[Cialug] Fwd: Announcing Fedora 12

Tue Nov 17 09:18:32 CST 2009

And now Fedora 12 is out.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Paul W. Frields <stickster at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 8:57 AM
Subject: Announcing Fedora 12
To: fedora-announce-list at redhat.com

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I'm proud to announce the release of Fedora 12, the latest innovative
Linux distribution from the Fedora Project, a global, collaborative
partnership of free software community members sponsored by Red Hat.

If you can't wait to get the distribution, simply visit:
 http://get.fedoraproject.org

If you want a quick tour of highlights in this release, check out:
 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_12_one_page_release_notes

You can also find this announcement text at:
 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_12_Announcement

Or read on for loads of information about the new release and all the
leading edge technologies we've packed into it.  More links are
available at the end of this message, too.  Enjoy!

* * *

Fedora is a leading edge, free and open source operating system that
continues to deliver innovative features to many users, with a new
release about every six months. We bring to you the latest and
greatest release of Fedora ever, Fedora 12! Join us and share the joy
of Free software and the community with friends and family. We have
several major new features with special focus on desktops, netbooks,
virtualization and system administration.

== What's New in Fedora 12? ==

* Optimized performance - All software packages on 32-bit (x86_32)
 architecture have been compiled for i686 systems, with special
 optimization for the Intel Atom processors used in many netbooks,
 but without losing compatibility with the overwhelming majority of
 CPUs.

* Smaller and faster updates - In Fedora 11, the optional yum-presto
 plugin, developed by Fedora contributor Jonathan Dieter, reduced
 update size by transmitting only the changes in the updated
 packages. Now, the plugin is installed by default. Also, RPMs now
 use XZ rather than gzip for compression, providing smaller package
 sizes without the memory and CPU penalties associated with
 bzip2. This lets us fit more software into each Fedora image, and
 uses less space on mirrors, making their administrators' lives a
 little easier. Thanks to the Fedora infrastructure team for their
 excellent work in setting up the infrastructure to generate delta
 RPMs on the fly for all the updates.

* NetworkManager broadband and other enhancements - NetworkManager,
 originally developed by Red Hat's Dan Williams, was introduced in
 Fedora 7 and has become the de facto network configuration solution
 for distributions everywhere. Enhancements to NetworkManager make
 both system-wide connections and mobile broadband connections easier
 than ever. Bluetooth PAN support offers a simple click through
 process to access the Internet from your mobile
 phone. NetworkManager can now configure always-on and static address
 connections directly from the desktop. PolicyKit integration has
 been added so configuration management can be done via central
 policy where needed. IPv6 support has also been improved.

* Next-generation (Ogg) Theora video - For several years, Theora, the
 open and free format not encumbered by known patents has provided a
 way for freedom-loving users to share video. Fedora 12 includes the
 new Theora 1.1, which achieves very high quality comparable to
 H.264, meeting the expectations of demanding users with crisp,
 vibrant media in both streaming and downloadable form. Thanks to the
 work of the Xiph.Org Foundation's Christopher "Monty" Montgomery,
 sponsored by Red Hat, other Xiph developers and the contribution of
 Mozilla.org, Theora videos now deliver much better quality primarily
 via enhancements in the encoder without any change in the format,
 making it available to all Theora users. Using Theora video and
 Vorbis audio formats, Firefox 3.5 and applications using the
 Gstreamer multimedia framework can deliver free media on the web out
 of the box even better than the previous release of Fedora. Theora
 is being rapidly adopted by several popular websites including
 Wikipedia, VideoPress and DailyMotion. Fedora Project is proud to
 support communities of free culture and open content as part of our
 mission. More details at
 http://hacks.mozilla.org/2009/09/theora-1-1-released/

