In preparation for getting into the Fedora Core 7 swing, a Fedora Summit has been taking place this week at the Red Hat offices in Westford. Today is the last day of this small summit but several Fedora developers have been blogging about what has been discussed, and the Wiki page has also been updated. Some of the blog posts on the Fedora Summit so far have been from Max Spevack (Day 0), Max Spevack (Day 0.5), Jesse Keating (Part 1), Greg DeKoenigsberg (Tomorrow), Greg DeKoenigsberg (A New BugZilla?), Jack Aboutboul (Day 1), Max Spevack (Day 1), Max Spevack (Day 1.5), Jesse Keating (Day 1.5), Greg DeKoenigsberg (Day 1), Max Spevack (Day 2), and Jesse Keating (Day 2).
FreshRPMs has officially extended their repository today for official support for Fedora Core 6 Zod. They also introduced packages for the NVIDIA binary display driver, ATI fglrx binary display driver, ipw3945 firmware and daemon, madwifi, ntfs, pwc, and lirc. The FreshRPMs release announcement can be found here. AtRPMs has also announced support for Fedora Core 6.
The Fedora Project has officially announced Core 6 (Zod) on the fedora-announce-list. A lot more information can be found at the Fedora Wiki. Finally, Fedora Core 6 can be downloaded from mirrors or torrents. This morning we also published the first review of Fedora Core 6 Zod. Be sure to discuss your Fedora 6 thoughts over at the Phoronix Forums.
Yet another delay has struck the Fedora Core 6 release cycle. After the delay yesterday that pushed the final release of FC6 from Tuesday to Thursday, the delay has now been pushed to next week. It seems that some additional bugs have crept into Rawhide at the last minute. A respin is now taking place, and Red Hat hopes to finally push out Fedora Core 6 on Tuesday, October 24, 2006. It looks like we will have to wait patiently a few more days for the release, and in the mean time feel free to visit the Phoronix Forums.
While we were all waiting for the release of Fedora Core 6 tomorrow, Jesse Keating has just issued a statement on the fedora-announce-list that the release of Fedora Core 6 has been pushed back to this Thursday. This is certainly a disappointment for those eagerly awaiting this release, but over the weekend several bugs cropped up in the latest spin. They hope to complete the spin process tomorrow and then allow the mirrors to update for Thursday. Jesse did, however, mention that Fedora Core 6 may need to get pushed back until next week if any new problems arise. We can only hope now that Fedora Core 6 will be ready to be pushed out this Thursday!
Rahul Sundaram has published part one of a series of articles for Red Hat Magazine titled Inside Fedora Core 6. In this part Rahul mentions the installer improvements with the ability to use Anaconda to fetch packages from a yum repository, enabling AIGLX and Compiz for desktop effects, and performance boosts throughout all of Fedora Core 6. These performance boosts can most notably be attributed to glibc with dynamic linking improvements as well as the speed boosts brought by GNOME 2.16. Part one of Inside Fedora Core 6 can be read at Red Hat. Look for Fedora Core 6 next Tuesday (October 17, 2006) when it will be officially announced.
Fedora Core 6 was slated for release on October 11, however, the announcement has just come out by means of the mailing list that the release has been pushed back to October 17. At this point there are five critical bugs left that developers would like to see addressed -- ranging from 256MB of system memory will stall Anaconda to an SELinux issue with updating the kernel on Power PC. The official announcement can be found here. We can only hope that Fedora Core 6 will make it out by October 17.
GNOME is having their Bostom Summit 2006 this weekend at the MIT Media Lab. This summit is a three-day hackfest for developers and contributors. There is also an embedded device hackfest, GNOME accessibility summit, and text layout summit. More on the GNOME Bostom Summit 2006 can be found on the GNOME Live Wiki. Chris Blizzard also posted some instructions this afternoon on his blog.
