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Fedora 18 "Spherical Cow" released
- rjknight 14y agoHopefully Gnome 3.6 will be a bit more mature and address some of the concerns people have with it, although MATE is now a first-class package in the Fedora repository for those who can't stand Gnome 3. Looking at the feature list, there are relatively few blockbuster features, but I'd be interested to know how useful people think the Active Directory support is, relative to support in other Linux distros (or OSX for that matter).
- reidrac 14y agoFedora 18 includes Cinnamon: http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/ http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/ I think it is a very good option if you don't like Gnome 3 but want to benefit from all the new stuff (ie. GTK+ 3) with a more traditional desktop interface.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- archangel_one 14y agoI've just upgraded this machine and lasted about three hours before I couldn't take Unity any more. Cinnamon is a really nice lightweight alternative which still makes a nice and (to me) sensible distinction between applications and instances of them.
- keypusher 14y agoWhat do you mean by includes? It's the default interface, or it's accessible in the repos? Looks really nice and I'm thinking of upgrading from FC17.
- reidrac 14y agoCinnamon is not installed by default (it is based on Gnome 3 that it is the default), you need to run: yum groupinstall "Cinnamon Desktop" Check the release notes: http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/18/html/Release_Notes/sect-Release_Notes-Changes_for_Desktop.html#idm4145456 http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/18/html/Release_N...
- JamesMcMinn 14y agoGnome 3.6 is better in a lot of ways, but worse in about as many more. I do wish they'd stop removing features just to make the UI simple (not even necessarily better, or easier to use, just simple).
- rjknight 14y agoWhat are the particularly bad bits? Gnome 3.4 feels OK to me - it happens to be a good fit for the "large number of low-resolution monitors" setup I'm currently enduring, as each monitor can have a separate full-screen app, which seems to be how Gnome wants you to do things. That said, I'm going to be trying Cinnamon shortly.
- elehack 14y agoOne thing: Gnome 3.6 is moving farther towards making use of the application menu. Good in general - it was stupid in 3.0 - but it plays very poorly with focus-follows-mouse.
- JamesMcMinn 14y agoNautilus has had an overhaul, too many changes for me to list them all, but some of the more noticeable ones: The separation of "Places" and "Bookmarks". It sounds reasonable, however you cannot modify what is in the Places menu, so even if the folder doesn't exist, you're stuck with it. I don't have a Videos folder, but I cannot remove it from the sidebar. They've also removed the tree view from Nautilus, I used it all the time, but now it's gone. I need multiple windows to look at the contents of multiple folders at once. I cannot make a new empty file directly inside Nautilus. I could understand if this had never existed , but not why they'd remove it now. The App Menu, or whatever they're calling it, is confusing. Nautilus has a button on the toolbar which seems to cover half of the options, and uses the App Menu for the remaining options. The Connect To Server dialog has been changed, for no reason as far as I can tell. It now only has a text box for entering the URI, no easy-to-use Protocol/Server/Port/Username/Password sections. Typing to locate a file will no longer take you to that file, but instead start a search. I personally hate this, although I could understand why some may prefer this. In terms of system configuration, they've stripped a bunch of options out, again. I can no longer enable horizontal scrolling using my touchpad. You can no longer select a background image which is outside of the root Pictures folder (Non-recursive). You cannot even specify a different folder. You cannot specify the background scaling (Zoom seems to be the default, no tiling, or centering etc.) Problems with are still around: The printer configuration is still a disaster - they seem unable to make it work correctly with networked printers. Space in the name? You're screwed. Still cannot easily disconnect from a wireless network (although the option is there, it's not easy: All Settings -> Network -> Wireless -> click on little arrow next to network name -> Disconnect) Having said all of that, it's still better than Unity (IMO).
- moystard 14y agoFedora announces a support of Exchange for Gnome 3.6, sounds interesting. Would be curious to hear some feedback from people who tried. The support of Exchange in Linux has always been wobbly.. Davmail has been the best way to do so until now.
- jvc26 14y agoSpherical Cow? Well that's a new one!
- vellamike 14y agoPerhaps it will only work in a vacuum?
- arethuza 14y agoIt's a very old joke: http://www.physics.csbsju.edu/stats/WAPP2_cow.html http://www.physics.csbsju.edu/stats/WAPP2_cow.html
- alanctgardner2 14y agoWhen I heard it the punchline was "Assume a spherical cow which isotropically radiates milk", which was pretty awesome.
