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diff --git a/fedora23.txt b/fedora23.txt index 2b5bb21..530611e 100644 --- a/fedora23.txt +++ b/fedora23.txt @@ -1,83 +1,46 @@ -After a slight, week-long delay to fix some last minute bugs, the Fedora project has released Fedora 23. The latest version of Fedora is a significant update thanks to upstream projects like GNOME, which is now at 3.18, as well as some signficant new features from Fedora itself. +After a slight, week-long delay to fix some last minute bugs, the Fedora project has released Fedora 23. The latest version of Fedora is a significant update thanks to upstream projects like GNOME, which is now at 3.18, as well as some significant new features from Fedora itself. -Like it's precessor, Fedora 23 comes in three base configurations -- Workstation, Server and Cloud. The former is the desktop release and the primary basis for my testing, though I also tested out the Server release this time around. +Like it's predecessor, Fedora 23 comes in three base configurations -- Workstation, Server and Cloud. The former is the desktop release and the primary basis for my testing, though I also tested out the Server release this time around. The default Fedora 23 live CD will install the GNOME desktop though there are plenty spins available if you prefer something else. I opted for GNOME since a lot of what's new in GNOME, like much improved Wayland support is currently only really available through Fedora. I have been hard on Fedora's Anaconda installer in the past, but I am slowly coming around. The installation experience in Fedora 23 is hard to beat, particularly the way you don't need to visit sections if Fedora has guessed something right. For example, Anaconda correctly guest my timezone so I can just skip that panel without even needing to click okay. It's a small thing, but it helps set a certain tone of feature completeness right from the start. -I still think the button-based approach of Anaconda can sometimes make it hard to figure out what you've missed if it's your first time using it the installer. But it's a little clearer in Fedora 23 because there's an additional orange bar across the bottom to tell you about whatever you missed. +I still think the button-based approach of Anaconda can sometimes make it hard to figure out what you've missed if it's your first time using the installer. But it's a little clearer in Fedora 23 because there's an additional orange bar across the bottom to tell you about whatever you missed. What's perhaps most encouraging about Anaconda is that Fedora continues to refining it. Having just installed and tested Ubuntu and openSUSE, I wouldn't hesitate to say Anaconda is a better experience than either. It's certainly faster thanks to the amount of stuff you can simply ignore. -Once you've got Fedora WorkStation installed the first thing you'll likely notice is GNOME 3.18. +Once you've got Fedora WorkStation installed the first thing you'll likely notice is GNOME 3.18. GNOME may be upstream from Fedora, but Fedora has long been where GNOME turns to showcase new features and Fedora 23 is no different. -GNOME 3.18, and Wayland if you want it +Among the changes in GNOME 3.18 are faster searching, first-class support for integrating Google Drive in Nautilus, support for light sensors (handy on laptops since you can lower the back light setting and extend battery life) and improved Wayland support. More on Wayland in a minute, but some other new features in GNOME 3.18 deserve mention. -For Fedora Workstation, much of the new goodness is thanks to GNOME 3.18. While GNOME is technically an upstream desktop project any Linux distribution can use, Fedora’s developers spend time working on GNOME and are closely involved. +GNOME Software now has support for firmware updates via fwupd. The firmware support means means you won't need any proprietary tools nor will you have to resort to pulling out the bootable DVDs. The catch is that the vendor for your hardware needs to upload the firmware to the <a href="https://http://www.fwupd.org/">Linux Vendor Firmware Service</a>. -Those big improvements in GNOME 3.18 are now here in stable form. You can now access your Google Drive account right from the file manager. Support for light sensors means that the GNOME desktop can now automatically adjust your backlight level to save power. +Another big new GNOME project that arrives in at least limited form with this release is the <a href="https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/SandboxedApps">Xdg project</a>. Xdg is a system for building, distributing and running sandboxed desktop applications. Aside from the security gains of sandboxing, xdg-app also hopes to allow app developers to use a single package for multiple distros. The xdg support in Fedora 23 is still very experimental and none of the apps are actually packaged this way, but look for xdg support to continue expanding in Fedora and GNOME's futures. -Search is much faster in nautilus +Fedora has been an early adopter of Wayland, the X.org replacement that will eventually be the default option (coming perhaps as early as Fedora 24). If you'd like to play around with Wayland this release offers considerably more support than any other distro to date. +In fact, provided you have supported hardware, Wayland actually works quite well and, with a little extra effort installing some experimental repos can get you really nice features like full GTK 3 support for OpenOffice 5 -- meaning support for HiDPI screens among other things -- and support for running monitors with DPI-independent resolution. That is, you can have hi-res and normal res monitors running off the same machine and it all just works. Reportedly anyway, I don't have the hardware setup to actually test this one. -Among the bigger news in GNOME Software is new support for firmware updates via fwupd. The firmware support means means you won't need any proprietary tools nor will you have to resort to pulling out the bootable DVDs. The catch -- and its a big one at the moment -- is that the vendor for your needs to upload the firmware to the <a href="https://http://www.fwupd.org/">Linux Vendor Firmware Service</a>. +Not everything GNOME 3.18 is great though. The GNOME project continues its curious take on usability by once again removing something that was genuinely useful. In this case it's the file copy feedback message, which was previously a small window with a progress bar. The window is gone and now you'll have to get by with a tiny icon in the Nautilus window that shows progress via a pie chart looking icon. +I mention this not so much to poke fun at Nautilus's ever-declining