Many reviewers may say that Fedora 7 lacks codecs, proprietary drivers or applications, flashplayer, etc. Me, I am a happier Fedora fan. I am definitely happier with Fedora 7 than the previous Fedora Core(s). The lacking of this and that in Fedora 7 can easily be solved by reading the howto published by Howtoforge.com. Another site which is also helpful is at Mauriat Miranda.

Worth the hassle! I have been using Fedora Core since the 1st edition Why? Because it's reliable. Yum is easy to use. By the way, SELinux and firewall are enabled by default. Lots of documentation. Even the the "Unbreakable" and Novell forces couldn't bring down the Red Hat's revenue. No open standard, no talk M$.

Another Fedora offering. Moonshine! I don't take alcohol though. Besides officially releasing the Fedora Core 6 Live CD in December 2006, the Fedora Project has been very emphatic to the different needs of its users or fans.

Below is a screenshot of Fedora Core 6 Live CD.

Thus, to make the release of Fedora 7 more interesting, the Red Hat/Fedora engineers have created an open source tool called Revisor that would allow even non-technical users to create their own installation media spin or a live image spin. The rpm/yum-dependent Revisor tool is actually made up of Pungi tool (for making Fedora 7 installation media spins) and also the livecd-tools(for making Live CD spins). So Fedora users with different needs would certainly benefit benefit from these efforts. Prior to December 2006, the Kadischi program was used to produce Fedora Core 6 Live CD. However the baton had been passed on to the livecd-tools which is the fruit of the Pilgrim Project.

This resulted in the release of 4 different iso images:- 2 Fedora 7 Live CDs and also 2 Fedora 7 Live DVDs have, which was officially released to the community on 31st May 2007. These 2 Live CDs and 2 Live DVDs iso images are built from a specific set of software packages aimed at desktop users. I found out that the set of software packages on the Live DVDs are the same as those on the Live CDs. Of course, the binaries on the Live DVDs are compiled for x86_64 architecture.

Live CD iso images(not compatible with Intel Core 2 Duo):-

Fedora-7-KDE-Live-i686 iso(688Mb).

Fedora-7-Live-i686 iso(701Mb).

Live DVD iso images:-

Fedora-7-KDE-Live-x86_64 iso(833Mb).

Fedora-7-Live-x86_64 iso(781Mb).

I share the delight of Fedora fans who have been downloading multiple CDs or DVD in the past. With a single-CD Live spin and a single-DVD Live spin iso images, slow internet connection wouldn't be preventing users from trying out every version of Fedora.

Below is a screenshot of the Revisor's graphical interface.

Below is a screenshot of Fedora 7 Live CD(i686) / Live DVD(x86_64).

Screenshot of Fedora 7 Kde Live CD(i686) / Kde Live DVD(x86_64).

A website called Respins.org has been dedicated to the re-spinning of Fedora 7 and its derivatives. Unlike the Fedora Core 6 Live-Spins, the binaries of Fedora 7 Live CDs (Kd or Gnome version) have been compiled for the i686 microprocessors. Meaning that the Fedora 7 Live CDs will not run on those processors that came before the Pentium Pro. Other i686 machines are the Athlons, Durons, and Celerons. The Fedora Core 6 Live-Spins was created for the i386 machines. The Live DVD, however, need processors with x86_64 or Intel processors with EMT64 capability. Under the hood, these 4 Live CDs and Live DVDs feature Linux Kernel 2.6.21. KDE 3.5.6 for the Kde-based live spins and Gnome 2.18 for the Gnome-based live spins. These 4 Live spins also features xorg7.2. Servers available on all of these 4 Live spins of Fedora 7 are Sendmail and Httpd-2.2.4.

The only components of the toolchain which are available on these 4 Live spins of Fedora 7 are Make, Binutils,and Gdb. Important libraries on these 4 Live spins (2 Live CDs and 2 Live DVDs) are glibc-2.6, libgcc, libstdc++, etc. Since these 4 Live Spins are spun for desktop use, not surprisingly, the Kernel headers and the Kernel sources are also not available. Even the libgcj that weigh over 30Mb and the gcc-java are not included. These 4 Live spins are are truly desktop-oriented. By the way, the openSUSE team has also released 2 one-CD "spin" for their openSUSE10.3 Alpha5 2 days ago. I haven't come across their "spinner tool" though.

