大家都知道，Fedora 是社区开发的 Linux 发行版，得到了世界上最大的 Linux 企业 Red Hat 赞助。得到如此有力的支持，意味着 Fedora 可以受益于全世界无数的开发者，包括 Red Hat 的一些雇员也在全职开发 Fedora。Fedora 本身源自 Red Hat Linux，大约五年前 Red Hat 决定不再开发 RHL，转向社区开发的方式，同时内部开发红帽企业版(RHEL)。Fedora 被认为是 RHEL 的上游平台，新技术和软件包的试验场。

Fedora 10 基于 2.6.27 内核，这是内核的最新版本，也包含 Red Hat 内核开发者和 Fedora 社区其他成员的增强补丁。

下载渠道

与过去一样，Fedora Project 提供了相当多的镜像，用户可以下载各种不同的版本，包括传统的 DVD 安装文件，基于 GNOME 或 KDE 的免安装 LiveCD 等等，适合自己的不同需要。Fedora Project 也提供了 BitTorrent 方式，如果用户采用这种方式，下载可以更快，用户同时也在互相帮助(通过上传)。本次评测中，我们下载了一份 GNOME 免安装 LiveCD，并且安装到了测试机器上，以便仔细测试。我们密切关注着 Fedora 10 的开发过程，从 Alpha, Beta 到 Preview，因此我们的评测是有备而来。

Fedora 10 提供了针对 i386, x86_64 和 PowerPC 体系结构的版本。关于背景知识就介绍到这里，我们来看新特性吧，看过之后您一定会希望亲手安装一份的！

蓝色太阳的照耀 – “Solar” 主题搭配 Plymouth 图形化启动过程，使得 Fedora 相当漂亮。

漂亮的启动过程

由于 Plymouth 图形启动过程替换了过去的 RHGB，您首先会注意到启动速度的提高。除了速度更好，启动过程也更平滑了，每一步转换都很平滑，从 BIOS 到 GRUB，到 Plymouth，最后通过平滑的渐变，进入 GDM 登录屏幕。尽管并非所有图形芯片都可以实现这个效果(基本上 Radeon 显卡效果最好)，这是 Fedora 向正确的方向迈出的一大步，也使 Fedora 启动速度更胜一筹。尽管对于服务器市场没有很大用户，对经常重启系统的移动和桌面用户则很有用。而且 Plymouth 提供了动画效果，不像 RHGB 只包含进度条和文本信息，您可以看到 Solar 动画——带有燃烧日晕的蓝色太阳。如果按 Mark Shuttleworth 所言，“美观算得是一种特性”，那么 Fedora 着实胜了一着。

进入桌面

进入桌面环境，默认是 GNOME 2.24.1，带有 Fedora 通常会包含的那些程序。后面会提到 OpenOffice.org 3.0，这是 OOo 3.0 首次在主要发行版中露面。另外还有其他桌面软件。Planner 是一个项目管理工具，这个工具很有用，在之前的版本中包含过，我们很高兴再次看到了它。利用它可以设计甘特图。NetworkManager 是网络连接和切换的工具，我们从未遇到它出问题，这次它增加了管理宽带连接的功能。宽带连接市场在不断增长，尤其是在英国这里。我们很高兴看到 Fedora 可以支持它。

设置 3G 调制解调器非常简单，几秒钟即可联网！

另外，即时通讯工具使用了 Pidgin。尽管 GNOME 桌面正在走向使用 Empathy，Fedora 团队决定继续使用 Fedora 10，主要的原因大约是 Empathy 还不够稳定。计划是在 Fedora 11 中默认使用 Empathy。当然，自由软件世界中，变化发生得非常快，我们会密切关注这件事。比较可惜的是本次发布中 OpenChange 特性没有完成，它使用基本的 MAPI 连接 Exchange 服务器，对于商业应用非常重要。

本应成为默认的即时通讯工具 Empathy，要等到 Fedora 11 了。

很多人只能使用 IMAP 甚至 POP 来访问 Exchange，但是最好用的协议还是 MAPI，只是没有得到实现。如果 Evolution 这样的应用程序可以支持 MAPI，将打破 M$ 在业界的另一个垄断地位。MAPI 不仅可以用来访问邮件，还包括日程，联系人，任务，记录和公开目录；绝不能小看它的意义，即使 M$ 自己在 Mac 的 Exchange 客户端 Entourage 中也不(愿)支持 MAPI。到 Fedora 11 发布时，OpenChange 也许已经进入了其他发行版，总之会帮助 Linux 在公司电子邮件领域占据立足之地。