While the release of Fedora Core 6 is still scheduled for October 11, and the final Test release (FC6T3) was pushed out earlier this month, Red Hat has pushed out a FC6 pre-release. FC6pre is a near final copy of Fedora Core 6 but there are still a few known bugs left. Links to the images and the announcement is on the mailing list.
The third and final test release is now available for the upcoming Fedora Core 6. Fedora Core 6 Test 3 (FC6T3) delivers GNOME 2.16.0, KDE 3.5.3, yum install repositories from Anaconda installer, new default font, Compiz window manager using AIGLX, notification bubbles for software updates, improved startup performance (DT_GNU_HASH), Xen improvements, setroubleshoot for SELinux, integrated smart card capabilities, improved X auto-configuration, and new Fedora artwork. The official release announcement can be read here.
Robert Jensen has passed along word on the fedora-announce-list that the Fedora Unity project has released their re-spin of Fedora Core 5, as well as ISOs for the Fedora Core LiveCD using Kadischi. The Fedora Core 5 re-spin contains all FC5 official updates as of 2006-08-18 and is available for i386 and x86_64 architectures. The Fedora Core Live spin is based on Fedora Core 5 Bordeaux with all updates to 2006-08-21. Also available are LiveCDs based upon Fedora Core 6 Test 2 (FC6T2). Grab all of these ISOs as torrents over at Fedora Unity.
Chitlesh Goorah has placed a request on his blog for help with Kadischi testing. Primarily the Kadischi Team and Fedora Unity are interested in participants to help out on x86_64 testing of Kadischi with Fedora Core 6 Test 2 (FC6T2). Kadischi is the tool to create Fedora-based LiveCDs, and more is available on the Wiki.
Fedora Core 6 Test 2 is now out after a Xen delay late last month. Among the notable highlights in FC6T2 include all packages are recompiled (built using Mock, packages also now have proper BuildRequires), ability to install from additional yum repositories during the Anaconda/KickStart installation, Java web applet from gcjwebplugin, new default font, package updates and upgrades, and Fedora Core 6 Extras. The preferred method of download is using Torrents, and Jesse's Fedora Core 6 Test 2 announcement is available here. Fedora Core 6 Test 3 (FC6T3) is scheduled for release on September 11, while the final Fedora Core 6 release is tentatively scheduled for October 9, 2006.
After the first delay of Fedora Core 6 Test 2, Jeremy Katz has announced a second delay. This time it is due to the 2.6.18-rc kernel and issues presented with Xen. The delay will occur till Xen is working properly, which looks like it might happen on July 24. If they meet the Monday deadline, Fedora Core 6 Test 2 would be released on July 26. More updates to come soon.
Due to the integration of DT_GNU_HASH changes for binutils and glibc, Fedora Core 6 Test 2 (FC6T2) has been delayed by one week. These changes will bring up to an approximate 50% speed-up in dynamic linking, however, a complete rebuild is necessary. Due to this Fedora Core 6 rebuild, the freeze date for Test 2 (the feature freeze release) is now on Wednesday, July 19, 2006. The release date for this next testing release will be on July 21, 2006. However, this delay has also pushed back the final Fedora Core 6 release from September 27 to October 4. The updated and preliminary Fedora Core Schedule can be found in the Wiki.
As expected, immediately at 10:00AM EDT the Red Hat server, and the Fedora Core mirrors are beginning to unlock with the ISOs for Fedora Core 6 Test 1 (5.90). So far, at 10:07AM many of these mirrors still appear to be locked, but we have found a few open ones -- such as the Linux FTP Duke server. We are in the process of acquiring Fedora Core 6 Test 1, and should hopefully have up a report this afternoon. More is at Fedora.
Creative Commons and the Fedora Project are pleased to announce the
Open Video Contest taking place now. The contest promotes flexible
copyright, open media formats and the Fedora Project.
