2. Release Highlights
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Latest Release Notes on the Web |
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2.1. Fedora Tour
You can find a tour filled with pictures and videos of this exciting new release at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Tours/Fedora9.
2.1.1. Release Summary
For a less technical user friendly summary of the important changes in this release, refer to:
2.2. New in Fedora
This release includes significant new versions of many key components and technologies. The following sections provide a brief overview of major changes from the last release of Fedora.
2.2.1. Spins
Fedora includes several different
spins,
which are variations of Fedora built from a specific set of
software packages. Each spin has a combination of software to
meet the requirements of a specific kind of end user. In
addition to a very small boot.iso image for
network installation, users have the following spin choices:
A regular Fedora image for desktops, workstations, and server users. This spin provides a good upgrade path and similar environment for users of previous releases of Fedora.
One of several Live images that can be run from a disc or USB flash device, and can be installed to hard disk as desired. Refer to the "Live" section for more information about the Live images.
More custom spins are available at http://spins.fedoraproject.org. These Live images can be used on USB media via the livecd-iso-to-disk utility available in the livecd-tools package.
2.2.2. Jigdo
Fedora releases are also available via Jigdo. This distribution method can improve the speed of obtaining the installation ISO images. Instead of waiting for torrent downloads to complete, Jigdo seeks the fastest mirrors it can find via the Fedora Project Mirror Manager infrastructure, and downloads the bits it needs from these mirrors. To optimize seeking these bits, you can tell Jigdo to scan a DVD or CD you already have, and cut down on redundant downloads. This feature becomes particularly useful if you:
Download all the test releases and then get the final release, in which case you have 90% of the data already with each subsequent download.
Download both the DVD and the CD set, in which case the DVD holds 95% of the data needed for the CD sets.
Download any combination of the above.
2.2.3. Features
This release features GNOME 2.22. GNOME now includes a webcam photo and video creation utility called Cheese, improved network filesystem support, a new international clock applet, Google Calendar support and custom email labels in Evolution, a new Remote Desktop Viewer, improved accessibility features, and PolicyKit integration.
KDE 4.0.3 is available in the KDE Live image as well as the regular DVD.
Xfce 4.4.2 is available as part of this release.
NetworkManager 0.7 provides improved mobile broadband support, including GSM and CDMA devices, and now supports multiple devices and ad-hoc networking for sharing connections. It is now enabled by default on installations from DVD, CD, the network, and Live images.
The Fedora installer, Anaconda, now supports partition resizing for ext2/3, NTFS filesystems, creating and installing to encrypted file systems, improved Rescue Mode with FirstAidKit, independent locations for the second stage installer and the software packages. A redesigned, larger
netboot.isoimage now features a second stage installer partly for this reason.Live USB images now support persistence, so your data and setting changes will be preserved even after rebooting.
PackageKit, a new set of graphical and console tools, with a framework for cross-distribution software management, has replaced Pirut in this release of Fedora. The PackageKit graphical updater is available instead of Pup. Behind PackageKit, the performance of
yumhas been significantly improved.FreeIPA makes managing auditing, identity and policy processes easier by providing web-based and command line provisioning, and administration tools to ease system administration. FreeIPA combines the power of the Fedora Directory Server with FreeRADIUS, MIT Kerberos, NTP and DNS to provide an easy, out of the box solution.
Ext4, the next version of the mature and stable ext3 filesystem is available as a option in this release. Ext4 features better performance, higher storage capacity and several other new features.
This release of Fedora uses Upstart, an event-based replacement for the
/sbin/initdaemon.Firefox 3 brings a number of major improvements including a native look and feel, desktop integration, the new Places replacement for bookmarks, and a re-worked address bar.
The completely free and open source Java environment OpenJDK 6 is installed by default. IcedTea 7, derived from OpenJDK 1.7, is no longer the default. IcedTea includes a browser plug-in based on GCJ, and is available for both x86 and x86_64 architectures. GCJ is still the default on PPC architecture.
OpenOffice.org 2.4, with many new features, is available as part of Fedora 9.
Fedora now includes Perl 5.10.0, which features a smaller memory footprint and other improvements.
Fedora now includes TeXLive to replace the older, unmaintained TeX distribution.
Fedora 9 features a 2.6.25 based kernel.
Kernel crashes can be more automatically reported to http://www.kerneloops.org/ and diagnosed in a friendly way via the kerneloops package installed by default. Crash signatures are commonly referred to as oopses in Linux.
Work on the start-up and shutdown in X has yielded noticeable improvements.
2.3. Road Map
The proposed plans for the next release of Fedora are available at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/RoadMap.