Introduction to Fedora 12
Ratnadeep Debnath (rtnpro)
Software Freedom Day,
CSI Auditorium,
Kolkata
th
15 September 2009

Quick Facts
● New release every six months
● Free and open source applications only
● Free and open source Infrastructure
● Red Hat is the primary sponsor
● Maintained by volunteers largely (~70%)
● Nearly 15000 installable software packages
● Rapid progress of free and open source
softwaare

Four Foundations of Fedora
● Freedom
● Friends
● Features
● First
● (Fun!)

Rapid Innovation
● NetworkManager
● SELinux
● PulseAudio
● PackageKit
● Plymouth
● DeviceKit

What's New in Fedora 11?
● 20 second startup time, Plymouth improvements and Kernel Mode Support
● Nouveau as the default driver for Nvidia cards ( No 3D support yet!)
● Ext4 as default filesystem. Btrfs tech preview
● Presto Yum Plugin for Delta RPM's
● GDM and GNOME finger print integration
● Windows Cross Compiler (MinGW + cross compiled packages)
● Automatic font and mime installer via PackageKit
● Firefox 3.5 and Thunderbird 3.0 pre releases and Openoffice.org 3.1
● Improved I18N support via Ibus input method
● Virtualization and Security enhancements
● RPM 4.7, GNOME 2.26, KDE 4.2, Xfce 4.6, Linux Kernel 2.6.29, Python
2.6. GCC 4.4 and several other changes.

Gotchas in Fedora 11!
● No GRUB support for Ext4 yet
● GNOME Power Manager is moody
● Pulse Audio Volume Control integration warts
● Intel Graphics drive issues
● fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F11_bugs

What's new in Fedora 12?
As always Fedora is a feature full distribution
and has got new stuff for you, me and people
from different walks of life ...
● I686 and Presto by default
● XZ (LZMA) compression in RPM
● Pulse Audio integration improvements
● Empathy as default Instant messenger
● NetworkManager – system wide,Ipv6 support
● PolicyKit 1.0, liblvm, debug info filesystem, kernel 2.6.31

Fedora 12 Release Schedule
● Planning and development begins 10/06/2009
● Freeze Features – Planning & development ends 04/08/2009
● Alpha release 25/8/2009
● Software Translation Deadline 22/09/2009
● Beta Final Development Freeze 29/09/2009
● Beta Release 13/10/2009
● Compose release candidate 28/10/2009
● Fedora 12 final release 10/11/2009

For desktop users & everyone
● KDE 4.3
● Gnome 2.28
● Better webcam support
● Mobile Broadband Enhancements
● NetworkManager Ipv6 and System Connections
● Improved power management
● Abrt 1.0

Virtualization
● KSM
● KVM
● KVM Huge Page Backed Memory
● KVM NIC Hotplug
● KVM Stable Guest ABI
● Libguestfs
● Virt Privileges

Other Changes & utilities
● Dracut
● Open Shared Root
● PolicyKit 1.0
● X86 Support
● XZ RPM Payloads
● NetworkManager System Connections + Ipv6
● NFSv4Default
● XI2

Fedora in Netbooks
Fedora Moblin
● Add support to Fedora for the Moblin
Core NetBook/NetTop/MID desktop
environment

Fedora 12 Spins
● Electronic Lab Spin
● Education Spin
● Games Spin
● LXDE Spin
● XFCE Spin

Common Issues!
● /boot must be a minimum of 500 MB
● RAID array creation fails, hanging the system
● Installation fails on systems with media card
reader attached
● Alpha live images too large to fit on a CD
● nomodeset kernel option ignored

What can you do?
● Download Fedora 12 Alpha
● Install Fedora 12 Alpha
● Test it
● Submit Bugs
● Contribute in Q-A

Questions?
rtnpro on #fedora-ambassadors
rtnpro@fedoraproject.org