Fedora 11 Alpha release notes

General information

No GPG signatures

The Fedora 11 Alpha release is not GPG-signed. The release engineering team is working on upgrades to the build system to add support for SHA-256 signatures. Once those upgrades are done, the following test releases will be GPG-signed.

Feature and package notes

The following sections document new features and changes in the Fedora 11 Alpha distribution.

Windows cross compiler (mingw32-*)

Fedora 11 alpha provides a preview of MinGW, a development environment for Fedora users who wish to cross-compile their programs to run on Windows without having to use Windows during development. In the past developers have had to port and compile all of the libraries and tools they have needed, and this huge effort has happened independently many times over. MinGW in Fedora eliminates duplication of work for application developers by providing a range of libraries and development tools already ported to the cross-compiler environment. Developers don't have to recompile the application stack themselves, but can concentrate just on the changes needed to their own application.

You can install the cross-compiler and environment by yum-installing mingw32-gcc and/or mingw32-gcc-c++. This will give you the mingw32-configure command which you can use to replace ordinary ./configure, so that:

mingw32-configure
make

will build a Windows executable (*.EXE) or Windows DLL (*.DLL) of your program/library.

If your program requires any libraries, you can install the mingw32-library, and mingw32-configure will find it.

The following libraries are available in the alpha release:

• bzip2, zlib for data compression
• dlfcn (dlopen workalike for Windows)
• freetype
• gdbm
• gettext, iconv, pdcurses, readline, termcap for text/terminal/i18n
• libpng
• pthreads (based on Sourceware pthreads-win32)
• SDL for graphics
• sqlite

Many more libraries will be available by the time of the Fedora 11 general release.

ext4 file system

Ext3 has been the standard and mature linux filesystem for a long time. Ext4 is a major update to this filesytem and has a improved design, better performance, reliability and number of important features including much larger storage, very fast filesystem checks (fsck) and file deletions.

The ext4 file system has been a experimentally supported option from Fedora 9 release and is now the default filesystem for the Fedora 11 Alpha release. More details and a comprehensive list of new features for ext4 is available at:

http://kernelnewbies.org/Ext4

A file system shrink capability is not supported yet, but planned for Fedora 11 release. Please backup your data for safety if you test this feature in Fedora 11 Alpha. Though unlikely, Fedora 11 general release might still revert back to Ext3 if any new major issues are discovered and cannot be fixed on time.

Backward compatibility issues
Backward compatibility for ext4 to ext2/3 is limited. If you convert a file system formatted with ext2/3 to the new ext4 system, be aware that converting back to ext2/3 can be difficult in some situations. Also GRUB boot loader does not yet support Ext4 in this release. Use Ext3 for your /boot partition instead.

Btrfs file system

The Btrfs next-generation file system is an experimentally supported option in this release. To enable it within the installer, pass icantbelieveitsnotbtr at the installation boot prompt. Btrfs might be made the default filesystem for Fedora in a couple of releases. Please backup your data for safety if you test this feature in Fedora 11 Alpha.

A screenshot and reference is available at:

http://www.heise-online.co.uk/news/Ext4-to-be-standard-for-Fedora-11-Btrfs-also-included--/112467

More information about Btrfs is available here:

http://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page

More explicit testing and feedback for btrfs is requested. Please note that this is a file system under heavy development, without a fully functional fsck program or even proper out of space handling. The on-disk format might still change if there any serious issues found. GRUB boot loader does not support Btrfs yet. Use ext3 for your /boot partition instead.

New volume control

Currently, people using Fedora have to go through many levels of mixers to properly set up sound sources. These are all exposed in the volume control on the desktop, making for a very confusing user experience. PulseAudio allows us to unify the volume controls in one interface that makes setting up sound easier and more pain-free. More details including screenshots here:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/VolumeControl

PackageKit Firmware Support

PackageKit in Fedora 10 already has support for installing additional media codecs on demand. PackageKit in this alpha release has extended this capability to install firmware on demand as well based on system requirements.

http://www.packagekit.org/img/gpk-client-firmware.png

X server

The key combination Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to kill the X server has been disabled by default. To get this behaviour back, add the the line

Option "DontZap" "false"

to the ServerFlags section in xorg.conf.

GNOME 2.26

The GNOME 2.26 development snapshot is part of this release, and is the default environment used in the Fedora Desktop Live image. The Desktop Live image is a downloadable CD you can use to test the new GNOME environment with or without installing it. The image can be written to CD, or to a USB flash disk using these instructions.

ADD MORE INFO.

KDE 4.2 RC2

The KDE 4.2 RC2 snapshot is part of this release and is the default environment in the Fedora KDE Desktop Live image. The KDE Desktop Live image is a downloadable CD you can use to test the new KDE environment with or without installing it. The image can be written to a CD, or to a USB flash disk using these instructions.

Xfce 4.6 Beta

A major new release of Xfce, Xfce 4.6 Beta, is available in the repository and is the default environment in the Fedora Xfce Live Spin. The Xfce Live Spin is a downloadable CD you can use to test the new Xfce environment with or without isntalling it. The image can be written to a CD, or to a USB flash disk using these instructions.

Python 2.6

Python 2.6 has been integrated into the release and all the software in the distribution has been made compatible with it. This effort leads the way to Python 3.0, a major release that is not backward compatible with the Python 2.x series.

Git 1.6.1.1

Git has been updated to 1.6.1.1. Among the changes is that the Fedora packages follow upstream defaults and install the majority of git-* commands are installed out side of the default PATH. If you have scripts that call git-* binaries, you are encouraged to change them to use the "git foo" style. If this is not feasible, you can adjust your PATH. Git provides a convenient method to do this:

PATH=$(git --exec-path):$PATH

It is worth noting that git hooks are run with $(git --exec-path) in their PATH.

NetBeans 6.5

The NetBeans has been updated to version 6.5. NetBeans 6.5 is a significant update of the NetBeans 6.1 and includes the following changes:

• PHP support with code completion, Xdebug and web service features.
• JavaFX 1.0 supports animation, graphics and media codecs for rich content application development.
• New Support for Groovy and Grails.
• Improved JavaScript, AJAX and Ruby support.
• Automatic Compile and Deploy on Save for Java and Java EE applications.
• Improved database support: SQL history, SQL completion, and results viewing and editing improvements.
• Improved Java ME support for Data Binding, SVG and Custom Component creation.
• GUI Builder: Support for Nimbus and simple class names.
• JUnit: single test method support.
• Debugger: Redesign of Step into feature.

For information about the main development features in NetBeans IDE, see:

• NetBeans IDE 6.5 Release Information
• New and Note Worthy NB65
• NetBeans IDE 6.5 Release Notes