Entries must be 30 seconds or less, in OGG Theora format, promote
freedom and openness, and be released under the Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 license.
http://creativecommons.org/video/openvideocontest/
Max Spevack, the chairman of the Fedora Project Board, has updated his blog with a few details with what has been going on this week and last. After the end of the Red Hat Summit 2006, Max and other Fedorians had continued the energy into this week, according to his blog. Some of the Fedora progress made includes beginning to figure out two more FUDCons this year, working on x86 Mac Intel boxes for Fedora, the announcement of a Fedora Core 5 re-spin from Fedora Unity, and a read-only copy of the Fedora Advisory Board. Max Spevack's blog post can be found here.
The Wiki summary of the Fedora Project board meeting is now available. Topics discussed at today's meeting included version control, possible Brazil FUDCon, Red Hat Summit, and other Fedora details.
The Fedora Project has launched Fedora Interview, which has a goal to present quickly the contributors behind the Fedora Project. All of these contributors explain in a few words what their role is with this popular Linux distribution. More on Fedora Interview can be found in the Wiki.
Robert "Bob" Jensen has passed along word on the Fedora Announcement List of the Fedora Unity Project re-spinning the FC5 i386 and x86_64 ISOs with the latest updates. While performing the RPM updates after a fresh install isn't much of a problem if they are all lodged on a local yum server, or some external media, for new users the hundreds of updates can certainly be overwhelming -- as well as taking a long while to complete. The Fedora Unity Project is attempting on re-spinning the Fedora Core ISOs on a routine basis and then to offer these DVD ISOs to the public. The first re-spin available is dated from May 23, 2006 and contains all official Fedora Core 5 updates to that point. At this time, the Fedora Core 5 Re-Spin 20060523 is only available through Bit Torrent. We at Phoronix will certainly give these re-spins a try, and more information is at Fedora Unity.
Will Woods of Red Hat has announced on the Red Hat announcement list the start of a Fedora Core package cleanup project. The intentions of this cleaning are to improve the quality of the Fedora Core RPM packages -- to get them to a higher standard, similar to the Fedora Extras repository with Mock building.
I'm announcing the start of a new QA project, and I'm asking for your
help.
In the past, Core packages have not been held to the same standards as
Extras. We want to fix this! We're starting by cleaning up the spec
files so that Core packages can all be built using Mock. (If you aren't
familiar with Mock, it's a cool RPM build tool that we use to build
Fedora Extras.)
This is where you come in: We need people to attempt Mock builds of
Fedora Core packages, and file bugs when they find packages that don't
build.
Doing so will earn you the thanks and respect of your peers, but as an
added incentive we're going to give away free stuff (!) to people who
help out.
Filing a bug on a broken package will earn you one Karma Point. If you
include a patch that makes that package build successfully, you'll get
five Karma Points. These will be redeemable for cool stuff from the Red
Hat Cool Stuff Store (at an exchange rate to be determined once we
figure out how much stuff we're actually allowed to give away :)
For more info, check out:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/FixBuildRequires
Ok? OK! Let's get testin'!
-w
Max Spevack has announced that the new community member for the Fedora Project Board at this time is Matt Domsch -- a Linux Software Architect for Dell.
Matt Domsch is a Linux Software Architect for Dell. He has been developing, debugging, testing, and fixing aspects of Linux since 1999. He maintains DKMS and efibootmgr userspace apps, edd, efivars and ppp_mppe kernel modules, and has contributed to the maintenance of many other kernel modules. Matt maintains several packages in Fedora Extras. Matt was a member of the 2004 and 2005 Ottawa Linux Symposium Program Committee. Matt holds a BS in Computer Science and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a MS in Computer Science from Vanderbilt University.
Greg DeKoenigsberg (click here for our most recent interview with Red Hat's PR man), has announced the creation of the Fedora Music list. This is designed to include Planet CCRMA into the Fedora Extras repository.
It looks like we've got some critical mass forming here, so I figured I'd go ahead and announce it. We've been working with Fernando Lopez-Lezcano of Planet CCRMA, the
popular Fedora-based music distribution, to see about bringing Planet
CCRMA under the Extras umbrella. So feel free to join the conversation:
The GStreamer team today has announced the new releases of the Good and Bag plug-ins collection for the GStreamer v0.10 stable release series. Stated are lots of improvements, some new plug-ins, and a lot of bug fixes. More information is at GStreamer.