usability, but because it is the only file copy feedback you'll get and unless you know it's there you'll probably keep dragging and dropping files, thinking they haven't copied, when in fact they have you just didn't notice. You silly user wanting feedback about an action you initiated. Sigh. By the time GNOME gets done with it Nautilus won't actually do anything anymore, it will just be a nice looking window you can use to view files. -Xdg-app—a GNOME project to create cross-distribution sandboxed applications —is now part of Fedora 23 and installed by default, too. It’s still experimental, however, and you won’t see many applications distributed this way yet except as proofs of concept. The GNOME Software application will eventually be able to properly manage and update these apps, but that’s something for a future release. +On the plus side the new Google Drive integration is quite nice. Once you enter your Google account details interacting with your Drive documents in indistinguishable from local documents (provided you have an internet connection that is, without one you'll be looking at a lot of documents you can't actually open). -Now way to package desktop apps that will make them available across distributions. It also has some sandboxing tools. +There are some big changes afoot in the Server release of Fedora 23 as well. Fedora's Cockpit, a web-based management console that aims to make everyone a reasonably compliant sysadmin, has been updated again. You'd be hard pressed to find a simpler visual way to monitor and manage your Fedora server deployments. You can do everything from here, including search for, install and deploy Docker containers with a single click. Cockpit's greatest contribution to the server world isn't its ease of use though, it's that that ease of use means more secure deployments. -## Fedora 23 +This release continues to improve on security by adding support for SSH key authentication in Cockpit and support for configuring user accounts with authorized keys. Fedora 23 Server also gets a rolekit update with the addition of a new role for a cache server for web applications (powered by memcached). -" Fedora 23 Server gains a new role via the rolekit service in the form of a cache server for web applications, powered by memcached, bringing the total number of roles to three alongside the database server and domain controller roles. Additional tweaks and upgrades include the ability to use rolekit from the anaconda kickstart, a cluster dashboard for Kubernetes and support for SSH key authentication. - Fedora 23 Workstation brings a preview of GNOME 3.18 as well as changes to the Software application (allowing it to update firmware) and Wayland, with the latter enhancements aimed at helping to make Wayland the default graphic server for future releases. - Fedora 23 Cloud does not have any obvious improvements, but enhancements continue to deliver a more secure and flexible image for cloud-based deployments. Additionally, Fedora 23 Cloud is expected to power the forthcoming Fedora Atomic Host which is anticipated to have a two-week release cadence moving forward. " +All versions of Fedora 23 ship with Linux kernel 4.2, which is pretty close to the latest and greatest, adding new hardware support for Intel Skylake CPUs and AMD GPUs. -## Installation +Fedora's new DNF package manager gets some more new powers in this release, it's now in charge of system upgrade. That's right, now more fedup, which frankly, didn't make the update process very smooth in my experience. The DNF update process is very simple, just a couple of commands. DNF also uses systemd's support for offline system updates and allows you to roll them back if necessary. +The new upgrade tools are a welcome change not just because upgrading is easier and safer (with the ability to roll back should things go awry), but because Fedora has no LTS style release. Fedora 23 will be supported for 12 months and then you'll need to move on to Fedora 24. That's a bit abrupt if you're coming from the Ubuntu (or especially Debian) world of LTS releases with two years of support. If you want that in the Red Hat ecosystem then you need to turn to RHEL or CentOS. However, now that Fedora is capable of transactional updates with rollbacks the missing LTS release feels, well, less missing since upgrading is less problematic. +Screenshots: - - - -##GNOME - - -## Wayland -HiDPI support in Office and support for two different monitors resolution in Wayland DPI-independent resolution. - -GTK hires compatible LibreOffice - - - - -###Bad UI decision - -Files Copying - - The Files browser, also known as Nautilus, now gives progress feedback when copying or moving large files. A button in the header bar allows you to see progress at a glance. Searching and renaming files in the file browser is now also quicker and easier to use. - - There’s now better support for your Google Drive contents, too. If you’ve set up a Google online account in the Control Center, you’ll see your Google Drive contents in Files, with a shortcut to Drive in the sidebar. - -## Kernel - -version 4.2 of the Linux kernel itself. - -ne important new change is the shift to DNF for system upgrades. Fedora’s old fedup tool for upgrading from one release of Fedora to another is gone. Operating system upgrades are now handled by DNF, Fedora’s new package management tool that replaced yum back in Fedora 22 . This uses systemd’s support for offline system updates and can roll them back if necessary. If you’re upgrading from one version of Fedora to another, you’ll need to use the DNF tools instead. - -## SErver - -Cockpit - -The Fedora 23 package comes with the state-of-the-art Cockpit. It is a web-based management console which is accessed through a web browser and aims to make the server status and monitoring tasks much simpler. - -Red Hat's admin monitoring interface. Visually managing services, containers. It makes maintaining systems in s secure easy to update fashion approachable to a far wider audience than CLI tools alone. It makes these services more accessible to more people, deploying things in a way that's secure and approachable. It's beating Apple's "just works" philosophy at its own game. - -Red Hat - Microsoft deal. - -## DNF upgrade process - -there is no LTS release, which means system upgrades have to be good. And they are. - - +fedora23-desktop.png The default GNOME 3.18 desktop in Fedora 23. +fedora23-gdrive.png Setting up a Google Drive account in Fedora 23. +fedora23-gdrive-nautilus.png Accessing Google Drive files in Nautilus. +fedora23-wayland.png To access the improved Wayland support log out and select GNOME Wayland. |