
Fedora 23 released - doener
http://fedoramagazine.org/fedora-23-released/
======
sandGorgon
This is the first distro with Gnome 3.18,Wayland and systemd ... And the new
sat solver based package manager. And it works really very well.

There are liveusb (for macbooks as well) - really encourage everyone to give
it a spin without installing. This is really the future of the Linux desktop.

~~~
devit
It might be time to switch to a package management paradigm that doesn't
require SAT solvers.

For example, one in which packages do not conflict because they are installed
in a directory for each package, and there is an "alternatives" mechanism for
any global choice.

~~~
JdeBP
Daniel J. Bernstein, around the turn of the century, proposed a /package
hierarchy (for package management without the need for conflict resolution)
and a /command directory.

* [http://cr.yp.to/slashpackage.html](http://cr.yp.to/slashpackage.html)

* [http://cr.yp.to/slashcommand.html](http://cr.yp.to/slashcommand.html)

Their major problem was the idea that one had to register things with what was
to most of the world just some bloke on another continent. But they had
concepts like a hierarchical package naming scheme ("admin/", "mail/", &c.),
self-contained build trees with versioned names, symbolic links to denote
"currently selected version", and an "index"/"alternatives" directory full of
symbolic links.

~~~
davexunit
The /package directory sounds sort-of like what GNU Guix and Nix do. They have
a "store" directory (say, /gnu/store) that works like a content-addressable
storage system. All store entries are associated with a SHA256 hash that
uniquely identifies the build. There's no SAT solver needed because package
recipes _precisely_ describe their dependencies, all the way down to the
bootstrap binaries for the system. There's also no global /usr that prevents
multiple versions of the same software from existing on the same machine in a
sane way. Users can manage their own "profiles" which are symlink forests to a
set of store items. Each user can choose their own set of software without
needing root privileges to install it and without fear of breaking another
user's environment. Furthermore, users can manage arbitrarily many profiles
and even create temporary environments (perhaps in a Linux container if you're
into that) to perform one-off tasks or hack on a new project without polluting
any profiles. You also get transactional package upgrade/rollback.

I'm one of the Guix hackers, and we're about to make a new release
announcement today, so I encourage you to check it out:
[http://gnu.org/software/guix](http://gnu.org/software/guix)

~~~
sandGorgon
it would be interesting if you could talk about Nix, Guix and the 800-lb
gorilla: click packages. incidentally, they just made an announcement:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10506188](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10506188)

------
pablo-massa
The other day I was considering switch my mom's PC from Windows to Linux. She
is the type of user who do almost everything on the browser (Gmail, Google
Docs, Google Photos, YouTube, Netflix, Spotify, read stuff), off the cloud
maybe some MP3, photos and documents; I mean, no command lines, no read
tutorials to do something, no annoyances, easy to give up on something with
too much steps.

I was considering installing the distro Elementary OS or Ubuntu. Do you think
that Fedora can be a good option too? Which of the three is best for that user
case?

A thing to consider is that her laptop is a bit old, from 2005-2010 I think. I
remember that has 2 GB of RAM. She upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10 and
say that now runs faster than before. The new OS shouldn't run slower than
Windows 10.

I'm on a decision paralysis because on Elementary OS I see most simplicity (OS
X in mind), in Ubuntu more speed and trust that is not going to crash (large
user base), and now I discover Fedora and see that can have a good mix of
both.

Let me know what you think. Thanks!

