Proposed Fedora 8 Features

Source: Fedora 8 Proposed Features



Fedora 8 is currently under development and is scheduled for release in November of this year (2007). This is a quick overview of the proposed features. As these are proposed features and as it is still about 4 months from release some of these will change.

Better Startup Graphical, smooth and polished startup



This first feature is to bling up the boot sequence. Currently the boot sequence is a mix of text and graphical modes and doesn't look as professional as some of the other competing OS's logins. (Mac OSX, Windows, Ubuntu) This features calls for the hiding of some current boot up graphics such as the GRUB menu and ensuring that there is only one mode switch between text and graphical boot. This will help make the fedora (and the next RHEL) boot up slicker and adds a more professional image to the OS.

Bigboard Replacement for GNOME panel that uses online services via mugshot



This next feature is about integrating the Mugshot Online Desktop Project's bigboard application. Bigboard is basically a sidebar for linux that partially replaces some of the top and bottom panel's functionality but with "greater emphasis to personalization, search, presence and contacts, and documents."

Codec Buddy Helper app promotes Free alternatives and guides users trying to play content under restricted codecs



This is a similar feature to Ubuntu's automatic codec install. When a user tries to play an audio or video file with an uninstalled codec this feature will ask the user if they would like to install the relevant codec. It will also warn the user about illegal use of codecs and will try to educate the user. This is different from Ubuntu's auto codec install as it will recommend the purchase of Fluendo's gstreamer codecs, where as Ubuntu will install the "free" codecs after the user acknowledges that the codecs are illegal in some countries and should not be installed there. This feature will help with usability as often users are confused when they cannot play their audio or video files. This also goes along with Fedora's commitment to a completely free OS as they are pushing the completely legal alternative first.

KDE4 Integrating KDE 4.0, a new major version of KDE



Not much has to be said about this feature as it explains itself. KDE 4 is going to be released in October and Fedora would like to incorporate it as the default KDE version into their 8th release. They are working hard on this feature as KDE 4 is highly desired and with the expected release of Fedora in November it will be one of the first distros to completely incorporate KDE 4. The Fedora developers are also working hard on ensuring compatibility with existing KDE 3 applications by shipping a full set of compatibility libraries.

NetworkManager System wide default network manager integration



This is another feature that Ubuntu currently has. Fedora would like to integrate NetworkManager as the default network configuration method. NetworkManager was started by Red Hat and currently the easiest way to manage wireless networks. It is ideally suited for laptops with wireless cards. It also has plugins for different VPN implementations making it easy to use a VPN. The current weaknesses of the implementation is in the server market or with managing multiple network devices. Also there isn't any easy method to manage the networks without a GUI. Fedora is working on these issues and is hoping to implement NetworkManager as the default and only network manager for Fedora 8.

PolicyKit Easy and painless administration



"PolicyKit provides a flexible framework for granting users access to privileged operations." This will help integrate the various ways distros allow desktop users to preform privileged operations. PolicyKit is completely integrated with HAL and DBUS and will provide a cutting edge desktop-environment agnostic method of securing the desktop. PolicyKit will also fix some implementation flaws of current methods of providing privileged operations to desktop users. (such as running X applications as root)

PulseAudio Feature rich sound server



This is one of the most exciting features slated for inclusion in Fedora 8. PulseAudio is a sound server, which provides for network abstraction for sound. It also provides for full mixing of multiple audio streams and can be used to preform various effects on sound. PulseAudio allows for application independent volume control and also will allow any sound source or output to be shared or mixed over a network. For example with PulseAudio you can have Rhythmbox running of one computer but play the audio over the soundcard of a different computer on the network. It also will work for input allowing for a microphone input on one computer to be used on a different computer. This feature will bring the audio side of the linux desktop into the 21st century and will compliment the advanced visual effects available with Compiz and Compiz Fusion.

Presto Using delta RPM updates by default. Saves heavy amount of bandwidth and time for updates.

This is also an exciting new feature. Presto is a plugin for Yum to allow for the use of deltaRPM's to be downloaded instead of the full RPM's when updating. The current method of updating requires the full packages to be downloaded, this requires a lot of bandwith and often is not required as only a few files in the RPM package are changed. DeltaRPM's are much smaller as they only contain the differences between the two different packages. Currently there isn't an easy way to make use of these deltaRPM's and Presto hopes to change this. By using this plugin the bandwith required by a user to update is greatly decreased this will benefit the users with slow connections and will also decrease the infrastructure required to host a Fedora update mirror.

