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Fedora 10

Release Notes

 

Fedora Documentation Project

Fedora Documentation Project

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Abstract
Important information about this release of Fedora
1. Welcome to Fedora 10
1.1. Welcome to Fedora
1.2. Fedora 10 Overview
1.3. Feedback
2. What is New for Installation and Live Images
2.1. Installation notes
2.2. Fedora Live Images
2.3. Hardware overview
2.4. Architecture specific notes
2.5. X Window system - graphics
2.6. Fedora 10 boot-time
3. Upfront About Multimedia
3.1. Multimedia
4. What is New for Desktop Users
4.1. Fedora Desktop
4.2. Networking
4.3. Printing
4.4. Package Notes
4.5. International language support
5. What is New for Gamers, Scientists, and Hobbyists
5.1. Games and entertainment
5.2. Amateur Radio
6. Features and Fixes for Power Users
6.1. Server tools
6.2. File systems
7. What is New for Developers
7.1. Runtime
7.2. Java
7.3. Tools
7.4. Linux kernel
7.5. Embedded Development
7.6. KDE 3 Development Platform and Libraries
8. What is New for System Adminstrators
8.1. Security
8.2. System Services
8.3. Virtualization
8.4. Web and Content Servers
8.5. Samba - Windows compatibility
8.6. Mail servers
8.7. Database servers
8.8. Backwards compatibility
8.9. Updated packages in Fedora 10
8.10. Package changes
9. Legal and Miscellaneous
9.1. Fedora Project
9.2. Colophon

1. Welcome to Fedora 10

1.1. Welcome to Fedora

Fedora is a Linux-based operating system that showcases the latest in free and open source software. Fedora is always free for anyone to use, modify, and distribute. It is built by people across the globe who work together as a community: the Fedora Project. The Fedora Project is open and anyone is welcome to join. The Fedora Project is out front for you, leading the advancement of free, open software and content.

Visit to view the latest release notes for Fedora, especially if you are upgrading.

If you are migrating from a release of Fedora older than the immediately previous one, you should refer to older Release Notes for additional information. You can find older Release Notes at http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/
You can help the Fedora Project community continue to improve Fedora if you file bug reports and enhancement requests. Refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugsAndFeatureRequests for more information about bug and feature reporting. Thank you for your participation.
To find out more general information about Fedora, refer to the following Web pages:

1.2. Fedora 10 Overview

As always, Fedora continues to develop (http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/RedHatContributions) and integrate the latest free and open source software (http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features.) The following sections provide a brief overview of major changes from the last release of Fedora. For more details about other features that are included in Fedora 10, refer to their individual wiki pages that detail feature goals and progress:
http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/10/FeatureList
Throughout the release cycle, there are interviews with the developers behind key features giving out the inside story:
http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Interviews
The following are major features for Fedora 10:
Some other features in this release include:
Features for Fedora 10 are tracked on the feature list page:
http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/10/FeatureList

1.3. Feedback

Thank you for taking the time to provide your comments, suggestions, and bug reports to the Fedora community; this helps improve the state of Fedora, Linux, and free software worldwide.

1.3.1. Providing Feedback on Fedora Software

To provide feedback on Fedora software or other system elements, please refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugsAndFeatureRequests. A list of commonly reported bugs and known issues for this release is available from http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Bugs/F10Common.

1.3.2. Common bugs

No software is without bugs. One of the features of free and open source software is the ability to report bugs, helping to fix or improve the software you use.
A list of common bugs is maintained for each release by the Fedora Project as a good place to start when you are having a problem that might be a bug in the software:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Bugs/Common

1.3.3. Providing Feedback on Release Notes

If you feel these release notes could be improved in any way, you can provide your feedback directly to the beat writers. There are several ways to provide feedback, in order of preference:

2. What is New for Installation and Live Images

2.1. Installation notes

To learn how to install Fedora, refer to to the Fedora Installation Guide

Refer to http://docs.fedoraproject.org/install-guide/ for full instructions on installing Fedora. If you encounter a problem or have a question during installation that is not covered in these release notes, refer to http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/FAQ and http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Bugs/Common.
Anaconda is the name of the Fedora installer. This section outlines issues related to Anaconda and installing Fedora 10.

2.1.1. Installation media

Fedora DVD ISO image is a large file.

If you intend to download the Fedora DVD ISO image, keep in mind that not all file downloading tools can accommodate files larger than 2 GiB in size.
The programs wget 1.9.1-16 and above, curl, and ncftpget do not have this limitation, and can successfully download files larger than 2 GiB. BitTorrent is another method for downloading large files. For information about obtaining and using the torrent file, refer to http://torrent.fedoraproject.org/.
Anaconda asks if it should verify the installation medium when Install or upgrade an existing system is selected during boot from an installation-only media.
For Fedora Live media, press any key during the initial boot countdown, to display a boot option menu. Select Verify and boot to perform the media test. Installation media can be used to verify Fedora Live media. Anaconda asks during the mediacheck if you want to check any other disc than the one Anaconda is running from. To test additional media, select eject to eject the inserted medium, then replace it with the medium you want to test instead.
Perform this test for any new installation or live medium.
The Fedora Project strongly recommends that you perform this test before reporting any installation-related bugs. Many of the bugs reported are actually due to improperly-burned CD or DVDs.
In rare cases, the testing procedure may report some usable discs as faulty. This result is often caused by disc writing software that does not include padding when creating discs from ISO files.

BitTorrent Automatically Verifies File Integrity.

If you use BitTorrent, any files you download are automatically validated. If your file completes downloading you do not need to check it. Once you burn your CD or DVD, however, you should still use mediacheck to test the integrity of the media.
Another reason for a failure during installation is faulty memory. To perform memory testing before you install Fedora, press any key to enter the boot menu, then select Memory Test. This option runs the Memtest86 standalone memory testing software in place of Anaconda. Memtest86 memory testing continues until you press the Esc key.
Fedora 10 supports graphical FTP and HTTP installations. However, the installer image must either fit in RAM or appear on local storage, such as the installation DVD or Live Media. Therefore, only systems with more than 192MiB of RAM or that boot from the installation DVD or Live Media can use the graphical installer. Systems with 192MiB RAM or less fall back to using the text-based installer automatically. If you prefer to use the text-based installer, type linux text at the boot: prompt.

2.1.2. Changes in Anaconda

  • NetworkManager for Networking -- Anaconda is now using NetworkManager for configuration of network interfaces during installation. The main network interface configuration screen in Anaconda has been removed. Users are only prompted for network configuration details if they are necessary during installation. The settings used during installation are then written to the system.
    For more information, refer to http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda/Features/NetConfigForNM.
  • When using netinst.iso to boot the installer, Anaconda defaults to using the Fedora mirrorlist URL as the installation source. The method selection screen no longer appears by default. If you do not wish to use the mirrorlist URL, either add repo=<your installation source> or add askmethod to the installer boot parameters. The askmethod option causes the selection screen to appear as it did in previous releases. To add boot parameters, press the Tab key in the initial boot screen and append any new parameters to the existing list. For more information, refer to the repo= and stage2= descriptions at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda/Options.

2.1.5. Kickstart HTTP issue

When using a Kickstart configuration file via HTTP, kickstart file retrieval may fail with an error that indicates the file could not be retrieved. Click the OK button several times without making modifications to override this error successfully. As a workaround, use one of the other supported methods to retrieve Kickstart configurations.

2.1.6. Firstboot requires creation of non-root user

The Firstboot application requires the creation of a non-root user for the system. This is to support gdm no longer allowing the root user to log in to the graphical desktop.
If a network authentication mechanism is chosen during installation, Firstboot does not require creating a non-root local user.

2.2. Fedora Live Images

The Fedora 10 release includes several Fedora Live ISO images in addition to the traditional installation images. These ISO images are bootable, and you can burn them to media and use them to try out Fedora. They also include a feature that allows you to install the Fedora Live image content to your hard drive for persistence and higher performance.

2.2.1. Available Images

For a complete list of current spins available, and instructions for using them, refer to:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/CustomSpins

2.2.2. Usage Information

To boot from the Fedora Live image, insert the media into your computer and restart. To log in and use the desktop environment, enter the username fedora. There is no password on this account. The GNOME-based Fedora Live images automatically login after one minute, so users have time to select a preferred language. After logging in, if you wish to install the contents of the Live image to your hard drive, click on the Install to Hard Drive icon on the desktop.

2.2.3. Checking Your Media

To check Fedora Live media, press any key during the initial boot countdown to display a boot option menu. Select Verify and boot to perform the media test.
Perform this test for any new Live medium.

2.2.4. Text Mode Installation

To perform a text mode installation of the Fedora Live image, use the liveinst command in the console.

2.2.5. USB Booting

Another way to use these Fedora Live images is to put them on a USB stick. To do this, use the liveusb-creator graphical interface. Use Add/Remove Software to search for and install liveusb-creator, or to install using yum: 
su -c 'yum install liveusb-creator'
Instead of the graphical tool, you can use the command line interface from the livecd-tools package. Then, run the livecd-iso-to-disk script: 
/usr/bin/livecd-iso-to-disk /path/to/live.iso /dev/sdb1
Replace /dev/sdb1 with the partition where you want to put the image.
This is not a destructive process; any data you currently have on your USB stick is preserved.
A Windows version of this tools is also available that allows users to try out or migrate to Fedora.

2.2.6. Persistent Home Directory

Support for keeping a persistent /home with the rest of the system stateless has been added for Fedora 10. This includes support for encrypting /home to protect your system if your USB stick is lost or stolen. To use this feature, download the Live image and run the following command: 
livecd-iso-to-disk --home-size-mb 512 /path/to/live.iso /dev/sdb1
Replace /dev/sdb1 with the partition where you want to put the image.
Replace 512 with the desired size in megabytes of the persistent /home. The livecd-iso-to-disk shell script is stored in the LiveOS directory at the top level of the CD image. The USB media must have sufficient free space for the Fedora Live image, plus the /home, plus any other data to be stored on the media. By default, this encrypts your data and prompts for a passphrase to use. If you want to have an unencrypted /home, then you can specify --unencrypted-home.
Note that later runs of livecd-iso-to-disk preserve the /home that is created on the USB stick, continuing to use it even if you change your Live image.

2.2.7. Live USB Persistence

Support for persistent changes with a Fedora Live image exists for Fedora 9 and later. The primary use case is booting from a Fedora Live image on a USB flash drive and storing changes to that same device. To do this, download the Fedora Live image and then run the following command: 
livecd-iso-to-disk --overlay-size-mb 512 /path/to/live.iso /dev/sdb1
Replace /dev/sdb1 with the partition where you want to put the image.
Replace 512 with the desired size in megabytes of the persistent data, or overlay. The livecd-iso-to-disk shell script is stored in the LiveOS directory at the top level of the CD image. The USB media must have sufficient free space for the Fedora Live image, plus the overlay, plus any other data to be stored on the media.

