You can find a tour filled with pictures and videos of this exciting new release at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Tours/Fedora8.

This release includes significant new versions of many key components and technologies. The following sections provide a brief overview of major changes from the last release of Fedora.

The proposed plans for the next release of Fedora are available at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/RoadMap.

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/F8Common.

	Feedback for Release Notes Only
	This section concerns feedback on the release notes themselves.

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

Refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DistributionUpgrades for detailed recommended procedures for upgrading Fedora.

/sbin/blkid

/dev/hdd1: LABEL="/boot" UUID="ec6a9d6c-6f05-487e-a8bd-a2594b854406" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3"

su -c 'cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.orig'
su -c 'gedit /etc/fstab'

LABEL=f7-slash  /  ext3  defaults  1 1

su -c 'gedit /boot/grub/grub.conf'

kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.20-1.2948.fc6 ro root=LABEL=f7-slash rhgb quiet

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"

You can add this to /etc/rpm/macros (for a system wide setting) or ~/.rpmmacros (for a per-user setting). It changes the default query to list the architecture:

%_query_all_fmt      %%{name}-%%{version}-%%{release}.%%{arch}

This section covers specific information about Fedora and the PPC hardware platform.

This section covers specific information about Fedora and the x86 hardware platform.

This section covers specific information about Fedora and the x86_64 hardware platform.

There are four Live images available for Fedora 8.

To boot from the Live image, insert it into your computer and restart. To log in and use the desktop environment, enter the username fedora. Hit Enter at the password prompt, since there is no password on this account. The Live images do not automatically login so users can 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.

	No i586 Support
	The i686 Live images will not boot on an i586 machine.

You can do a text mode installation of the Live images using the liveinst command in the console.

Another way to use these Live images is to put them on a USB stick. To do this, install the livecd-tools package from the development repository. 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.

The following items are different from a normal Fedora install with the live images.

The installonlyn plugin functionality has been folded into the core yum package. The installonlypkgs and installonly_limit options are used by default to limit the system to retain only two kernel packages. You can adjust the package set or the number of packages, or disable the option entirely to match your preferences. More details is available in the man page for yum.conf.

The yum command now retries when it detects a lock. This function is useful if a daemon is checking for updates, or if you are running yum and one of its graphical frontends simultaneously.

The yum command now understands a cost parameter in its configuration file, which is the relative cost of accessing a software repository. It is useful for weighing one software repository's packages as greater or less than any other. The cost parameter defaults to 1000.

The cryptsetup-luks package has been renamed to cryptsetup.

The i810switch package has been removed. This functionality is now available through the xrandr command in the xorg-x11-server-utils package.

The evolution-exchange package replaces evolution-connector, and provides a capability under the old name.

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 

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.

Fedora 8 includes the following kernel builds:

You may install kernel headers for all 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.

	32bit Kernel Includes Kdump
	The 32bit kernel is now relocatable, so kdump functionality is included. 64bit still requires installation of the -kdump kernel.

	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 does still have a separate SMP kernel.

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.

Fedora 8 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 Section 9.3, “Kernel Flavors”.

	Custom Kernel Building
	For information on kernel development and working with custom kernels, refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/CustomKernel.

This release features GNOME 2.20.

The GNOME splash screen has been disabled upstream intentionally. To enable it, use gconf-editor or the following command:

gconftool-2 --set /apps/gnome-session/options/show_splash_screen --type bool true

The lock screen dialog theme is not connected to the selected screensaver in this release. To enable it, use gconf-editor or the following command:

gconftool-2 --set  --type string /apps/gnome-screensaver/lock_dialog_theme  "system"

This release features KDE 3.5.6.

Fedora 8 does not include the KDE 4 Desktop because the currently available prerelease versions are not ready for daily use. It does include the KDE 4 Development Platform, which can be used to develop, build, and run KDE 4 applications within KDE 3 or any other desktop environment. See the Development section for more details about what is included.

This release of Fedora includes version 2.0 of the popular Firefox web browser. Refer to http://firefox.com/ for more information about Firefox.

The mail-notification package has been split. The Evolution plugin is now in a separate package called mail-notification-evolution-plugin. When you update the mail-notification package, the plugin is added automatically.

This release contains Thunderbird version 2.0, which has numerous performance improvements, folder viewing enhancements, and enhanced mail notification support.

This release of Fedora includes a set of fonts called "Liberation." These fonts are metric equivalents for well-known proprietary fonts prevalent on the Internet. With these fonts, users will find better cross-platform viewing and printing support for a variety of documents. Future versions of these fonts will be fully hinted.