The popular Fedora FAQ (Unofficial) site for all of the Fedora newbies has been updated to reflect changes in Fedora Core 5. Many of the questions on the site have been rewritten. The Fedora FAQ information is here.
For those that may have missed it, the Fedora Project Wiki has the Fedora Core 6 preliminary schedule available. The draft in its current form states that the first Fedora Core 6 test release will occur on June 14, followed by a FC6T2 release on July 12, and FC6T3 release on August 16. The anticipated release date for Fedora Core 6 will be September 20, 2006. Of course, these dates are subject to change. Lining up with this release is GNOME v2.16.0, which is due on September 6, 2006. The Fedora Core 6 schedule is at the Wiki.
Out today on Fedora's official update servers are a slew of new stable packages. The updates out today include: gnome-utils-2.14.0-4.fc5.1, file-roller-2.14.2-1.fc5.1, gnome-menus-2.14.0-1.fc5.1, rhythmbox-0.9.4-1.fc5.1, setools-2.3-3.FC5, and anthy-7500b-1.fc5. There is also a Fedora Core 5 security update for Ethereal -- ethereal-0.99.0-fc5.1. Fire up yum or the pup package updater.
A series of Fedora Core 5 updates have been released onto the official FC5 Bordeaux repositories this afternoon. These updates appear to be primarily focused upon GNOME v2.14.1 integration. These RPM updates should be appearing on all update mirrors, so fire up yum or pup! The update list for today at this time includes: epiphany-2.14.1-1.fc5.1, eog-2.14.1-1.fc5.1, evolution-2.6.1-1.fc5.2, gnome-desktop-2.14.1.1-1.fc5.1, gedit-2.14.2-1.fc5.1, gnome-user-docs-2.14.2-1.fc5.1, gtkhtml3-3.10.1-1.fc5.1, gnome-panel-2.14.1-1.fc5.1, gnome-applets-2.14.1-1.fc5.1, gnome-games-2.14.1-1.fc5.2, gnome-screensaver-2.14.1-1.fc5.1, gnopernicus-1.0.4-1.fc5.1, libwnck-2.14.1-1.fc5.1, gnome-system-monitor-2.14.1-1.fc5.1, libgtop2-2.14.1-1.fc5.1, gnome-session-2.14.1-1.fc5.1, gnome-desktop-2.14.1-1.fc5.1, nautilus-cd-burner-2.14.1-1.fc5.1, yelp-2.14.1-1.fc5.1, gtk-doc-1.6-1.fc5.1, gnome-terminal-2.14.1-1.fc5.1, metacity-2.14.3-1.fc5.1, beagle-0.2.4-1.fc5.1, pango-1.12.1-1.fc5.1, gtk2-2.8.17-1.fc5.1, glib2-2.10.2-1.fc5.1, sound-juicer-2.14.3-1.fc5.1, dasher-4.0.2-1.fc5.1, atk-1.11.4-1.fc5.1, librsvg2-2.14.3-1.fc5.1, at-spi-1.7.7-1.fc5.2, control-center-2.14.1-1.fc5.2, libsoup-2.2.92-1.fc5.1, evolution-connector-2.6.1-1.fc5.1, evolution-data-server-1.6.1-1.fc5.2, nautilus-2.14.1-1.fc5.1, gnome-utils-2.14.0-4, gtksourceview-1.6.1-1.fc5.1, eel2-2.14.1-1.fc5.1, file-roller-2.14.1-1.fc5.1, libgnomeui-2.14.1-1.fc5.1, and libgnome-2.14.1-1.fc5.1.
Hi folks,
Just wanted to send a brief update about the Fedora Project Board, which was announced prior to FUDCon Boston, and had its first meting there.
