My Fedora 8 Diary

Fedora 8 is the latest rpm-based linux distribution managed and operated by Planet Fedora which offers the latest and free open source linux softwares. Born to be Fedora Core continuous to be a fully established bleeding-edge razor-sharp linux distro for desktop and production servers. Fedora 8, released 7 days ago is now available to many mirror sites from the web.

I am writing this blog entry for me to have my own record keeping Fedora desktop linux installation and diary.

Yes, I am proud that I am currently using Fedora 8 as my current desktop now.

GETTING FEDORA 8

Downloading Fedora 8 is really quite easy using bittorrent downloader software. Fedora 7 was my current OS then when I downloaded Fedora 8. You can also get Fedora 8 torrent file from here. If you have slow connection, it is suggested to downloade F8 before any nice midnight TV show.

Early morning of the the next sunrise, I begun that day with a nice grin from my face. Yes, I had a big grin aware that my F8 ISO finished earlier than I've expected it to be. Amazed to realized that it was not even time for my breakfast coffee.

FEDORA 8 INSTALLATION PREPARATIONS

I have been a full time Fedora fanatic since her very first core release. I never miss out any single year of not having a Fedora OS upgrade or Fedora fresh new installation. I make it appoint to myself that I should have every ISO of every Fedora release.

And then, I decided to do Fedora 8 installation in evening. Before any F8 installation and complete F7 OS erasure, it is a must to prepare several things. This includes the norms of file and folder movements from source to backup destination point. Ofcourse, I have to do it manually. Additionally, I had to jot down those existing partitions that needs to be freshen up, formatted and even merged with other partitions, as I require more hard diskspace this time around. Formatting everything with only exception to /dev/sda1 which was my /data backup partition. It is also where the F8 DVD ISO is currently located.

Moving more than 30 gigabytes of data, comprised of downloaded files, installers, multimedias, not to mention my large email box files have eaten more time than I expected. Luckily, my backup partition have enough free disk space to accommodate all my backup data.

Taking a note, my Fedora-8-i386-DVD.iso file needs to sit down and stay into my backup partition harddisk as my DVD writer is not currently around my table that time. I was going to do the traditional mode of installation via CD/DVD source drive but I was forced to have an installation via local hard disk or from another linux host around my own network.

HARDDISK MODE OF INSTALLATION

I have chosen the harddisk mode of installation. FAILED!

I was in Anaconda installer right after the parameter prompt for ISO source. Anaconda installer continued and was trying to access my ISO file from /tmp/hdimage/data/F8/Fedora-8-i386-DVD.iso. I was expecting it to be /dev/sda1/data/F8/Fedora-8-i386-DVD.iso as this was my submitted parameters to Anaconda prompts for installation source. What a confusion!

I tried several combinations guessing that I can still proceed with the hard drive mode of installation.

Here are several failed sets of parameter inputs that I have tried as ISO source location:

/dev/sda1 and /data/F8/Fedora-8-i386-DVD.iso
/dev/sda1 and //data/F8/Fedora-8-i386-DVD.iso
/dev/sda1 and data/F8/Fedora-8-i386-DVD.iso
/dev/sda1 and Fedora-8-i386-DVD.iso

I am aware that I need not to reboot to Fedora 7 and do MD5SUM checksum as I believe bittorrent software is capable of on-the-fly CRC data checking during the data transfers between source and destination. I also knew that my backup partition and Fedora DVD ISO parameter is correct as well. After several minutes of trying those several input strings, I have to give up.

NETWORK-BASED INSTALLATION MODE

And so I reboot to F7 and did some boot grub changes. I also prepared a separate fedora-box ready to serve as NFS server as my F8 installation plan this time is to do a NFS mode of installation.

I have to transfer almost 4GB between my box and the said temporary NFS server. Doing the NFS server did not take me more than two minutes but transferring more than 4GB, whoaah, I have to take a small coffee break.

Back to installation attempt via NFS server, anaconda gave me a different screen prompts this time around since I have chosen the NFS mode. SUCCESS!

I immediately noticed an improved interaction of the screen from mouse inputs - faster OS response! Followed by a well polished sleed design of anaconda GUI screens, a well highlighted bluish color of the percentage bar and window icons. I have to say, that the F8 artwork have been tremendously improved compared to recent version.

