Things went as scheduled. Fedora 9, code-named "Sulphur" has just been released. Fedora 9 promises some significant improvements over its "Werewolf" predecessor. Though this is a major release version of this Red Hat-sponsored distribution, the excitement is less compared to the flight of the "Heron". But should we care about this so-called publicity more than anything?Though I didn't notice a lot of sites and blogs that displayed a release countdown image, I didn't care because I'm still pretty much excited about Fedora 9. Counting on some rave reviews of Fedora 9 "Preview" HERE and HERE, I expect this new version to be the best release ever. To really know why I'm so thrilled about it, here is a list of new features that are included in Fedora 9:
*This release features GNOME 2.22. GNOME now includes a webcam photo and video creation utility called Cheese, improved network filesystem support, a new international clock applet, Google Calendar support and custom email labels in Evolution, a new Remote Desktop Viewer, improved accessibility features, and PolicyKit integration.
*KDE 4.0.3 is available in the KDE Live image as well as the regular DVD.
*Xfce 4.4.2 is available as part of this release.
*NetworkManager 0.7 provides improved mobile broadband support, including GSM and CDMA devices, and now supports multiple devices and ad-hoc networking for sharing connections. It is now enabled by default on installations from DVD, CD, the network, and Live images.
*The Fedora installer, Anaconda, now supports partition resizing for ext2/3, NTFS filesystems, creating and installing to encrypted file systems, improved Rescue Mode with FirstAidKit, independent locations for the second stage installer and the software packages. A redesigned, larger netboot.iso image now features a second stage installer partly for this reason.
*Live USB images now support persistence, so your data and setting changes will be preserved even after rebooting.
*PackageKit, a new set of graphical and console tools, with a framework for cross-distribution software management, has replaced Pirut in this release of Fedora. The PackageKit graphical updater is available instead of Pup. Behind PackageKit, the performance of yum has been significantly improved.
*FreeIPA makes managing auditing, identity and policy processes easier by providing web-based and command line provisioning, and administration tools to ease system administration. FreeIPA combines the power of the Fedora Directory Server with FreeRADIUS, MIT Kerberos, NTP and DNS to provide an easy, out of the box solution.
*Ext4, the next version of the mature and stable ext3 filesystem is available as a option in this release. Ext4 features better performance, higher storage capacity and several other new features.
*This release of Fedora uses Upstart, an event-based replacement for the /sbin/init daemon.
*Firefox 3 brings a number of major improvements including a native look and feel, desktop integration, the new Places replacement for bookmarks, and a re-worked address bar.
*The completely free and open source Java environment OpenJDK 6 is installed by default. IcedTea 7, derived from OpenJDK 1.7, is no longer the default. IcedTea includes a browser plug-in based on GCJ, and is available for both x86 and x86_64 architectures. GCJ is still the default on PPC architecture.
*OpenOffice.org 2.4, with many new features, is available as part of Fedora 9.
*Fedora now includes Perl 5.10.0, which features a smaller memory footprint and other improvements.
*Fedora now includes TeXLive to replace the older, unmaintained TeX distribution.
*Fedora 9 features a 2.6.25 based kernel.
*Kernel crashes can be more automatically reported to http://www.kerneloops.org/ and diagnosed in a friendly way via the kerneloops package installed by default. Crash signatures are commonly referred to as oopses in Linux.
*Work on the start-up and shutdown in X has yielded noticeable improvements.
See release notes HERE for the complete list of features and important announcements.
Plenty of hardcore Linux enthusiasts are probably on standby right now and are waiting for their download to finish. By the way, you can get Fedora 9 from HERE. At the moment, I'm downloading Fedora-9-i686-Live.iso. I will see you all later for updates.
How about? Do you care about the Fedora 9 release?
I have Gnome 2.22, ok I don't have KDE 4, but I wouldn't use it anyway (and if I wanted to, it's just a compile away).
I also had bad experiences with package management in Fedora 8. The fact that Pirut has been replaced is a good thing, imho. Pirut was a very slow application.
Firefox 3, great. GCJ java, not so great. I prefer Sun's Java every time, as it's faster.
OpenOffice 2.4 - already have.
I also wonder about font rendering in Fedora. I use Ubuntu's patches in Arch, and the fonts look great to me.
With everything I've heard and looked at about Fedora 9, I'm hoping it's as nice as I expect it to be when I get my hands on it. I just have to find where I lost my usb drive... (which, ironically, I lost -yesterday- and was pissed off by it.)
I replaced my beloved FC6, and now I'm very sorry. Nothing friggin' works! Package updater/installer does nothing, just sits there. Can't get Samba or NFS up to save my life. I'm back to yum/yumex and the command line (not that there's anything wrong with that.....)
Sure, it may have enormous potential, and I sorta like Dolphin, but this is little more than alpha software. I HIGHLY recommend that you stay away from it, at least the KDE version, until it starts to work.
Btw, I am a HUGE Arch fan too. Have it on all my machines, except this poor one.
I can almost taste kde4.0 now..
F9 is a mess. Stay clear until it's sorted which may be at F10 or later I feel. Release is alpha at best."
Hey Mr. Anonymous. Stop trying to get bleeding edged software to run on your old 486. It wont work, trust me.
nice blog you've got here, keep it up! mabuhay ka pinoy!
Thanks for the kind words and for dropping by. Mabuhay!