
Fedora 22 released - bndr
http://fedoramagazine.org/fedora-22-released/
======
l1ambda
Recently installed the Fedora 22 beta on my desktop and am blown away. It even
automatically resized my Windows partition for me and works with my UEFI BIOS.
3D, printer, sound, all my mouse buttons worked out of the box. Thanks to
systemd, the whole system boots up in a few seconds. Everything feels really
smooth and polished. There's even a maps and software app now! The new GNOME
is really beautiful and easy to use, easier than mac even, and I didn't have
to tweak anything. You can even download RPMs and double click them to
install.

~~~
jordigh
I've had really good experience with systemd on Debian stable too. Suspend has
worked flawlessly, and the bootup time is quite a bit faster too. I kind of
miss seeing the startup scripts output to stdout what they were doing during
boot time, but I suppose that if I really care, I can always go digging in
binary logs.

~~~
rogerbinns
I upgraded my main workstation to the recent Ubuntu with systemd, and sadly
that has turned into a big problem. I use btrfs, and have several subvolumes
as well as multi-drive filesystems. At some point systemd decides to
filesystem check something it doesn't need to, and then times out. Sadly this
kind of thing is really difficult to diagnose. The exact same devices are
already mounted - the second mount is just a different subvolume. If it just
went ahead and mounted instead of outsmarting itself, then all would be good.
Thankfully I can make it boot using upstart which works fine.

It is very frustrating that /etc/fstab has just worked for several years, but
now systemd does the wrong thing. I really want to like and use systemd.

An Ubuntu bug report did not help (ignore the wrong title)
[https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/systemd/+bug/14478...](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/systemd/+bug/1447879)

~~~
vezzy-fnord
To the best of my knowledge, the intention is to deprecate fstab(5) entirely
in favor of automatic GPT partition discovery. Where this isn't possible,
systemd-fstab-generator(8) will translate the contents of fstab(5) into native
systemd units (mount, automount, swap...) and henceforth the semantics will be
subject to the ordering and scheduling policies of systemd itself.

Mount and swap units are in theory supposed to just be wrappers to the regular
system tools that merely extend them to the Unit semantics, but as a whole I'm
unsurprised that these assumptions may not play well with more complex storage
configurations. That's always been a recurring systemd pain point.

~~~
rogerbinns
My frustration is that systemd isn't working in this case, that it is trying
to do something pointless (check an already mounted filesystem), AND that I
have no way to diagnose or correct it since there is no useful information to
work with.

When I had my drives on different controllers things were even worse because
btrfs device scan didn't complete running before systemd then tried to mount
an incomplete filesystem.

Automatic partition discovery is going to have its own issues. For example
plugging in a drive from another system/backups is not something you want
mounted in the right places on the wrong system! fstab is also a nice place to
put non-physical filesystems like tmpfs (I use it for /tmp /var/tmp
$HOME/.cache $HOME/.ccache /space/work). Having to create separate .mount
files for each of those would be a big pain.

I really want to use and like systemd, but it does fundamentally need to work
first.

~~~
baghira
There is no need to create mount units, all those thing will work from
/etc/fstab, which overrides the generator. And I don't think the intent is to
deprecated /etc/fstab. The list of possible automounts is limited:
[http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-
gpt-...](http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-gpt-auto-
generator.html) the point really being that of having a system that can boot
without /etc.

I've read quite a few complaints about Ubuntu 15.04+btrfs problems, for what
is worth I had no problems with Fedora22 and Opensuse Tumbleweed.

------
kbenson
Am I old fashioned in that I usually run CentOS for my workstation? After a
year or two it can be a pain getting some third party RPM, but generally I
find that's a pain I'm willing to deal with to not have to worry about
updating my workstation until I want to.

Although, I do port my highly customized Fvwm2 config every time I update, so
maybe it is just me being old fashioned. Although I think anyone that thinks
most modern WM are "fast" really is missing a bit of perspective. You haven't
seen fast or efficient until you've custom tweaked a Fvwm2 config (or
something equivalent).

~~~
e40

        Am I old fashioned in that I usually run CentOS for my workstation?
    

No, you're not. CentOS is a fantastic distro. The stability of it is what drew
me away from Fedora.

~~~
merb
I'm using arch, currently and it looks rock solid aswell, even that it is
really really bleeding edge

~~~
Alupis
The definition of "stable" is different between something like Arch and CentOS
(and even Fedora).