Links: [http://elementary.io](http://elementary.io)
[http://ubuntu.com/desktop](http://ubuntu.com/desktop)
[http://getfedora.org/en/workstation/](http://getfedora.org/en/workstation/)

~~~
embik
As an elementary OS contributor _and_ Fedora user, I guess this is my time to
shine, hu?

It really depends on your use case. I've heard quite a bit positive feedback
about elementary OS for "computer illiterate" (parents, old people, etc). It
seems to "just work" for them after installation (bear with me I really can't
judge about "ease of use" after years with Linux) and it's running on Ubuntu
LTS versions. You're running apt-get to install security fixes, the current
version of Firefox/Chrome and fixes provided by the elementary OS team, and
that's basically it.

Fedora on the other hand is "the latest hot thing". It has by far the best
GNOME3 integration and it previews technical features worked on by Red Hat and
GNOME. It also features recent kernel versions which might be important for
new-ish hardware. All that is quite awesome for technical-minded people like
me. I'd like to say "it's unstable", but in my experience, it's not. I did not
do the 22 -> 23 transition yet though. You have to do some additional work for
the frequent new versions (backup everything in case it breaks, try the
transition, etc). You also have to fiddle around with GNOME addons, font
rendering and media codecs (RPMFusion as third-party provider) to make it
usable as "personal computer" IMHO.

In the end it's up to you. I do believe your mom will be able to work with
both (you'll need to tweak GNOME a bit IMHO, but that's up to discussion I
guess), but you'll have to deal with different administrative workloads.

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
I don't have eOS as a daily driver (I've got the Pantheon desktop on top of
Ubuntu as a chroot environment on my Chromebook and a full Elementary VM on
another laptop), but I've been playing with it for some time.

One thing that really irks me about the OS is the designers' reluctance to
actually let you customize anything. For instance, the lack of a minimize
button really bothered me, and I ended up having to install a third-party
program called elementaryTweaks just to restore that functionality. The
designers have outwardly refused to incorporate any of that and have
repeatedly defended the decision to not give us a minimize button:

[http://blog.elementary.io/post/131034577721/will-any-of-
the-...](http://blog.elementary.io/post/131034577721/will-any-of-the-options-
added-by-elementary-tweaks#notes)

[http://blog.elementary.io/post/130282384916/i-was-
wondering-...](http://blog.elementary.io/post/130282384916/i-was-wondering-if-
you-guys-are-going-to-put-a#notes)

To me, that reeks of Apple's walled-garden "We know better than you do what
you want" attitude.

~~~
embik
Well to be honest, you're not completely wrong. elementary OS _is_ trying to
make as much decisions as possible for the user - To make it "just work". I
agree that this is annoying to people accustomed to tweaking their system or
desktop. No doubt. elementary OS is - at least partially - targetted at people
with minimal technical knowledge. And there _are_ some design decisions I
might not really agree with. The minize button, well, uhh ... I didn't get it
back via elementary-tweaks on my machines, but I understand people missing and
re-activating it.

Now here's the thing though: There's a different between Apple's walled-garden
and elementary OS. You are very much able to tweak your elementary OS setup in
any way you want. It's Linux after all. It's your system. We try to discourage
tweaking a newcomer's system via commands learned on a blog post because
they're old, outdated or plain wrong / bad. elementary-tweaks was not
maintained at all for a long time as well. And there are quite a bit
customizability options out there hidden in dconf. That's what elementary-
tweaks is a frontend to after all, basically.

I understand it's a bit frustrating to not see the customizability in a Linux
distribution you're used to from others. You're not exactly the target
audience for elementary OS and I'm sorry for that.

And to be honest, there's another spin to it: More customizability means more
features maintained in the source code. And quite frankly, sometimes we're
really short of developers (I'm not contributing anything at all currently as
I'm kind of busy with my apprenticeship). If nobody is going to maintain a new
feature, it's not going to be in the code because it will break one fine day
and it's adding work to the "to-fix" list.

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
So who _is_ the target audience, if you don't mind my asking? Because from my
perspective, I am someone who likes the idea of Linux and is not afraid to get
his hands dirty, but at the same time is generally disappointed with most
Linux distros insofar as their GUIs usually feel like an afterthought. So
something with a nice frontend but the ability to nonetheless tinker and throw
up a terminal when I need to sounds ideal. That is the attractive element of
ElementaryOS, to me: an attractive frontend and a Linux backend. I could
always go for Cinnamon Mint, I guess, but eOS certainly did seem to buck the
trend as far as distros go.

The idea of the easy-to-use "just works" setup for the non-tinkerers, on the
other hand, starts to resemble Apple; unfortunately, I don't think you can
out-Apple Apple. That's their thing. The "stunning," almost condescendingly
simple GUI that people "not good with computers" flock to. It's almost as
though your target audience is my mother, or the people on whose behalf I will
install this OS onto their aging desktop/laptop because they found re-learning
Windows 8.1/10 too confusing.

~~~
digi_owl
To me eOS looks like glossy crap. But then i sit here writing this using a
minimal XFCE on Gobolinux, so what do i know? ;)

------
dizzystar
I'm a fairly recent convert to Fedora from Arch, and I don't think I'll ever
go to another distro as long as they keep up the good work. I even suggest
Fedora to anyone who wants to try out Linux because Fedora is easy to install,
doesn't come with a bunch of extra stuff you don't need, dnf is a great
package manager, and the default software is the latest stable version.
Perfect for people just coming on board, I think.

I just downloaded 23 and it worked like a charm. I'm not sure how much this
upgrade affects me, but it is nice to see how nothing was lost (maybe it is my
illusion, but programs seem to load a bit faster?). Good job to everyone who
commits to this project.

While I wish Fedora was a rolling release, I'm happy that the upgrade was easy
and didn't take very long.