A few pages on the wiki that will be of interest to everyone:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Board (includes contact info)
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Board/Meetings
And a summary of our first meeting:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Board/Meetings/2006-04-07
Thanks,
For Fedora users and developers who were unable to attend FUDCon Boston 2006, some of the video footage and notes from this release are on the Wiki. At this time. The videos available (in Ogg Theora format) are the Fedora welcome, Fedora Eclipse, Fedora Core 6, Xiph Linux Desktop Media Roadmap, MIT OpenCourseWare, State of the Fedora address, and the crowd. Information for the Fedora FUDCon Boston 2006 is available at the Fedora Project.
With LinuxWorld Boston 2006 now over, FUDCon Boston 2006 is now taking place today. The FUDCon at Boston University is a single-day event that focuses on covering all sorts of Fedora related topics for developers, end-users, and applications. Some of the various topics include Network Manager, Eclipse, Pogo Linux, Xen, yum, mySQL, MythTV, Xiph, D6, and U6. Finally, the State of the Fedora address will wrap up the event this afternoon. While on the Wiki the event will also be simulcast over the Internet, it will not be live. As nothing has worked its way down the announcement list yet, we asked Greg DeKoenigsberg of Red Hat for additional information. He says they will probably be able to get some video, and it will only be offered over BitTorrent after the event has already taken place. Thus, more information to come soon.
On the heals of the Boston FUDCon, and the end coming near for LinuxWorld Boston 2006, Max Spevack (the chairman of the Fedora Project) has announced that Fedora Foundation will be coming to a close. No no, the elimination of the Fedora Foundation does not mean the end of Fedora, but rather they will be restructuring the Fedora Project to better serve the community's goals. Personally being a strong supporter of Fedora, and after reading through Max Spevack's message, the intentions are clear and it looks as though it should prove mutually beneficial to Fedora users (and the Linux community) as well as Red Hat. The lengthy message does state the various reasons for a Fedora Foundation not being able to reach the initial goals when it was created last year, and the intentions now for the Fedora Project. More information will likely be coming out in the coming days especially with FUDCon taking place. For those of you not making the journey to FUDCon Boston, video feeds will be available -- as well as notable highlights appearing on Phoronix. More information on the Fedora Foundation.
More Fedora Core 5 updates have made their way to the various repositories today. The FC5 update list for April 3, 2006 includes -- wpa_supplicant-0.4.8-7.fc5, binutils-2.16.91.0.6-5, perl-Net-DNS-0.57-1, perl-DBD-Pg-1.47-0.1.FC5, perl-HTML-Parser-3.51-1.FC5, gnome-applets-2.14.0-1.fc5, pcmciautils-012-0.FC5.2, openoffice.org-2.0.2-5.7.2, k3b-0.12.14-0.FC5.2, mc-4.6.1a-12.FC5, selinux-policy-2.2.25-3.fc5, and policycoreutils-1.30.1-3.fc5. Some of these updates also have equivalent Fedora Core 4 packages.
Being released today are a great deal of official Fedora Core 5 updates. The partial list includes -- ncpfs-2.2.6-2, system-config-kickstart-2.6.6-4, scim-1.4.4-9.1.fc5, mlocate-0.14-0.fc5.1, spamassassin-3.1.1-1.fc5, gconf-editor-2.14.0-1.fc5, kernel-2.6.16-1.2080_FC5, cpio-2.6-16.FC5, libsetrans-0.1.20-1.fc5, selinux-policy-2.2.25-2.fc5, policycoreutils-1.30.1-2.fc5, libsemanage-1.6-1.fc5, libselinux-1.30-1.fc5, and checkpolicy-1.30-1.fc5. Fedora Core 4 also has a couple of package updates out today as well. One of the notable packages being updated today for Fedora Core 5 is the 2.6.16-1.2080_FC5 kernel. This is the first official kernel update for FC5 Bordeaux and it features quite a few changes. The Fedora 5 update repository is here.