2.2.8. Booting a Fedora Live Image from USB on Intel-based Apple Hardware

Fedora 10 includes support for putting the Live image onto a USB image and then booting it on Intel processor-based Apple hardware. Unlike most x86 machines, this hardware requires reformatting the USB stick. To set up a USB stick, run this command: 
/usr/bin/livecd-iso-to-disk --mactel /path/to/live.iso /dev/sdb1
Replace /dev/sdb1 with the partition where you want to put the image.
Note that all of the other arguments for the livecd-iso-to-disk tool as described above can be used here as well.

2.2.9. Differences from a Regular Fedora Installation

The Fedora Live image is different from a normal Fedora installation as shown below.
  • Fedora Live images provide a subset of packages available in the regular DVD image. Both connect to the same repository that has all the packages.
  • The SSH daemon sshd is disabled by default. The daemon is disabled because the default username in the Fedora Live images does not have a password. However, installation to hard disk prompts for creating a new username and password.
  • Fedora Live image installations do not allow any package selection or upgrade capability since they copy the entire file system from the Live media to the hard disk. After the installation is complete, and your system has been rebooted, you can add and remove packages as desired with the Add/Remove Software tool, yum, or the other software management tools.
  • Fedora Live images do not work on i586 architecture.

2.3. Hardware overview

Users often request that Fedora provide a hardware compatibility list (HCL), which we have carefully avoided doing. Why? It is a difficult and thankless task that is best handled by the community at large than by one little Linux distribution.
However, because of our stance against closed-source hardware drivers and the problems of binary firmware for hardware, there is some additional information the Fedora Project wants to provide Fedora users.

2.3.1. Useful hardware information in these release notes

2.3.2. Hardware stance

From http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ForbiddenItems:
  • If it is proprietary, it cannot be included in Fedora.
  • If it is legally encumbered, it cannot be included in Fedora.
  • If it violates United States federal law, it cannot be included in Fedora.

2.3.3. What can you do?

  1. Get active. Tell your hardware vendors you only want free, open source drivers and firmware
  2. Use your buying power and only purchase from hardware vendors that support their hardware with open drivers and firmware. Refer to http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/hardware.html for more information.

2.4. Architecture specific notes

This section provides notes that are specific to the supported hardware architectures of Fedora.

2.4.1. RPM multiarch support on 64-bit platforms - x86_64 and ppc64

RPM supports parallel installation of multiple architectures of the same package. A default package listing such as rpm -qa might appear to include duplicate packages, since the architecture is not displayed. Instead, use the repoquery command, part of the yum-utils package, which displays architecture by default. To install yum-utils, run the following command: 
      su -c 'yum install yum-utils'
To list all packages with their architecture using rpm, run the following command: 
      rpm -qa --queryformat "%{name}-%{version}-%{release}.%{arch}\n"
This setting changes the default query to list the architecture. Add it to /etc/rpm/macros (for a system wide setting) or ~/.rpmmacros (for a per-user setting). 
      %_query_all_fmt %%{name}-%%{version}-%%{release}.%%{arch}

2.4.2. x86 specifics for Fedora

This section covers specific information about Fedora and the x86 hardware platform.
2.4.2.1. Hardware requirements for x86
In order to use specific features of Fedora 10 during or after installation, you may need to know details of other hardware components such as video and network cards.
2.4.2.1.1. Processor and memory
The following CPU specifications are stated in terms of Intel processors. Other processors, such as those from AMD, Cyrix, and VIA that are compatible with and equivalent to the following Intel processors, may also be used with Fedora.
Fedora 10 requires an Intel Pentium or better processor, and is optimized for Pentium 4 and later processors.
  • Recommended for text-mode: 200 MHz Pentium-class or better
  • Recommended for graphical: 400 MHz Pentium II or better
  • Minimum RAM for text-mode: 128MiB
  • Minimum RAM for graphical: 192MiB
  • Recommended RAM for graphical: 256MiB
2.4.2.1.2. Hard disk space
All of the packages from a DVD install can occupy over 9 GB of disk space. The final install size is determined by the installing spin and the packages selected during installation. Additional disk space is required during installation to support the installation environment. The additional disk space corresponds to the size of /Fedora/base/stage2.img plus the size of the files in /var/lib/rpm on the installed system.
In practical terms the additional space requirements may range from as little as 90 MiB for a minimal installation to as much as an additional 175 MiB for a larger installation.
Additional space is also required for any user data and at least 5% free space should be maintained for proper system operation.

2.4.3. x86_64 specifics for Fedora

This section covers specific information about Fedora and the x86_64 hardware platform.
2.4.3.1. Hardware requirements for x86_64
In order to use specific features of Fedora 10 during or after installation, you may need to know details of other hardware components such as video and network cards.
2.4.3.1.1. Memory requirements for x86_64
  • Minimum RAM for text-mode: 256MiB
  • Minimum RAM for graphical: 384MiB
  • Recommended RAM for graphical: 512MiB
2.4.3.1.2. Hard disk space requirements for x86_64
All of the packages from a DVD install can occupy over 9 GB of disk space. The final install size is determined by the installing spin and the packages selected during installation. Additional disk space is required during installation to support the installation environment. The additional disk space corresponds to the size of /Fedora/base/stage2.img plus the size of the files in /var/lib/rpm on the installed system.
In practical terms the additional space requirements may range from as little as 90 MiB for a minimal installation to as much as an additional 175 MiB for a larger installation.
Additional space is also required for any user data and at least 5% free space should be maintained for proper system operation.

2.4.4. PPC specifics for Fedora

This section covers specific information about Fedora and the PPC (Power PC) hardware platform.
2.4.4.1. Hardware requirements for PPC
2.4.4.1.1. Processor and memory
  • Minimum CPU: PowerPC G3 / POWER3
  • Fedora 10 supports the New World generation of Apple Power Macintosh, shipped from circa 1999 onward. Although Old World machines should work, they require a special bootloader which is not included in the Fedora distribution. Fedora has also been installed and tested on POWER5 and POWER6 machines.
  • Fedora 10 supports pSeries and Cell Broadband Engine machines.
  • Fedora 10 also supports the Sony PlayStation 3 and Genesi Pegasos II and Efika.
  • Fedora 10 includes new hardware support for the P.A. Semiconductor 'Electra' machines.
  • Fedora 10 also includes support for Terrasoft Solutions powerstation workstations.
  • Recommended for text-mode: 233 MHz G3 or better, 128MiB RAM.
  • Recommended for graphical: 400 MHz G3 or better, 256MiB RAM.
2.4.4.1.2. Hard disk space
The complete packages can occupy over 9 GiB of disk space. Final size is entirely determined by the installing spin and the packages selected during installation. Additional disk space is required during installation to support the installation environment. This additional disk space corresponds to the size of /Fedora/base/stage2.img (on Installation Disc 1) plus the size of the files in /var/lib/rpm on the installed system.
In practical terms, additional space requirements may range from as little as 90 MiB for a minimal installation to as much as an additional 175 MiB for a larger installation.
Additional space is also required for any user data, and at least 5% free space should be maintained for proper system operation.
2.4.4.2. 4 KiB pages on 64-bit machines
After a brief experiment with 64KiB pages in Fedora Core 6, the PowerPC64 kernel has now been switched back to 4KiB pages. The installer should reformat any swap partitions automatically during an upgrade.
2.4.4.3. The Apple keyboard
The Option key on Apple systems is equivalent to the Alt key on the PC. Where documentation and the installer refer to the Alt key, use the Option key. For some key combinations you may need to use the Option key in conjunction with the Fn key, such as Option+Fn+F3 to switch to virtual terminal tty3.
2.4.4.4. PPC installation notes
Fedora Installation Disc 1 is bootable on supported hardware. In addition, a bootable CD image appears in the images/ directory of this disc. These images behave differently according to your system hardware:
  • On most machines -- The bootloader automatically boots the appropriate 32-bit or 64-bit installer from the install disc.
  • 64-bit IBM pSeries (POWER4/POWER5/POWER6), current iSeries models -- After using OpenFirmware to boot the CD, the bootloader, yaboot, automatically boots the 64-bit installer.
  • IBM "Legacy" iSeries (POWER4) -- So-called "Legacy" iSeries models, which do not use OpenFirmware, require use of the boot image located in the images/iSeries directory of the installation tree.
  • Genesi Pegasos II / Efika 5200B -- The Fedora kernel supports both Pegasos and Efika without the need to use the "Device Tree Supplement" from powerdeveloper.org. However, the lack of full support for ISO9660 in the firmware means that booting via yaboot from the CD is not possible. Boot the 'netboot' image instead, either from the CD or over the network. Because of the size of the image, you must set the firmware's load-base variable to load files at a high address such as 32MiB instead of the default 4MiB: 
     
	  setenv load-base 0x2000000
    At the OpenFirmware prompt, enter the following command to boot the Efika update, if necessary, or the netboot image from the CD: 
    	  boot cd: /images/netboot/ppc32.img
    Or from the network: 
    	  boot eth ppc32.img
    You must also manually configure OpenFirmware to make the installed Fedora system bootable. To do this, set the boot-device and boot-file environment variables appropriately, to load yaboot from the /boot partition. For example, a default installation might require the following: 
    setenv boot-device hd:0 setenv boot-file /yaboot/yaboot setenv auto-boot? true
  • PA Semi Electra -- The Electra firmware does not yet support yaboot; to install on Electra, you can boot the ppc64.img netboot image. After the installation, you will need to manually configure the firmware to load the installed kernel and initrd from the /boot partition.
    Refer to the firmware documentation for further details.
  • Sony PlayStation 3 -- For installation on PlayStation 3, first update to firmware 1.60 or later. The "Other OS" boot loader must be installed into the flash, following the instructions at http://www.playstation.com/ps3-openplatform/manual.html. A suitable boot loader image can be found on Sony's "ADDON" CD, available from ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/geoff/cell/.
    Once the boot loader is installed, the PlayStation 3 should be able to boot from the Fedora install media. Please note that network installation works best with NFS, since that takes less memory than FTP or HTTP methods. Using the text option also reduces the amount of memory taken by the installer.
    For more info on Fedora and the PlayStation3 or Fedora on PowerPC in general, join the Fedora-PPC mailing list (http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/fedora-ppc) or the #fedora-ppc channel on FreeNode (http://freenode.net/.)
  • Network booting -- Combined images containing the installer kernel and ramdisk are located in the images/netboot/ directory of the installation tree. They are intended for network booting with TFTP, but can be used in many ways.
    The yaboot loader supports TFTP booting for IBM pSeries and Apple Macintosh. The Fedora Project encourages the use of yaboot over the netboot images.
2.4.4.4.1. PPC specific packages
  • The ppc64-utils package has been split out into individual packages reflecting upstream packaging (ps3pf-utils, powerpc-utils, powerpc-utils-papr.) Although the mkzimage command is no longer supplied, you can use the wrapper script from the kernel-bootwrapper package: 
    wrapper -i initrd-${KERN_VERSION}.img -o zImage-${KERN_VERSION}.img vmlinuz-${KERN_VERSION}

2.5. X Window system - graphics

This section contains information related to the X Window System implementation, X.Org, provided with Fedora.

