Fedora Core 2 released.

[mbottrell]

Hi all,

The Redhat+community distribution has delivered the second release of Fedora.

The new version packs a punch with many new features. :) It includes:[list=1] Kernel 2.6
SELinux (disabled by default)
Better firewalling tools
LVM2
GCC 3.4
XFree86 has been replaced with X.org's official X11R6.7.0 X Window System release.
KDE 3.2.2
Gnome 2.6
Subversion 1.0
Gimp 2.0
Upgraded Anaconda -- now able to install via a VNC connection. ;)[/list=1]
It's not a small release with many changes... :D

If you're looking for a solid Linux distro, it's well worth the look. Quite polished
and suitable for most.

It's now compiled and optimised for a Penitum Pro or better computer... so make sure you read the Release Notes (http://www.distrowatch.com/external/Fedora2-Release-Notes.html). It will still run however on a Pentium class machine (though not recommended).

It ships on 4 CDs or 1 DVD, a rescue, SRPMS and minimal boot ISOs are also available (you can install with the minimal boot via NFS, HTTP or FTP if inclined).

You can read more about it from the Official Redhat Fedora site (http://fedora.redhat.com/)

Downloading it
You have a few options to download it! :)

Official Download Site
http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/
Official Australian mirrors
ftp://ftp.netcraft.com.au/pub/fedora/linux/core/
http://planetmirror.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/
ftp://ftp.planetmirror.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/
http://mirror.pacific.net.au/linux/redhat/fedora/
ftp://mirror.pacific.net.au/linux/redhat/fedora/
Official Bit Torrent
http://torrent.dulug.duke.edu/

NB: It has been released for X86 and X86_64 platforms at this stage.

For those curious... you can find out what the codename for this release (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tettnang) is all about. ;)

Happy Linuxing! ;)

Cheers,

Matt.

[Fraser]

Just for the technically partially illiterati amongst us (i.e. me), what is the difference between the binary and SRC downloads?

I don't just mean technically... what the the implications, applications and eases of installation of the two types



Fraser
(Now with Linspire running, but wanting the next challenge)

[rbirdman]

Yep, I've been looking forward to this but I'll
wait for the initial flurry to die down before I bother downloading it

As to the source rpm's you'd only want those if you intend to compile the programs into binaries yourself. Certainly not necessary for someone still getting the hang of linux.

[axcairns]

Originally posted by Fraser
Just for the technically partially illiterati amongst us (i.e. me), what is the difference between the binary and SRC downloads?

I don't just mean technically... what the the implications, applications and eases of installation of the two types



Fraser
(Now with Linspire running, but wanting the next challenge)

Binary downloads are precompiled packages. Source downloads are the source code. If you are feeling masochistic you can compile them yourself. The advantage of this approach is that the binary can be tuned to your specific architecture. The downside is it is a painful and long process. I suggest sticking to binaries.

If you want to play around with source downloads I suggest Gentoo Linux which takes a lot of the pain out of source compilation. It's not for n00b's though.

Cheers,

Allan

[mbottrell]

I would give Fedora Linux a go. :)

I've very well compiled package and perfect if you want a stable and clean environment.

A good range of GUI admin tools for those new to Linux. :)

The SRPMs -- refer to Source RPMS... used as RBirdman points out for rebuilding and compiling the code into RPMS (binary packages you use).

Unless you need to recompile they are not normally needed. :)

(I normally grab the SRPMS of just a few files that I customise for my liking (notably Apache and PHP). :)

Cheers,

Matt.

PS: The BitTorrent seems to fly down... I got the 2 Gb overnight... seems most of the mirrors are currently 'swamped'...

PPS: 2 Updates have already come out... kdelibs, and gaim... :(

[Fraser]

Originally posted by mbottrell
I would give Fedora Linux a go. :)

... 2 Updates have already come out... kdelibs, and gaim... :(

Hmm... sound like a short wait of maybe just a few more days might make things better, stronger, faster.... ;)


Fraser

[archonit.net]

PPS: 2 Updates have already come out... kdelibs, and gaim... :(

Gaim's one of those programs that I wish you could add to the ban list on updates... they release new changes to the sourceforge cvs so often it's hard as hell to keep up.
And I don't even use it! My partner loves the idea that she is running 'the latest' gaim.

