Fedora 9 Review (Mini-Edition)

Updated 5.15.08 7:30PDT - Thanks AnotherBrick


It's here!!!

Fedora 9 is the latest release from the Fedora Project team, released today, May 13th 2008. Sulfur sports yet another slew of new and exciting features, as well as some big package updates. I'd like to highlight some of the new packages I care about and give an initial opinion on each.

New Stuff

GNOME 2.22 is included. (Evolution 2.22.1 along with IMAP for Gmail, it also supports read/write Google Calendar integration!)


KDE 4.0.4, which has been completely migrated to the default kde install (no more of that kde3 and kde4 side by side nonsense.)

Open Office 2.4 long feature update and bug fix list. Haven't used extensively yet.


The shiny new 2.6.25 kernel.

A smaller memory footprint Perl 5.10.0.

PackageKit, a cross-platform front end for yum, is the new default ui for package management.

Firefox 3 beta 5 feels much smoother and quicker, and is already pretty stable. Many UI improvements. Many security enhancements such as a new malware protection and anti-phishing warning, as well as the infamous green EV-SSL Cert location bar. I'd like to highlight some of the neat new visuals:



Reported Phishing Site? Big Red box? Very nice.



A pop-up window asking to remember a password that isn't modal?? *Gasp* Now where have I seen this before...



IMHO, this SSL Cert pane looks much cleaner than IE7's equivalent.



I dig the new suggestion tab in the add-ons window.



Finally! Firefox 3 now saves open tabs even if it isn't crashing. Hazzah!

It's just too bad that many of my favorite add-ons aren't ff3 ready yet. No dinged points however, as this is still beta software. (no foxmarks! nooooo!)

Work has also gone into segregating firefox's plugins from the remainder of the OS using SELinux. Fedora's SELinux policy guy, Dan, has some background on his blog. To try it out in Sulfur, issue this command:

setsebool -P allow_unconfined_nsplugin_transition 1

Installation

My Installation went smoothly, nothing to report. (Always a good thing, especially since I chose the 64bit flavor.) I went with the default Gnome Window Manager, and will try out the new KDE4 release later. I like the new wallpaper theme, which just like Fedora 8, will change depending on the time of day. Also like in Fedora 8, the Compiz powered desktop effects checkbox worked flawlessly on my ATI AGP X850Pro card - Feels faster. The updated "Update System" UI is much easier to use, and feels much faster too.

If you plan to browse the internet or play multimedia, you'll need to add the livna repo. Here is the command I used:

su -c 'rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-9.rpm'

Once that's done, you'll likely want Flash (the proprietary adobe package isn't up on livna yet for 64bit so gnash will do), and mp3 support. I added it simply with:

su -c 'yum install gnash-plugin gstreamer-plugins-ugly'

Summary

I'm coming off as a broken record, but I have to admit everything "feels" snappier. I have no scientific proof to back up this feeling, but I would bet that much effort went into performance tune ups for this release.

It's only day one, but I'd already like to give Fedora 9 the thumbs up!