- TallGuyShort 14y agoI like it better than "Beefy Miracle"
- Sarkie 14y agoI like Brass Eye's version of it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgnuxd0tiHk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgnuxd0tiHk
- metaobject 14y agoI was hoping it was a Fritz Zwicki reference - spherical bastards: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=spherical+bastard http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=spherical+bas...
- Unoeufisenough 14y agoI heard it first originally as an engineering joke. And also horses instead of cows. You know you're an engineer when: You'll assume a horse is spherical in order to make a math easier. Funnier with horses. Horses are less spherical. They way they industrially force feed and force breed cows these days, spherical is actually not that ironic an approximation to make. More sad than funny.
- ch0wn 14y agoHere are the release notes: http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/18/html/Release_Notes/index.html http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/18/html/Release_N...
- AndreasFrom 14y agoAnd here's the release announcement: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/F18_release_announcement https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/F18_release_announcement > Heck, we'd even say that getting this release to you has been a mooving experience. Heh.
- jpdoctor 14y agoAnyone want to create highlights for those of us with a short attention span?
- RyanZAG 14y agoThe firewall daemon firewalld will be the default firewall solution for Fedora 18, replacing iptables. Using firewalld will allow for application of policy changes without reloading, allowing connection states to stay unbroken when rules are changed. UEFI Secure Boot will be supported in Fedora 18. This will allow Fedora to boot on systems that have Secure Boot enabled. Tools are available for administrators to create custom certificates to sign local changes to GRUB or the kernel. Fedora 18 adds FedFS, a mechanism to provide a coherent namespace across multiple file servers. Fedora 18 includes Samba4, which provides improved cross-platform file server support. The X.org server has been rewritten to support 'hot' plugging and unplugging of GPUs. Specifically, this allows Fedora to provide better support for USB connected graphics devices exposed by many modern systems and laptop docking stations. The user is no longer required to restart the X.org server for such devices to be recognised.
- jpdoctor 14y agoThanks for that. God I hope firewalld has more intuitive config than iptables.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- zanny 14y agoIf there were a rolling release Fedora, I'd be all over that as a drop-in alternative to Ubuntu for friends and family. * Systemd > Upstart in performance usability (for me, at least). * selinux > apparmor when properly integrated (personal preference, but it sees more active development and feature parity). * RPMs and debs are basically the same thing except not. I have to say adding repos in Ubuntu is much easier than in Fedora. The choice of GUI during installation is also nice. I just can't keep putting relations and friends on distros that break on really major updates (like 10.04 to 12.04 for Ubuntu) and that is one of the reasons I run Arch. Problem is Arch has really bad support for MAC and takes forever to set up.
- elehack 14y agoArch? Don't know if they support SELinux, but they use SystemD and are rolling-release. For me, the 6-month release cycle is a major reason why I am using Fedora rather than Arch. With a rolling release, I am constantly distracted by monitoring what is new; 6-month releases allow me to batch my curiosity into 1-2 days of heightened but less prolonged distraction.
- aw3c2 14y agoUpgrades in Arch often require manual editing of files and an understanding what is done. Sadly that is not suitable for "friends and family".
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- sho_hn 14y ago> I have to say adding repos in Ubuntu is much easier than in Fedora. Hm, could you elaborate? Adding a repo is usually "wget .repo file into /etc/yum.repos.d/" which doesn't seem harder to me than editing sources.list (about the same, really). What's soured your experience?
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- Nux 14y agoWow, nice! At last. This one packs a lot of goodies!
- saljam 14y agoWhy don't distributions provide an image that can be dd'd onto a USB stick? I'm sure I'm not the only one who finds USB mass storage infinitely more convenient than CDs nowadays. Sure, they provide a USB image creator, but you have to have a fairly standard (and graphical, last time I checked) Linux installation first. And sure, you can extract the files and make one yourself, but is that really necessary? This goes for both Ubuntu and Fedora.
- limmeau 14y agoCan't you just dd the ISO image to the USB stick? http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/18/html/Installation_Guide/Making_USB_Media-UNIX_Linux.html http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/18/html/Installat...
- saljam 14y agoOK, I stand corrected! I should've done my homework...