FC1 is insane. I've been using it alongside slackware for ages now but with all honesty I find myself switching to it a lot more due to the relative ease of doing things. It feels bigger and beefier (almost like windows) but it certainly still works fast.


The only problem with FC2 is that ATI's firegl drivers were compiled for XFree86 4.3 with a 2.4 based kernel.
FC2 is X.org and 2.6 kernel. I've heard that it DOES work just as well but takes a bit of tweaking. I'm going to download FC2 nowish and give it a whirl over the weekend.

[Pigs]

Originally posted by mbottrell
I would give Fedora Linux a go. :)



I did and am very impressed with this compliation. Very nice. I can feels Bills grip slipping a little.

Matt can you recommend a good Virus program for Linux?

Cheers

[sticky_chicken]

I did and am very impressed with this compliation. Very nice. I can feels Bills grip slipping a little.

Matt can you recommend a good Virus program for Linux?

Cheers

For servers or workstations? If you are looking for mail server anti-virus, try sophie http://freshmeat.net/projects/sophie/ or mimedefang http://freshmeat.net/projects/mimedefanger/

[axcairns]

Originally posted by Pigs
I did and am very impressed with this compliation. Very nice. I can feels Bills grip slipping a little.

Matt can you recommend a good Virus program for Linux?

Cheers

Linux devotees like to point out that there are almost no viruses on the Linux platform and therefore no full-service anti-virus solutions such as you see on Windows. I am a bit dubious about this but haven't seen anything to disprove it yet.

There are virus scanners specifically for incoming mail such as clamAV. My home web/mail server is linux but most of my boxes are windows so clamAV is useful in cleaning out the viruses before they get to my windows machines.

Cheers,

Allan

[Pigs]

Thanks guys..

[Pigs]

Originally posted by sticky_chicken
For servers or workstations? If you are looking for mail server anti-virus, try sophie http://freshmeat.net/projects/sophie/ or mimedefang http://freshmeat.net/projects/mimedefanger/

While I'm on it can you recommend a good workstation Anti virus program?

Thanks in advance.

[sticky_chicken]

While I'm on it can you recommend a good workstation Anti virus program?

Thanks in advance.


ClamAV is not too bad :)

http://www.clamav.net/

[SteveM]

For Victorian users wanting this without the pain of 2Gb of quota usage, go to Victorian Swift users torrent tracker (http://vicbt.ath.cx/index.php). It will be a slow download, but makes use of local state traffic only (not free for 200Mb plans).

SteveM

[mbottrell]

Originally posted by Pigs
While I'm on it can you recommend a good workstation Anti virus program?

Thanks in advance.

With Sticky on this...

ClamAV will do the trick....

Also MailScanner, is a nice intergrated solution that lets you hook-up items like SpamAssassin and ClamAV so you get your incoming mail SPAM and VIRUS free. :D

Read more about MailScanner here (http://www.sng.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailscanner/)

There are some commercial desktop AntiVirus scanner programs available (some give their Linux Version away for free!)[list=1] BitDefender for Linux (http://www.bitdefender.com/bd/site/products.php?p_id=16) (Free)
F-Prot (http://www.f-prot.com/products/home_use/linux/) (Free)
Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Linux Workstation (http://www.kaspersky.com/trials?chapter=146538435) (Trial)
Nod32 for Linux File Servers (http://www.nod32.com/products/lfs.htm) (Trial)
McAfee (30 day trial) -- couldn't find link! :(
[/list=1]

There are heaps around.. though Kaspersky on the commercial side is very good....

Depends if you wanna spend money or have a free one. :)

Also the viruses that effect Windows DONT affect Linux... it's not to say Linux can't get viruses/worms/trojans... just different ones. :) Also the amount is no-where as high as that of Windows.