2.5.1. X Configuration Changes

Fedora 10 uses the evdev input driver as standard mouse and keyboard driver for the X server. This driver works with HAL to provide a persistent per-device configuration that allows devices to be added or removed at runtime.

2.5.2. Third-party Video Drivers

Refer to the Xorg third-party drivers page for detailed guidelines on using third-party video drivers.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Xorg/3rdPartyVideoDrivers

2.6. Fedora 10 boot-time

Fedora 10 includes multiple boot-time updates, including changes that allow for faster booting and graphic booting changes.

2.6.1. GRUB

The GRUB menu is no longer shown at startup, except on dual-boot systems. To bring up the GRUB menu, hold the Shift key before the kernel is loaded. (Any other key works but the Shift key is the safest to use.)

2.6.2. Plymouth

Plymouth is the graphical boot up system debuting with Fedora 10.
  • Adding rhgb on the grub command line directs Plymouth to load the appropriate plugin for your hardware.
  • The graphical boot splash screen that comes with Plymouth requires kernel mode setting drivers to work best. There are not kernel modesetting drivers available for all hardware yet. To see the graphical splash before the drivers are generally available, add vga=0x318 to the kernel grub command line. This uses vesafb, which does not necessarily give the native resolution for a flat panel, and may cause flickering or other weird interactions with X. Without kernel modesetting drivers or vga=0x318, Plymouth uses a text-based plugin that is plain but functional.
  • Currently, only Radeon R500 and higher users get kernel modesetting by default. There is work in progress to provide modesetting for R100 and R200. Additionally, Intel kernel modesetting drivers are in development, but not turned on by default.
  • The kernel modesetting drivers are still in development and buggy. If you end up with nothing but a black screen during boot up, or a screen with nothing but random noise on it, then adding nomodeset to the kernel boot prompt in grub disables modesetting.
  • Plymouth hides boot messages. To view boot messages, press the Esc key during boot, or view them in /var/log/boot.log after boot up. Alternatively, remove rhgb from the kernel command line and plymouth displays all boot messages. There is also a status icon on the login screen to view boot warnings.
  • Fedora 10 systems that default to a graphical environment, or runlevel 5, now place the graphical display manager on virtual terminal 1 instead of virtual terminal 7. Text terminals (mingetty) start on virtual terminals 2 through 6, and virtual terminal 7 is not used. Systems that default to a text environment use the standard configuration of text terminals on virtual terminals 1 through 6. On those systems, the startx places the graphical display manager on the next available virtual terminal, usually 7, as in previous releases.

2.6.3. Faster booting

Fedora 10 gets a faster boot from improvements in process start-up.
  • Readahead is started in parallel with the boot process.
  • Udev may appear to be slower but in fact readahead reads all disk buffers needed for the boot process in the background and shortens the whole boot process. Creation of the readahead file list is done monthly and can be triggered manually by touching /.readahead_collect. The configuration file /etc/sysconfig/readahead can be edited to turn off readahead-collector and/or readahead.

2.6.4. Kernel modesetting

Kernel modesetting (KMS) can default to either enabled or disabled in the DRM driver and it can be enabled or disabled at boot-time.
  • Both Plymouth and the DDX drivers detect whether KMS is present and enabled. If it is present and enabled, Plymouth and DDX drivers will take advantage of them.
  • If KMS is not present or it is present but disabled then Plymouth will automatically fall back to the text splash and the DDX driver will automatically fall back to user-space modesetting.
  • Allows for faster user switching, seamless X server switching, and graphical panic messages.

3. Upfront About Multimedia

3.1. Multimedia

Fedora includes applications for assorted multimedia functions, including playback, recording, and editing. Additional packages are available through the Fedora Package Collection software repository. For additional information about multimedia in Fedora, refer to the Multimedia section of the Fedora Project website at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Multimedia.

3.1.1. Multimedia players

The default installation of Fedora includes Rhythmbox and Totem for media playback. Many other programs are available in the Fedora repositories, including the popular XMMS player and KDE's Amarok. Both GNOME and KDE have a selection of players that can be used with a variety of formats. Additional programs are available from third parties to handle other formats.
Totem, the default movie player for GNOME, now has the ability to switch playback back-ends without recompilation or switching packages. To install the Xine back-end, use Add/Remove Software to install totem-xine or run the following command: 
      su -c 'yum install totem-xine'
To run Totem with the Xine back-end once: 
      su -c 'totem-backend -b xine totem'
To change the default back-end to xine for the entire system: 
      su -c 'totem-backend -b xine'
While using the Xine back-end, it is possible to temporarily use the GStreamer back-end. To use the GStreamer back-end, run the following command: 
      su -c 'totem-backend -b gstreamer'

3.1.2. Ogg and Xiph.Org foundation formats

Fedora includes complete support for the Ogg media container format and the Vorbis audio, Theora video, Speex audio, and FLAC lossless audio formats. These freely-distributable formats are not encumbered by patent or license restrictions. They provide powerful and flexible alternatives to more popular, restricted formats. The Fedora Project encourages the use of open source formats in place of restricted ones. For more information on these formats and how to use them, refer to:

3.1.3. MP3, DVD, and other excluded multimedia

Fedora cannot include support for MP3 or DVD video playback or recording. The MP3 formats are patented, and the patent holders have not provided the necessary licenses. DVD video formats are patented and equipped with an encryption scheme. The patent holders have not provided the necessary licenses, and the code needed to decrypt CSS-encrypted discs may violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a copyright law of the United States. Fedora also excludes other multimedia software due to patent, copyright, or license restrictions, including Adobe's Flash Player and Real Media's Real Player. For more on this subject, please refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ForbiddenItems.
While other MP3 options may be available for Fedora, Fluendo now offers an MP3 plugin for GStreamer that has the related patents licensed for end users. This plugin enables MP3 support in applications that use the GStreamer framework as a backend. We cannot distribute this plugin in Fedora for licensing reasons, but it offers a new solution for an old problem. For more information refer to these pages:

3.1.4. CD and DVD authoring and burning

Default installations of Fedora and the Desktop Live spin include a built-in feature for CD and DVD burning. Fedora includes a variety of other tools for easily creating and burning CDs and DVDs. Fedora includes graphical programs such as Brasero, GnomeBaker, and K3b. Console programs including wodim, readom, and genisoimage. Graphical programs are found under Applications → Sound & Video.

3.1.5. Screencasts

You can use Fedora to create and play back screencasts, which are recorded desktop sessions, using open technologies. Fedora includes istanbul, which creates screencasts using the Theora video format, and byzanz, which creates screencasts as animated GIF files. You can play back these videos using one of several players included in Fedora. This is the preferred way to submit screencasts to the Fedora Project for either contributors or end-users. For more comprehensive instructions, refer to the screencasting page:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ScreenCasting

3.1.6. Extended support through plugins

Most of the media players in Fedora support the use of plugins to add support for additional media formats and sound output systems. Some use powerful backends such as the gstreamer package to handle media format support and sound output. Fedora offers plugin packages for these backends and for individual applications, and third parties may offer additional plugins to add even greater capabilities.

3.1.7. Infrared remote support

A new graphical frontend to LIRC is provided by gnome-lirc-properties, making it easy to connect and configure infrared remote controls. LIRC is routinely used in multimedia applications to implement support for infrared remote controls, and using it in Rhythmbox and Totem should be as easy as plugging the remote receiver into your computer, then selecting Auto-detect in the Infrared Remote Control preferences.
If you had a previous setup with LIRC, it is recommended you regenerate the configuration files with gnome-lirc-properties. This is required so that a majority of applications work with your new setup.
Refer to the feature page for more information:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/BetterLIRCSupport

3.1.8. Glitch-free PulseAudio

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 Apple's CoreAudio and the Windows Vista audio subsystem. The timer-based audio scheduling has a number of advantages, including reduced power consumption, minimization of drop-outs, and flexible adjustment of the latency for the needs of the application.

3.1.9. SELinux denials in Totem and other GStreamer applications

Users may experience SELinux denials while using Totem or other GStreamer applications to play multimedia content. The SELinux Troubleshooting tool may produce output similar to the following message: 
SELinux is preventing gst-install-plu from making the program stack executable.
This situation may occur when older versions of the Fluendo MP3 codecs are installed. To solve the issue, install the latest version of the Fluendo MP3 decoder plugin, which does not require an executable stack.

4. What is New for Desktop Users

4.1. Fedora Desktop

This section details changes that affect Fedora graphical desktop users.

4.1.1. Better webcam support

Fedora 10 comes with improved support for webcams.
This support follows on the improvements to the UVC driver first introduced in Fedora 9 that added support for any webcam with a Windows Vista compliant logo. Fedora 10 features a new V4L2 version of gspca, a USB webcam driver framework with support for many different USB webcam bridges and sensors.
Userspace support for webcams has also been improved by adding libv4l and updating all webcam using applications to use libv4l. This support makes these applications understand the manufacturer specific and custom video formats emitted by many webcams, especially by many of the webcams supported by gspca.
For a list of all webcams and applications where Fedora 10's new webcam support has been tested refer to https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/BetterWebcamSupport. For a list of all webcams supported by the original version of gspca refer to the original gspca website.
http://mxhaard.free.fr/spca5xx.html
The V4L2 version of gspca in Fedora 10 supports all these webcams and more.

4.1.2. Plymouth graphical boot

For information about the new graphical boot mode read Section 2.6, “Fedora 10 boot-time”.