Not to mention, a faster boot up time even with more modules and services enabled. Oh, I did not use a kickstart file during my NFS mode of installation. This was my intention as I would like to experience my very first attended Fedora 8 installation.

Choosing all the needed package that I need does not take too much time as I know what I require first hand. I plan to have the least priority softwares and be installed later on. This time around, I haved added to install the KDE environment to actually see the improvements donefrom Fedora 8.

At this point, I have to leave and have another longer coffee break and get back after 25 minutes or less.

It was all done!

Yes, less than 25 minutes is all it takes to get all things installed. I arrived to my desktop and the screen was already showing me the firstboot initial screen prompt. A minute after a secondary reboot, I was stunned by latest GNOME user login prompt presented with a minty blueish login screen colors. This login prompt is capable of multi-user enabled. I have to add another F8 points for that one.

Later on, I plan to have a total Fedora 7 to Fedora 8 upgrade from DVD drive or via yum isolated alone inside a virtual environment.

INSIDE FEDORA 8

After moving back my home data files including all my email boxes, and browser favorites, I now continue the usual yum installation steps so I can take a peep of what's new, what are installed, their application features, software improvement and the like.

In several terms, I manage to have these diaries with specific applications. Here are several of them:

Gnome / X.Org
Fedora 8 has a much faster and more responsive X in comparison with older version. It was quite noticeable from the eyes of an old Fedora user.

One thing is still there, clicking the maximize and minimize still shows those slow rectangles trying to follow each other. Whatever those black rectangle lines are doing, it was noticeably slow.

There are several defaults that were visible from taskbar and menubar. Those changes increases the distro's user-friendliness. Default folders and folder locations were also added and maintained from Places like Videos, Pictures, and Documents. The System menu shows a different sub-tree-style of categorized program menus and options. These screen changes add more flavors and friendliness to users in general.

Video Card
Considering that I have an Intel-based video card capable of 3D graphics rendering, I now proceed testing F8 Desktop Effects features which quite impressed me. The cube rotation is far more faster and timing to mouse movements. The wobbly effects are tremendously amazing in comparison with F7 desktop effects performance. My detected video card is Intel 82865G.

Monitor
My cheap flat screen monitor was fairly detected as well. And so I still have a viewing comfort using a wide 17 inch GNOME screen.

Screen Fonts

I am not really in line with more graphics, icon editing, long-docs typing and fonts-matching kind of field and hobby, so I would leave this uncommented.

Network Card.
Both my on-board based Intel 82801 and 3Com 3cSOHO network cards were successfully detected and installed. These NICs were both transmitting and receiving broadcast packets right. This was another improvement as I had an epileptic experience with Intel 82801 over Fedora 7, which serves the network in a random fashion.

Sound Card
My on-board sound card was detected but driver was not properly installed. I have an Intel 82801 AC'97 audio controller using snd-intel8x0 sound module. This was normal as always with Fedora previous versions. I just need to do some tweaks with modprobe.conf to get it working. Will do that later on.

Keyboard / Mouse
All I need to have is an adjustment with my mouse motion preferences since I have a 17 inch screen, I need a faster mouse acceleration motion compared to smaller video screens.

Memory
Additionally, Fedora 8 comes with bundled daemon services which were enabled and turned on during initial reboots compared to already customized daemon services with Fedora 7. One thing I noticed was a higher free memory state when using GNOME X. I am assuming that Fedora 8 might perform faster than Fedora 7 on data buffering operations with X enabled.

Floppy/CD/DVD
Detection and installation is no problem at all.

USB Ports
Perfect, works great!

Firefox
Currently F8 is using firefox version 2.0.0.8. I felt the same operation and usage speed from the all latest firefox. I have also tried a tar ball version of firefox 2.0.0.9 which was a little bit slower than the previous firefox. I have a 17 inch monitor so no doubt my browsing experience was more interactively comfortable in terms of mouse-to-screen browsing operations.

All my browser plugins were checked and properly upgraded. I had to increase the cache size according to my needs, I am a heavy browser.

Thunderbird
Moving back my emails dating from Jan 1 2007 up to this date took only a few minutes. I just launched Thunderbird and amazingly recognized all my email account settings including the global inbox and emails. To my amazement, my Enigmail OpenPGP was still installed with F8 Thunderbird even without installing the enigmail package. I also noticed a faster execution of sending and receiving of mails.