As we had initially mentioned upon the FC5 Test 3 release, Fedora Core 5 features a great deal of UI improvements, along with GNOME v2.14 itself, and one of the noticeable improvements during every-day usage is the notification framework. As was mentioned originally, the notification framework provided such alerts when the network cord was detached. Using the official Fedora Core 5 release, we have already noticed additional notifications appearing, such as alerting the user that the disk space is running quite low. Overall, the notification framework appears to be visually appealing while also being quite informative.
Hi, my name is Fedora Core "Bordeaux", and today I am 5. When I
turned 4 last year, they got a funny salesman to talk about me like I
was a toy. I like toys. But today Teacher said I am a big kid, and I
should talk about myself. I can do lots of big kid stuff now, and
everyone tells me that I play really well with all the other kids in
class, even the ones who are mean like bullies. I always try and
share, which is what Teacher says is the best thing.
Yes, Fedora Core 5 has been released today -- Monday, March 20, 2006. Information pertaining to this release can be found at the Wiki, and here are the official mirrors. Enjoy!
Yarrow, Tettnang, Heidelberg, Stentz, what is next in the Fedora code-names? Well, /etc/fedora-release in these early Fedora ISOs seem to confirm that the fifth installment of Fedora Core will be dubbed Bordeaux.
What is Bordeaux (other than the codename for Fedora Core 5)? Well, according to Wikipedia, Bordeaux is also a port city in the south-west region of France.
Just one more day till the official launch of Fedora Core 5 Bordeaux!
With the release of Fedora Core 5 (Bordeaux) being just hours away now from its official launch, a few Fedora developers and other prodigies of the Fedora Project have begun blogging about the fifth installment of Fedora Core. The official Fedora Core 5 ISOs have been on a majority of the official Fedora mirrors since this past Friday, and will remain locked until the official launch by Red Hat (except for of course the occasional unlocked mirror). However, the active developers have received FC5 this weekend. Some of those who have already blogged about the Fedora 5 experience include Adrian Reber, Tejas Dinkar, Thomas Vander Stichele, and Josh Boyer. EDIT [2006-03-19]: Jeremy Katz has now posted a new blog entry with extensive thoughts on both Fedora Core 5 and the upcoming Fedora Core 6. Look for Phoronix coverage of Fedora Core 5 coming tomorrow (Monday) and the following days to come with hardware examinations.
With the launch of Fedora Core 5 quickly approaching (2 days!), we have managed to snag a few minutes of Greg DeKoenigsberg's time to answer some Fedora related questions and other happenings going on at the Fedora Project. For Fedora and Linux users, this interview should be especially interesting.
As Chris Blizzard and I rode around Delhi during our visit to FUDCon India, Chris said to me, "what if open source is just a side effect of people wanting to work together?" I think that this was a profound observation. To me, it's one of the most important reasons for having FUDCons. IRC is great, but having a beer with somebody -- or even having somebody tell you off to your face -- is an irreplaceable personal experience, and one that's central to building lasting communities.
This interview in its entirety can be read here at Phoronix.
While Fedora Core 5 is not slated to be released until Monday, March 20, 2006, some users have managed to find a few of the mirrors unlocked and have already begun downloading the various CDs and DVDs. After that, a few have already begun hosting bit-torrents of these new FC5 ISOs. An active discussion is presently taking place over at Fedora Forum. Of course, some of these sources may be a bit sluggish when it comes to the downloading speeds. Look forward to all of the Fedora Red Hat mirrors becoming available on Monday morning. As we had found out in the interview with Greg DeKoenigsberg, the Fedora 5 Extras should be available on launch-date. However, a quick visit to the Extras Repository shows the downloads for Fedora 5 are already available as of today, and are unlocked! Even if you're not into getting a jump start on downloading these final ISOs from the various sources, you can surely begin downloading the new Fedora Extras :). Also, the folks over at ATrpms, have had their Fedora 5 repository available for some time now. The ATrpms 5 repo is here. FreshRPMs still has yet to post their stable FC5 packages.