安装 Fedora 中，另一件做得漂亮的事是让 Anaconda 安装程序直接提交 bugzilla 错误报告，让这个过程无比简单。当然这个功能要求网络连接可用，但是它让如此重要的安装程序得以方便地发现和解决问题。

PackageKit 紧密集成到 Fedora，底层调用了 Yum 和 RPM。

办公软件升级

Fedora 10 的另一个重要特性是 OpenOffice.org 3.0，Fedora 是首个在 DVD 安装文件中包含它的发行版。如果您使用免安装 LiveCD，默认是用 AbiWord，因为 CD 空间着实有限。OOo 3.0 是 Fedora 的“绝招”，因为 Ubuntu 8.10 只有十二月上旬才能用上它，并且必须打开开发版本的向后移植仓库(Backport)。包含 OOo 3.0 使 Fedora 在宣传上得了一分，更不要说实际的好处。新版本的速度提升和特性增强将使 OOo 更加受大众欢迎，支持的文件格式更多了，您现在可以用它打开 Office 2007 XML 文件，尽管还无法导出成那种格式。其他核心组件也有大量改进，像 Calc 电子表格，Impress 简报等等。Impress 还包含了全新的简报终端视图(presenter console view)，这是 Powerpoint 自 Office XP 版本以来就有的功能，做很多简报展示时会非常有用，它让您在投影简报的同时，在运行简报的计算机上显示简报的详细信息。

Impress 3.0 现在成为真正的 Powerpoint 对手。

深度探索

Fedora 首次包含了高级消息队列协议(AMQP)，这是中间件的一个开放协议标准。您也许不清楚中间件是什么，有什么关系，简单的说，中间件将大量的异构系统互联，使它们可以交换信息。很多大型企业都使用中间件，不过主要是在银行内部供大型机和旧系统应用，因为与这种系统通信是一种很难的事情。这样就可以理解，为什么 AMQP 最初是来自一家最大的美国银行。不过现在它被一个工作组所采纳，这个工作组的成员有 Red Hat, Cisco 以及其他大公司，也包括 M$ 和 Novell。尽管它不太可能用在应用 Fedora 的场合，但是在它进入将来的红帽企业版(RHEL)之前，Fedora 就是新技术的试验场。

另外，Fedora 团队将最新的 RPM (4.6) 带入了 Fedora 10。尽管这看上去无关紧要，但是久被搁置的软件包管理工具得到改进终究是件好事。将来版本的 Fedora 和其他基于 RPM 的发行版可望达到更高的性能。尽管 Fedora 10 中并不是最终版本的 RPM 4.6，但是这份基础工作将随着时间逐渐体现出它的价值。

让我们从企业空间走向起居室。在 LIRC 方面有很多工作，来改进遥控的可连接性，使 Fedora 更适于媒体中心。同时在多媒体领域，PulseAudio 得到改进，更加稳定可靠，比 Fedora 9 消耗更少电力。这是通过重写 PulseAudio 核心做到的，使它基于定时器，这是 Mac OS X 和 Vista 的声音系统很早就在做的事。大多数人会注意到音频播放的进步，失真被基本消除。

尽管不提供有专利限制的解码器，Fedora 做到了让安装更简单。

写在最后

那么，我们应该怎么评论 Fedora 10？它在短暂的发布周期中实现了大量内容，尽管其间受到了服务器被入侵的影响。更重要的是，Fedora 开始对美观好用等方面有所关注，让它可以与 Ubuntu 相比。主要的差别在于，Fedora 仍然严格地坚持自己对自由软件的定义，不像 Ubuntu 的每次发布都会带来争议。Fedora 开发者为我们带来了一个先进的版本，为将来的宏伟目标提供了坚实的支持。Fedora 发行版本身已经走过了五年的长路，我们衷心希望接下来的五年里，这些非凡的努力可以带来合理的回报。如果您还没有尝试 Fedora，或者(因为种种原因)离开了它，那您绝对应该试试它。如果您是 Fedora 用户，相信您已经迫不及待地想要安装和升级了吧。