4.1.3. Infrared remote support

New to Fedora 10 is the gnome-lirc-properties package with a new graphical front-end for configuring LIRC to use with applications supporting the protocol. For more information refer to Section 4.1.3, “Infrared remote support”.
LIRC is routinely used in multimedia applications to implement support for infrared remote controls, and using it in Rhythmbox and Totem should be as easy as plugging the remote receiver into your computer, then selecting Auto-detect in the Infrared Remote Control preferences. Refer to the feature page for more information:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/BetterLIRCSupport

4.1.4. Bluetooth BlueZ 4.0

The Bluetooth support stack, called BlueZ (http://www.bluez.org,) has been updated to version 4.x in Fedora 10. Most changes in this version are useful for application developers, but users can notice the new, easier to use wizard for setting up keyboards, mice, and other supported Bluetooth devices. There is also the ability to turn-off the Bluetooth adapter on most brands of laptops through the preferences. This new version will also allow better support for audio devices in the future, through PulseAudio.
Note that the default Bluetooth kernel driver was also switched to btusb, which cuts down power consumption compared to its predecessor hci_usb.

4.1.5. GNOME

This release features GNOME 2.24. For more details refer to:
http://www.gnome.org/start/2.24/
4.1.5.1. Empathy instant messenger
Empathy instant messenger is available in this release. It has support for multiple protocols including IRC, XMPP (Jabber), Yahoo, MSN, and others via plugins. It also supports video and voice in the XMPP protocol, with support for other protocols under active development. Empathy uses the telepathy framework that has a number of additional plugins:
  • telepathy-gabble - Jabber/XMPP plugin
  • telepathy-idle - IRC plugin
  • telepathy-butterfly - MSN plugin
  • telepathy-sofiasip - SIP plugin
  • telepathy-haze - Libpurple (Pidgin) library connection manager provides support for other protocols such as Yahoo
Pidgin continues to be available in the Fedora software repository and is retained as the default for users upgrading from previous releases of Fedora.
4.1.5.2. GNOME Display Manager
The GNOME Display Manager (gdm) has been updated to the latest upstream code, which is a complete rewrite driven by Fedora developers. PolicyKit can be used to control shutdown and reboot. The configuration tool gdmsetup is missing currently, and is set to be replaced. For configuration changes, refer to:
http://live.gnome.org/GDM/2.22/Configuration
4.1.5.3. Codec installation helper
The GStreamer codec installation helper codeina was replaced by a PackageKit-based solution for Fedora 10. When Totem, Rhythmbox, or another GStreamer application require a plugin to read a film or song, a PackageKit dialog appears, allowing the user to search for the necessary package in the configured repositories.
More details are available on the feature page:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/GStreamer_dependencies_in_RPM

4.1.6. KDE

This release features KDE 4.1.2. As the kdevelop packages is not part of KDE 4.1 and kdewebdev is only partially available (no Quanta) in KDE 4.1, the KDE 3.5.10 versions of those packages are shipped. A kdegames3 package containing the games not yet ported to KDE 4 is also available.
http://kde.org/announcements/announce-4.1.2.php
KDE 4.1 is the latest release of KDE 4 and provides several new features, many usability improvements, and bugfixes over KDE 4.0, the first KDE 4 release series. This new release includes a folder view desktop applet (Plasmoid), improvements to Dolphin and Konqueror and many new and improved applications. KDE 4.1.2 is a bugfix release from the KDE 4.1 release series.
Fedora 10 does not include the legacy KDE 3 Desktop. It does include a compatibility KDE 3 Development Platform, which can be used to build and run KDE 3 applications within KDE 4 or any other desktop environment. Refer to the Section 7.6, “KDE 3 Development Platform and Libraries” section for more details about what is included.
Fedora 10 includes a snapshot of knetworkmanager, which works with the prerelease of NetworkManager 0.7 in Fedora 10. As it was not considered ready for production use, the KDE Live images use nm-applet from NetworkManager-gnome instead (as in Fedora 8 and 9). The gnome-keyring-daemon facility saves passwords for these encryption technologies. If you wish to try knetworkmanager, it can be installed from the repository.
As the native KWin window manager now optionally supports compositing and desktop effects, the KDE Live images no longer include Compiz/Beryl (since Fedora 9). The KWin compositing/effects mode is disabled by default, but can be enabled in systemsettings. Compiz (with KDE 4 integration) is available from the repository by installing the compiz-kde package.
4.1.6.1. Enhancements
  • Plasma is more mature and panel configuration has been extended. The new panel controller makes it easy to customize your panel providing direct visual feedback. The Plasma folderview applet provides a view of a directory and thus allows you to store files on the desktop. It is replaces other well known icons on the desktop.
4.1.6.2. Package and application changes
  • Fedora 10 ships kdepim 4.1.2 instead of 3.5.x.
  • libkipi, libkexiv2, and libkdcraw have been obsoleted by the KDE 4 versions in the kdegraphics package. Accordingly, kipi-plugins, digikam, and kphotoalbum have been updated to KDE 4 versions.
  • kpackagekit, a KDE frontend to PackageKit, is now available. (It may be made available as an update for Fedora 9 at a later time.)
In addition, the following changes made since the Fedora 9 release, which have been backported to Fedora 9 updates, are also part of Fedora 10:
  • KDE has been upgraded from version 4.0.3 to 4.1.2.
  • qt and PyQt4 have been upgraded from 4.3 to 4.4.
  • kdewebdev, kdevelop, kdegames3, and the KDE 3 backwards-compatibility libraries have been upgraded from KDE 3.5.9 to 3.5.10.
  • QtWebKit is now part of the qt package. The stand alone WebKit-qt package has been obsoleted.
  • The new package qgtkstyle contains a Qt 4 style using GTK+ for drawing, providing better integration of Qt 4 and KDE 4 applications into GNOME.
  • The phonon library, which was part of kdelibs in Fedora 9, is now a separate package. An optional GStreamer backend (phonon-backend-gstreamer) is now available, but the xine-lib backend, which is now packaged as phonon-backend-xine, is still the recommended default backend and is now required by the phonon package.
  • The kdegames3 package no longer provides development support for the KDE 3 version of libkdegames because nothing in Fedora outside of kdegames3 itself requires that library any longer.
  • The package okteta is now part of kdeutils.
  • The package dragonplayer is now part of kdemultimedia.
  • The program kaider has been renamed to Lokalize and is now part of kdesdk.
  • The package ksirk has been ported to KDE 4 and is now part of kdegames.
  • The package extragear-plasma has been renamed to kdeplasma-addons.

4.1.7. LXDE

This release of Fedora comes with an additional desktop environment named LXDE. LXDE is a new project that provides a lightweight, fast desktop environment designed to be usable and slim enough to keep resource usage low. To install the LXDE environment, use the Add/Remove Software tool or run: 
su -c 'yum groupinstall LXDE'
If you only need the base components of LXDE, install the lxde-common package: 
su -c 'yum install lxde-common'

4.1.8. Sugar Desktop

The Sugar Desktop originated with the OLPC initiative. It allows for Fedora users and developers to do the following.
  • Build upon the collaborative environment.
  • Test out Sugar on an existing Fedora system by selecting the Sugar environment from their display manager.
  • Developers interested in working on the Sugar interface or writing activities can have a development platform without needing an XO laptop.

4.1.9. Web browsers

4.1.9.1. Enabling Flash plugin
Fedora includes swfdec and gnash, which are free and open source implementations of Flash. We encourage you to try either of them before seeking out Adobe's proprietary Flash Player plugin software.
For more information on Flash in Fedora, including installation tips and known problems, visit http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Flash.
4.1.9.2. Disabling PC speaker
PC speaker is enabled by default in Fedora. If you do not prefer this, there are two ways to circumvent the sounds:
  • Reduce its volume to a acceptable level or completely mute the PC speaker in alsamixer with the setting for PC Speak.
  • Disable the PC speaker system wide by running the following commands in a console: 
    	    su -c 'modprobe -r pcspkr' su -c 'echo "install pcspkr :" >> /etc/modprobe.conf'

4.2. Networking

This section contains information about networking changes in Fedora 10.

4.2.1. Wireless Connection Sharing

The NetworkManager applet nm-applet has been updated to provide better connection sharing through the Create New Wireless Network menu item.
Connection sharing makes it possible to easily set up an ad-hoc WiFi network on a machine with a network connection and a spare wireless card. If the machine has a primary network connection (wired, 3G, second wireless card), routing is set up so that devices connected to the ad-hoc WiFi network can share the connection to the outside network.
When you create a new WiFi network, you have to specify the name of the network and what kind of wireless security to use. NetworkManager then sets up the wireless card to work as an ad-hoc WiFi node that others can join. The routing will be set up between the new network and the primary network connection, and DHCP is used for assigning IP addresses on the new shared WiFi network. DNS queries are also forwarded to upstream nameservers transparently.

4.3. Printing

The print manager (system-config-printer or SystemAdministrationPrinting) user interface has been overhauled to look friendlier and be more in line with modern desktop applications. The system-config-printer application no longer needs to be run as the root user.
Other changes include:
  • The configuration tool window has been made easier to use. Double-clicking on a printer icon opens a properties dialog window. This replaces the old behavior of a list of printer names on the left and properties for the selected printer on the right.
  • The CUPS authentication dialog selects the appropriate user-name and allows it to be altered mid-operation.
  • When the configuration tool is running, the list of printers is updated dynamically.
  • All jobs queued for a specific printer can be seen by right-clicking on a printer icon and selecting View Print Queue. To see jobs queued on several printers, select the desired printers first before right-clicking. To see all jobs, right-click with no printers selected.
  • The job monitoring tool displays a message when a job has failed. The message indicates whether the printer has been stopped as a result. A Diagnose button starts the trouble-shooter.
  • The job monitoring tool now performs proxy authentication. A submitted job that requires authentication on the CUPS backend now displays an authentication dialog so the job can proceed.
  • The print status dialog (for GTK+) gives more feedback about the status of printers. For example, printers that are out of paper show a small warning emblem on their icon. Paused printers also show an emblem, and printers that are rejecting jobs are shown as grayed-out to signify they are not available.

4.4. Package Notes

The following sections contain information regarding software packages that have undergone significant changes for Fedora 10. For easier access, they are generally organized using the same groups that are shown in the installation system.

4.4.1. GIMP

Fedora 10 includes version 2.6 of the GNU Image Manipulation Program.
This new version is designed to be backwards compatible, so existing third party plug-ins and scripts should continue to work, with a minor caveat. The included Script-Fu Scheme interpreter no longer accepts variable definitions without an initial value, which is not compliant to the language standard. Scripts included in Fedora packages should not have this problem, but if you use scripts from other sources, please refer to the GIMP release notes for more details and how you can fix scripts that have this problem:
http://www.gimp.org/release-notes/gimp-2.6.html
Additionally, the gimptool script that is used to build and install third party plug-ins and scripts has been moved from the gimp package to the gimp-devel package. Install this package if you want to use gimptool.

4.5. International language support

This section includes information on language support under Fedora.

