Open Source

Fedora X

How things change while on the move! I had been hitting the Fedora site constantly for the Fedora 10 download – last at around 20:30 hrs IST from a client’s office. While driving back, about 30 mins away from home, I checked the site on my Windows Mobile (ironic?) and I spotted “Fedora 10″ written all over the site. Rushed home at double speed.

Fired the torrent as well as direct download. The latter because, saw only one peer @ 98.7% download. Let’s see who, direct or the torrent download, wins the race on my 2 Mbps connection at home. The torrent download is not giving me more than 3KBps whereas the direct download is dicey and swinging – at times from about 260 KBps to 40 KBps

Once downloaded I have to start thinking about backing up my laptop running Fedora 9 and installing the 10. This may happen tonight, if sleep does not take over the X.

Will update this post as I sail to X from IX.

And now (Nov 27, 2008 @ 16:30 IST), my laptop runs Fedora 10 Continuing to write from Fedora 10, about it. Following is the first glimpse, with the noteworthy new wallpaper,  of Fedora 10’s desktop, after the installation:

Installation
Didn’t find anything strikingly new in the installation. But worth mentioning is about ext4 filesystem. Fedora 9 started supporting this new filesystem. I skipped using ext4 on Fedora 9 fearing that it is relatively new. With Fedora 10, I decided to go with it. But seems ext4 is still getting a newbie treatment. While partitioning ext4 does not show up until you type it in as a boot option.

That is, while booting from the Fedora 10 DVD, select “Install or upgrade an existing system” from the boot menu, press tab and append ext4 to the boot options such that the boot options look as follows:

vmlinuz initrd=initrd.img ext4

But then I got struck with a doubt while doing a custom partitioning. I recalled that when I used ext4 in Fedora 9 (just to experiment), I was not able to boot into the system because Grub (the Linux boot loader) did not like ext4 (/boot was ext4). I wondered whether this problem still existed with Fedora 10. Quick and impatient browsing did not help. So I decided to select ext4 even for the /boot partition, expecting that I may face a crash after installation. But thanks to Fedora 10’s installer. It prompted me (unlike Fedora 9) to not to use ext4 for the boot partition.

Bottom line: Don’t use ext4 for /boot or the boot partition. Those who are not in a habit to create a separate /boot partition will now have to create one, if they want to use ext4 for the root (/) partition.

Remaining installation was typical Fedora like. I was expecting but did not find Netbeans during the package/software selection. Hoping that it will be available separately from the Fedora repositories.

Booting: The Wow Factor
After installation and during the boot up, we see the Fedora 10’s WOW Factor. Unlike most Linux distributions, including Fedora < 10, no cryptic text saying “booting kernel”, “starting udev” etc. A straight jump to a graphical boot with a progress bar. Is this the Wow factor? No. Can’t explain it without a video While booting the animation of the shooting blue flairs from the blue Sun is really Wow. Thanks to the new boot system so called Plymouth. Following are the links to some YouTube videos which showcase the magnificent, new, animated boot screen:

Plymouth Solar Theme in Action

I think it is really a good move to hide those cryptic boot time messages. It scares a newbie and sometimes even me when I once saw a message as follows:

“Memory for crash kernel (0×0 to 0×0) not within permissible range”

during the boot process of CentOS Linux. Upon read up, this message was claimed to be harmless despite talking about “crash kernel” Similarly it may be unnecessary to show the plethora of boot time messages, especially to a newbie and Fedora 10 does it well and even better with Plymouth. But, alas, shutdown of Fedora 10 still shows system messages on the screen.

As customary to Fedora, after the boot, I was greeted by the First Boot screen where I could setup a non-root user account, amongst others.

Finally I was dropped on the GNOME desktop (as shown in the screenshot above) and was greeted by 49 pending updates! This is something which used to surprise me before but humours me now, with all Fedoras. It has been just a day or two since the release of Fedora 10 and about 50 pending updates!. Either the releases are deadline driven or the Fedora community is indeed quite active. Anyways, being a long time Fedora user, this is just a rant.

Note: Fedora 10 does not even show the Grub menu while booting. As per Fedora 10’s release notes, the Grub menu is shown only if you have a dual boot (say with Windows and Fedora 10). Yet, to see the Grub menu, press any key after powering on your computer.

Internet Connection Sharing with Windows Mobile
One of the most talked about set of enhancements in Fedora 10 are those in the NetworkManager – a graphical applet which manages wired and wireless connection. One of the enhancements in NetworkManager is the connection sharing via WiFi ad-hoc which I will test and write about later.

This para is devoted to how easily I was able to connect my Windows Mobile (I-Mate Ultimate 8502 running Windows Mobile 6.0) via USB and was able to browse through its EDGE connection. One of the advantages of using USB to using Bluetooth is, the mobile keeps charging via USB while serving the Internet connection.

The general case is, if you are on the move and do not have access to an Internet connection (wired or WiFi), then one of the best ways is to connect your laptop via your GPRS/EDGE enabled mobile phone or PDA.

In Fedora 9, I could not get NetworkManager to work as easily for connection sharing with my mobile. I had to compile drivers (usb-rndis-lite), write configuration files and connect to the mobile from the commandline.

But with Fedora 10, its a breeze. Connect the mobile via USB, start “Internet Sharing” on the mobile and voila, you are connected! To launch “Internet Sharing” via USB on Windows Mobile 6, launch Start>Programs>Internet Sharing. Select “USB” from the “PC Connection” dropdown and for Network Connection, select your pr-configured GPRS/EDGE connection – “HUTCH (WEB)” in my case. Click on Connect. In seconds NetworkManager applet on the top right GNOME panel will show as connected to the mobile. Jet, set, browse!

Note: There are forum posts across the web which suggests to try permutations like click on the Connect (on the mobile) before connecting the mobile via USB or click on Connect after connecting the USB cable. I tried both and always found it to connect. Bottom line: whichever way, you should get connected instantly.

To be continued…

Fedora X, 7.0 out of 10 based on 1 rating
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© 2008 Shekhar Govindarajan’s Blog.