VirtSecurity Secure remote mangement for Xen, KVM & QEMU virtualization



Currently in Fedora 7 and RHEL 5 their is no secure remote management of installed VM's. This feature will incorporate full TLS for all communication between the VM and the management applications. It also incorporates secure migration of guests across hosts.

Bookmarks Fedora 8 Bookmarks

This is a very basic feature that just states which bookmarks should be default in Firefox with Fedora 8.

TexLive TeXLive 2007 inclusion



The current teTeX TeX distribution is no longer actively maintained and TeXLive is the new recommended TeX distribution. Debian and Ubuntu already are shipping TeXLive and this is a natural choice for any distribution that ships TeX.

Rsyslog New default syslog daemon

This feature calls for the inclusion of Rsyslog as a replacement for sysklogd. The sysklogd upstream is dead and also is missing a lot of requested features. Rsyslog has full security for logging (an often requested feature for sysklogd) and also can log to a MySQL database. Sysklogd is an ancient implmentation of the syslog functionality and is missing many requested features so upgrading is a no-brainer. There are several syslog replacements but Rsyslog is fully backwards compliant and provides most of the requested features and has an active upstream.

No More XFS Don't start XFS font server daemon by default and fix font packages. Savings on performance and bootup time.



This feature would like to disable the x font server that is currently enabled by default in all installations. The two main reasons are it will accelerate the bootup process and that the use of an x font server is not required for most installations. This is almost a no brainier but needs some testing to ensure that this will achieve the desired results. Also this will require checking all programs that make use of the xfs to ensure they use the local fonts.

XULrunner Use and integrate XULRunner which is the Gecko browser engine separated from the user interface.



Currently many applications depend upon Firefox just to make use of it's gecko rendering engine. XULrunner is a Mozilla project to separate the common features of Firefox, Thunderbird, Seamonkey, and any other gecko powered application into a separate program to make maintenance easier and to reduce duplication of code and functionality throughout their projects. This will require changes to many applications so that they use XULrunner instead of their own embedded gecko implementation. This will also increase security as if there is a vulnerability in the gecko engine it will be fixed in all programs that make use of it. This is another no-brainier as all distributions will eventually have to implement and the benefits are many.

Laptop Improvements Improved support for using Fedora on Laptops.



This last proposed feature is a blanket feature to improve the Fedora experience on a laptop. This is basically just a improvement to the suspend/resume support and the special keyboard keys that are often on laptops. It also would like to see an improvement in battery life to the previous Fedora release.

So, that is a rundown of the features in the works for the next fedora release. Please check out the wiki pages for more details and future changes.

Nouveau Driver 2D performance exceeds Nvidia driver

Source: Nouveau 2D progress



Richard Hughes has just published results from the gtkperf performance test.

Results:

Nouveau: 24.86 seconds
NV: 40.78 seconds

Which is a 64% improvement over the existing Nvidia sponsored nv driver.

This is a very limited 2D only test and does not represent 3D performance but it does show that the developers are making good progress.

The Nouveau driver is quickly gaining support within the various distros. Fedora 7 shipped with an alpha version of the driver and Ubuntu has committed to assisting and supporting the project.


Related:
Nouveau Driver Homepage

Updated:
To better show the improvements here is a benchmark comparing the free NV driver to the closed source Nvidia driver: NVIDIA Xserver driver Benchmark
In this benchmark (using a GeForce2 MX) the closed source Nvidia driver has a performance gain of 36% over the free NV driver. As Nouveau driver had a 64% improvement it even exceeds the Nvidia driver.

These figures should not really be treated as equal as they are using completely different Nvidia drivers. (6xxx series to hopefully the new 9x or 10x drivers.

Full OpenGL 3D Acceleration for Xen/Vmware/Kvm

Source: Thoughts on the Virtualization area.



With all the news about Vmware Fusion and Parallels upcoming 3D acceleration capabilities there hasn't been much about the free software projects work in this area.

Introducing VMGL, which provides OpenGL Hardware 3D Acceleration for Virtual Machines. It is a program that you install in both the host and guest and allows for virtualizing the OpenGL functions. When tested in xen with Quake 3 & Unreal Tournament 2004 it provides for up to 87% of the performance of the native implementation. It has been tested under vmware and xen but it should work under any of the other virtualization solutions out there. (kvm, qemu, virtual box)

This is major news for the virtualization field as 3D acceleration has been the one area where there has not been much progress. As this is a generic solution released under a BSD licence it can be incorporated into any of the current virtualization solutions. Also it is gpu independent and will work with any OpenGL accelerator.