When it comes to "bleeding edge" distros, stability might mean, "it doesn't
crash". When it coems to stability for an enterprise/server focused distro
like RHEL/CentOS, it not only means "it doesn't crash", but that package
versions stay similar, major configs don't change, etc... so you scripts you
write today will work on that system 3 years from now, no update will change
some dependency you relied on, etc.

~~~
merb
However mostly configs doesn't need to change even on bleeding edge, only
major upgrades to gnome like gnome2 to gnome3 broke something, however that
doesn't happen too often. Also I was on CentOS a long time ago, even on
servers, but it isn't good for projects with a dependency hell, i.e. when the
project has some dependencies on newer operating system libs.

------
johnchristopher
> Files. The updated layout in Files gives a better view of your files and
> folders, and a new view popover makes it easy to change the zoom level and
> sort order from a single place. You can also now move files and folders to
> the trash intuitively using the Delete key, rather than the Ctrl+Delete
> keyboard combination.

It's 2015 and it still baffles me that a basic file manager still need such
tweaking, rewriting and brainstorming.

Is there no such thing as a `problem solved, let's not touch it again' in the
FOSS world [0] ?

I say that as someone using Debian with xfce and awesome everyday.

[0] Don't know why I specifically mentionned FOSS. Closed source is plagued as
well as mentionned bayle a child poster. Chalk it up to fatigue.

~~~
cbd1984
> Is there no such thing as a `problem solved, let's not touch it again' in
> the FOSS world ?

Is there such a thing in the closed-source world?

Because Windows 1... err, Windows 3 (now with tiling windows!), uhhh...
Windows 95 (now semi-3D!) uhhh... Metro! That's it!... is certainly a case
study in how nothing changes and UI is a solved problem, right?

Oh, and I've used WindowMaker across multiple distros, from Red Hat (pre
Fedora) through Slackware and now Ubuntu. (Yes, Ubuntu without Unity. Shock
and horror and "Can such things be?!?!" line starts on the left.)

~~~
vezzy-fnord
Desktop UI has barely budged since WIMP became the dominant paradigm in the
80s. There have always been alternatives (Oberon, rio, Cedar, zoomable UIs,
etc.), but they've never had any widespread adoption.

As of more recent, there have been attempts by various parties (Microsoft,
GNOME, Canonical...) to create these tablet-centric, opaque but outwardly
simple UIs that are positioned as being groundbreaking and challenging norms,
but in reality are some subset of WIMP with certain properties being given
more weight than others (e.g. menus and icons over windows and pointers), but
with little in the way of any true improvements in discoverability and
interaction. Nothing like how all the text on screen is programmable, like in
Oberon. _That 's_ groundbreaking.

Because the desktop shell is what most people ever see, it's a decent proxy
for programmers to use providing an illusion of change and progress.

~~~
zxcvcxz
Well I think GNOME shell is the best desktop experience I've ever had in my
life. Pretty sure it's not an illusion.

~~~
WorldWideWayne
They took too many OS X anti-patterns such as the ever-present menu bar, for
my taste.

------
reidrac
I'm running Fedora 20 as my main home desktop/dev platform (upgraded from
Fedora 19, it worked just fine this time!).

Fedora 22 means 20 will be EOL soon and I've been thinking what to do next.

I've realized that I don't use many things from the default install, and
Debian Jessie provides reasonable versions for the important software I use
every day (XFCE, Mesa libraries, Python, pip, gcc, vim; things like that), and
for the other software I can install it from 3rd party repos (Chrome and Skype
mainly) or compile it (I track SFML git repo, for example; and pip is
amazing), so I won't be upgrading or reinstalling Fedora any more (since
Fedora 12, I've been mostly a happy user after moving from Ubuntu -Debian
before that-).

To be honest, I don't know what's going on. May be is the OSS I use that is
now mature enough to not care any more if I'm running the latest version or
not, or if it's me that is mature enough to just get things done (I was going
to say "boring", but I'll stick with _mature_ ).

Fedora has been very useful for me when it was bleeding edge and I needed the
new an shiny stuff, and because Fedora was a great community effort and it was
really open to contributors (and I contributed!).

Since Gnome 3 and Unity, I'm not interested in the new stuff, and tired to see
how any non-mainstream opinion makes you _a hater_ (like anyone was interested
in my blog; tip: nobody); but I digress.

Nice to see Fedora going strong, but please give me stability and something I
can use every day without changing things because _there 's a vision and a
plan_ and I'll be happy!

EDIT: I said _when it was bleeding edge_ ; and it still is. I guess other
distros are catching up and that's not that relevant.

~~~
merb
just upgrade to Fedora 21 as soon as 20 is EOL or use ArchLinux, thats what I
did after I had enough from too many things that didn't worked out of the box
in Fedora (like propriatary WLAN drivers, my current wlan stick is still
really old stable, but it isn't inside the Fedora Kernel, however its already
inside the arch linux kernel).

