
Fedora 16 Released - Garbage
http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/16/html/Release_Notes/index.html
======
mapleoin
Dedicated to Dennis Ritchie! [http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-
US/Fedora/16/html/Release_N...](http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-
US/Fedora/16/html/Release_Notes/sect-Dedication.html)

Also, a StackExchange-like Fedora Q&A site was launched today:
<http://ask.fedoraproject.org/questions/>

------
leif
I am now a Productive Member Of Society, which means two things: I have a
macbook air (from my job), and I have little free time. In the past, seeing a
release like this would mean picking the least-used partition on my computer,
doing a full install, and using it for a week before deciding what I had
before was better, or not doing that.

This time around, here was my experience:

1\. Download the ISO

2\. Open up VMWare (oh shit, there's a new version! oh shit, you have to pay
again...forget it)

3\. Make a new VM, boot the ISO

4\. GNOME 3 won't work. Hmm, well I probably need VMWare Tools installed.

5\. Try to install VMWare Tools. CD tray's locked. Guess I have to do a full
install first.

6\. Do the install (defaults everywhere).

7\. Reboot into system. GNOME 3 won't work, of course.

8\. Click "Install VMWare Tools". A window pops up with a tar.gz. That's
silly, okay, extract it, see a folder with a perl script called "something
install something".

9\. Open a terminal, sudo perl whatever-installer.pl.

10\. Hit enter a bunch of times. I have to run some config script, would I
like it launched for me? Sure.

11\. Can't install, I need make and gcc. WTF?

12\. sudo yum install make gcc. Nope, the package manager's locked.

13\. Where's update manager? Maybe I can kill it. Nope, that opened it, ok, 35
updates. It just got released, what the hell? Okay don't do that yet.

14\. How about Add/Remove Programs? Hmm, there's a Programming category. Click
it. Window goes gray.

15\. Flip over to a web browser. Browse for a bit. Send an email.

16\. Back to Fedora. Still gray.

17\. Close window, delete VM, delete ISO, remove from torrents. My ratio's
only 18%. Oh well.

18\. Write stupid comment on HN.

19\. Dinner time.

~~~
tdavis
I, too, am a Productive Member of Society which means two things: I gave back
the terrible Macbook my employer provided and seamlessly and painlessly
upgraded from Fedora 15 to Fedora 16 earlier today. Here was my experience:

1\. Run _preupgrade_

2\. Reboot

3\. Load up xmonad without issue

4\. Ask a couple low-level upgrade-related questions in #fedora; get answers
in a couple seconds

5\. Get back to work

I'm really failing to see what point you're trying to make with your comment,
aside from noting that your old version of VMWare Fusion doesn't play very
nicely with this Fedora release and that installing VMWare Tools on Linux is a
pain in the ass (something I would never dispute, but then running the real
thing absolves you of the need to run a VM).

I'm sorry about your experience, but as far as mine is concerned this is
another swell Fedora release. Thanks, everybody!

~~~
burgerbrain
As a productive member of society myself (wtf? The implication here is rather
insulting is it not?) I also appreciated Fedora's upgrade situation this time
around.

1\. Run _preupgrade_.

2\. Reboot.

3\. Load up Awesome WM (installed from a _3rd party repo_ months ago) without
issue.

4\. Load up Opera (which I installed months ago straight from Opera, again
with no Fedora involvement) without issue.

5\. Go to youtube and start playing some music with Adobe Flash (you get the
pattern...) without issue.

6\. Continue working.

I too, do not understand the GP's criticism.

~~~
leif
Mainly: why are make and gcc not installed?

~~~
burgerbrain
I'm going to guess because you installed from the live media. The full install
media lets you pick what sorts of things you want to be installed as I recall.

If having to do _`yum groupinstall "Development Tools"`_ yourself is your
biggest complaint, I'd say Fedora is doing pretty damn well.

------
211231321
I can't make up my mind. I used to use ubuntu as my primary OS, but I am
familiar enough with linux that I can run any distro (I used to run Gentoo and
Archlinux, but at some point of time I realized I actually like the sink
included stuff so I switched back to ubuntu, now I experiment less). When I
bought my new laptop (Acer Aspire 5742G) it came with two graphics cards, one
intel onboard and one dedicated nVidia 540M. Their is a tech, nVidia optimus,
which is supposed to switch between these two depending upon my performance
needs. But linux (I mean the kernel linux not a specific distro) does not
really do that because of some driver issues. So my battery performance drops
like 50% and the laptop heats up a lot, which is bad. I tried CPU scaling, I
tried that bumblebee package but nothing worked. For now I am working out of
windows 7 home edition which came pre-installed. And I must tell you, there
isn't much of a difference(in usability and stability that is, battery backup
increased 2x). I may switch to windows full time because switching back to
linux doesn't have much merit right now. I am thinking of trying out Fedora
but I need to know if it would solve the problem before I go through the
hassle of installing it.

If anyone else has this kind of laptop and notes similar battery life for each
distro and which is actually the battery life the laptop should have, then
please tell me.

Edit: Grammar and explanation.

~~~
dman
In the future I would advise using <http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/> or
some other linux compatibility hardware list before buying hardware. Using
linux on a poorly supported device can cause you grief and make you dislike
linux for reasons that it does not deserve.

~~~
211231321
1\. I don't dislike linux, it doesn't support my hardware and so I don't use
it. As simple as that.