The majority of Linux users don't run AV software.... (only over their mail).

I use ClamAV and run a scan over my fileservers/webservers weekly... whilst scan incoming mail (SPAM/Viruses).. I have desktop AV software on Windows desktops. :)

Cheers,

Matt.

[DrT33th]

Yup, I'm trickling it down from the Vic (Swiftel) Torrent server as we speak.. :o


... we need help guys and gals... I seeder, 6 peers...and still damn slow.. (About 6k)

Anybody else got a copy and feel like seeding?:(

[SteveM]

With 2 people being 98%+ it should pick up very soon, provided that they don't disconnect as soon as they are finished. Unfortunately, with the low upload speeds on Australian connections, it is not the most efficient method of distributing large files unless people stay connected for reasonable periods of time after a download is completed. The best point is that it is a free download & for those with low limits or high usage it is well worth the wait.
(After downloading the test 3 release this month, I wouldn't otherwise get this until next month)

SteveM

[mbottrell]

Originally posted by DrT33th
Anybody else got a copy and feel like seeding?:(

I'll throw a copy up...

I grabbed it off the official Torrent site.... and will re-seed that an stick it up.. :)

I'll leave it running for a while.... hopefully more ppl can grab it.

As mentioned... if you finish getting it... leave your client run for a while longer... this helps everyone else and increases everyones overall speed.

Cheers,

Matt.

[Pigs]

Originally posted by mbottrell
Read more about MailScanner here (http://www.sng.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailscanner/)

There are some commercial desktop AntiVirus scanner programs available (some give their Linux Version away for free!)[list=1] BitDefender for Linux (http://www.bitdefender.com/bd/site/products.php?p_id=16) (Free)
F-Prot (http://www.f-prot.com/products/home_use/linux/) (Free)
Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Linux Workstation (http://www.kaspersky.com/trials?chapter=146538435) (Trial)
Nod32 for Linux File Servers (http://www.nod32.com/products/lfs.htm) (Trial)
McAfee (30 day trial) -- couldn't find link! :(
[/list=1]

There are heaps around.. though Kaspersky on the commercial side is very good....



Thanx for the additions Matt,
And thanx to everone else as well. I've got to get over the Linux hill in front of me. I've got Windows down pat but Linux is a whole new ball game.

Cheers to all.

[rbirdman]

Just tried installing Fedora Core 2 on a widescreen dell laptop.

I did a basic Desktop install (needs disc one and two ony) with a seperate home partition.
Everything went well except the screen resolution. At the moment I have a widescreen desktop after setting it after firstboot
but not at the full resolution the screen is capable of.
When it boots it doesn't boot in widescreen mode. I'll worry about that when the nvidia driver comes out.

ACPI seems to be working well. Screen brightness reacts to having the power cable plugged in.

All in all very impressive.

[SteveM]

Originally posted by mbottrell
I'll throw a copy up...

I grabbed it off the official Torrent site.... and will re-seed that an stick it up.. :)

I'll leave it running for a while.... hopefully more ppl can grab it.

As mentioned... if you finish getting it... leave your client run for a while longer... this helps everyone else and increases everyones overall speed.

Cheers,

Matt.

Preferred option would be if you downloaded the existing torrent & pointed it at a copy of the data on your computer. The files are already there & bittorrent is not clever enough to draw from 2 seperate torrents the same data (afaik). The only diffence between the torrent that you provided & the existing one is that yours has an extra file (don't know if that file is necessary though).
Currently you are providing bandwidth to just one user, while the other way you would be pooling your bandwidth with a couple of others to feed several users.

SteveM

[DrT33th]

Anything that will help the download speed would be good. I'm dribbling down about 4kB/s... and pushing about 9kB/s back up...

[mbottrell]

I'm currently upping at around 15-20kb/sec

Someone's grabbing! ;)

Cheers,

Matt.