4.5.1. Language coverage

Fedora features a variety of software that is translated in many languages. For a list of languages refer to the translation statistics for the Anaconda module, which is one of the core software applications in Fedora.
4.5.1.1. Language support installation
To install langpacks and additional language support from the Languages group, run this command: 
	su -c 'yum groupinstall <language>-support'
In the command above, <language> is the actual language name, such as assamese, bengali, chinese, and so on.
SCIM users upgrading from earlier releases of Fedora are strongly urged to install scim-bridge-gtk, which works well with third-party C++ applications linked against older versions of libstdc++.
4.5.1.2. Transifex
Transifex is Fedora's online tool to facilitate contributing translations to projects hosted on remote and disparate version control systems. Many of the core packages use Transifex to receive translations from numerous contributors.
http://transifex.org/
Through a combination of new web tools (http://translate.fedoraproject.org), community growth, and better processes, translators can contribute directly to any upstream project through one translator-oriented web interface. Developers of projects with no existing translation community can easily reach out to Fedora's established community for translations. In turn, translators can reach out to numerous projects related to Fedora to easily contribute translations.
https://translate.fedoraproject.org/submit

4.5.2. Fonts

Fonts for most languages are installed by default on the desktop to give good default language coverage.
4.5.2.1. Default language for Han Unification
When not using an Asian locale in GTK-based applications, Chinese characters (that is, Chinese Hanzi, Japanese Kanji, or Korean Hanja) may render with a mixture of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean fonts depending on the text. This happens when Pango does not have sufficient context to know which language is being used. The current default font configuration seems to prefer Chinese fonts. If you normally want to use Japanese or Korean say, you can tell Pango to use it by default by setting the PANGO_LANGUAGE environment variable. For example ... 
	export PANGO_LANGUAGE=ja
... tells Pango rendering to assume Japanese text when it has no other indications.
4.5.2.2. Japanese
The fonts-japanese package has been renamed to japanese-bitmap-fonts.
4.5.2.3. Khmer
Khmer OS Fonts khmeros-fonts have been added to Fedora for Khmer coverage in this release.
4.5.2.4. Korean
The un-core-fonts packages replaces baekmuk-ttf-fonts as the new Hangul default fonts.
4.5.2.5. Complete list of changes
All fonts changes are listed on their dedicated page:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fonts_inclusion_history#F10

Fonts in Fedora Linux

The Fonts SIG (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fonts_SIG) takes loving care of Fedora Linux fonts (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fonts). Please join this special interest group if you are interested in creating, improving, packaging, or just suggesting a font. Any help is appreciated.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Joining_the_Fonts_SIG
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fonts_and_text-related_creative_tasks
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fonts_and_text_quality_assurance
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fonts_packaging
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Font_wishlist

4.5.3. Input Methods

There is a new yum group called input-methods and input methods for many languages are now installed by default. This allows turning on the default input method system and immediately having the standard input methods for most languages available. It also brings normal installs in line with Fedora Live.
4.5.3.1. im-chooser and imsettings
It is now possible to start and stop the use of input methods during runtime thanks to the imsettings framework. The GTK_IM_MODULE environment variable is no longer needed by default but can still be used to override the imsettings.
Input methods only start by default on desktops running in an Asian locale. The current locale list is: as, bn, gu, hi, ja, kn, ko, ml, mr, ne, or, pa, si, ta, te, th, ur, vi, zh. Use im-chooser via System+Preferences+Personal+Input method to enable or disable input method usage on your desktop.
4.5.3.2. New ibus input method system
Fedora 10 includes ibus, a new input method system that has been developed to overcome some of the limitations of scim. It may become the default input method system in Fedora 11.
http://code.google.com/p/ibus
It already provides a number of input method engines and immodules:
  • ibus-anthy (Japanese)
  • ibus-chewing (Traditional Chinese)
  • ibus-gtk (GTK immodule)
  • ibus-hangul (Korean)
  • ibus-m17n (Indic and many other languages)
  • ibus-pinyin (Simplified Chinese)
  • ibus-qt (Qt immodule)
  • ibus-table (Chinese, etc)
We encourage people to install ibus, test it for their language, and report any problems.

4.5.4. Indic onscreen keyboard

Fedora 10 includes iok, an onscreen virtual keyboard for Indian languages, which allows input using Inscript keymap layouts and other 1:1 key mappings. For more information refer to the homepage:
https://fedorahosted.org/iok

4.5.5. Indic collation support

Fedora 10 includes sorting support for Indic languages. This support fixes listing and order of menus in these languages, representing them in sorted order and making it easy to find desired elements.
These languages are covered by this support:
  • Gujarati
  • Hindi
  • Kannada
  • Kashmiri
  • Konkani
  • Maithili
  • Marathi
  • Nepali
  • Punjabi
  • Sindhi
  • Telugu

5. What is New for Gamers, Scientists, and Hobbyists

5.1. Games and entertainment

Fedora provides a selection of games that cover a variety of genres. Users can install a small package of games for GNOME (gnome-games) and KDE (kdegames). There are also many additional games that span every major genre available in the repositories.
The Fedora Project website features a section dedicated to games that details many of the available games, including overviews and installation instructions. For more information, refer to:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Games
For a list of other games that are available for installation, select Applications → Add/Remove Software, or via the command line: 
    yum groupinfo "Games and Entertainment"
For help using yum to install the assorted game packages, refer to the guide available at:
http://docs.fedoraproject.org/yum/

5.2. Amateur Radio

Fedora 10 includes a number of applications and libraries that are of interest to amateur radio operators and electronic hobbyists. Many of these applications are included in the Fedora Electronic Lab spin. Fedora also includes a number of VLSI and IC design tools.
  • Sound card mode applications include fldigi, gpsk31, gmfsk, lpsk31, xfhell, and xpsk31.
  • The gnuradio package is a software defined radio framework.
  • The aprsd and xastir packages provide APRS capabilities.
  • The gEDA suite consists of an integrated set of schematics applications for capture, net listing, circuit simulation, and PCB layout.
  • The gspiceui, ngspice, and gnucap packages provide circuit simulation capabilities.
There are a variety of other tools for learning Morse code, orbit prediction and tracking satellites, producing schematic diagrams and PCB artwork, amateur radio logbook keeping, and other applications of interest to amateur radio and electronics enthusiasts.
For a complete list of all the amateur radio and electronics related packages see Applications for Amateur Radio on the wiki (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Applications_for_Amateur_Radio).
In this release, there are a number of changes.
The geda (gnu Electronic Design Assistant) suite of tools has been updated to version 20080929. This is a bugfix release and there are no major changes visible to the user. pcb has been updated to 0.20081128. gtkwave which is used by the gEDA suite has also been updated to 3.1.13. These are also bugfix releases.
gerbv 2.1.0 is also used as part of the gEDA suite. It includes a number of new features:
  • Added ability to select objects, with the option of deleting or viewing basic properties of the objects
  • Split off the core functionality of gerbv into a library (libgerbv) to allow developers to quickly write software using Gerber parsing/editing/exporting/rendering functionality. Full Doxygen documentation has also been created to facilitate developers wishing to use libgerbv.
  • Added export to RS274X and Excellon functionality, allowing gerbv to translate files between formats. The RS274X export function can also be used to "clean" troublesome files to a more compatible format.
  • Added the ability to override the Excellon format "guessing", allowing non-standard drill files to be correctly rendered
  • Greatly expanded the command line functionality, including the ability to panelize boards into a single one through the command line
  • Added "Aperture usage" tab to Gerber reports. This allows the user to see how often each aperture is used in all visible layers of his project.
gnuradio has been update to version 3.1.2. There are a large number of bugfixes as well as many "fine tuning" changes to the gui. See the gnuradio release log at http://gnuradio.org/trac/wiki/Release3.1Branch for complete details.
iverilog is used for circuit simulation and Fedora 10 includes version 0.9.20080905. This is primarily a bugfix release.
Fedora 10 includes version 3.4.30 of xcircuit, a schematic capture and netlist generation tool. This is a minor upgrade from Fedora 9 and upgrading should pose no problems for users.
soundmodem has been temporarily removed from the distribution. It is expected to be back before the release of Fedora 11.

6. Features and Fixes for Power Users

6.1. Server tools

This section highlights changes and additions to the various GUI server and system configuration tools in Fedora 10.

6.1.1. First Aid Kit

Firstaidkit is a fully automated recovery application that makes subsystem recovery easier for technical and non-technical users. Firstaidkit is designed to automatically fix problems while focusing on maintaining user data integrity. It is available in rescue mode, on the Fedora Live CD, and on running systems.

6.2. File systems

6.2.1. eCryptfs

Fedora 10 builds on the encrypted file system support that debuted in Fedora 9, and fixes a number of problems that could have resulted in data corruption.

6.2.2. EXT4

Fedora 9 featured a preview of ext4 support. Fedora 10 brings a fully ext4-compatible e2fsprogs. In addition, the Anaconda partition screen has an ext4 file system option available if you start the installer with the ext4 option at the boot prompt. Fedora 10 also includes delayed allocation for ext4. However, ext4 in Fedora 10 does not currently support file systems larger than 16 TiB.

6.2.3. XFS

XFS is now a supported file system and an option within the partitioning screen of Anaconda.

7. What is New for Developers

7.1. Runtime

7.1.1. Python NSS bindings

Python bindings for NSS/NSPR allow Python programs to utilize the NSS cryptographic libraries for SSL/TLS and PKI certificate management. The python-nss package provides a Python binding to the NSS and NSPR support libraries.
Network Security Services (NSS) is a set of libraries supporting security-enabled client and server applications. Applications built with NSS can support SSL v2 and v3, TLS, PKCS #5, PKCS #7, PKCS #11, PKCS #12, S/MIME, X.509 v3 certificates and other security standards. NSS has received FIPS 140 validation from NIST.

7.2. Java

7.2.1. Best of breed free software Java implementation

Fedora includes multiple best of breed free software Java(TM) implementations, obtained through active adoption of innovative technology integrations produced by Fedora and others within upstream projects. The implementations integrated into Fedora are based on OpenJDK (http://openjdk.java.net/) and the IcedTea GNU/Linux distribution integration project (http://icedtea.classpath.org/), or based on alternatives such as the GNU Compiler for Java (GCJ - http://gcc.gnu.org/java and the GNU Classpath core class libraries (http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/). All Fedora innovations are pushed upstream to get the widest possible integration of the technologies in general Java implementations.
The implementation of OpenJDK 6 included in Fedora 10 uses the HotSpot virtual machine runtime compiler on x86, x86_64, and SPARC. On PowerPC (PPC) it uses the zero interpreter, which is slower. On all architectures an alternative implementation based on GCJ and GNU Classpath is included that includes an ahead-of-time compiler to produce native binaries.
Fedora binaries for selected architectures (currently only x86 and x86_64 based on OpenJDK) are tested against the Java Compatibility Kit (JCK) by Red Hat to guarantee 100% compatibility with the Java Specification (JDK 1.6 at this time).

