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Fedora 10 (Cambridge) Beta Release Notes

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What is Fedora?

Fedora is a set of projects sponsored by Red Hat and guided by contributors. These projects are developed by a large community of people who strive to provide and maintain the very best in free, open source software and standards. The center piece of the Fedora project is an operating system that is released twice a year, and is based on the Linux kernel, that is always free for anyone to use, modify, and distribute.

To find out more information about Fedora, refer to the following Web pages:

Formal Announcement

http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-September/msg00016.html

What Is The Beta Release?

The Beta release represents a sanitized snapshot of Rawhide, the development branch of Fedora, and signals the feature freeze. This means that all major features must be complete or in a testable state, and so the Beta release provides a good indication of what users can expect from the final release. It is aimed primarily at developers and early-adopters, and gives testers an opportunity to provide feedback and bug reports to help ensure that the next release is as good as possible. Users who are interested in helping with testing are encouraged to do so with the live media (bootable CDs, DVDs or USB sticks).

How To Try Beta

Thanks to the infrastructure that was developed during the Fedora 7 release cycle, Beta is accompanied by installable live CDs of both the GNOME and KDE desktops. With a Live CD users can perform testing and demonstration without installing any software to the hard disk. As the Beta release is largely targeted at developers and contains many bleeding edge packages, this is the best method for less experienced users who want to get involved with testing. The Live CDs also have an option to install Fedora to the hard disk for the more intrepid users.

The best way to download Fedora 10 Beta is through BitTorrent -- visit the Fedora torrent server for a listing of available images.

Beta images can also be downloaded from any of our mirrors. Remember that live images can be used on USB media via the livecd-iso-to-disk utility available in the livecd-tools package on existing Fedora systems. Refer to the USB How-to for more instructions.

You can also use Jigdo to download the i386, x86_64, or ppc versions.


Fedora 10 (Cambridge) Release Schedule And Feature Details

Development continues on Rawhide during and after the Beta release, leading up to the Release Candidate before the final release. The links below provide the release schedule for both the pre-releases and the final release, as well as the wiki pages for tracking the various features planned for inclusion in Fedora 10.

Providing Feedback and Reporting Bugs

As mentioned above, the Beta release provides an opportunity for the wider community to begin testing the next release of Fedora. You help the Fedora Project continue to improve Fedora when you file bug reports and enhancement requests. These links explain what needs testing for the Beta release and allow you to submit your feedback:

Release Overview

As always, Fedora continues to develop and integrate the latest free and open source 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 10, refer to their individual wiki pages that detail feature goals and progress. Also, throughout the release cycle, there are interviews with the developers behind key features giving out the inside story.

The following are major features targeted for this release.

  • Wireless connection sharing -- Enables ad hoc network sharing
  • Better printing -- Improved management and handling of printers for ease of setup and use
  • Virtualization storage -- Storage provisioning for local and remote virtualization connections now simplified
  • SecTool -- A new security audit and intrusion detections system
  • RPM 4.6 -- A major update to the powerful, flexible software management libraries

Some other major features in this release include:

Features for this release are tracked on the feature list page.


Desktop

Fedora 10 Beta features the development version of GNOME 2.23 and the KDE 4.1.1 release.

System

Boot up

The graphical boot up system used in previous Fedora versions is being replaced with a new system called Plymouth. There are a few issues with Plymouth in the Beta:

  • Adding rhgb on the command line directs Plymouth to load the appropriate plugin for your hardware.
  • The graphical boot splash screen that comes with Plymouth requires kernel mode setting drivers to work best. There are not kernel modesetting drivers available for all hardware yet. To see the graphical splash before the drivers land, add vga=0x318 to the kernel grub command line. This uses vesafb, which does not necessarily give the native resolution for the flat panel, and may cause flickering or other weird interactions with X. Without kernel modesetting drivers or vga=0x318, Plymouth uses a text-based plugin that is plain but functional.
  • Currently, only Radeon R500 and higher users will get kernel modesetting by default. There is work in progress to provide modesetting for R100 and R200. Additionally, Intel kernel modesetting drivers are in development, but not turned on by default.
  • The kernel modesetting drivers are still in development and buggy. If you end up with nothing but a black screen during boot up, or a screen with nothing but random noise on it, then adding "nomodeset" to the kernel boot prompt in grub disables modesetting.
  • Plymouth hides boot messages. To view boot messages, press the [Esc] key during boot, or view them in /var/log/boot.log after boot up. Alternatively, remove rhgb from the kernel command line and plymouth will display all boot messages. There is also a status icon on the login screen to view boot warnings.
  • Plymouth currently does not work properly in some serial console configurations. This is being addressed post-Beta.
  • The grub menu doesn't automatically show up when a machine is configured to dual boot. This is being addressed post-Beta.
Intel network cards
Refer to the Known Bugs section for an issue affecting some Intel network cards.