[mbottrell]

Originally posted by SteveM
Preferred option would be if you downloaded the existing torrent & pointed it at a copy of the data on your computer. The files are already there & bittorrent is not clever enough to draw from 2 seperate torrents the same data (afaik). The only diffence between the torrent that you provided & the existing one is that yours has an extra file (don't know if that file is necessary though).
Currently you are providing bandwidth to just one user, while the other way you would be pooling your bandwidth with a couple of others to feed several users.

SteveM

Sorry Steve.... still getting my head around this whole Torrent stuff.

The extra file is the boot.iso off disk1...

Cheers,

Matt.

*sigh* Learnt my mistake... will learn for next time. :) Thanks for the tip! :D

[mbottrell]

Steve,

I've removed the torrent I uploaded and joined the bandwidth pool for others to grab it from. :)

Hopefully some additional download speed for ya all. :D

Cheers,

Matt.

[axcairns]

Anybody setup a torrent for WA?

[mbottrell]

Unsure... however it's likely one of the mirrors on the WAIX has it you can download via FTP/HTTP... (lucky bastard!) :p

Cheers,

Matt.

[mbottrell]

Seems Fedora News has finally let the rest of the world know it's here! :D

Take a read of their quite funny article here: http://fedoranews.org/newsalert/2004-05-18-001.shtml

Cheers,

Matt.

[KRiSX]

mmmm i still think rpm based dists have had there day...

i will check this out just to see what it has to offer...

my fav dist tho is MEPIS... i highly suggest you all try it out... :)

either way tho... Linux rocks! :D

[mbottrell]

Originally posted by KRiSX
mmmm i still think rpm based dists have had there day...

Always believed that RPM distros work well if the packages are put together with some thought, and the person doing the installing knows what the hell they are doing...

Those who have whinged about circles of deps at times don't understand that package-A and package-B rely on each other... it's easy... that's what the -f option in RPM was made for. :p

Just upgrade both at the same time via an -f option and all is sweet... :D

I like RPM distros as their builtin MD5 checksums makes it very easy to tell what/if any files have been trojaned or backdoored. :)

Try that with a source distro! :p

Cheers,

Matt.

PS: I make a lotta my own RPMs.... it's not hard if you take the time to learn how to use it.... This ensures I always get the latest packages I want, and it fits nicely into the RPM world.... most notably I use Apache/2, PHPv5, OpenSSL, and Samba custom builds.. :)

[KRiSX]

well.. i used to think that rpm was great.. but now i'm an apt-get whore... you can't beat it

altho i believe it has been ported to rpm as well now.. so who knows.. i may fall in love with rpm's once again

i used mandrake a fair bit, red hat just died as far as i'm concerned... wondering if its back to life with fedora

i just love any debian based dist due to the simplicity of package management.. or my prefered style of package management..

when it comes down to it though, it doesn't matter if you use debian, slackware, fedora, mandrake, mepis, suse or whatever... your still using linux.. which is, as far as i'm concerned, the most important and best thing about it all... its in no way related to microsoft winblows! :)

[mbottrell]

hehehe.. exactly.. the worse Linux distro is still leaps and bounds ahead of Windoze. :p
Actually whilst apt-get is available for RPMS.... yum is the preferred method for those in the know. ;)

You can learn more about yum here (http://linux.duke.edu/projects/yum/)

Cheers,

Matt.

[axcairns]

Actually I'm hooked on Gentoo. I've tried Suse, Debian, Xandros, Knoppix, Morphix, Lindows, Onebase and Mandrake but always go back to Gentoo.

mmmmmmm source based mmmmmmmmmm

Oh and SME Server (aka e-smith) on my server.

Allan

[DrT33th]

After some unidentified glitch that locked mysystem up overnight... [no download at all] I am now grabbing 10kB/s.

...better, but still not brilliant.

Anyway... magnificent thanks to Floppyman, Unforgiven, Ubottrell and Steve for staying online and seeding.....