Just as we came down to the fifth day to Fedora Core 5, we have received a message stating that this release will be DELAYED. No worries, however, as this release is now expected to occur on March 20, 2006 (Monday). With this five day delay, they do anticipate they will be able to include the final release of GNOME v2.14.0 (rather than a stable GNOME v2.13 development build) as it is schedule for release on March 15, and Jeremy Katz hopes to have the tarballs this coming Monday. Ah well, five more days of waiting :).
The countdown can begin... 7 days remaining until the official launch of Fedora Core 5 and GNOME v2.14.0. Although CeBIT is beginning bright and early tomorrow morning, and ends on March 15, which will result with quite a bit of premiere articles during this time period (starting in just a few hours!), we have some things planned out for these Fedora happenings. Yesterday we managed to speak with Greg DeKoenigsberg, who serves as the community relations manager for Red Hat, and hope to have an interview ready by early next week. This interview will primarily focus on Fedora Core 5 (and Core 6) happenings as well as some Fedora Project outlooks, and a few general Linux items. Certainly it will be well worth reading, and we will also be presenting a wealth of new Fedora Core 5 literature next week. Also, we can't forget about GNOME v2.14.0, which is penciled in to premiere on the same day.
David Nielsen and Peter Gordon have proposed development cycle changes for Fedora. At this present time there is a 9-month cycle between major releases, and this new strategy would involved a two-tiered plan. One of the releases would target aggressive users demanding the very latest packages in their distribution (those who often tap into Rawhide for the Fedora Project), and then the alternative users that provide stability and a bug-free environment rather than necessarily being the latest-and-greatest. David's proposed plan would be to release a "technology preview" every nine months, which would involve six months of pure coding while the later three months would be the time to addresses all serious issues. This technology preview would serve as an interim release for those users that would die without the latest packages. This tech preview for Fedora wouldn't be bug free but they would hope to address all critical problems. Coming another four months after this Fedora preview would be the full release with all of the bugs properly addressed. No word yet if Red Hat (Fedora's corporate sponsor) supports this or if any other Fedora leaders would embrace this new development strategy.
My personal thought on this matter from an end-user standpoint is that the status quo is certainly satisfactory with their cycle they have done since the Tettnang days. Those users seeking the bleeding-edge status, they can easily use one of the testing builds. It is also important to look at the MASSIVE improvements from Fedora Core 4 to Fedora Core 5. For those users wishing the latest-and-greatest they can simply tap into the Rawhide repository and get all sorts of nightly development builds. Stretching their major development cycle beyond a year (Nelisen's present statement would be 13 months) could get fierce opposition from some users who prefer the present cycle. As stated before, this is simply talk right now and there is no official word if they intend to enact these ideals.
Tapping into the Fedora Core 5 Rawhide repository, it appears the developers have made better use of the capabilities of GNOME v2.13/2.14 with the notification framework. GNOME is heavily working on recommendations for its Human Interface Guidelines in the notification framework before GNOME v2.16 hits full swing. The below notification was from Fedora Core 5 and is displaying an alert about a network connection being disconnected.
After a one-week delay of FC5T3, due to having the need to rebuild the entire distribution due to changes in the most recent version of GCC, Fedora Core 5 Test 3 has finally been released. As the release announcements cite, changes consist of Xen with the x86_64 packages, package selection within the reinstaller enabled, re-built using a newer GNU Compiler Collection snapshot of Version 4.1 (for performance and security), improved hibernation function, PowerPC Install CDs are bootable again, unified SRPM (Source RPM) set rather than a per architecture basis, lots of bug fixes beyond Fedora Core 5 Test 2, and 1600+ packages in the yum repository. Mirrors for Fedora Core 5 Test 3 are available here. Fedora Core 5 is still scheduled for a final release on March 15, which is scheduled for the same day as the launch of GNOME v2.14! Official Phoronix coverage of Fedora Core 5 Test 3 will be coming this week with new screenshots as well as a performance examination.