原文见 Hands on with the new Fedora 10

Fedora 10 has just been released to the waiting masses. Andy Hudson takes the distro for an early test run, exploring the new features and seeing how it stacks up against the other major players in the Linux league…

Key software

• Kernel 2.6.27.5
• Glibc 2.9
• GCC 4.3.2
• X.org 7.4
• Gnome 2.24.1
• KDE 4.1.2
• Firefox 3.0.4
• OpenOffice.org 3.0.0

As you’re probably aware, Fedora is a community-based distribution that has backing from Red Hat, the largest Linux vendor in the world. Having this backing means that Fedora can work with a wide selection of developers all over the world, including some who are employed by Red Hat to work solely on the distro. Fedora itself is a descendant of the original Red Hat Linux which was discontinued a little over five years ago in favour of moving to a more community-focused approach, in tandem with in-house development for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, for which Fedora is considered by many to be up-stream and which provides a useful proving ground for many new technologies and packages.

Fedora 10 is based primarily on the 2.6.27 kernel, giving you access to the very latest and greatest that the kernel developers can offer, along with minor enhancements that come from Red Hat kernel developers and other members of the Fedora community.

Availability

As usual, the Fedora project offers a wide number of mirrors that you can use to obtain the different flavours in which Fedora 10 is available, including the traditional DVD alongside Live CDs for Gnome and KDE depending on which desktop environment you favour. BitTorrent distribution is usually very well served by the Fedora project, so if you’re in a hurry then this is probably the way to go and you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that you’re helping others download (as long as you’re allowing uploads!). For this review we snagged a copy of the Gnome Live CD which we then installed to our test machine to give it a good going over. We’ve also been closely tracking the development of Fedora, including the Alpha, Beta and Preview releases, all of which allow us to give you our informed opinion of Fedora 10.

Fedora 10 is available principally for i686 and x86-64 compatible processors, although versions for the PowerPC platform are also available. But enough about the background to the distro; let’s take a look at some of the new features with Fedora 10, some of which should whet your distro-installing appetite!

Bask in the blue sunshine – the solar theme
combined with Plymouth makes Fedora incredibly
easy on the eye (click for bigger).

Beautiful booting

Performance benchmarks

Fedora 9

GRUB to login screen: 58.4s
Login to desktop: 12s
Launching Firefox 2: 1.4s
Shutdown: 14.5s
Geekbench score: 2271

Fedora 10

GRUB to login: 52.2s
Login to desktop: 14.9s
Launching Firefox 3: 2.4s
Shutdown: 11.6s
Geekbench score: 2260

(Test hardware: 2.4GHz
Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM)

The first thing you’ll notice is the vast increase in bootup speed thanks to the implementation of Plymouth – the replacement for the ageing and increasingly fragile RHGB. Along with the improvement in speed, the general look and feel of the initial boot process feels a lot smoother thanks to work done to minimise all the different handovers between the BIOS, GRUB, RHGB and finally a smooth fade into the GDM login screen. Whilst not complete for all graphics chipsets (you get the best effect from Radeon-based cards) it’s certainly a big step in the right direction and helps Fedora move ahead in boot up times. We appreciate that this isn’t going to be particularly significant for the server market, but certainly it will make a difference for laptop and desktop users who shutdown after each use. Also of note is the beautiful animation scheme that Plymouth delivers; not just content with a simple status bar moving across the screen, you instead get the Solar animation – reminiscent of a blue sun with solar flares. If Mark Shuttleworth’s ‘Pretty is a Feature’ is anything to by, then Fedora has just run up and tweaked his nose quite severely!

Onto the desktop

Moving on into the distro itself, it’s a stock Gnome 2.24.1 implementation, complete with the usual applications that Fedora typically bundles. As mentioned later, OpenOffice.org 3.0 makes its first major appearance in one of the major distros, a long with the usual raft of improvements to the standard desktop software. Planner, a project management tool, also makes an appearance; to our mind it is a useful application that seems to have come and gone in different releases. In any case, we’re glad it’s back in because we certainly can’t work without our intricately designed Gannt Charts. NetworkManager is still the management tool of choice for switching between different networks; we’ve never had a problem whilst using it, and we can report that it now extends onto working with mobile broadband solutions. This is a growing market, particularly in the UK and we’re glad to see support for it within this venerable distro.