....Still 36 hours to go (according to the dowload estimator)

[alterego]

Is there an nsw (Sydney) bit torrent.
And is there a reference on how to use it (it sounds good)
I am currently running fedora Yarrow as my firewall (rock solid so far)
and administering three other sites with the same,
All vpn'd with freeswan

[rbirdman]

got my little glitch sorted out. :)

widescreen is great. its 1920 by 1200 so the image is way big but we all use broadband so here's a screen shot.
http://home.swiftdsl.com.au/~rbirdman/screenshot.gif
and yes i am a happy little penguin;)

fedora 2 is looking great. I think I'll format my pc which is a multi-boot system and just put fedora on it.

[mbottrell]

Yup... gotta admit FC2 is definately the best rounded and smoothest of all the distros that has come out. :D

Very impressed with it.

I use FC1/FC2 on all my servers now (currently upgrading the FC1s to FC2).

It's very slick and a job well done. :)

I like the model that FC has over Debian as RedHat still has final say, and gives some corporate direction.... whereas I find Debian stable completely outdated.. .whilst the unstable release has no support... even security fixes.. ya on ya own. :confused: (Something I never understood!)

Glad to see we're getting a range of Happy Pengiuns! :D

BTW: I use OpenVPN (http://openvpn.sourceforge.net/) instead of FreeSWAN. :) It's easy to setup and works a treat with Mac or Windows users. :) There is also an excellent article to get you started on FedoraNews (http://fedoranews.org/contributors/florin_andrei/openvpn/)

Regards,

Matt.

PS: Still connected to the VIC BT server.... I'm currently pushing it out at 22kb/sec. :) I'll leave it running until Friday... that should give ppl enough time to grab it.

If you have grabbed it ... stay connected... it helps others get it MUCH faster... also good karma comes ya way. ;) Please stay connected for another 24 hours.... lightening speeds are possible... but it only improves the more ppl that stay connected. :) With ADSL this isn't a problem. ;)

[kal]

Originally posted by mbottrell

BTW: I use OpenVPN (http://openvpn.sourceforge.net/) instead of FreeSWAN. :)
I use IPsec so Free s/wan it is. The vpn handshake can be a nuisance to get right between vendors tho (*cough* checkpoint *cough*) :mad:
Cisco vpn concentrator works well with it on the other hand.

yet to move to Fedora since my servers got unsupported by RH(not quite over that yet). Perhaps its time to give it a try.

[rbirdman]

Originally posted by kal
I use IPsec so Free s/wan it is. The vpn handshake can be a nuisance to get right between vendors tho (*cough* checkpoint *cough*) :mad:
Cisco vpn concentrator works well with it on the other hand.

yet to move to Fedora since my servers got unsupported by RH(not quite over that yet). Perhaps its time to give it a try.

there's always fedora legacy, though it will mainly be security fixes

http://fedoralegacy.org/

[mbottrell]

Originally posted by kal
yet to move to Fedora since my servers got unsupported by RH(not quite over that yet). Perhaps its time to give it a try.

No problemo.... :)

I like Fedora... much more flexiable than RH ever where... and the benefits of a fast developing community... :)

Also it keeps the nice admin tools and layout we are all familar with. :)

Fedora: Better OS, Less BS, and faster updates. :) What's not to like!? :D

[mbottrell]

There is a bug in the FC2 installation that makes Windows not boot after installation. :(
(Some might say that's a good thing! :p)

In any event.... it's not fatal and is recoverable! :D

If you require dual boot Linux/Windows I suggest you read this article (http://lwn.net/Articles/86835/) that describes how to go about it. :)

Cheers,

Matt.

[Phil]

Slashdot review on Fedora Core 2 (http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=04/05/26/1441241)
that may interest a few of you :)

[mbottrell]

Originally posted by soundguy
Slashdot review on Fedora Core 2 (http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=04/05/26/1441241)
that may interest a few of you :)
BTW -- it's Not a /. article... :p

Also there are more retractions then truths in the article.... sheesh... what type of journo is this guy... sounds more like he reports Hockey Scores than a Tech Writer!

Cheers,

Matt.

Edit: Seems I'm not the only one bagging the reviewer.. .read the comments at the bottom of the article. :P

For the record -- I'm a KDE fan... :) I don't use GNOME.