2\. There are other more important things I look for in a laptop than if it
runs linux or not. No disrespect, if I get a decent graphics card at this
price point, I would say hell yeah! (There was a discount in the store on the
same day as I blew my last computer. RIP Sophiya)

~~~
dman
I was hoping to coax you into giving linux another try in the future on a
machine that is more amenable to running linux.

------
RexRollman
So how "light" is a default install of Fedora these days? The thing I don't
like about Ubuntu is that they take the kitchen sink approach and install a
bunch of stuff I don't believe should be installed by default, such as
Open/Libre Office.

~~~
gnaritas
An office suite most certainly should be installed by default in a distro
aimed at ordinary users. That you'd think otherwise is stunning.

~~~
vault_
Neither Windows nor OS X comes with an office suite installed by default. It
wouldn't be unprecedented if a linux distro were to come without one.

~~~
eitland
For distros targetting ordinary users the office suite should come
preinstalled as long as you can't buy one at Staples.

That said this is also part of what makes Linux shine compared to especially
Windows: Usually everything is installed and Just Works in 20 minutes after
started installation. (Have been fixing peoples borked Windowses from '95 to
'08 so I'm allowed to be opinionated here. : )

------
dignan
I'm pretty curious how Aeolus is working out. It looks like an interesting
technology (<http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Aeolus_Conductor>)

~~~
rwmj
New release just came out and it looks quite nice.

Also new in Fedora 16 is full OpenStack support. And before people say, Aeolus
and OpenStack are complementary things, they aren't "competing". Aeolus is a
cross-cloud management tool. OpenStack is (to put it in very simple and not
quite accurate terms) an EC2 clone. You can use Aeolus to manage OpenStack or
to migrate loads between EC2/OpenStack/other cloud.

------
j_col
The new Jules Verne inspired theme looks great.

~~~
rbanffy
I love their themes. Wish it were easy to download them separately.

------
taudelta
Here is a link to the downloads: <http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora-
options>

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melling
Can someone discuss the pros of Fedora? I'm mainly a Mac user these days but
my Fedora 9 box is still running in the corner on a very old box. I promised
myself I'd get a beefy 8-core Intel Ivy bridge system next year. I assume all
my "build notes" with all my yum installs still work. All I ever hear about is
Ubuntu.

~~~
dignan
Well, I'd say first and foremost, it's a matter of preference. For example,
some people just can't stand yum, others love it.

From a technical perspective, Fedora tends to be about 1/2 to 1 release ahead
of Ubuntu, by which I mean the software in Fedora now will be in Ubuntu in 3-6
months, and has less "magic".

If you care about free/libre/whatever it's called today software, then Fedora
tends to be a better choice than Ubuntu, since the Fedora developers tend to
work much more closely with the community, whereas Ubuntu does its own thing.

These days, Fedora uses Gnome 3 whereas Ubuntu uses Unity for its desktop
environment.

~~~
pook1e
> These days, Fedora uses Gnome 3 whereas Ubuntu uses Unity for its desktop
> environment.

This is what convinced me to switch to Fedora last week after using Ubuntu for
years, and so far I love it (Fedora, I'll save my opinions of Gnome 3 for
another thread). Using yum was very easy after having used synaptic and I was
able to get everything set up on my system without any trouble.

------
jtreminio
I'm using Ubuntu, and I wanted to give Fedora a try. I can't run Docky or
Avant Window Navigator :(

Gnome 3 is great and all, but I really like using docks and from some google
searches it seems many people have this issue!

~~~
herrwolfe
Both of these run under fedora 15. Try installing from source, I have done
this and it has worked fine.

~~~
herrwolfe
That wasn't very clear, sorry: Try installing AWM and docky from source and
run them under a different window manager. It should work fine (XFCE is a
great alternative to Gnome 3).

~~~
jtreminio
Yup, that's worked for me before... but then I'm not using Gnome 3, which I'm
growing rather fond of.

------
mdaniel
Also, please don't forget that Fedora is available via BitTorrent:
<http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora-all>

~~~
codeine
If you're running Fedora 15, you can also upgrade using yum:

[http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Upgrading_Fedora_using_yum#Fed...](http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Upgrading_Fedora_using_yum#Fedora_15_-.3E_Fedora_16)

~~~
flink
Yes, you can upgrade that way but it's not recommended (see the warning @ the
top of that page). That upgrade method isn't really tested and may or may not
work depending on your system.

You'd be much better off using PreUpgrade (making sure you update your system
first) [1] or the install media. If you don't want to burn a DVD or CD, you
can make a bootable USB stick with the iso [2].

[1] <http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_use_PreUpgrade> [2]
[http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-
US/Fedora/16/html/Installat...](http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-
US/Fedora/16/html/Installation_Guide/Making_USB_Media-UNIX_Linux.html)

------
RusAlexander
if someone don't know, a new Fedore codename is Verne

------
RusAlexander
3d linux distro by popularity in the World.

~~~
Sindisil
Third by what measure? I hate to be "that guy", but [citation needed].

Seriously, if you're just quoting distrowatch, you need a new source.

Even by their own numbers, Ubuntu claims to have less than Fedora, though they
do seem to be gaining.

[[http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/operating-
systems/331095...](http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/operating-
systems/3310952/canonical-launches-ubuntu-1110-update/?page=0,0)]
[<http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Statistics>]

