15y ago
Both of these run under fedora 15. Try installing from source, I have done this and it has worked fine.
- herrwolfe 15y ago
  That wasn't very clear, sorry: Try installing AWM and docky from source and run them under a different window manager. It should work fine (XFCE is a great alternative to Gnome 3).
  - jtreminio 15y ago
    Yup, that's worked for me before... but then I'm not using Gnome 3, which I'm growing rather fond of.

RexRollman 15y ago

So how "light" is a default install of Fedora these days? The thing I don't like about Ubuntu is that they take the kitchen sink approach and install a bunch of stuff I don't believe should be installed by default, such as Open/Libre Office.

cturner 15y ago
I've had the same objection. Now I run installs from the server edition. You can add stuff afterwards.
gnaritas 15y ago
An office suite most certainly should be installed by default in a distro aimed at ordinary users. That you'd think otherwise is stunning.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- vault_ 15y ago
  Neither Windows nor OS X comes with an office suite installed by default. It wouldn't be unprecedented if a linux distro were to come without one.
  - eitland 15y ago
    For distros targetting ordinary users the office suite should come preinstalled as long as you can't buy one at Staples. That said this is also part of what makes Linux shine compared to especially Windows: Usually everything is installed and Just Works in 20 minutes after started installation. (Have been fixing peoples borked Windowses from '95 to '08 so I'm allowed to be opinionated here. : )
  - gnaritas 15y ago
    That's mostly not true, nearly every windows install from a store bought machine has trial versions of office already installed. Word and Excel are expected programs for most people.

mapleoin 15y ago

Dedicated to Dennis Ritchie! http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/16/html/Release_Notes/sect-Dedication.html http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/16/html/Release_N... Also, a StackExchange-like Fedora Q&A site was launched today: http://ask.fedoraproject.org/questions/ http://ask.fedoraproject.org/questions/

dignan 15y ago

I'm pretty curious how Aeolus is working out. It looks like an interesting technology (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Aeolus_Conductor http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Aeolus_Conductor)

rwmj 15y ago
New release just came out and it looks quite nice. Also new in Fedora 16 is full OpenStack support. And before people say, Aeolus and OpenStack are complementary things, they aren't "competing". Aeolus is a cross-cloud management tool. OpenStack is (to put it in very simple and not quite accurate terms) an EC2 clone. You can use Aeolus to manage OpenStack or to migrate loads between EC2/OpenStack/other cloud.

melling 15y ago

Can someone discuss the pros of Fedora? I'm mainly a Mac user these days but my Fedora 9 box is still running in the corner on a very old box. I promised myself I'd get a beefy 8-core Intel Ivy bridge system next year. I assume all my "build notes" with all my yum installs still work. All I ever hear about is Ubuntu.

dignan 15y ago
Well, I'd say first and foremost, it's a matter of preference. For example, some people just can't stand yum, others love it. From a technical perspective, Fedora tends to be about 1/2 to 1 release ahead of Ubuntu, by which I mean the software in Fedora now will be in Ubuntu in 3-6 months, and has less "magic". If you care about free/libre/whatever it's called today software, then Fedora tends to be a better choice than Ubuntu, since the Fedora developers tend to work much more closely with the community, whereas Ubuntu does its own thing. These days, Fedora uses Gnome 3 whereas Ubuntu uses Unity for its desktop environment.
- pook1e 15y ago
  > These days, Fedora uses Gnome 3 whereas Ubuntu uses Unity for its desktop environment. This is what convinced me to switch to Fedora last week after using Ubuntu for years, and so far I love it (Fedora, I'll save my opinions of Gnome 3 for another thread). Using yum was very easy after having used synaptic and I was able to get everything set up on my system without any trouble.
jqueryin 15y ago
The main reason I chose Fedora over Ubuntu: You get more recent and frequent package updates running on Fedora or CentOS (RHEL derivatives). The secondary reason I chose Fedora over Ubuntu: I can't stand the apt-get package manager from the command line. I prefer yum over apt-get any day of the week. I understand you can install synaptic, I'd rather not have to. Yum also has the wonderful yum-plugin-priorities package for maintaining a number of repos with specific priorities and hierarchical rules for determining which packages to update from which repositories. There are also plugins for finding the fastest mirror and protected the base packages so you don't bomb an app updating: http://wiki.centos.org/PackageManagement/Yum/ http://wiki.centos.org/PackageManagement/Yum/ I also enjoy CentOS, but generally more for headless web servers.

RusAlexander 15y ago

3d linux distro by popularity in the World.