Evolution Mail Software
I never use evolution as I prefer Thunderbird

Adobe Flash Web Plugin
Successully installed it for two times. I first did it manually using yum and secondly upon launching of firefox. Firefox's auto plugin mechanism detected that adobe flash plugin was not currently installed. I never encounter any problems installing adobe flash via firefox web plugin. I installed the Adobe web plugin for two times though I never revert back and uninstall the Adobe plugin and start first from firefox automatic plugin installation.

GAIM/Kopete
I never noticed any improvement with Kopete and Gaim or I just never diddled with each new application features covered by GAIM and Kopete. Bottomline, the feeling of using these messengers becomes more lighter due to quite improved faster X response to currently opened applications.

Java
By default yum installation, the Java that comes with Fedora 8 works out pretty well. I even went to Sun's test page to further test it. All went fine. However, I have several old Java-based applications that works perfectly even with older java version. Sadly, I cannot use those applications using the Java that Fedora 8 had. I even install Sun's latest java but those two java-based applications were does not launch perfectly well, and so I cannot use them yet. Those application were working perfectly before with Fedora 7 though I was using Sun's java then. I still am having a hard time up until now trying to make my old javalite to work with the latest Javas from F8 and Sub\n.

Gimp
F8 Gimp was absolutely improved. Gimp now loads its software and plugins faster than ever. Gimp also shows more enticing artwork from its menu icons compared to previous one.

Remote Desktop
Rdesktop shows a faster connection. I did not notice any bugs or like using this remote desktop tool.

GNOME Terminal
Never been happier with GNOME terminal, just perfect for me.

OpenSSH
I never noticed any glitch as of this time working with any box via openssh from my box.

Multimedia - Video / Audio
VLC is my fave video player, so I am quite satisfied with VLC still. Never noticed any performance improvement, but features are quite more flexible. VLC only need less than 20 dependencies.

Since Fedora does not come with non-free applications, you have to get alternative repos and get those non-free package for you to install them.

XMMS
XMMS player were guite improved including plugins and library achieving a better sound quality and performance for me. It was long since I played MP3 again, so the sounds are excellent! The plugins are great too! There were around 32 dependencies when installing a complete XMMS, not bad even for a dialup connection.

Screen Shots
Gnome screenshot is quite flexible in terms of feature enhancement. However, I am fond of using KDE snapshot software which works just fine for me.

Software and Package Management
I never had any problems with software and package management as I always prefer the use of yum via terminal on software installations and updates. Yum is quite faster now and much more improved than what is it before from F7. Yum takes care of my installation and update including software dependencies the way I like it to be - terminally.

I am sure Fedora developers have given hard time getting this pretty power F8. However, a big attention and improvement needs to be taken care of when using this nice Fedora 8 GUI-based software and program management as it still takes long time for its initial launch.

The GUI-based software and package management for Fedora 8 may need a ferrari car to boost up against the other GUI based package management.

Fedora 8 Bottomline

A faster boot up time is noticeably even with the initial daemon services enabled. Though drivers and hardware detections were the same speed compared with F7 with regards to my current hardware specs as I need more external hardware and devices to further test this hardware detection with F8 issues.

Data transfer between hosts is also faster than before. Even local harddisk copying is quite amazing.

Quite impressive with the improvement and changes made from Fedora 7. Multi user session has been polished and enhanced. X was a big improvement in terms of response time and user interaction. Major bugs were eliminated between user desktop switching.

Fedora 8 had improved amazingly and boosted far with other nice linux distros around and again.

I need not to test and examine all the other features and improvements with these hundred Fedora 8 packages and thousand binaries as to conclude a Fedora 8 diary as a whole.

Fedora 8 is enough to start and end my daily computer activities. So far, I am staying with Fedora 8 for good.

I love it, Fedora rocks!

PS

We better watch out for the next Fedora release.

Below are the current file size and MD5SUM (SHA1SUM) of Fedora 8 ISO

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3424749568 2007-11-14 06:41 Fedora-8-i386-DVD.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 107833344 2007-11-14 06:41 Fedora-8-i386-rescuecd.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 133 2007-11-14 06:41 SHA1SUM

782a0e80de1b8e9f24e10e40055cc1b545390cbd Fedora-8-i386-DVD.iso
aa27d819079b8c92efa2ea58a5c0c84825f7a959 Fedora-8-i386-rescuecd.iso
~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~