Fedora at a Glance

Given Red Hat's recent announcement that
Red Hat Linux and Fedora Linux are merging into
the Fedora Project, I
thought I would see what Fedora was like. I began by downloading
the source files for
Fedora Core
1. Installation was fairly straightforward, and my Philips
monitor and SiS onboard video were detected correctly. I recommend
using the optional CD media test provided to test all CDs before
launching the graphic installer, as it can save you time by finding
out immediately if one of the CDs is faulty. I chose the automatic
partitioning option and the Personal Desktop install. While the
packages are installing, the estimated remaining time is shown. An
overall progress bar shows the name, description and size of each
package as it's installed. A graphic changes periodically,
providing details about the dev-log mailing list, the Fedora Web
site and the Fedora IRC channels.Once the installation was finished and the computer had
rebooted, a post-installation menu appeared. This menu included a
license agreement, the facility to set the date and time (including
support for NTP servers), user account creation (including NIS or
Kerberos support), a sound card test and an option to use
additional CDs.SecurityThe usual Red Hat firewall script for iptables (GNOME Lokkit)
is enabled by default. Simplified options are shown from
redhat-config-securitylevel during the installation of Fedora to
allow you to enable common services, such as a Web server, and to
allow a device to be trusted, for example, a network card on a
local network. On the topic of security, Zebra has been replaced by
the Quagga Software Routing Suite, and Sendmail accepts connections
from only local computers by default.AppearanceFedora has a semi-graphic boot loader where you can see the
initial steps like mounting filesystems in text mode. The rest of
the set up is shown on a slick graphic screen and progress bar,
using the rhgb package.PackagesOne of the differences between earlier versions of Fedora and
the new Fedora Project is things will be updated more often. As a
result, there potentially will be newer packages and more packages
overall. The Fedora Core 1 Release Notes has more details, but some
of the most obvious changes are listed here.Default packages include the usual stalwarts, such as GNOME,
OpenOffice.org, Mozilla, Evolution and instant messaging and GNOME
Games. In addition to Aisle Riot and
FreeCiv, GNOME Games now includes
TuxRacer and Chromium
BSU.KernelThe kernel includes a native POSIX thread library, ACPI
support, support for CPU clock throttling control, laptop mode and
exec-shield. ACPI support is disabled by default, but it can be
enabled by specifying a boot-time argument.GNOMEFedora features GNOME 2.4, which offers support for CD
burning from Nautilus and such accessibility features as the
onscreen reader/magnifier Gnopernicus and the on-screen keyboard
GOK. The Galeon Web browser no longer is included; it has been
replaced by Epiphany. GNOME also has Bluetooth support, a
text-to-speech package and a PDF viewer called GPdf. There's a new
Resolution menu item that arguably is handier than going into the
Display item for changing the screen resolution.Other PackagesMozilla (1.4) now supports NTLM authentication for Web sites
that use "Windows integrated security". Gaim 0.71 is included,
which supports MSN protocol 9 so you can use MSN Messenger. Several
bugfixes have been made since that version, though, so you may want
to upgrade it. OpenOffice.org 1.1 doesn't seem to load much faster
than did 1.0, but it now offers the ability to export to PDF and
Macromedia Flash formats.In addition, some packages previously available in Fedora
have been removed from this new release. These removed packages
include the LPRNG printing program, which was replaced by CUPS;
php-manual; Pine and Tripwire.MultimediaOne of the criticisms of recent Red Hat releases by home
users has been the lack of default multimedia support.
Unfortunately, Fedora is no different. And due to licensing issues,
Xmms is crippled with an MP3 placeholder plugin, so it can't play
MP3 audio files. Fedora also was not able to include media players
such as Mplayer or Xine. On a more positive note, a new package
called Sound-Juicer has been included for extracting music from
CDs. RhythmBox also is offered for managing and playing your media
library and connecting to Internet radio stations; it's a program
similar to Apple's iTunes. RhythmBox has the same limitation as
Xmms, however, in that it does not include the MP3 plugin.Automatic UpdatesThe Red Hat Alert Notification Tool tray applet was a bit
confusing, but running up2date did work once I installed yum with
default channels fedora-core-1 and updates-released. You can add to
these by editing /etc/sysconfig/rhn/sources. Both yum and apt are
supported, but you need to download apt yourself. I used the
version provided for the 0.95 beta from the
download.fedora.us
site. Before you can use yum, you need to first run it as root so
it can install the required headers.Several third-party repository sites are available, but at
the time of this writing, some are not yet providing packages for
Fedora Core 1. You can specify these sites in /etc/apt/sources.list
and /etc/yum.conf; you also may need to download and install the
GPG keys for those sites.BugsWhen I was installing packages using redhat-config-packages
(Add/Remove Applications in the menu), an error occurred when
trying to find the RPM source. Changing the line
self.packagesDir = "RedHat/RPMS" in
/usr/share/redhat-config-packages/method.py to
Fedora/RPMS resolved this. I've since found this
particular bug listed in Bugzilla, though, and updated versions of
redhat-config-packages are being made available.ResourcesDocumentation from the main site is still coming, but there's
useful information at the following sites:Release
NotesUnofficial
FAQFedora
HOWTORPM Repositoriesrpm.livna.org/fedora/1/i386dag.wieers.com/packages/gstreamer-pluginsdownload.fedora.usnewrpms.sunsite.dkftp.freshrpms.netIn summary, there are some promising new features in Fedora
and it is reassuring to see it has the stability and slick
interface we've come to expect from Red Hat, but it is not quite as
polished as some of the recent Red Hat releases. If you know Linux
already and don't mind installing some extra packages and changing
some settings, then it's for you. If you are new to Linux or want
it to all work perfectly "out-of-the-box" with an automatic package
resolver, you might be better off to wait for the next Fedora
release.Adam Jenkins has been
playing with Linux on and off for many years and was most recently
working at Information Technology Services for the University of
Sydney.