Also I would still be happy if ANY linux distribution could fix monitor plug &
play, thats already really screwed. I mean things gotten better, but as soon
as you deal with a retina display and plug in two 1920x1080 monitors in and
out things getting screwed up really really fast. Also 3 monitors didn't
worked out really well on login managars in the past years, however thats
fixed now when you have the same resolution. That makes me really sad.

~~~
thwarted
I've written a script that looks at the output of xrandr and reconfigures the
screen layout, based on which outputs are plugged in and what the resolutions
are. This is then bound to a key via the window manager so I can seamlessly
move between laptop only, laptop+1 external, laptop+2 externals, or 2
externals only with just a keypress after coming out of sleep. This has been
pretty solid on MacBookPro10,2, running the XFCE spin of Fedora 21. Some
people have questioned if I'm running Linux when they see this work.

The background on the login screen doesn't always render correctly, but I look
at that as often as I reboot (which is like once a month), so that doesn't
impact me much (just like boot time, ahem).

My main concern is that as things become less shell-scriptable (like requiring
complex dbus interactions), doing this will be less accessible to work around
design or implementation quirks to achieve the desktop experience one wants.
This is the price we pay for progress, I suppose.

------
baldfat
Not sure where Fedora sits in the current system.

1) Cutting Edge - Rolling releases of Arch or Gentoo

2) Stable - Debian (Slow and Steady on the Main Release)

3) Cutting Edge and Stable - OpenSUSE (One I mostly use)

4) Ubuntu - Ubuntu (Not sure where to place it, since is its own thing now to
me compared to the rest of Linux blazing its own whatever it wants to do)

I am hoping that Fedora isn't just the break things fast and often it has been
for me in the past.

I still remember the frustrations of having a good Fedora that ran out of
updates. I would skip to the current version and not be happy with my computer
for months. Last version I have tried to use for my own personal use is Fedora
14 (Used it since Core through 14). Fedora was never my main distro and I
always had hopes for it to work for me, but alas ...

~~~
cstoner
I've been using Fedora pretty solidly since 20. I use it in a VM to get all of
my "actual work" done and just use my host machine for email and web browsing.
It's been pretty stable for me.

The main reason I use it is that our production environments run CentOS and I
want to get used to upcoming features before they're included in mainline
(systemd, firewalld, dnf, python3, iproute2, etc).

Fedora has actually gotten a lot better since around Fedora 19. If you haven't
given it a shot in a while you might be pleasantly surprised.

~~~
craigching
Same for me, use it in a VM, etc. I've been doing this since 18 and have found
it to be very stable. My only complaint would be Fedora 21 seemed like the
filesystem was a bit slow. But I yum update pretty regularly and it seems good
now. This is all anecdotal, just noticing startup times of the product I work
on and other programs I use daily.

EDIT: I just remembered something important about my use and might be why that
you say it wasn't good before 19. I use MATE mostly because 18's Gnome3 was
really bad. I still don't like Gnome3 and stick with MATE. Gnome3 is just too
slow for me and some of the workflows get in my way.

------
craigching
I use Fedora for my day-to-day development and love it. 21 seemed a bit bad on
performance initially, but I keep upgrading and it now feels about right. When
I saw this, though, I thought "Isn't it a bit early? 21 just came out in
December and they're on yearly releases." Then I read the link:

    
    
      Also with this release, we return to our traditional six-month cadence —
      we’ll see you back here sometime around Halloween!
    

Nice. Guess I'll be upgrading soon!

------
whitehat2k9
I really want to like Fedora but the short lifecycle is, at least for me,
unsustainable. I wish there was something like Ubuntu's LTS releases.

~~~
groks
What's the attraction of antique, buggy software which no one is maintaining?

If you're responsible for a power station, satellite etc. then OK, better the
devil you know than the possibility of a destabilising bug among all the new
features and bug fixes. But for your laptop?

Tip: use ansible to configure your personal machine. Once every six months you
boot into the live media, install, reboot, run ansible, reboot, done. You'll
spend more time boiling a kettle and drinking a beverage than fettling a new
release, and no more time trying to hand install the latest version of package
X on a 3 year old base OS.

~~~
UserRights
could you point me to some ansible scripts that setup a fedora 22 desktop?
Thanks!

~~~
edcastro
[https://github.com/edgard/ansible-edgard](https://github.com/edgard/ansible-
edgard)

