Fedora 17 Has More Features: GIMP 2.8, GCC 4.7, oVirt, Etc

Phoronix ^ | January 10th | Michael Larabel

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

The Beefy Miracle already has a beefy list of possible changes like maybe the Btrfs file-system by default, multi-touch advancements, GNOME Shell software rendering, and many other features, but now there's even more.

At the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo) meeting on Monday (9 January), several more Fedora 17 features were approved. Here's the features that were just approved to be part of the Beefy Miracle:

[Westbrook]

> Guess I was mostly lucky :)

More likely that your hardware vendor’s BIOS was more friendly to GPT in the MBR.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

I have the feeling, very subjective of course, that the maturity that has been sorely needed for linux is really upon us. It’s gotten to the point that the software quality is very high, and daily tasks like upgrades and package installations “Just Work”. It’s a great time to be a linux user.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

Could be - ASUS P7P55D-E Pro.

[Westbrook]

Oh, and I believe it’s an anaconda bug.

anaconda should be aware that not every BIOS is going to play well with GPT and that the boot partition flag must be set in the MBR for some BIOS to play well.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

There’s also a whole series of issues related to Grub2 and it’s strange use of symlinks involving a config file that have messed a few people up -

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=743977

[Westbrook]

OK, your MB has AMI BIOS. +1 for AMI.

The systems I’m having problems with are based on Phoenix BIOS.

I think that for W8 logo secure boot, all BIOS will have to migrate to UEFI.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

Agreed - have yet to figure out in my own mind if UEFI is the antichrist or just another bump in the road - guess we’ll know soon enough.

[Westbrook]

> have yet to figure out in my own mind if UEFI is the
> antichrist or just another bump in the road - guess we’ll
> know soon enough.

Heh. UEFI is a ROM based operating environment that looks and feels like DOS. From the UEFI point of view, the OS is just a long procedure call. :)

There are a lot of nice features with UEFI. Support for installing to and booting from partitions > 2TiB, a shell environment, a character-cell based gui, the ability to boot from a much greater variety of sources, more granularity in defining failovers, etc.

Newer OS’s will be relying more and more on it.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

I had read some stuff that it was a technology that could be used by Redmond to force manufacturers to keep linux off UEFI enabled machines - not so? Sort of a anti-linux potion?

[Westbrook]

> Redmond to force manufacturers to keep linux off UEFI
> enabled machines - not so? Sort of a anti-linux potion?

This is inaccurate, and I am a staunch Linux supporter.

However, I am not at liberty to discuss. Be aware that not everything you read on the internet is accurate. Think WikiPedia and hyperbolic blogs.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

Wikipedia on UEFI has this:

Red Hat developer Matthew Garrett in his article “UEFI secure booting” raised a concern that UEFI “secure boot” feature may impact Linux (machines with the Windows 8 logo with secure boot enabled that ships with only OEM and Microsoft keys will not boot a generic copy of Linux)[43][44] In response, Microsoft stated that customers may be able to disable the secure boot feature in the UEFI interface.[2][45] Concern remains that some OEMs might omit that capability in their computers.

Josh Gay of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) raised concerns on “secure boot” implementation to UEFI and FSF declared a public statement open for signing which states:

We, the undersigned, urge all computer makers implementing UEFI’s so-called “Secure Boot” to do it in a way that allows free software operating systems to be installed. To respect user freedom and truly protect user security, manufacturers must either allow computer owners to disable the boot restrictions, or provide a sure-fire way for them to install and run a free software operating system of their choice. We commit that we will neither purchase nor recommend computers that strip users of this critical freedom, and we will actively urge people in our communities to avoid such jailed systems.[46][47]

I claim no special insight into what TRUTH is here.

[Westbrook]

Concerns have been expressed wrt secure boot implementation.

I can only say that these concerns are being addressed by the appropriate parties.

It is very likely that you will be able to install/boot the OS of your choice on the hardware of your choice. It is possible that a few exceptions will exist. If necessary, workarounds will emerge, as they always do.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

Sounds good - things generally do work out - at least they have in the past.