Anaconda Installer Improvements

  • Anaconda/Features/NetConfigForNM -- Anaconda is now using NetworkManager for configuring network interfaces during installation. The previous backend tool was libdhcp (which was a replacement for libpump). Anaconda uses NetworkManager by communicating with it via D-Bus during installation. The move to NetworkManager in Anaconda is still ongoing and some things are not yet 100% functional, but the bulk of existing functionality has been retained. NetworkManager is enabled by default on newly installed systems, so moving to NetworkManager in Anaconda allows the installer to use the same network management tool that the final system uses. The move to NetworkManager brings some changes, most notably the removal of the network interface configuration screen in Anaconda. You are no longer asked to verify the network settings during installation. The screen now simply prompts for the hostname. The settings used during installation are written to the system.
  • When using the netinst.iso to boot the installer, Anaconda defaults to using the Fedora mirrorlist URL as the installation source. The method selection screen no longer appears by default. If you do not wish to use the mirrorlist URL, either add repo=<your installation source> or add askmethod to the installer boot parameters. The askmethod option causes the selection screen to appear as it did in previous releases. Boot parameters can be added by pressing the [Tab] key in the initial boot screen and appending your new parameters to the existing list. For more information, see the repo= and stage2= descriptions at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda/Options

RPM 4.6

  • Features/RPM4.6 -- Update RPM to 4.6, which includes many enhancements and bugfixes.

Security audit

  • Security tool, sectool, that can be used both for security auditing and intrusion detection. The sectool application contains tests that scan the system for security vulnerabilities.
  • The tests that sectool provides are sorted into 5 security levels, each level targeting a different type of system and security awareness. Test results can be saved to an XML file or e-mailed.
  • Tests can be custom built using bash, Perl, or Python.
  • The security audit tool is easy to configure but has many configuration options for different environments.

Kernel 2.6.27 development version

Fedora 10 Beta includes a development snapshot of the 2.6.27 kernel. More details at

Development

Objective CAML (OCaml) coverage greatly extended

Improved Haskell support

  • Haskell support now provides good support for Haskell development and use, with a high number of quality libraries and tools available. Status of completion at the Beta is 75%.

Filesystems

eCryptfs

Fedora 10 builds on Fedora 9's intial encrypted filesystem support and fixes a number of problems that could have resulted in data corruption.

EXT4

Fedora 10 brings a fully ext4-compatible e2fsprogs. In addition Anaconda's partition screen has an ext4 filesystem option available if you launch the installer with the ext4 option.

Fedora 10 also brings delayed allocation for ext4. However, ext4 in Fedora 10 does not currently support filesystems larger than 16 terabytes.

XFS

XFS is a supported filesystem and an option within the the partitioning screen of Anaconda

Known bugs and issues

These are bugs and issues known at Beta release or in the time following. Expect this section to receive occasional updates during the Beta cycle.


Intel Gigabit support disabled

http://bugzilla.redhat.com/459202

The e1000e ethernet driver that supports some Intel Gigabit network adapters has been disabled, due to an issue where the EEPROM of the cards may become corrupted at runtime. If you use this card for your network connection, you will be unable to install via the network, or use the network if you perform a local media install. When this issue is solved, the driver will be re-enabled. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Installer probing empty CD/DVD drives

http://bugzilla.redhat.com/BUGNUM-FIXME

The first stage of the installer (stage 1) takes a long time probing empty CD/DVD drives, due to a kernel bug.


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