Setting up a 3G modem is a straight-forward
affair – be online in seconds!

Also in, by the skin of its teeth, is Pidgin. Although the vanilla Gnome desktop has moved to Empathy as its primary instant messenger application, the Fedora team decided fairly late on to not use it as the default within Fedora 10. The main reasons for this appear to be do with Empathy’s stability, and the current thinking is to do the Pidgin-to-Empathy switch sometime during the Fedora 11 release cycle. Of course, things can (and do) change rapidly within the open source world so we’ll keep a close eye on this and see what comes of it. Another feature that was sadly dropped from this release was OpenChange, a fairly important inclusion for businesses as it allows native MAPI connectivity with Exchange servers.

The default IM client that never was – at least
not until Fedora 11.

A lot of people use IMAP or even POP support within Exchange, but by far the most used protocol is MAPI, something which we have had to live without. Having MAPI support built into applications such as Evolution would break another of Microsoft’s vice-like holds in the business and corporate market. Not only would it allow access to email but also calendars, contacts, tasks, notes and public folders; the importance of this cannot be underplayed as even Microsoft seem unable to support MAPI for their Mac Exchange client, Entourage. Of course, by the time Fedora 11 comes onto the scene, OpenChange may have made its way into the other distributions and will hopefully help give Fedora and Linux in general a foothold in the corporate email arena.

Another nice touch when you install Fedora is that the Anaconda installer can now submit bugzilla reports directly, making this process infinitely easier. Of course it requires a working network connection, but nonetheless it can only help to identify and remove any bugs from this venerable installer.

PackageKit is closely integrated with Fedora,
leveraging Yum and RPM under the hood.

Office updates

Another key feature of Fedora 10 is OpenOffice.org 3.0, making Fedora the first major distro to include it in the DVD install. If you go with the Live CD then you’ll get AbiWord instead which is due to space restrictions on the CD. OOo 3.0 is a major coup for Fedora, with Ubuntu 8.10 not slated to get it until early December and even then only via the Backports repository. The inclusion of OOo 3.0 is a major publicity boost for Fedora, not to mention the many benefits that it brings. Improved performance and an enhanced feature-set will further endear OOo to the masses, with the list of supported file formats ever growing; you can now open Office 2007 XML files, although you can’t export in that format. Other improvements abound for core applications such as Calc and Impress, with particular attention being drawn to the new presenter console view within Impress. This is something that Powerpoint has had since Office XP and can be very useful if you do a lot of presentations, allowing you to view the presentation on the projector whilst seeing a more informative view from the computer that’s running the presentation.

Impress 3.0 is now a real PowerPoint beater.

Delving deeper

Moving under the hood, Fedora also includes the first real glimpse of the Advanced Message Queing Protocol (AMQP), an open protocol standard for middleware. Some of you may be scratching your heads trying to work out what exactly middleware is, but it’s quite simply the layer of software that sits between numerous disparate systems and allows them to communicate and exchange information. Middleware can be found in many large companies, but we’ve mainly come across it in the banking environment where they routinely use mainframe and legacy systems making such inter-system communication a challenge. It’s no real surprise to learn that AMQP started off life in a large US bank, and has now been adopted by a working group that includes Red Hat, Cisco and other major corporates including both Microsoft and Novell. It’s undeniable that it’s not likely to be used in anger with a Fedora deployment, but rather Fedora is being used as a proving ground before it ultimately arrives in a future version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Staying under the hood, the Fedora team has worked to include the latest version of RPM (4.6) into Fedora 10. Whilst this might not mean much, it’s good to see movement in this long neglected package management system so that future versions of Fedora, and other RPM-dependent distros can start to move closer to the performance of apt. Although not a final version of RPM 4.6, the groundwork laid in Fedora 10 will pay dividends moving forward.

Moving well away from the corporate sphere and into the living room, a fair amount of work has gone into LIRC, to improve connectivity with remote controls to further enhance Fedora’s media centre credentials. Also within the multimedia realm, PulseAudio has been improved upon to make it more stable and reliable, with real gains in power consumption over Fedora 9. This has been achieved by undertaking a fairly extensive re-write of the core of PulseAudio to deliver timer-based audio scheduling, something which our Mac OS X and Vista friends already enjoy. Most people should notice an improvement in audio playback, with a serious reduction in any drop outs.