* Graphics support improvements - Fedora 12 introduces experimental 3D
 support for AMD Radeon HD 2400 and later graphics cards. To try it
 out, install the mesa-dri-drivers-experimental package. On many
 cards, this support should allow desktop effects to be used. Kernel
 mode setting (KMS) support, which was introduced on AMD hardware in
 Fedora 10 and extended to Intel hardware in Fedora 11, is now
 extended to NVIDIA hardware as well, meaning the great majority of
 systems now benefit from the smooth, fully-graphical startup
 sequence made possible by KMS. The Fedora graphical startup sequence
 now works better on systems with multiple monitors. Also on multiple
 monitor systems, the desktop will now automatically be spread across
 all monitors by default, rather than having all monitors display the
 same output, including on NVIDIA chips (where multiple monitor
 spanning was not possible without manual configuration changes in
 Fedora 11). Systems with NVIDIA graphics chips also gain initial
 support for suspend and resume functionality via the default Nouveau
 driver. Initial support for the new DisplayPort display connector
 has been added for Intel graphics chips. Support for Nvidia and ATI
 systems is already under rapid development and will be included in
 the next release of Fedora. Thanks to the Red Hat Xorg team
 including Adam Jackson (X server), Kristian Høgsberg (Intel driver),
 Dave Airlie and Jerome Glisse (Radeon driver for AMD), and Ben
 Skeggs (Nouveau driver for NVIDIA).

* Virtualization improvements - Not content with all the improvements
 in Fedora 11, we've kicked virtualization based on KVM up another
 notch in Fedora 12. There are extensive improvements in performance,
 management, and resource sharing, and still more security
 enhancements. A new library (libguestfs) and an interactive tool
 (guestfish) are now available for directly accessing and modifying
 virtual machine disk images. Richard W.M. Jones from Red Hat's
 virtualization team has a list of extensive virtualization tools
 available and coming up for Fedora at
 http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2009/10/20/fedora-virt-commands/

* Automatic reporting of crashes and SELinux issues - Abrt, a tool to
 help non-power users report crashes to Bugzilla with a few mouse
 clicks, is now enabled by default. Abrt collects detailed
 information automatically and helps developers identify and resolve
 issues faster, improving the quality of individual upstream
 components and Fedora. The SELinux alert monitoring tool has also
 added the ability to report SELinux issues to Bugzilla quickly and
 easily with just a couple of clicks.

* New Dracut initrd generation tool - Up until Fedora 11, the boot
 system (initial ram disk or initrd) used to boot Fedora was
 monolithic, very distribution specific, and didn't provide much
 flexibility. This has been replaced with Dracut, an initial ram disk
 generation tool with an event-based framework designed to be
 distribution-independent. Dracut has been also adopted by OLPC which
 uses Fedora; OLPC modules for Dracut are available in the Fedora
 repository. Thanks to the Dracut team, including Harald Hoyer,
 Jeremy Katz, Dave Jones, and many others.

* PackageKit plugins - PackageKit now has a plugin which can install
 an appropriate package when a user tries to run a command from a
 missing package. Another new plugin allows installation of software
 packages from a web browser. Thanks to Red Hat's Richard Hughes and
 the PackageKit team.

* Bluetooth on-demand - Bluetooth services are automatically started
 when needed and stopped 30 seconds after last device use, reducing
 initial startup time and resource use when Bluetooth is not in
 active use. Thanks to Red Hat's Bastien Nocera.

* Moblin graphical interface for netbooks - In additional to special
 compiler optimization for netbooks in this release and the continued
 integration of Sugar interface, the Moblin graphical interface and
 applications are fully integrated thanks to Peter Robinson, a Fedora
 Project volunteer, and others. Collaboration between the Moblin
 project and Fedora was accelerated since Moblin itself is largely
 based on Fedora. To use it, just install the Moblin Desktop
 Environment package group using yum or the graphical software
 management tools, and choose Moblin from the login manager. A Moblin
 Fedora Remix (installable Live CD) for Fedora 12 will also be
 available.

* PulseAudio enhancements - Red Hat's Lennart Poettering and several
 others have made significant improvements to the PulseAudio
 system. Improved mixer logic makes volume control more fine-grained
 and reliable. Integration with the Rygel UPnP media server means you
 can stream audio directly from your system to any UPnP / DLNA
 client, such as a Playstation 3. Hotplug support has been made more
 intelligent, so if you configure a device as the default output for
 a stream, unplug that device -- causing the stream(s) to be moved to
 another output device -- and later reattach it, the stream is moved
 back to the preferred device. Finally, Bluetooth audio support means
 pairing with any Bluetooth audio device makes it available for use
 through PulseAudio.

* Lower process privileges - In order to mitigate the impact of
 security vulnerabilities, permissions have been hardened for many
 files and system directories. Also, process privileges have been
 lowered for a number of core components that require super user
 privileges. Red Hat's Steve Grubb has developed a new library,
 libcap-ng, and integrated it into many core system components to
 improve the security of Fedora.

