Fedora 16 PPC release notes

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General Information

Download Fedora 16 PPC now
To download Fedora 16 PPC, visit https://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/publiclist/Fedora/16/ppc64/ to get to one of the mirrors or directly from http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora-secondary/releases/16/Fedora/ppc64. This release is available for 64-bit Power PC platforms. Power PC 32-bit images and trees have been created but due to lack of time and resources haven't received any testing. Note that Fedora uses SHA256 instead of MD5 or SHA-1 to verify images in a more secure way. For more information, refer to #How_to_Try_Fedora_16_for_PowerPC on this page.

Filing Bug Reports

Please file bug reports on this release if you find any problems.

Known Issues

Refer to the Common F16 bugs page for a listing of issues, and any known resolutions, commonly found with this release. This page is maintained throughout the Fedora 16 developmental cycle.

Known PPC Issues

We currently have several issues in F16 PPC that don't block installation. Please read and review the following known issues before reporting bugs.

Installation

• On Apple PPC64 hardware with Radeon graphics cards, graphical anaconda fails to load. Bug -> 766862

 Add the kernel commandline parameter radeon.agpmode=-1 at the yaboot prompt to work around this issue.

Runtime

• Similar to the installation issue on Apple PPC64 hardware with Radeon graphics cards, the kernel commandline parameter radeon.agpmode=-1 must be added to /etc/yaboot.conf

Release Overview

As always, Fedora continues to develop and integrate the latest free and open sourced software. The following sections provide a brief overview of major changes from the last release of Fedora. For more details about other features that are making their way into Rawhide and set for inclusion in Fedora 16, refer to their individual wiki pages that detail feature goals and progress. Features for this release are tracked on the feature list page.

What's New in Fedora 16 PPC

In addition to the features mentioned in the release announcement,

• No desktop folder by default Major desktop environments including GNOME 3 and KDE 4 do not show the desktop folder's contents by default anymore and hence xdg-user-dirs has been configured to not create a desktop folder anymore by default. This is still user configurable however. Thanks to Matthias Clasen for doing this change.

Additional Information

The Fedora 16 PPC release is a Secondary Arch release, in fact the first since Fedora 12. More information about this specific architecture can be found here:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/PowerPC

The developers working on it typically hang out on the FreeNode IRC channel #fedora-ppc and we do have a architecture specific mailinglist for Power PC on Fedora here:

https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/ppc

How to Try Fedora 16 for PowerPC

• Simply install it via the DVD or the netboot images
• Boot it!
• Run it!
• Test it!
• Write bugs!

IBM PPC64 Notes

• You should use the graphical installer to install Fedora whenever possible. This is enabled by passing the 'vnc=1' parameter.

Apple PPC64 Notes

• If your machine has a radeon graphics card, the kernel commandline parameter radeon.agpmode=-1 needs to be added to /etc/yaboot.conf and the bootloader must be re-written with ybin.

You also might need to create a new file /etc/X11/radeon-disable-dri.conf with these contents:

  Section "Device"
      Identifier  "Card0"
      Driver      "radeon"
      Option      "DRI" "off"
  EndSection

Verify Fedora

Fedora does not publish MD5 or SHA1 hashes to verify images since they are not secure enough. Instead we have been using SHA256 since Fedora 11. In Linux, you can use sha256sum command (part of coreutils and installed by default) to verify the Fedora image

sha256sum -c *-CHECKSUM

Windows can use the free to download utility HashCalc.

Mac OS X can use the free to download utility hashtab.

Fedora GPG signatures can be verified following the instructions here

Debugging Information And Performance

Fedora kernels have many extensive debugging options during the developmental cycle that have a negative impact on performance but provide developers with more information automatically, in the case of bug reports. If you are running performance analysis on Rawhide or test releases such as Alpha or Beta, make sure you take this into account.

Fedora 16 Feature Details

The link below provides the wiki's pages for tracking the various features in Fedora 16.

• Feature List