7.2.2. Handling Java Applets and web start applications

In Fedora 10 gcjwebplugin has been replaced by IcedTeaPlugin, which runs untrusted applets safely in a Web browser and works on any architecture. You can see which Applet Plugin is installed by typing about:plugins in Firefox. The new plugin adds support for the JavaScript bridge (LiveConnect) that was missing from earlier versions. For more details on the bytecode-to-JavaScript bridge (LiveConnect), refer to the bug report:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=304021
Feedback on the security policy is appreciated. If you suspect the security policy may be too restrictive to enable restricted applets, follow this procedure:
  • Run the firefox -g command in a terminal window to see what is being restricted.
  • Then grant the restricted permission in the /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0-openjdk-1.6.0.0/jre/lib/security/java.policy file.
  • File a bug report, so your exception can be included in the packaged security policy. Packaging these exceptions allows system owners to avoid having to hack the policy file in the future.
Experimental Web Start (javaws) support via NetX has been added to the IcedTea repository. When a Java Network Launching Protocol (.jnlp) file is embedded on a web page you can open it with the IcedTea Web Start (/usr/bin/javaws). For more information on NetX, refer to:
http://jnlp.sourceforge.net/

7.2.3. New integration with other Fedora technologies

Through the IcedTea project, OpenJDK has been integrated with several new technologies that are also part of Fedora 10.
7.2.3.1. VisualVM integration through the NetBeans framework
VisualVM (jvisualvm) provides a graphical overview of any local or remotely running Java application, letting you monitor all running threads, classes, and objects allocated by the application by taking thread dumps, heap dumps, and other lightweight profiling tools.
7.2.3.2. PulseAudio integration for javax.sound
PulseAudio integrations provides all the benefits of PulseAudio to any java application using the javax.sound package.
7.2.3.3. Integration of Mozilla Rhino - JavaScript
Rhino is a pure-Java JavaScript implementation from Mozilla providing an easy mixing of Java and JavaScript for developers using the javax.script package.
7.2.3.4. Other improvements
Also in Fedora 10 Java cryptography (javax.crypto) is fully supported without any (regional) restrictions.

7.2.4. Fedora and JPackage

Fedora 10 includes many packages derived from the JPackage Project.
http://jpackage.org
Some of these packages are modified in Fedora to remove proprietary software dependencies, and to make use of GCJ's ahead-of-time compilation feature. Use the Fedora repositories to update these packages, or use the JPackage repository for packages not provided by Fedora. Refer to the JPackage website for more information about the project and the software it provides.

Mixing Packages from Fedora and JPackage

Research package compatibility before you install software from both the Fedora and JPackage repositories on the same system. Incompatible packages may cause complex issues.

7.2.5. Note on upgrading from Fedora 8 - OpenJDK Replaces IcedTea

Since Fedora 9 the packages called java-1.7.0-icedtea* in Fedora 8 have been renamed to java-1.6.0-openjdk*. The Fedora 8 IcedTea packages tracked the unstable OpenJDK 7 branch, whereas the java-1.6.0-openjdk* packages track the stable OpenJDK 6 branch. All the upstream IcedTea sources are included in the java-1.6.0-openjdk SRPM.
If you are upgrading from a system based on Fedora 8 that still has IcedTea installed, the package changeover does not happen automatically. The packages related to IcedTea based on OpenJDK 7 must first be erased, then the new OpenJDK 6 packages installed. 
      su -c 'yum erase java-1.7.0-icedtea{,-plugin}' su -c 'yum install java-1.6.0-openjdk{,-plugin}'
Upgrading from Fedora 9 does not require special action.

7.3. Tools

This section covers various development tools and features.

7.3.1. Eclipse

This release of Fedora includes Fedora Eclipse, based on the Eclipse SDK version 3.4. The 3.4 series of releases has a "What's New in 3.4" page:
http://help.eclipse.org/stable/index.jsp?topic=/org.eclipse.platform.doc.user/whatsNew/platform_whatsnew.html
Release notes specific to 3.4 are also available.
http://www.eclipse.org/eclipse/development/readme_eclipse_3.4.html
Some of the notable features in 3.4 include a number of improvements in handling bookmarks, easier ways to find and install plug-ins, and additional help with refactoring.
7.3.1.1. Additional plugins
This release of Fedora includes plugins for C/C++ (eclipse-cdt), RPM specfile editing (eclipse-rpm-editor), PHP (eclipse-phpeclipse), Subversion (eclipse-subclipse), SELinux (eclipse-slide) and (eclipse-setools), regular expression testing (eclipse-quickrex), Fortran (eclipse-photran), Bugzilla integration (eclipse-mylyn), Git (eclipse-egit), Perl (eclipse-epic), Checkstyle (eclipse-checkstyle), and Python (eclipse-pydev).
7.3.1.2. Translations from the Babel project - eclipse-nls
This release also includes the Babel language packs, which provide translations for Eclipse and Eclipse plugins in a number of languages. Note that some of the languages have very low coverage: even if you have the translations installed, you will probably still see many strings in English. The Babel project accepts contributions if you would like to help their translation efforts.
http://www.eclipse.org/babel/
7.3.1.3. Upgrading from Fedora 9
Users upgrading from Eclipse 3.3 will need to migrate any plug-ins they have installed from sources other than RPMs. The simplest way to do this is to re-install. For plug-in developers migrating from 3.3, refer to the "Plug-in Migration Guide":
http://help.eclipse.org/ganymede/nav/2_3

7.3.2. Emacs

Fedora 10 includes Emacs 22.2.
In addition to many bugfixes, Emacs 22.2 includes new support for the Bazaar, Mercurial, Monotone, and Git version control systems, new major modes for editing CSS, Vera, Verilog, and BibTeX style files, and improved scrolling support in Image mode.
For a detailed description of the changes see the Emacs news for the release (http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/NEWS.22.2).

7.3.3. GCC Compiler Collection

This release of Fedora has been built with GCC 4.3.2, which is included with the distribution.
For more information on GCC 4.3, refer to:
http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.3/
7.3.3.1. Target-specific improvements
7.3.3.1.1. IA-32 x86-64
ABI changes
  • Starting with GCC 4.3.1, decimal floating point variables are aligned to their natural boundaries when they are passed on the stack for i386.
Command-line changes
  • Starting with GCC 4.3.1, the -mcld option has been added to automatically generate a cld instruction in the prologue of functions that use string instructions. This option is used for backward compatibility on some operating systems and can be enabled by default for 32-bit x86 targets by configuring GCC with the --enable-cld configure option.

7.3.4. Improved Haskell support

Fedora 10 introduces better support for Haskell. With a new set of packaging guidelines and tools, it is incredibly easy to support any Haskell program using the Glasgow Haskell Compiler. Package creation and deployment, leveraging Fedora's quality tools plus a few new friends has never been easier. As support for Haskell grows there will be continued development for Haskell as more libraries are introduced.
Package creation is quite simple. Haskell already provides the infrastructure for compiling and deploying packages consistently. Setting up a package for Fedora takes very little time, meaning code that works in Haskell works in Fedora too.
Fedora also provides tools for enterprise deployment of Fedora packages. With the inclusion of Haskell in Fedora, the developer is now free to write enterprise level applications in Haskell and feel secure knowing the code can be used in Fedora.
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/GoodHaskellSupport

7.3.5. Extended Objective CAML OCaml Coverage

Fedora 10 contains the OCaml 3.10.2 advanced programming language and a very comprehensive list of packages:
http://cocan.org/getting_started_with_ocaml_on_red_hat_and_fedora#Package_status
OCaml was available as an update to Fedora 9 but not in the initial release.

7.3.6. NetBeans

This release of Fedora includes NetBeans IDE, version 6.1. NetBeans IDE is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for Java, C/C++, Ruby, PHP, etc. Default configuration of the NetBeans IDE (Java SE IDE configuration) supports development of programs for the Java platform, Standard Edition (Java SE), including development of the modules for the NetBeans Platform.
The NetBeans IDE is a modular system and includes facilities for updating and installing plugins. There is a wide spectrum of plugins for the NetBeans IDE that are provided by community members and third-party companies.
7.3.6.1. NetBean resources

7.3.7. AMQP Infrastructure

The AMQP Infrastructure package is a subset of the Red Hat Enterprise MRG. The package allows for development of scalable, interoperable, and high-performance enterprise applications.
More specifically it consists of the following.
  • AMQP (protocol version 0-10) messaging broker/server
  • Client bindings for C++, Python, and Java (using the JMS interface)
  • A set of command line interface configuration/management utilities
  • A high-performance asynchronous message store for durable messages and messaging configuration.
7.3.7.1. AMQP resources
For more information refer to the following resources:

7.3.8. Appliance building tools

Appliances are pre-installed and pre-configured system images. This package includes tools and meta-data that make it easier for ISVs, developers, OEMS, etc. to create and deploy virtual appliances. The two components of this feature are the ACT (Appliance Creation Tool) and the AOS (The Appliance Operating System). Install the appliance-tools package with Add/Remove Software or yum.
7.3.8.1. Appliance Creation Tool
The Appliance Creation Tool is a tool that creates Appliance Images from a kickstart file. This tool uses the Live CD creator API as well as patches to the Live CD API that allow for the creation of multi-partitioned disk images. These disk images can then be booted in a virtual container such as Xen, KVM, and VMware. This tool is included in the appliance-tools package. This package contains tools for building appliance images on Fedora based systems including derived distributions such as RHEL, CentOS, and others.
7.3.8.2. Appliance Operating System
The Appliance Operating System is a scaled down version of Fedora with a small footprint. It contains only the packages necessary to run an appliance. The hardware supported by this spin of Fedora would be limited, primarily focusing on virtual containers such as KVM and VMware. The goal is to create a base on which developers can build their applications, only pulling in packages that their software requires.
7.3.8.3. Appliance building tools resources
Appliance Tool Project Site: http://thincrust.net/

7.3.9. SystemTap

Systemtap has been updated to version 0.8. In addition to kernel tracing/probing, it now supports on-the-fly tracing/probing of user-space applications. For more information, refer to the following resources.

7.4. Linux kernel

Deprecated or out of date content?

This content may be deprecated or out of date, it has not been updated since the Fedora 9 release notes.
This section covers changes and important information regarding the 2.6.27 based kernel in Fedora 10.