Although they don’t supply patent restricted codecs,
Fedora does try to make things a little easier.

The bottom line

So, do we recommend Fedora 10? A tremendous amount of work has taken place in a release cycle which has also had to cope with a major infrastructure breach during its development. Importantly though, Fedora is starting to work on some of the aesthetical portions of the distro, in an attempt to bring it to a level par with Ubuntu. The main difference is that Fedora sticks rigidly to its interpretation of free software and doesn’t entertain the kind of controversy that seems to hit nearly every Ubuntu release. The developers have given us a decent distro, and one that will reinforce Fedora’s long term ambitions by providing a platform for growth. The distro itself has come a long way over the last five years; we certainly hope that the work that has been carried out can be matched, if not exceeded over the next five. If you’ve not tried Fedora, or have moved away from it in the past then you should definitely take a look – existing users will be rubbing their hands with glee over this solid release.

脚本的作者是 Dan Berrange，我(Richard Jones)做了修改。我们在打包 MinGW 和 OCaml 过程中已经用了很久了。

根据 Seth Vidal，这个脚本的功能可能将被整合到 mock 中。

原文见 ANNOUNCE: Smock (simpler mock) – a mock wrapper for chain building

‘Smock’ stands for ‘simpler mock’. It’s a script that runs on top of
mock, allowing you to chain-build a series of RPMs from a single
command.
smock.pl --arch=i386 --arch=x86_64 \
--distro=fedora-9 --distro=fedora-10 \
*.src.rpm

The above command would arrange the SRPMs into the correct order
according to their BuildRequires, then build each in the four separate
mock environments Fedora {9,10} {i386,x86_64}. It makes the result of
each previous package build available to subsequent packages, and in
case of error it is fully restartable (it skips packages which have
already been built).

The script was written by Dan Berrange and extensively hacked on by
me. This is how we've been building the MinGW & OCaml packages for
quite a while.

Available from:

http://hg.et.redhat.com/misc/fedora-mingw--devel/

(click 'manifest' then 'smock')

Please read the README file!

Example output:

http://www.annexia.org/tmp/mingw/fedora-9/

Example wrapper script we use for MinGW:

http://hg.et.redhat.com/misc/fedora-mingw--devel/?f=d3dc6fa7cddd;file=build-everything-in-mock.sh

Commands we use for OCaml:

cd fedora
for f in ocaml*; do (cd $f/devel && make srpm); done
smock.pl --arch=i386 --arch=x86_64 --distro=fedora-rawhide \
ocaml*/devel/*.src.rpm

Rich.

命令行安装： yum install grip
图形化安装： 搜索 grip
安装后菜单位置： 应用程序 > 影音 > Grip
命令： /usr/bin/grip
上游网站： http://www.nostatic.org/grip/

原文见 Artsy Tuesday: grip — CD Ripper GUI

Grip is a graphical front-end for cd-ripping and encoding tools such as cdparanoia, cdda2wav, and oggenc. It can auto-detect disc insertions, do database lookup of CD title and track information, encode one track while reading another, rip partial tracks, and more.Installing from the command line: yum install grip
Installing using the graphical installer: Search for grip
Menu location after installation: Applications > Sound & Video > Grip
Command: /usr/bin/grip
Upstream website: http://www.nostatic.org/grip/

RPM Fusion

Fedora 长期以来都受到批评，因为不提供专有软件，专利编码译码器(codec)，出于我们熟悉的种种原因。过去，可以通过各个第三方软件仓库才能获得这些被禁止的额外软件，可是它们往往与 Fedora 基本的软件仓库的软件冲突，或者互相不兼容。

现在好了，几个最常用的软件仓库已经走到了一起，并且创建了一个全新的超级软件仓库，这就是 RPM Fusion 。这是你获取多媒体解码器和硬件驱动所唯一需要的软件仓库。

RPM Fusion 最了不起的是，多亏了 Fedora 的开放特性，他们使用完全相同的工具（比如打包软件）和相同的打包过程各自打包他们的软件，所以质量还是有保证的。

更好的打印支持

在 Fedora 8 中打印机自动配置成为可能。插入几乎任何一台打印机，所有缺失驱动程序将被自动安装，整个过程都不需要使用者自己动手。

在 Fedora 10 中，打印机控制应用程序，系统配置打印驱动程序，都被彻底重写编写和简化。当然，有些改动是很小的，正是这些很小的改动让整个打印系统改头换面，不是吗？一些显著改进包括：