~~~
signa11
> I'm a fairly recent convert to Fedora from Arch, and I don't think I'll ever
> go to another distro...

as a fairly long time arch user, may you please describe areas where you find
arch to be deficient w.r.t fedora ? i haven't tried using redhat for while,
but when i did earlier, i just found rpm, and later yum, to be quite
cumbersome to work with. thanks !

~~~
dnlrn
I'm also a long time arch user, who switched to fedora half a year ago. All in
all both distributions are great, but one area where fedora has an edge is
selinux support and delta updates. One area where arch has an edge is better
font rendering using infinality-bundle by bohoomil.

------
SEJeff
For those curious, here are the major changes that went into this release:

[https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/23/ChangeSet](https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/23/ChangeSet)

------
pippy
I'm really impressed with Fedora 23. My only gripe is the horrific sub pixel
rendering. I'm waiting for rpmfusion to come out so I can install an
alternative font rendering engine.

It's also lacking netbeans in the repo which is kind of a hassle for me.

~~~
sandGorgon
Actually, just adding this [1] config file and restarting is good enough.

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Fedora/comments/3o6ijr/trying_fedor...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fedora/comments/3o6ijr/trying_fedora_23_for_the_first_time_why_do_fonts/cvunl5w)

------
flamemyst
Have been bitten by docker upgrade from FC21 to FC22 and docker-fig upgrade on
FC21 from fedora package. I have faced problem ranging from docker daemon
refusing to start, failed to run container, and SELinux alarm ringing every
now and then. Not the best developing experience.

Switched to Elementary(Ubuntu based distro) combined with docker repo now.

In my opinion, FC is more suited to lightweight work (email, word,
spreadsheet).

------
b3b0p
Can anyone comment on current status of using Fedora (or maybe even Linux in
general) on sleep/suspend/hibernate? I remember the last time I tried it being
a hit or miss and was painful to get working consistently.

For reference, I'm using Retina MacBook Pro Mid 2012 (10,1), but I was
unsuccessful on my Dell Latitude E Series (the exact model escapes me at the
moment) also and gave up.

~~~
hiq
Suspend works perfectly for me on Debian. I don't use hibernation (no reason
to).

------
cozzyd
Apparently those using nvidia proprietary drivers should wait until nvidia
supports X.org 1.18 (or downgrade X.org to 1.17).

~~~
mdda
Suppose I just want to use my Nvidia card in GPU mode (i.e. monitor only
connected to Intel integrated video), does the X.org version still impact me?
Or does the 'nvidia' proprietary driver somehow pull in Xorg dependencies even
when not displaying anything?

------
z3t4
Last time I tried Fedora I got stuck on installing the boot manager, probably
because of secure boot. It worked fine on Ubuntu though.

------
zvrba
Is there a version with KDE desktop?

~~~
stoolpigeon
I've been using the KDE spin for a long time but this has me concerned -
[https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/kde/2015-October/0...](https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/kde/2015-October/016315.html)
especially what he has to say about F23 - "the Fedora 23 KDE Spin (which is
now final or almost final) is easily the worst KDE Spin we have ever
released:"

~~~
zvrba
I feel his pain with packages. I'm running Debian 8.2 here, and the number of
packages that Qt has been split into is just overwhelming. I ended up
downloading Qt's official binary distribution. Now I know at least that I a)
have all the bits and pieces, and b) where they are.

------
bitmadness
Fedora = best distro.

~~~
semperfaux
Oops! You just replaced Fedora with Debian!

------
rust4homoslol
Wish they removed the backdoors this time.

~~~
simoncion
Are you taking the piss, or do you have a reliable citation for the presence
of backdoors in previous versions?

~~~
hodwik
There's a handful of conspiracy theorists who think SELinux is an NSA
backdoor. That's my only guess.

~~~
mamon
Of course it is, otherwise what incentive would NSA have to develop it in the
first place? :)

Also, people who laugh at every conspiracy theory could use one or two good
history books about 20th century to see how much conspiracies really DID
HAPPEN in the past.

~~~
noir_lord
That some conspiracies happened in the past doesn't imply that all future
conspiracies are true.

Personally I think the governments of the world are run by giant inflatable
pink pigs and the media covers it all up.