7.4.1. Version

Fedora may include additional patches to the kernel for improvements, bug fixes, or additional features. For this reason, the Fedora kernel may not be line-for-line equivalent to the so-called vanilla kernel from the kernel.org web site:
http://www.kernel.org/
To obtain a list of these patches, download the source RPM package and run the following command against it: 
      rpm -qpl kernel-<version>.src.rpm

7.4.2. Changelog

To retrieve a log of changes to the package, run the following command: 
      rpm -q --changelog kernel-<version>
If you need a user friendly version of the changelog, refer to http://wiki.kernelnewbies.org/LinuxChanges. A short and full diff of the kernel is available from http://kernel.org/git. The Fedora version kernel is based on the Linus tree.
Customizations made for the Fedora version are available from http://cvs.fedoraproject.org.

7.4.3. Kernel flavors

Fedora 10 includes the following kernel builds:
  • Native kernel, for use in most systems. Configured sources are available in the kernel-devel package.
  • The kernel-PAE, for use in 32-bit x86 systems with more than 4GB of RAM, or with CPUs that have a NX (No eXecute) feature. This kernel support both uniprocessor and multi-processor systems. Configured sources are available in the kernel-PAE-devel package.
  • Debugging kernel, for use in debugging some kernel issues. Configured sources are available in the kernel-debug-devel package.
You may install kernel headers for all four kernel flavors at the same time. The files are installed in the /usr/src/kernels/<version>[-PAE|-xen|-kdump]-<arch>/ tree. Use the following command: 
      su -c 'yum install kernel{,-PAE,-xen,-kdump}-devel'
Select one or more of these flavors, separated by commas and no spaces, as appropriate. Enter the root password when prompted.

x86 Kernel Includes Kdump

Both the x86_64 and the i686 kernels are relocatable, so they no longer require a separate kernel for kdump capability. PPC64 still requires a separate kdump kernel.

Kernel Includes Paravirtualization

Both the x86_64 and the i686 kernels contain paravirt_ops support and no longer require a separate kernel for running under a Xen hypervisor. For more information, refer to Section 8.3.1, “Unified kernel image”.

Default Kernel Provides SMP

There is no separate SMP kernel available for Fedora on i386, x86_64, and ppc64. Multiprocessor support is provided by the native kernel.

PowerPC Kernel Support

There is no support for Xen or kdump for the PowerPC architecture in Fedora. 32-bit PowerPC still has a separate SMP kernel.

7.4.4. Preparing for kernel development

Fedora 10 does not include the kernel-source package provided by older versions since only the kernel-devel package is required now to build external modules. Configured sources are available, as described in Section 7.4.3, “Kernel flavors”.

Custom Kernel Building

For information on kernel development and working with custom kernels, refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Building_a_custom_kernel

7.4.5. Reporting bugs

Refer to http://kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/lkml/reporting-bugs.html for information on reporting bugs in the Linux kernel. You may also use http://bugzilla.redhat.com for reporting bugs that are specific to Fedora.

7.5. Embedded Development

Fedora 10 includes a range of packages to support development of embedded applications on various targets. There is broad support for the AVR and related parts as well as for the Microchip PIC. In addition, there are packages to support development on older, less popular parts such as the Z80, 8051, and others. For a more complete description see http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packages_For_Embedded_Development.

7.5.1. avr-binutils

This release includes version 2.18 of avr-binutils. In addition to a large number of bugfixes, this release includes a new tool, windmc, to provide a Windows-compatible message compiler.

7.5.2. dfu-programmer

Version 0.4.6 of dfu-programmer is included in Fedora 10. 4k bootloaders are now supported and eeprom-flash and eeprom-dump are now supported. Release information as well as a forum specific to this version can be found at http://dfu-programmer.sourceforge.net/.

7.5.3. gputils

gputils has been updated to version 0.13.6 which includes support for many more PIC18 processors as well as support for Microchip's new COFF file format. Find details at http://gputils.sourceforge.net/.

7.5.4. piklab

Fedora 10 includes version 3.5.10 of the popular IDE piklab. This version now supports the Microchip ICD2 and PICkit in-circuit debuggers, as well as a number of other improvements. piklab now supports the following toolchains; gputils, C30 and C18, PICC, JAL, BoostC, CCS, MPC and CC5X. Many of the toolchains use Windows executables via Wine. See http://piklab.sourceforge.net/ for complete details.
Note that the executable names for sdcc have changed (see below). Since piklab does not provide for configuring executable names, but does provide for configuring paths, the piklab/sdcc user should copy files beginning with sdcc- from /usr/bin to /usr/local/bin and adjust the paths in piklab until this issue is resolved.

Windows Directory Names

Microchip has a tendency to have a lot of spaces in their default installation directories. Getting those paths configured in piklab can be quite confusing, so the dual-boot user may choose to copy files to the /usr/local tree rather than simply mounting the Windows drive and directly referencing the files in the Microchip installation. This affects not only executables, but linker scripts, headers and libraries.

7.5.5. sdcc

Version 2.8.0 of the Small Device C Compiler is included in Fedora 10. This version offers a number of improvements to the version in Fedora 9. Some of these changes will result in changes to source code, so users should review the sdcc manual carefully for their target. In addition, due to some conflicts, all the executable names have been prefixed with sdcc-, which will require changes to makefiles. See the sdcc page at http://sdcc.sourceforge.net/ for complete details.

7.6. KDE 3 Development Platform and Libraries

Fedora now features KDE 4, and no longer offers KDE 3 as a full desktop environment. Fedora does provide the following KDE 3.5 library packages to run and build the many existing KDE 3 applications:
  • qt3, qt3-devel (and other qt3-* packages): Qt 3.3.8b
  • kdelibs3, kdelibs3-devel: KDE 3 libraries
  • kdebase3, kdebase3-pim-ioslaves, kdebase3-devel: KDE 3 core files required by some applications
Moreover, the KDE 4 kdebase-runtime package, which provides khelpcenter, also sets up khelpcenter as a service for KDE 3 applications, so help in KDE 3 applications works. The KDE 3 version of khelpcenter is no longer provided, and the KDE 4 version is used instead.
These packages are designed to:
  • comply with the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS), and
  • be completely safe to install in parallel with KDE 4, including the -devel packages.
In order to achieve this goal, Fedora KDE SIG members have made two changes to the KDE 4 kdelibs-devel packages:
  • The library symlinks are installed to /usr/lib/kde4/devel or /usr/lib64/kde4/devel depending on system architecture.
  • The kconfig_compiler and makekdewidgets tools have been renamed kconfig_compiler4 and makekdewidgets4, respectively.
These changes should be completely transparent to the vast majority of KDE 4 applications that use cmake to build, since FindKDE4Internal.cmake has been patched to match these changes. The KDE SIG made these changes to the KDE 4 kdelibs-devel rather than to kdelibs3-devel because KDE 4 stores these locations in a central place, whereas KDE 3 applications usually contain hardcoded copies of the library search paths and executable names.
Note that kdebase3 does not include the following:
  • A complete KDE 3 desktop (workspace) which could be used instead of KDE 4; in particular, KDE 3 versions of KWin, KDesktop, Kicker, KSplash and KControl are not included.
  • The KDE 3 versions of kdebase applications such as Konqueror and KWrite, which are redundant with the KDE 4 versions and would conflict with them.
  • The libkdecorations library required for KWin 3 window decorations, as those window decorations cannot be used in the KDE 4 version of KWin.
  • The libkickermain library required by some Kicker applets, as there is no Kicker in Fedora 10 and thus Kicker applets cannot be used.

Developing new software against the legacy API is discouraged.

As with any backwards-compatibility library, you would be developing against a deprecated interface.

8. What is New for System Adminstrators

8.1. Security

This section highlights various security items from Fedora.

8.1.1. Security enhancements

Fedora continues to improve its many proactive security features.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Security/Features

8.1.2. SELinux

The SELinux project pages have troubleshooting tips, explanations, and pointers to documentation and references. Some useful links include the following:

8.1.3. SELinux enhancements

Different roles are now available, to allow finer-grained access control:
  • guest_t does not allow running setuid binaries, making network connections, or using a GUI.
  • xguest_t disallows network access except for HTTP via a Web browser, and no setuid binaries.
  • user_t is ideal for office users: prevents becoming root via setuid applications.
  • staff_t is same as user_t, except that root-level access via sudo is allowed.
  • unconfined_t provides full access, the same as when not using SELinux.
Browser plug-ins wrapped with nspluginwrapper, which is the default, are confined by SELinux policy.
SELinux and the Firefox mozplugger infrastructure may not work together as expected, due to fundamentally different goals for each. As a test or solution, to turn off SELinux confinement of nsplugin, run this command: 
      setsebool -P allow_unconfined_nsplugin_transition =0

8.1.4. Security audit package

The new sectool provides users with a tool to check their systems for security issues. Included libraries allow for the customization of system tests. More information can be found at the project home:
https://fedorahosted.org/sectool

8.1.5. General information

A general introduction to the many proactive security features in Fedora, current status, and policies is available at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Security.

8.2. System Services

8.2.1. Upstart

Fedora 10 features the Upstart initialization system. All System V init scripts should run fine in compatibility mode. However, users who have made customizations to their /etc/inittab file need to port those modifications to upstart. For information on how upstart works, refer to the init(8) and initctl(8) man pages. For information on writing upstart scripts, refer to the events(5) man page, and also the "Upstart Getting Started Guide":
http://upstart.ubuntu.com/getting-started.html
Due to the change of init systems, it is recommended that users who do an upgrade on a live file system to Fedora 10, reboot soon afterwards.

8.2.2. NetworkManager

Fedora 10 features NetworkManager. NetworkManager 0.7 provides improved mobile broadband support, including GSM and CDMA devices, and now supports multiple devices, ad-hoc networking for sharing connections, and the use of system-wide network configuration. It is now enabled by default on all installations. When using NetworkManager, be aware of the following:
  • NetworkManager does not currently support all virtual device types. Users who use bridging, bonding, or VLANs may need to switch to the old network service after configuration of those interfaces.
  • NetworkManager starts the network asynchronously. Users who have applications that require the network to be fully initialized during boot should set the NETWORKWAIT variable in /etc/sysconfig/network. Please file bugs about cases where this is necessary, so we can fix the applications in question.
    https://bugzilla.redhat.com/enter_bug.cgi?product=Fedora

8.2.3. Autofs

Autofs is no longer installed by default. Users who wish to use Autofs can choose it from the System Tools group in the installer, or with the package installation tools.

8.2.4. Varnish

Varnish, the high-performance HTTP acclerator, has been updated to version 2.0. The VCL syntax has changed from version 1.x. Users who upgrade from 1.x must change their vcl files according to README.redhat. The most important changes are:
  • In vcl, the word insert must be replaced by deliver
  • In the vcl declaration of backends, set backend has been simplified to backend, and elements within the backend are now just prefixed with a dot, so the default localhost configuration looks like this: 
    	  backend default { .host = "127.0.0.1"; .port = "80"; }

8.3. Virtualization

Virtualization in Fedora 10 includes major changes, and new features, that continue to support KVM, Xen, and many other virtual machine platforms.

