I upgraded my laptop to the latest Fedora Core 9 test release last night due to having some issues with a broken keyring database. And I have to say it is a very nice experience so far. The major thing I think a lot more people than me has been waiting for is having the GNOME keyring database connected to your gdm login. So now more first login in then providing they keyring manager your password before it logs you onto the wireless or email servers.
Another small bug now fixed is that when you boot with for instance a SD card in the machine it pops up on the desktop right away. in FC8 I had to take it out and put it in again once the desktop was running to get it automounted.
The system monitor is also become very nice, while this is a GNOME improvement more than something Fedora specific it is still something I appreciated when I took at look at it. There are also some improved icons, especially the new SD card icon looks really sweet.
Various bits of polish added to NetworkManager also like a Connection Information item. The power manager has also improved, and it now asked me if I wanted to change my lid down action when connected with mains power to avoid system risking overheating.
Firefox 3 is of course another nice improvement of this release. And it seems Fedora integrated the OpenOffice GStreamer patches created by Novell as I was able to put an Ogg video into a presentation and have it work now.
I also liked the fact that when I had to type in my SSH password in a terminal window the gnome-keyring popped up a dialogue asking if I wanted it to remember this password, very sweet indeed.
Only thing I am not to fond of is the new GDM log in, it feels slow and cumbersome as I first have to pick my name from the list before it ‘slowly’ brings up the password field.
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The gdm thing annoys me too, although it annoys me less since i realized i could just type my username + Enter rather than having to actually use the mouse.
Everything you list as good are improvements in Gnome, not Fedora. (Though the NM improvements were released by Red Hat). The GDM problem is a problem with the default theme included in Fedora 9. The regular user/password prompt doesn’t have this issue.
Jason, it’s a new GDM developed by Red Hat which is not shipped with any other distro yet. Has nothing to do with the theme.
I was impressed by NetworkManager. I have a USB wireless adapter that just 6 months ago could be used only with an external driver. Now it’s fully supported by the kernel included in Fedora and by NM/wpa_supplicant. Yesterday I tested the livecd. Right-clicking on the applet I could see the wireless networks list, I selected mine, it asked for a WPA password, I inserted it and I was browsing my favourite websites.
To the contrary last week my brother came visiting me with his windows laptop. He doesn’t use a wireless network at his home, and we spent 10 minutes to make the laptop connect here; in the end I was forced to download the Intel wireless tools and transfer them through an USB key.
Jason,
Cut it out already. Red Hat has contributed very heavily to GNOME and continue to do so. They are largest contributor to Linux kernel and very likely to GNOME too and maintain a number of core modules including GTK, Cairo, HAL, D-Bus, NetworkManager, Nautilus, gio and so on. The latest GDM rewritten primarily by Red Hat that Fedora uses is part of GNOME too if you didn’t notice. Your rapid anti-Red Hatism isn’t wanted here.
Fedora has a number of improvements unrelated to GNOME, freeipa, PackageKit, KDE 4 and so on.
+1 for the points your brought up – I’ve been running Fedora 9 Beta then did a fresh Preview install when it came out, and I still didn’t notice some of what you mentioned, although I experienced it.
I also agree with the GDM annoyance. What annoys me isn’t so much the time involved, in fact, but the fact that the scrolling actually feels like it’s lagging…maybe if they just made it snappier I would be appeased…
I probably should get to writing me own write-up of the improvements myself…probably should get to do a lot of other things, too….
You should just be able to set PAM authentication for the default keyring to solve your problem. See the link below:
http://live.gnome.org/GnomeKeyring/Pam
I just upgraded from fedora 8 to fedora 9. I have a bunch of issues can you suggest solutiuons if you happen to know
1. eth0 is not wroking automatically, I had to give IP details manually
2. I used to use ssh://user:pass@server from nautilus, but now its gone, I am feeling as if my hand is cut down
3. I expected I will have ext4 file system but I still has ext3
4. Dual head never worked for me both fc8 & fc9 instead I am using vnc/synergy combination
5. wpa_suplicant used to work in fc8, now I got errors but no issues connecting to wireless though
6. As you said default keyring did not pop up when I gave my ssh password.
Good news:
1. I had oracle running in fc8, it still works BIG ONE
2. My entire fc8 configuration was preserverd including vnc user, instance
3. No more default keyring pop ups.