• 不需要根密码的时候不再提示输入根密码
• 没有纸张，被拒绝的打印任务等等的图标
• 打印任务失败时通知用户，并且提供诊断工具找出失败原因
• 对话框被简化，不再让人感到混乱

初始打印机对话框

更好的遥控支持

喜欢用你的电脑看电影或者听音乐吗？想用你的遥控来控制这些应用程序吗？ Fedora 现在包含 gnome-lirc-properties 包，它让配置和添加新的遥控变得更加容易，它也允许使用者为他们的遥控器配置自定义按键事件。基于这一特性的开发工作被重新提出，不仅仅是 gnome-lirc-properties ，还包括别的流行的应用程序以确保它们在信的配置工具下工作正常。

gnome-lirc-properties

更好更快的启动

Fedora 10 包含一些巨大的其启动过程的改进。从系统刚刚开始启动的时候开始，使用者会注意到不再有 Grub splash 画面了，节省了系统启动整个过程的时间，同时，去掉了一些屏幕闪动的画面，使启动过程更加精炼。对于那些想进入启动菜单的使用者，只要系统启动的时候按住任意键别松开，启动菜单就会出现了。

Grub 加载完毕之后，使用者会注意到 RHGB 不复存在了。它已经被一个全新的程序，Plymouth 所替代，Plymouth 利用了基于内核方式的设定，让启动过程不再闪烁，平滑的过渡到GDM，并提供更好的图形界面。着不仅仅是美化，Plymouth 不需要一个独立的 X 服务器来运行，因此这个改进让系统启动速度大幅改善。

除了这个特性之外，别的工作也正在被看开发出来以降低系统启动时间，包含默认启用的预读功能，这一点利用了平行启动系统，还不只这些。总之，很多用户应该能看到他们的系统启动速度更快了。

连接共享

这个特性一定会在全世界的黑客大会上非常流行，连接共享允许使用者更容易的建立无线自组网络，所有的流量将通过一个额外的连接。首选连接，比如第二个 WI-FI 卡，3G数据连接，或者是纯以太网连接。

这一特性以来于 Fedora 9 中已经被开发出来的 3G 网卡开箱即用功能，也包括在网络管理器下允许对多网络设备的支持。

网络管理器的这个改进并不止这些，很多用户反映在连接无线网络的时候，网速有比较重大的提高。它看起来和 Mac OS X 下的 Airport 连接差不多。

急救工具箱

“急救工具箱是一个自动化的回复工具，它是和普通的恢复过程结合实现的，并且将它们应用到了系统中。急救工具箱处理恢复的过程凭借插件。一个插件在系统中负责一个特定的部分，就像Grub，init 代码和 X 服务器。急救工具箱被设计来自动修复在集中保持用户数据完整性方面遇到的问题。换句话说，急救工具箱将尽力修复系统的错误，并让你有能力恢复这些错误改动”

零缺陷音频

“PulseAudio 声音服务器已经被重写，替换了传统的驱动中断处理方式，取而代之的是基于计时器的音频时序安排。这是别的系统，比如苹果 CoreAudio 和 Windows Vista 的声音子系统采用的处理方式，有很多优点，不仅在最小程度上减少了功耗，将中断减少到最低程度，灵活的调整应用程序潜在的各种需求。”

Sugar 桌面

自始至终，红帽公司和 Fedora 一直和 OLPC 项目紧密合作。目前，在帮助获得更广泛的注意和创新力使用的努力之下，专注于孩子们的 Sugar 桌面环境（孩子们更喜欢，大家都这么说），Fedora 项目的成员努力工作和一些实用的活动打包，因此你能更容易的在你的 Fedora 系统上使用它们。

这是一个很不错的方式来参与这个项目的开发工作，更多的活动一直都在打包进来。如果你想试一下，你需要做的就是安装 Sugar桌面 群组。如果你想帮助开发，请点击查看这个维基页面。

来自 laptop.org 的 Sugar 主桌面截图

改进的解码器支持

这个功能和 RPM Fusion 的到来衔接的很好，增加 GStreamer 的附加依赖的时候将直接指向受限解码，只要播放需要。如果使用者的 PackageKit 开启了 RPM Fusion ，它将自动寻找并安装你正在播放的媒体文件的合适的解码器。