8.3.1. Unified kernel image

The kernel-xen package has been obsoleted by the integration of paravirtualization operations in the upstream kernel. The kernel package in Fedora 10 supports booting as a guest domU, but will not function as a dom0 until such support is provided upstream. The most recent Fedora release with dom0 support is Fedora 8.
Booting a Xen domU guest within a Fedora 10 host requires the KVM based xenner. Xenner runs the guest kernel and a small Xen emulator together as a KVM guest.

KVM requires hardware virtualization features in the host system.

Systems lacking hardware virtualization do not support Xen guests at this time.
For more information refer to:

8.3.2. Virtualization storage management

Advances in libvirt now provide the ability to list, create, and delete storage volumes on remote hosts. This includes the ability to create raw sparse and non-sparse files in a directory, allocate LVM logical volumes, partition physical disks, and attach to iSCSI targets.
This enables the virt-manager tool to remotely provision new guest domains, and manage the storage associated with them. It provides improved SELinux integration, since the APIs ensure that all storage volumes have the correct SELinux security context when being assigned to a guest.
Features

8.3.3. Remote installation of virtual machines

Improvements in Virtualization storage management have enabled the creation of guests on remote host systems. By leveraging Avahi, systems supporting libvirt can be automatically detected by virt-manager. Upon detection guests can be provisioned on the remote system.
Installations can be automated with the help of cobbler and koan. Cobbler is a Linux installation server that allows for rapid setup of network installation environments. Network installs can be configured for PXE boot, reinstallations, media-based net-installs, and virtualized guest installs. Cobbler uses a helper program, koan, for reinstallation and virtualization support.
For further details refer to:

8.3.4. Other improvements

Fedora also includes the following virtualization improvements:
  • Utilities in the new virt-mem package provide access to process tables, interface information, dmesg, and uname of QEmu and KVM guests from the host system. For more information, refer to http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-mem/.

    The virt-mem package is experimental.

    Only 32-bit guests are supported at this time.
  • The new virt-df tool provides information on the disk usage of guests from the host system. http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-df
  • The new experimental xenwatch package provides utilities for interacting with xenstore on Xen-based virtualization hosts. For more information refer to http://kraxel.fedorapeople.org/xenwatch/
8.3.4.1. libvirt updated to 0.4.6
The libvirt package provides an API and tools to interact with the virtualization capabilities of recent versions of Linux (and other OSes). The libvirt software is designed to be a common denominator among all virtualization technologies with support for the following:
  • The Xen hypervisor on Linux and Solaris hosts.
  • The QEMU emulator
  • The KVM Linux hypervisor
  • The LXC Linux container system
  • The OpenVZ Linux container system
  • Storage on IDE/SCSI/USB disks, FibreChannel, LVM, iSCSI, and NFS
New features and improvements since 0.4.2:
  • Enhanced OpenVZ support
  • Enhanced Linux containers (LXC) support
  • Storage pools API
  • Improved iSCSI support
  • USB device passthrough for QEMU and KVM
  • Sound, serial, and parallel device support for QEMU and Xen
  • Support for NUMA and vCPU pinning in QEMU
  • Unified XML domain and network parsing for all virtualization drivers
For further details refer to:
http://www.libvirt.org/news.html
8.3.4.2. virt-manager Updated to 0.6.0
The virt-manager package provides a GUI implementation of virtinst and libvirt functionality.
New features and improvements since 0.5.4:
  • Remote storage management and provisioning: view, add, remove, and provision libvirt managed storage. Attach managed storage to a remote VM.
  • Remote VM installation support: Install from managed media (CDROM) or PXE. Simple install time storage provisioning.
  • VM details and console windows merged: each VM is now represented by a single tabbed window.
  • Use Avahi to list libvirtd instances on network.
  • Hypervisor Autoconnect: Option to connect to hypervisor at virt-manager start up.
  • Option to add sound device emulation when creating new guests.
  • Virtio and USB options when adding a disk device.
  • Allow viewing and removing VM sound, serial, parallel, and console devices.
  • Allow specifying a keymap when adding display device.
  • Keep app running if manager window is closed but VM window is still open.
  • Allow limiting the amount of stored stats history.
For further details refer to:
http://virt-manager.et.redhat.com/
8.3.4.3. virtinst updated to 0.400.0
The python-virtinst package contains tools for installing and manipulating multiple VM guest image formats.
New features and improvements since 0.300.3:
  • New tool virt-convert: Allows converting between different types of virt configuration files. Currently only supports vmx to virt-image.
  • New tool virt-pack: Converts virt-image xml format to vmx and packs in a tar.gz. (Note this will likely be merged with virt-convert in the future).
  • virt-install improvements:
    • Support for remote VM installation. Can use install media and disk images on remote host if shared via libvirt. Allows provisioning storage on remote pools.
    • Support setting CPU pinning information for QEmu/KVM VMs
    • NUMA support via --cpuset=auto option
    • New options:
      • --wait allows putting a hard time limit on installs
      • --sound create VM with soundcard emulation
      • --disk allows specifying media as a path, storage volume, or a pool to provision storage on, device type, and several other options. Deprecates --file, --size, --nonsparse.
      • --prompt Input prompting is no longer the default, this option turns it back on.
  • virt-image improvements:
    • --replace option to overwrite existing VM image file
    • Support multiple network interfaces in virt-image format
  • Use virtio disk/net drivers if chosen guest OS entry supports it (Fedora 9 and 10)
For further details refer to:
8.3.4.4. Xen updated to 3.3.0
Fedora 10 supports booting as a guest domU, but will not function as a dom0 until such support is provided in the upstream kernel. Support for a pv_ops dom0 is targeted for Xen 3.4.
Changes since 3.2.0:
  • Power management (P & C states) in the hypervisor
  • HVM emulation domains (qemu-on-minios) for better scalability, performance, and security
  • PVGrub: boot PV kernels using real GRUB inside the PV domain
  • Better PV performance: domain lock removed from pagetable-update paths
  • Shadow3: optimisations to make this the best shadow pagetable algorithm yet, making HVM performance better than ever
  • Hardware Assisted Paging enhancements: 2MB page support for better TLB locality
  • CPUID feature levelling: allows safe domain migration across systems with different CPU models
  • PVSCSI drivers for SCSI access direct into PV guests
  • HVM framebuffer optimisations: scan for framebuffer updates more efficiently
  • Device passthrough enhancements
  • Full x86 real-mode emulation for HVM guests on Intel VT: supports a much wider range of legacy guest OSes
  • New qemu merge with upstream development
  • Many other changes in both x86 and IA64 ports
For further details refer to:

8.4. Web and Content Servers

8.4.1. Drupal

Drupal has been updated to 6.4. For details, refer to:
http://drupal.org/drupal-6.4
If your installation is updated to the 6.4 version in Fedora 9, skip the following step.
Before upgrading from earlier versions, remember to log in to your site as the admin user, and disable any third-party modules. After upgrading the package:
  1. Copy /etc/drupal/default/settings.php.rpmsave to /etc/drupal/default/settings.php, and repeat for any additional sites' settings.php files.
  2. Browse to http://host/drupal/update.php to run the upgrade script.
Several modules are also now available in Fedora 10, including drupal-date, -cck, -views, and -service_links.

8.5. Samba - Windows compatibility

This section contains information related to Samba, the suite of software Fedora uses to interact with Microsoft Windows systems.
Fedora 10 includes samba-3.2.1. This is only a minor release over the version included in Fedora 9, 3.2.0, so users upgrading from Fedora 9 should see no specific issues. However, users upgrading from earlier versions of Samba are advised to carefully review the Samba 3.2 release notes:
http://samba.org/samba/history/samba-3.2.0.html
In addition, the news articles on Samba 3.2 also highlight some of the major changes:
http://news.samba.org/

8.6. Mail servers

This section concerns electronic mail servers or mail transfer agents (MTAs).

8.6.1. Sendmail

By default, the Sendmail mail transport agent (MTA) does not accept network connections from any host other than the local computer. To configure Sendmail as a server for other clients:
  1. Edit /etc/mail/sendmail.mc and either change the DAEMON_OPTIONS line to also listen on network devices, or comment out this option entirely using the dnl comment delimiter.
  2. Install the sendmail-cf package: su -c 'yum install sendmail-cf'
  3. Regenerate /etc/mail/sendmail.cf: su -c 'make -C /etc/mail'

8.7. Database servers

You must do your own research on upgrading database packages.

Consult the release notes for the version of database you are upgrading to. There may be actions you need to do for the upgrade to be successful.

8.7.1. MySQL

Fedora 10 includes MySQL 5.0.67-2.

MySQL version in Fedora 10 significantly different from Fedora 9 version

There are a number of changes from the version included in Fedora 9, including some incompatible changes.
The MySQL user is strongly encouraged to study the release notes for MySQL before upgrading his MySQL databases.
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/releasenotes-cs-5-0-67.html

8.7.2. PostgreSQL

Fedora 10 includes PostgreSQL 8.3.4-1.
If you are migrating from Fedora 9, no special action should be required. However, migration from versions of PostgreSQL prior to 8.3.1 may require special steps. Be sure to check the PostgreSQL release notes before performing the migration.
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/static/release-8-3-4.html

8.8. Backwards compatibility

Fedora provides legacy system libraries for compatibility with older software. This software is part of the Legacy Software Development group, which is not installed by default. Users who require this functionality may select this group either during installation or after the installation process is complete. To install the package group on a Fedora system, use ApplicationsAdd/Remove Software or enter the following command in a terminal window: 
    su -c 'yum groupinstall "Legacy Software Development"'
Enter the password for the root account when prompted.

8.8.1. Compiler compatibility

The compat-gcc-34 package has been included for compatibility reasons:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2006-August/msg00409.html

8.9. Updated packages in Fedora 10

This list is automatically generated by checking the difference between the (F10)-1 GOLD tree and the F10 tree on a specific date. The content is posted only on the wiki:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Beats/PackageChanges/UpdatedPackages

8.10. Package changes

This list is automatically generated

This list is automatically generated. It is not translated.
This list is generated for the release and posted on the wiki only. It is made using the repodiff utility from the yum-utils package, run as repodiff --old=<base URL of the old SRPMS repository> --new=<base URL of the new SRPMS repository>>.
For a list of which packages were updated since the previous release, refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Beats/PackageChanges/UpdatedPackages. You can also find a comparison of major packages between all Fedora versions at http://distrowatch.com/fedora.