Sindisil 15y ago
Third by what measure? I hate to be "that guy", but [citation needed]. Seriously, if you're just quoting distrowatch, you need a new source. Even by their own numbers, Ubuntu claims to have less than Fedora, though they do seem to be gaining. [http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/operating-systems/3310952/canonical-launches-ubuntu-1110-update/?page=0,0 http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/operating-systems/331095...] [http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Statistics http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Statistics]

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

211231321 15y ago

I can't make up my mind. I used to use ubuntu as my primary OS, but I am familiar enough with linux that I can run any distro (I used to run Gentoo and Archlinux, but at some point of time I realized I actually like the sink included stuff so I switched back to ubuntu, now I experiment less). When I bought my new laptop (Acer Aspire 5742G) it came with two graphics cards, one intel onboard and one dedicated nVidia 540M. Their is a tech, nVidia optimus, which is supposed to switch between these two depending upon my performance needs. But linux (I mean the kernel linux not a specific distro) does not really do that because of some driver issues. So my battery performance drops like 50% and the laptop heats up a lot, which is bad. I tried CPU scaling, I tried that bumblebee package but nothing worked. For now I am working out of windows 7 home edition which came pre-installed. And I must tell you, there isn't much of a difference(in usability and stability that is, battery backup increased 2x). I may switch to windows full time because switching back to linux doesn't have much merit right now. I am thinking of trying out Fedora but I need to know if it would solve the problem before I go through the hassle of installing it. If anyone else has this kind of laptop and notes similar battery life for each distro and which is actually the battery life the laptop should have, then please tell me. Edit: Grammar and explanation.

andrewl-hn 15y ago
What about running Linux inside a virtual machine when you do UNIX work? That would certainly add up some CPU overhead (how many is that these days - 10%?) but I doubt that graphics chip would kick in unless it's really needed. I hope you can get your laptop run Linux with a little less overhead that way.
- 211231321 15y ago
  The thing is, I don't really need linux. I started using it since XP was okey and Vista sucked. I needed change and Linux provides room for lots of experiment. We have good WMs and we have a wide range of types. All of that was fine and dandy when I was 15 and loved to experiment. But now I don't really want to experiment much. I just want a stable OS which works great with my laptop. Should integrate well and all the buttons on my laptop should work with it (like I have only one button for both wifi and bluetooth, on windows it brings up a dialog box with options for turning them on or off, in ubuntu there is this [00,01,10,11] sequence. Its annoying). I am a student and majorly do C programming for microcontrollers. All that works good, sometimes better [looking at you TI MSP430 launchpad debugger] on windows. So the only purpose of having a linux installation is that I am habituated in last 5 years.

mdaniel 15y ago

Also, please don't forget that Fedora is available via BitTorrent: http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora-all http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora-all

codeine 15y ago
If you're running Fedora 15, you can also upgrade using yum: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Upgrading_Fedora_using_yum#Fedora_15_-.3E_Fedora_16 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Upgrading_Fedora_using_yum#Fed...
- flink 15y ago
  Yes, you can upgrade that way but it's not recommended (see the warning @ the top of that page). That upgrade method isn't really tested and may or may not work depending on your system. You'd be much better off using PreUpgrade (making sure you update your system first) [1] or the install media. If you don't want to burn a DVD or CD, you can make a bootable USB stick with the iso [2]. [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_use_PreUpgrade http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_use_PreUpgrade [2] http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/16/html/Installation_Guide/Making_USB_Media-UNIX_Linux.html http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/16/html/Installat...

leif 15y ago

I am now a Productive Member Of Society, which means two things: I have a macbook air (from my job), and I have little free time. In the past, seeing a release like this would mean picking the least-used partition on my computer, doing a full install, and using it for a week before deciding what I had before was better, or not doing that. This time around, here was my experience: 1. Download the ISO 2. Open up VMWare (oh shit, there's a new version! oh shit, you have to pay again...forget it) 3. Make a new VM, boot the ISO 4. GNOME 3 won't work. Hmm, well I probably need VMWare Tools installed. 5. Try to install VMWare Tools. CD tray's locked. Guess I have to do a full install first. 6. Do the install (defaults everywhere). 7. Reboot into system. GNOME 3 won't work, of course. 8. Click "Install VMWare Tools". A window pops up with a tar.gz. That's silly, okay, extract it, see a folder with a perl script called "something install something". 9. Open a terminal, sudo perl whatever-installer.pl. 10. Hit enter a bunch of times. I have to run some config script, would I like it launched for me? Sure. 11. Can't install, I need make and gcc. WTF? 12. sudo yum install make gcc. Nope, the package manager's locked. 13. Where's update manager? Maybe I can kill it. Nope, that opened it, ok, 35 updates. It just got released, what the hell? Okay don't do that yet. 14. How about Add/Remove Programs? Hmm, there's a Programming category. Click it. Window goes gray. 15. Flip over to a web browser. Browse for a bit. Send an email. 16. Back to Fedora. Still gray. 17. Close window, delete VM, delete ISO, remove from torrents. My ratio's only 18%. Oh well. 18. Write stupid comment on HN. 19. Dinner time.

rjbond3rd 15y ago
My experiences have been completely opposite. Didn't GNOME 3 just silently go into fallback mode? I've been running Fedora 16 beta VM's for many weeks (on VMware and VirtualBox running on a Linux host).
- leif 15y ago
  It does go silently into fallback mode and it looks awful (IMHO). If I remember correctly, so does non-fallback mode though. My problem is mostly with the fact that make and gcc are not installed on a Linux system by default, and that the software installer just hangs and offers no explanation.

RusAlexander 15y ago

if someone don't know, a new Fedore codename is Verne