Fedora 10 下安装解码器

更好的摄像头支持

Hans De Goede 一直在非常刻苦的开发以确保如果一个摄像头存在的 Linux 版驱动程序（对大多数摄像头来说，驱动程序的确存在），在 Fedora 下开箱即可使用。以前，摄像头并不能得到良好支持，不仅因为驱动程序并不包含在内核中，也因为他们使用 V4L2 ，然后很多应用程序纸盒 V4L1 兼容。现在，更多摄像头驱动程序被包含在教新的内核中，并且很多随机且机密的应用程序和驱动程序兼容。

其他！

这些仅仅是Fedora项目成员开发出来的功能，并且受益目标放在桌面用户。除了这些特性之外，还有一些常用的一系列最新和最高版本的软件，连同一些新的特性将让软件开发者和系统管理员工作更轻松。你可以点击这里查看完整的特性清单，你也可以点击这里下载预览版本。

期待 6 个月之后别的发行版本增加很多这样的特性。

原文见 10 Reasons You’ll Love Fedora 10

Around about this time 6 months ago, I wrote a post called 5 Reasons You’ll Love Fedora 9. This time around Fedora 10 is about to be released, and there are even more reasons you’ll love this release.

RPM Fusion

Fedora has long received a lot of criticism for not providing support for proprietary software and patented codecs out of the box, for all the reasons we’re so familiar with. In the past, to get access to these forbidden extras there were a number of third party repositories that you could access, some of which were incompatible with the main Fedora repositories as well as with each other.

Now, the teams behind the most common repositories have come together to create one new super repository: RPM Fusion. This is now the only repository you’ll need to get all multimedia codecs, hardware drivers etc.

The really cool thing about RPM Fusion is that thanks to Fedora’s open nature, they’re using exactly the same tools (e.g. build software) and processes to build their packages, so quality is guaranteed.

Better Printing

In Fedora 8 it became possible to plugin almost any printer and any missing drivers would be installed automatically and the printer configured, all without the user having to do anything.

In Fedora 10, the printer control application, system-config-printer, has been completely reworked and simplified. While some of the changes are small, it’s the little things that make all the difference, right? Some of the highlights include:

* not prompting for a root password until it’s needed;
* icons and status symbols for no paper, rejecting jobs etc;
* users are notified if a job has failed, and offered the option of running a diagnostic tool to find out why;
* dialogues have been simplified and de-cluttered

Initial Printer Dialouge

Initial Printer Dialouge

Better Remote Support

Enjoy using your computer to watch movies and listen to music? Want to use your remote to control these applications? Fedora now includes gnome-lirc-properties, which makes configuring and adding new remotes really easy, as well as allowing users to configure custom key press events for their remotes. All of the work done on this feature has been pushed upstream, not just to gnome-lirc-properties, but also to other popular applications to ensure they work correctly with the new configuration tools.
gnome-lirc-properties

gnome-lirc-properties

Better And Faster Startup

Fedora 10 sees a number of huge improvements to its boot processes. From the very beginning the user will notice that there is no Grub splash anymore, saving time in the boot up process as well as removing some screen flicker to give a more polished finish. For any user who wants to access the boot menu, simply hold down any key during startup and it will appear.

Following on from Grub, users will notice that RHGB is no more. It has been replaced with a brand new application, Plymouth, that takes advantage of kernel based modesetting, allowing for a flicker free boot process, smooth transitions to GDM, and much prettier graphics. It’s not all about aesthetics either, Plymouth doesn’t need a seperate X server to run, and so boot up speed has been improved by this change.

Beyond this, other work has gone on to reduce boot time, including enabling readahead by default, taking advantage of Upstart’s parallel boot system, and much more. All in all, many users should see their system’s start up much quicker.

Connection Sharing

A feature that is sure to be extremely popular at hackfests around the world, connection sharing allows a user to easily setup an ad-hoc wireless network that will then route all traffic through an alternative, primary connection such as a second wi-fi card, a 3G data connection, or a plain old ethernet connection.

This feature relies on work done in Fedora 9 to ensure that all 3G data cards work out of the box, as well as work to allow support of multiple network devices under NetworkManager.