Wow,even the ntfs-3g 1.516, the 3rd generation NTFS driver is included.Besides Ntfsprogs-1.13.1 and Fuse-2.6.5, the Ntfs-3g 1.516 driver is also available on those 2 Live CDs and those 2 Live DVDs. So, we can easily access the NTFS partition in read/write mode from a Live environment. Before I forget to mention, you will not see the login manager when you boot up the Fedora-7 -KDE-Live-i686 and also the Fedora-7-KDE-Live-x86_64. This is because, the Kde flavour of Fedora 7 Live CD/DVD only support the English language.One of the features that reminded me of the Slax Live CD, is the ability to install programs on the running Fedora 7 Live CDs and the Live DVDs, via yum. It is made possible by using the rootfs. I have tested this new feature by installing synaptic. The Synaptic ran flawlessly on the Live CDs and Live DVDs of Fedora 7.

The essential desktop applications available on the Fedora-7-Live-i686 and Fedora-7-Live-x86_64 are games, Gimp, gThumb image viewer, Firefox 2.0.0.3, Pidgin, BitTorrent 4.4.0, Evolution, Abiword 2.4.6, Gnumeric 1.6.3, Totem Movie Player 2.18.1, Rhythmbox Music Player, CD Player, Gparted,Gnome Terminal, etc. Other important tools are the SELinux Management, SELinux Troubleshooter, and Firewall (enabled by default).

Essential desktop applications available on the Fedora-7-KDE-Live-i686 are also abundant. Like its Gnome counterpart, all the Fedora native administrative, and security tools are also available on the Fedora-7-KDE-Live-i686 and Fedora-7-KDE-Live-x86_64. Desktop applications on this KDE Live spins are games, digikam, Kooka,Kpdf viewer, Ksnapshot, Kuickshow image viewer, Konqueror, Kopete, Krdc, Akregator, Kmail, Krdc, Twinkle sip softphone, K3b, Kaffeine,KMix, KAudioCreator, Amarok, Kontact, KOffice suite, GParted, Kate editor, Kwrite editor, Konversation etc.

3-D Eye Candy

With Compiz 0.3.6, the 3D eye candy worked flawlessly on the Fedora-7-Live-x86_64(Live DVD spin) and Fedora-7-Live-i686(Live CD spin). All that I needed to do was to click on the Desktop Effects option from the desktop menu. However, I couldn't find the same Desktop Effects option on the Fedora-7-KDE-Live-x86_64(Live DVD spin) and Fedora-7-KDE-Live-i686. It was nice to see the woobling and 3D cubes on my Dell Inspiron 600m (ATI Radeon 250) notebook, Dell Inspiron 640m notebook (Intel 945GM Graphics), and on my Compaq Presario V3222AU notebook(Nvidia Geforce Go 6150). The open source video drivers included in these 4 Live CDs and Live DVDs worked! By the way, if you need the 915resolution tool, you can get it from the unified Fedora repository.

Installation

Although you cannot install Fedora Core 6 from the Fedora Core 6's Live CD, you can now install Fedora 7 to your hard disk using any of the 4 Live CDs and Live DVDs. Just click on the icon located on right side of the desktop. I had no problem installing the i686 Live CDs (Gnome & Kde version) to my Dell Insprion 600m notebook with Pentium M 1.4Ghz and 1.5Gb DDR Sdram. The installations of the x86_64 Live DVDs (Gnome and Kde version) to my Dell Inspiron 640m notebook's hard disk were also very easy and smooth. Thank you Anaconda!

There were also no problem when I installed the i686 Live CDs and the x86_64 Live DVDs to my Compaq Presario notebook with AMD Turion 64x2 processor. The installation duration was between 6 to 8 minutes for all of the 3 notebooks. It's also the same duration whether they were Live DVDs or Live CDs. The screens that you would meet during the installation of those 4 Live CDs/DVDs of Fedora 7 are very similar to the screens of events that you would meet when installing the usual Fedora 7 DVD installation media. However, you won't be able to add repository, and you cannot customize what goes into the hard disk.