This is what I use to configure my Fedora workstation. It also has a few roles
for other stuff and might seem a little confusing at first, but it's a good
starting point, I guess.

~~~
UserRights
THANKS!

BTW here are some good ones for Debian / Ubuntu:
[http://debops.org/](http://debops.org/)

------
keithpeter
Tried Fedora 22 on my laptop - installed from the live image dd'ed to a USB
stick

Gnome 3.16 looks well slick although those new scroll widgets take a bit of
getting used to (middle click for drag-scroll), e.g. Terminal | Edit | Profile
then try changing the terminal font.

Playing mp3 music: gstreamer1-plugins-ugly package not available in Fedora
repository. RPMFusion repository does not seem to work at present, the
/etc/yum.repos.d entries refer to rawhide as well as Fedora 22. So I just used
an old copy of the Fluendo mp3 codecs from Centos 6 installed with rpm -i
--nodeps. I find it strange that in the second decade of the 21st Century
playing a music track should take a significant amount of tweaking. Just works
on Debian, who are _very_ careful about licensing.

NTFS format external hard drive: ntfs-3g and fuse installed, but my (harmless)
500Gb external drive does not automount. Entry present in dmesg but can't see
it in Files.

'Software' application reports failure to install just about every package,
command line install using '# dnf install foobar' works much better.

------
foodstances
Off-topic, but does anyone know what laptop is shown in this image on Fedora's
site?

[https://getfedora.org/static/images/workstation/workstation-...](https://getfedora.org/static/images/workstation/workstation-
splash.jpg)

~~~
mattikus
Looks like a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon, 2nd Generation based on the modifier
keys.

~~~
vetrom
I'm pretty sure that's a first generation, as there is no 'Fn' mod key on the
left.

2nd gen has the 'Fn' key but still has the fingerprint reader on the right
margin like the 1st gen. 2nd gen is also distinguished by having the split
middle button on the trackpad.

3rd gen (the current one?) moves the fingerprint reader below instead of to
the right from the keyboard.

------
fideloper
New Linux releases always remind me that I'm in the minority (??) for not
giving a single ...care... about the desktop version of the OSes.

Mac OS is great for a workstation OS (better user experience, application
support). Linux for me is very much a CLI-only experience.

Edit: I mean to say that I only use linux for servers, typically web servers.
I personally have no use for linux desktops. In theory they'd be nice (Docker
running natively on Mac would be a dream) but I need Photoshop/Word products
and really do not need to deal with the random issues of Linux desktops (e.g.
getting wifi to work, dealing with sound driver funkiness, getting
drivers/off-brand productivity apps, etc)

~~~
zxcvcxz
> Linux for me is very much a CLI-only experience.

What's it like in 1999?

>really do not need to deal with the random issues of Linux desktops (e.g.
getting wifi to work, dealing with sound driver funkiness, getting
drivers/off-brand productivity apps

Personally I have bigger problems with Apple products. OS X has all sorts of
random issues(and even worse driver support). People like to pretend like
Apple products "just work" but the reality is that OS X is just as buggy (if
not more so) as Linux. The fact that Apple curates the hardware for their
devices and has their OS coupled tightly to their ecosystem means these
problems are inexcusable, they only need to ensure the OS works on around 5
models but they can't even get that right:

Sound not working after upgrade on OS X:

    
    
      http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/151045/why-is-the-audio-is-not-working-after-upgrading-to-yosemite
    
      http://www.iphonetopics.com/no-sound-after-upgrading-to-os-x-yosemite/
    
      https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6606695
    

[the list could go on]

Wifi not working in OS X:

    
    
      http://www.macrumors.com/2014/10/30/yosemite-wi-fi-connection-issues/
    
      http://osxdaily.com/2015/01/30/os-x-10-10-2-yosemite-wi-fi-problems/
    
      http://fieldguide.gizmodo.com/the-worst-bugs-in-os-x-yosemite-and-how-to-fix-them-1652690924
    

[the list could go on]

Upgrade disasters:

    
    
      http://www.macworld.com/article/2837811/bugs-and-fixes-solving-a-yosemite-post-install-disaster.html
    
      http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/161368/mac-os-x-yosemite-broke-my-imac
    
    

There are over 500 Ubuntu Certified PCs whereas there are ~5 current Apple
models.

It's astonishing that apple users go out of their way to buy specific hardware
just to get OS X up and running but refuse to do the same thing for other
OS's, then go and claim that OS X "just works". I assume most apple users
attempt to install Linux on their macbook only to find that Apple has made
this process extremely hard and deliberately chosen hardware that uses closed
source drivers that are hard to get on other operating systems, then they
blame Linux.

Imagine if the situation was turned around and you were trying to install OS X
on your Ubuntu Certified PC. Would it still "just work"? I'd wager installing
OS X on anything that isn't a mac is a bigger headache than installing any
other OS anywhere.

It would be like me building a custom computer, creating my own OS that only
works on that computer, and then claiming my OS is good because it "just
works" on my one specific machine.

OS X has the worst hardware support of any OS. You can get better hardware
support and a computer/OS that "just works" by taking the time and energy you
took to buy a PC specifically made to run OS X and use it to buy a PC
specifically made to run Linux.

~~~
timc3
Not everyone uses or needs a desktop on a OS. Personally I think anyone that
installs a GUI on a server obviously doesn’t know what they are doing.