The improvements to NetworkManager don’t just end here either, with many users reporting a significant speed bump when connecting to wireless networks. It now seems to be on a par with Airport in Mac OS X.

Check out this link to see a video of developer Dan Williams explaining how to use the new technology.

First Aid Kit

“Firstaidkit is an automated recovery tool that brings together common recovery processes and applies them to a system. The way that Firstaidkit handles the recovery processes is by means of plugins. The idea being that a plugin will focus on a particular issue in the system, like grub, init scripts or Xserver. Firstaidkit is designed to automatically fix problems while focusing on maintaining user data integrity. In other words, Firstaidkit will try its best to fix your system while giving you the possibility to revert the changes.”

Glitch Free Audio

“The PulseAudio sound server has been rewritten to use timer-based audio scheduling instead of the traditional interrupt-driven approach. This is the approach that is taken by other systems such as Apples CoreAudio and the Windows Vista audio subsystem and has a number of advantages, not the least in reduced power consumption, minimization of drop-outs and flexible adjustment of the latency to the needs of the application.”

Sugar Desktop

From the very beginning, Red Hat and Fedora have worked closely with the OLPC project. And now, in an effort to help gain wider attention and use of the innovative, child focused Sugard desktop environment (which children prefer, by all accounts), Fedora Project members have worked hard to package it along with some useful activities so that you can easily use it on your Fedora system.

It’s a great way to get involved with the development of this project, and more activities are being packaged all the time. If you’d like to try it out, all you have to do is install the sugar-desktop group. If you’d like to help out with development, check out this wiki page.
Sugar home screen, from laptop.org

Sugar home screen, from laptop.org

Improved Codec Support

This feature links very well with the arrival of RPM Fusion, and sees the addition of dependencies to GStreamer that will point to restricted codecs when they’re needed for playback. If the user has RPM Fusion enabled PackageKit will automatically find and install the appropriate codecs for the media you’re trying to play.
Fedora 10 codec installation

Fedora 10 codec installation

Better Webcam Support

Hans De Goede has been working extremely hard to make sure that if a driver that supports a webcam exists for Linux (and for most webcams, a driver does exist), it will work out of the box in Fedora. In the past this hasn’t always been the case, either because the drivers have been outside of the mainline kernel, or because they use V4L2, while many applications will only work with V4L1. Now, many more webcam drivers are in the upstream kernel, and huge numbers of random and esoteric applications will work with the drivers.

More!

These are only the features that have been developed by Fedora Project members, and are largely targeted at desktop users. Beyond these, there’s the usual array of the latest and greatest versions of upstream software, along with a significant number of features that are aimed at making the lives of developers and system administrators easier. You can check out the full feature list here, and you can download the preview release here.

Expect to see many of these features cropping up in other distributions in 6 months to a years time.

yum-fastestmirror 插件为 Yum 提供了衡量现有镜像速度，将其排序，首选最快服务器的功能。这样，yum 操作可以加快，也有助于减少网络拥塞。安装插件之外，不需要任何手动配置！

命令行安装： yum install yum-fastestmirror
图形化安装： 不在浏览列表中，需要搜索 yum-fastestmirror
安装后菜单位置：没有菜单选项，没有为 yum 或者 PackageKit 提供新的子命令，自动通过 /usr/bin/yum 和 /usr/bin/pkcon 生效
上游网站： http://yum.baseurl.org/

原文见 Productive Monday: yum-fastestmirror – Use fastest mirror for downloads

Fedora uses a worldwide system of mirror servers to distribute packages. When a Fedora system needs pacakge info, packages, or updates, it will by default request a mirror list from a Fedora server. This list is generated based on the repository and architecture requested as well as the IP address of the requesting system.

The yum-fastestmirror package provides a Yum plugin which measures the speed of available mirrors and sorts the list so that priority is given to the fastest mirrors; this can result in faster yum operations and reduced network congestion — and with no additional manual effort beyond installing the plugin.

Installing from the command line: yum install yum-fastestmirror
Installing using the graphical installer: Not available by browsing; search for yum-fastestmirror
Menu location after installation: Not on the menu; alters the operation of yum and PackageKit
Command: No direct command; access functionality via /usr/bin/yum and /usr/bin/pkcon
Upstream website: http://yum.baseurl.org/

过去 Fedora daily package 都是 Allen Chen 翻译，这一篇是暂代 ^_^