The 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.
> 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.
Does anybody know if this means good things about the state of those nvidia/intel hybrid graphics setups?
2.4.3. 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.
This 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.
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!")
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/ 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.
Trust isn't binary. Backdooring or exploitably bungling the deterministic parts of the CPU without getting caught is much harder than doing the same for the RNG part. Black box RNG's are notoriously hard to evaluate.
Also, 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.)
If 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.
Arch? 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.
Have you looked at openSUSE, and specifically openSUSE Tumbleweed[1]?
* systemd
* apparmor[2]
* RPMs + One Click Install[3]
* YaST[4]
For what it's worth, I have been using Tumbleweed for quite a while now and the last two upgrades (11.4 > 12.1 > 12.2) have been unproblematic, the 12.1 > 12.2 one went without even a single conflict or problem.
[1]: http://en.opensuse.org/Tumbleweed -- Tumbleweed has been initiated Greg Kroah-Hartman (Greg KH) while working at SUSE and he continues as the maintainer, even after leaving SUSE for the Linux Foundation. Note that Tumbleweed is basically a rolling release but based on the current stable version, which means you update normally upon a new distro release and over time updated packages (Kernel/KDE/Gnome/XFCE etc. etc.) are being added as they are being submitted into Factory, the development branch.
[4]: Yast lets you use a GUI for a number of things like adding users, setting up servers, runlevels(!) etc. I see many people disliking it, but I am unsure why. It is nice to have sometimes, but at no point are you ever forced to use it, in fact, editing configs directly works just as well.
P.S.: You can of course also run openSUSE factory straight away, it often works, however, since that is where development happens, things might break. This is much the same as Fedora Rawhide, and it might (or might not happen) that someone on a given day breaks something essential (like say...systemd). So consider yourself warned! ;)
edit: formatting & added fluffing to Factory explanation!
I never heard of tumbleweed from suse, time for more distro tinkering!
I don't have too much against AppArmor, and it is easier to configure, but I see selinux as a project with more momentum behind it. AppArmor has switched hands a lot recently.
> 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?
I'd assume he's referencing the "apt-add-repository" with ppm support, which automatically takes care of editing sources, adding GPG keys to sign the downloads, and rebuilding the repo list, in one shot. It's not dramatically different than Fedora, but it's different enough you do appreciate it after awhile.
Have you given any thought to ArchBang? Seems ideal for your situation. It's Arch with a default configuration so that you don't have to edit any files and it installs as easily as Ubuntu.
I would rather not tell people to use Rawhide unless they have some specific development needs. The link you provided tells that in the begining. For more information see this lwn article: https://lwn.net/Articles/506831/
Hopefully 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).
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.
I'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.
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.
Nautilus 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).
This was precisely what I was looking for before I upgraded to 3.6, thank you. I'm worried about switching to 3.6 now, I've invested a lot of time and energy making gnome-shell_3.4 usable for me. This sounds like it breaks a lot.
One 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.
Fedora 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.
Makes 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.
Can 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.
Why 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?
I've successfully installed the last two Fedora versions by DD'ing the ISO to a USB stick.
Pre-F18, it was worthless to do this for anything but the net install image, as Anaconda wouldn't locate packages on the USB stick. I don't know if the F18 Anaconda fixed this or not, as I used the net install image.
Between 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.
Thinkfan 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.
I 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.