Sequence of events occuring during installation to the hard disk:-

First select the keyboard system->

Partitioning layout->

Grub configuration->

Network device configuration->

Timezone setup->

Root password creation->

Anaconda will start formatting the hard disk

and then start copying the live image to the hard disk->

Postinstallation->installation completed->

Reboot the machine->

First-boot Setup Agent->

Welcome screen->

License info->

Firewall configuration(enabled by default)->

SELinux configuration(enforced by default)->

Date and Time configuration(the ntp is

disabled by default on Gnome Live CD/DVD

but enabled by default on KDE live CD/DVD)->

Smolt hardware profiler(disabled by default)->

create user account->sound card configuration->Login Manager.

Wired And Wireless Networking

As far as networking is concerned, the wired ethernet connections are activated by default. For the 1st time in history, the iwlwifi-firmware-2.14.3, the ipw2100-firmware-1.3, and the ipw2200-firmware-3.0 firmwares were available on Fedora Linux images. So the wifi connection worked out-of-the-box on my notebook with IPW2100 adapter and also on my notebook with IPW3945 adapter. All of the 4 Live CDs and Live DVDs have those firmwares. With the help of the network manager,connection via the the WPA-PSK encryption protocol was a breeze.

I can never forget how troublesome it was to setup my Dell Inspiron 600m notebook's IPW2100 wifi adapter, Fedora Core after Fedora Core. Six of them! Sorry, there is no out-of-the-box support for wifi adapter with Broadcom-based chipset. The bcm43xx-mac80211 driver and the softmac's bcm43xx driver/module is included in all of the Fedora 7 Live CDs and Live DVDs, but without the the needed firmware.

You need to grab the bcm43xx-fwcutter tool to extract the firmware from the bcmwl*.sys file. You can download the bcm43xx-fwcutter from the Fedora 7 repository. these effort to make Broadcom-based wifi adapter failed, you can download the ndiswrapper package from either the Livna or Freshrpm repositories. Just make sure that you blacklist the open source bcm43xx-mac80211 and also the bcm43xx module before trying out the ndiswrapper technique.

Package Management

Package management is via yum. You can use the graphical Pirut application or execute yum from the gnome-terminal. Pup is also very efficient in the updating tasks. I managed to update 42 packages in 2 hours via Pup. Pirut has also been very responsive and intelligent. I feel that Pirut and Pup are much more polished now. I disliked Pirut and Pup in Fedora Core(s).

After updating my system, I installed the sensational yum/rpm-dependent tool,Revisor, by searching through the Search Tab of Pirut. When I wanted to install Revisor, I was immediately informed of the 3 dependencies:- livecd-tools-009-1.fc7, pungi-0.3.7-1.fc7 and system-config-kickstart. It took Pirut just 2 minutes and 15 seconds to install those 4 packages on my Dell Inspiron 600m notebook. It was also uneventful with the other 2 notebooks.

Conclusion

In conclusion, despite the issues with licensing, the Fedora developers still managed to squeeze in the firmwares for the Intel Pro Wireless wifi adapter. These efforts will definitely pay off. The adoption of the best wireless stack (mac80211/devicescape) for Fedora 7 is definitely the way to go. I am also very pleased with the package management. In fact, I love it. With such a positive experience with the 4 Live CDs and Live DVDs, I think I am ready to show it to my friends and maybe they would let me install Fedora 7 into their computers.

The only glitches that came my way were:- i) couldn't make the wifi device start when booting the Linux Kernel, even when there was no encrytion protocol used. ii) couldn't boot the i686 Live CDs on my Dell Inspiron 640m notebook with Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T5500. iii) couldn't see the pointer of my mouse or touchpad on my Compaq Presario notebook, after the firt-boot, which can easily be remedied by just rebooting Fedora 7. iv) Suspend to disk(hibernate) worked on those 3 note-books but Suspend to Ram(sleep) had problems on those 3 notebooks. Lastly,the Grub bootloader failed to recognize other partition that contain Fedora 7, despite being told to do so when configuring Grub in Anaconda. So, you need to edit the menu.lst yourself.

Thank you for reading this article.

By Michael Shee Choon Beng.

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