- reidrac 14y agoI think you can just dd the CD ISO into the USB. That's what I do, and it's supported: http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/18/html/Installation_Guide/Making_USB_Media-UNIX_Linux.html#Making_USB_Media-UNIX_Linux-RHEL_Fedora-dd http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/18/html/Installat... I'm sure you can find the same info for Ubuntu.
- cowsaysoink 14y agoUbuntu iso's can be dd'd onto a usb stick as well as fedora.
- DoubleMalt 14y agoWell ... I did my last 7 (at least) Ubuntu installs by dd'ing Ubuntu isos to a USB stick without a hitch ...
- elehack 14y ago
- donniezazen 14y agoBetween cutting edge Fedora and Bleeding edge Arch, my vote goes to Arch. It does take a long time to setup Arch but after that most packages can be grabbed from repo or AUR unlike Fedora that recommends manual compiling.
- sethish 14y agoExamples? The only things I have to compile are python packages with c-extensions and the occasional small daemon like xcape.
- donniezazen 14y agoThinkfan is one of the packages that I couldn't find in fedora repo or any third party repos. It is available in Ubuntu repo and pretty much every software out there is available in Arch's AUR. Other license ridden packages like MS Core Fonts are included in Ubuntu Partner's repo and again in AUR. You will also have to either write systemd files or borrow and modify from other places. Ubuntu has a huge collection of PPAs and Arch has AUR. But again all of these things can be done using already posted tutorials or community help.
- vivaforever 14y agoI hope there would be a Linux distribution which focuses on applications.
- piqufoh 14y agoDoes 'spherical cow' make you think 'bloated bovine'?
- dkuntz2 14y agoAt least it's not Beefy Miracle.
- jlgreco 14y agoMakes me think of hanging out in the highschool physics classroom after school, calculating what sort of spring you would need to fling a cow into orbit. Nerdy, but Fedora has never really been into that whole "imaginary computer-illiterate grandmother" user-base anyway.
- wildster 14y agoWhy do Fedora releases have such bad names? Although Spherial Cow is at least better than Beefy Miracle.
- switch007 14y agoReference from a hilarious British 90s comedy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgnuxd0tiHk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgnuxd0tiHk
- mixmastamyk 14y agoCan anyone with experience comment on the number of regressions each release of Fedora compared to Ubuntu? Many of them aren't the distros fault of course, but I'm looking for something up to date with a bit more focus on QA.
- rwg 14y ago2.4.3. rngd Random number generation is improved by enabling rngd by default. violent twitching The /dev/random situation on Linux is beyond laughable, and everyone who thinks the "solution" for a kernel problem is MOAR USRLAND DEEMONZ!!!!@$^#$# should drown themselves in the nearest toilet immediately.
- joelthelion 14y agoCould you elaborate on this, or share a link or two?
- rwg 14y agoThis is several years old now, but it is an overview of a (failed) attempt to replace Linux's existing random implementation with Fortuna, an improved variant of the Yarrow algorithm used by FreeBSD, and a comparison with Linux's existing random implementation. http://jlcooke.ca/random/ http://jlcooke.ca/random/ This is a thread on LKML about adding support to Linux's random implementation for Intel's RdRand instruction. You have to read all the way through to see the extent of the insanity. ("We can't trust Intel because NSA backdoor government spying chemtrails HAARP fluoride wharrgarbl!") http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1173350 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1173350 I can't find the LKML thread to link to it, but earlier this year, there was a hullabaloo over a paper published at https://factorable.net/ https://factorable.net/ regarding network-connected devices generating weak keys because of "insufficient randomness" at boot time. This led to a reworking of how/when/why entropy is fed into Linux's entropy pool.
- uvdiv 14y agoHow is it unreasonable for open-source OS developers to be concerned about closed-source blobs in cryptographic components?
- rwg 14y agoAlso, I don't remember anyone getting publicly bent out of shape about including AES-NI support in Linux's CryptoAPI. (I'm unsure why people would think Intel would backdoor RdRand but not the AES-NI instructions.)
- bni 14y agoThe release notes says Fedora 18 uses the 3.6.0 kernel. Yet on my F18 machine the kernel version is: 3.7.2-201.fc18.x86_64
- papablogger 14y agoi like the new features given in <a href="http://www.papablogger.org/2013/01/Fedora-Linux-18-Spherical-cow.html>fedora http://www.papablogger.org/2013/01/Fedora-Linux-18-Spherical... 18</a>