* SELinux sandbox - It is now possible to confine applications' access
 to the system and run them in a secure sandbox that takes advantage
 of the sophisticated capabilities of SELinux. Dan Walsh, SELinux
 developer at Red Hat, explains the details at
 http://danwalsh.livejournal.com/31146.html

* Open Broadcom firmware - The openfwwf open source Broadcom firmware
 is included by default. This means wireless networking will be
 available out of the box on some Broadcom chipsets.

* Hybrid live images - The Live images provided in this release can be
 directly imaged onto a USB stick using dd (or any equivalent tool)
 to create bootable Live USB keys. The Fedora Live USB Creator for
 Windows and Fedora and the livecd-tools for Fedora are still
 recommended for data persistence, encryption and non-destructive
 writes. Thanks to Jeremy Katz.

* Better webcam support - While Fedora 11 improved webcam support, in
 Fedora 12 you can expect even better video quality, especially for
 less expensive webcams. Red Hat's Hans de Goede, developer of the
 libv4l library, has more details on his continuous upstream webcam
 support enhancements at
 http://hansdegoede.livejournal.com/6989.html.

* Polished Desktop - The latest version of the GNOME desktop includes
 the lighter Gnote replacement for Tomboy as the default note
 application, and Empathy replaces Pidgin as the default instant
 messenger. The new volume control application, first seen in Fedora
 11, has been improved to cover more advanced users. There are many
 nice tweaks from the desktop team for a polished user
 experience. More details at
 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Desktop_Enhancements_in_Fedora_12

* GNOME Shell preview - Fedora 12 includes an early version of GNOME
 Shell, which will become the default interface for GNOME 3.0 and
 beyond. To try it, install the gnome-shell package, and use the
 Desktop Effects configuration tool to enable it. It will only work
 correctly from the GNOME desktop environment, not others such as KDE
 or Xfce. This is a preview technology, and some video cards may not
 be supported. Thanks to Owen Taylor from Red Hat and the GNOME Shell
 team.

* KDE 4.3 - The new KDE features an updated "Air" theme and fully
 configurable keyboard shortcuts in Plasma, improved performance and
 new desktop effects in the window manager, a new bug reporting tool,
 and a configuration tool for the LIRC infra-red remote control
 system.

* Cool new stuff for developers beginning with Eclipse Galileo, which
 includes more plugins than ever before. Perl 6 is now included,
 along with PHP 5.3. For Haskell developers, the Haskell Platform now
 provides a standardized set of libraries and tools. But one of the
 biggest changes for developers is that most of the nice new features
 of Fedora 12, from Bluetooth to webcams, are implemented through
 underlying libraries, and many of the improvements will be included
 simply by relinking your application. Also available in this release
 are SystemTap 1.0 for improved instrumenting and debugging of
 binaries, complete with Eclipse integration, and the newest NetBeans
 IDE for Java development.

* Cool new stuff for sysadmins include added functionality for
 clustered Samba services (including active/active configurations)
 over GFS2; and the ability to boot a cluster of Fedora systems from
 a single, shared root file system.

* Multi-Pointer X - The update to X.Org server 1.7 introduces the X
 Input Extension version 2.0 (XI2), with much work contributed by Red
 Hat's Peter Hutterer. This extension provides a new client API for
 handling input devices and also Multi-Pointer X (MPX)
 functionality. MPX functionality allows X to cope with many inputs
 of arbitrary types simultaneously, a prerequisite for (among others)
 multitouch-based desktops and multi-user interaction on a single
 screen. This is low-level work of which applications and desktop
 environments will incrementally take advantage in future
 releases. More details are available in the Release Notes and in the
 XI2 tag of Peter Hutterer's blog at
 http://who-t.blogspot.com/search/label/xi2

A full feature list is available on the wiki at:
 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/12/FeatureList

OK, go get it. You know you can't wait.
 http://get.fedoraproject.org

Fedora 12 release notes and guides for several languages are available
at:
 http://docs.fedoraproject.org/

* * *

Even as we continue to provide updates with enhancements and bug fixes
to improve the Fedora 12 experience, our next release, Fedora 13, is
already being developed in parallel, and is open for active
development now. We have an early schedule for an April 2010 release,
with many new features slated.

Refer to:
 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/13/Schedule
and:
 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/13/FeatureList

- --
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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 http://redhat.com/   -  -  -  -   http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/
 irc.freenode.net: stickster @ #fedora-docs, #fedora-devel, #fredlug
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