Promo movie:


Related:
VMGL Homepage
Xen summit Slides

New SSL secured Apt in works for Debian/Ubuntu

As part of the new Gusty 7.10 release of Ubuntu, Apt has be upgraded to the latest 0.7.x series slated for Lenny. Some of the benefits of this new apt have already been seen in Ubuntu. The automatic dependency removal, the unattended upgrades, and the dpkg breaks field.

One upgrade in this latest series is the addition of a https transport method. This transport method should help to further increase apt's security.

Already with Etch (and many past releases of Ubuntu) secure apt has been included. Secure apt includes cryptological signed packages. These signed packages ensure that they are the ones the developers compiled, ensuring security. This was a major step forward in apt security.

The addition of the apt-transport-https package allows for ssl secured communication between the webserver and the apt client. Now with secure apt ensuring that the packages are what they say they are, and https secured communication, the entire debian/ubuntu package stack is more secure.



Related:
Secure Apt
Apt 0.7.0 Changes
Debian: apt-transport-https
Ubuntu: apt-transport-https

OpenMoko.com goes live

Source: OpenMoko.com



Today marks the launch of openmoko.com the corporate site for the openmoko project. If you didn't know already the openmoko is a new cell phone designed from the ground up in an open manner. All the hardware is designed in an open manner and the software on the phone itself is gnu/linux.

Previously only the community oriented openmoko.org site was live but this did not allow actual purchase of the Neo1973 phone. (The first phone openmoko will run on) Today anyone can go to the openmoko.com store and purchase a Neo1973 phone running openmoko. The phone is initially aimed at developers and is not quite ready for mass consumption.

The Neo Base model retails for $300 US, and the Neo Advanced is $450 US. They are not tied to any network and will function on any GSM provider.

This hopefully will provide some competition to Apple's latest creation, the iPhone.

Related:
OpenMoko.org - Development Site
- OpenMoko.org - Wiki
- OpenMoko.org - Planet
- OpenMoko.org - Mailing List
- OpenMoko.org - Getting Started with your Neo1973

New exciting Gnome developments

Source: Developing GNOME is going to rock even more very soon!



Gnome development is starting to see some interesting changes. The first is the previously mentioned gtkbuilder support in GTK+ 2.12. This adds new features over the previous libglade implementation and also is now part of GTK+ so it can be used everywhere GTK+ is used.

Another ongoing development is GVFS. Currently gnome uses something called gnome-vfs which is great but is showing its age when it comes to newer functionality such as FUSE.

These new features alongside the amazing existing language bindings for GTK+/Gnome make for a very exciting time for Gnome.

Related:
Initial plans to replace gnome-vfs
GVFS announcement
Upcoming talk on GVFS at GUADEC
GVFS Benchmarking Ideas

Kernel Change Logs for linux in English

Source: Linux Kernel Newbies



Ever want to know what was changed in the current release of the linux kernel but can't understand the cryptic changelogs? This site rewrites the changelogs in English and adds references. A great resource for anyone interested in the linux kernel.


Related:
Kernel Terms Glossary
Current Stable Kernel Changelog

Vista vs. Linux vs. Mac OSX 90 Day Vulnerability

Source: Windows Vista - 90 Day Vulnerability Report



Recently (March 2007) there was a report (pdf) released comparing the 90 day vulnerabilities of all the major operating systems. The report compares RHEL 4, Ubuntu 6.06, Novell SLED 10, Mac OSX 10.4, Windows XP, Windows Vista. One dramatic result of this is the large number of vulnerabilities for the various linux distros compared to windows. Newer articles have come out and have shed more light on this issue. Most of the reasons come from the huge number of programs installed in the typical linux distro as compared to windows. Also the enterprise class distros have a policy of very long freeze cycles before release where some security advisories are not corrected. This all adds up to a test that does not properly compare the actual security of the different operating systems.

Related:
List of all RHEL 4 vulnerabilities
List of Ubuntu 6.06 vulnerabilities
Windows Vista 6 month report

KDE 4 Alpha 2 Released

Source: KDE 4.0 Alpha 2 Released



KDE released the 2nd alpha of their upcoming 4th desktop environment. This release sees much more work done on the Plasma part of KDE 4. KDE 4 is tentatively scheduled to be released in October of this year.

Related:
KDE 3.91 (4 Alpha 2) info page

Compiz Fusion Aquarium

Source: Compiz Fusion cube aquarium - first look



Compiz Fusion has a new aquarium plugin. It makes the desktop cube transparent and adds some fish. See the full image for a better look

Related:
OpenCompositing.org - Home of compiz fusion
YouTube Video of Compiz Fusion features