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, edit /etc/mail/sendmail.mc and change the DAEMON_OPTIONS line to also listen on network devices, or comment out this option entirely using the dnl comment delimiter. Then install the sendmail-cf package and regenerate /etc/mail/sendmail.cf by running the following commands:

su -c 'yum install sendmail-cf' 
su -c 'make -C /etc/mail'

Fedora 8 includes KDE 4.0 (beta) development libraries. The following new packages are provided:

Use these packages to develop, build and run KDE 4 applications within KDE 3 or any other desktop environment.

The kdebase4 package also includes a beta version of the Dolphin file manager as a technology preview. Note that although Dolphin currently fails to start up when run from the KDE 3 menu, it works when run from Konsole. Other issues may exist as well. If you need a stable version of Dolphin, please install the d3lphin package, which is based on KDE 3 and can be safely installed alongside kdebase4.

These packages are designed to:

In order to achieve this, Fedora KDE SIG members made 2 changes to the -devel packages:

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.

Note that kdebase4 does not include the KDE 4 Desktop package kdebase-workspace and its components such as Plasma and KWin version 4. The kdebase-workspace package is still too incomplete and unstable for daily use and would conflict with KDE 3.

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

This release of Fedora includes the IcedTea environment. IcedTea is a build harness for Sun's OpenJDK code that replaces encumbered parts of OpenJDK with Free Software replacements. IcedTea provides a more complete, compatible environment than GCJ, including support for building and running bytecode up to the 1.6 level. Users of IcedTea should be aware of a few caveats:

The Fedora IcedTea packages also include an adaptation of gcjwebplugin that runs untrusted applets safely in a web browser. The plugin is packaged as java-1.7.0-icedtea-plugin.

This release of Fedora includes java-gcj-compat. The java-gcj-compat collection includes a tool suite and execution environment that is capable of building and running many useful programs that are written in the Java programming language.

The java-gcj infrastructure has three key components: a GNU Java runtime (libgcj), the Eclipse Java compiler (ecj), and a set of wrappers and links (java-gcj-compat) that present the runtime and compiler to the user in a manner similar to other Java environments.

The Java software packages in this Fedora release use the java-gcj-compat environment. These packages include OpenOffice.org Base, Eclipse, and Apache Tomcat. Refer to the Java FAQ at http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/JavaFAQ for more information on the java-gcj-compat free Java environment in Fedora.

	Include Location and Version Information in Bug Reports
	When making a bug report, be sure to include the output from these commands: which java && java -version && which javac && javac -version

In addition to the java-gcj-compat free software stack, Fedora lets you install multiple Java implementations and switch between them using the alternatives command line tool. However, every Java system you install must be packaged using the JPackage Project packaging guidelines to take advantage of alternatives. Once these packages are installed properly, the root user may switch between java and javac implementations using the alternatives command:

alternatives --config java alternatives --config javac 

A simpler way to switch Java alternatives is using the sytsem-switch-java tool included in Fedora.

Fedora includes many packages derived from the JPackage Project, which provides a Java software repository. 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 at http://jpackage.org for more information on 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.

Refer to the latest release notes pertaining to Eclipse at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Beats/Devel/Tools/Eclipse.

This release of Fedora includes maven2, a Java project management and project comprehension tool. Maven can be invoked by the mvn and mvn-jpp commands. The former makes Maven behave just like upstream Maven, while the latter calls mvn with additional properties that make off-line building easier.

The maven2 package in Fedora is modified to work in a fully off-line mode. With no additional properties defined (the mvn command), maven2 works exactly like upstream Maven. Users may define additional properties to facilitate off-line builds, or call mvn-jpp, a wrapper that defines the most commonly used properties for off-line building. The properties and their usage details are described in the /usr/share/doc/maven2-2.0.4/maven2-jpp-readme.html file, which comes from the maven2-manual package.

The default installation of Fedora includes Rhythmbox and Totem for media playback. The Fedora repositories include many other popular programs such as the XMMS player and KDE's amaroK. Both GNOME and KDE have a selection of players that can be used with a variety of formats. Third parties may offer additional programs to handle other formats.

Fedora also takes full advantage of the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) sound system. Many programs can play sound simultaneously, which was once difficult on Linux systems. When all multimedia software is configured to use ALSA for sound support, this limitation disappears. For more information about ALSA, visit the project website at http://www.alsa-project.org/. Users may still experience issues when multiple users log into the system. Depending upon hardware and software configurations, multiple users may not be able to use the sound hardware simultaneously.

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 formats in place of restricted ones. For more information on these formats and how to use them, refer to the Xiph.Org Foundation's web site at http://www.xiph.org/.

Fedora software repositories 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 patent licenses. DVD video formats are patented and equipped with an encryption scheme. The patent holders have not provided the necessary patent 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 a free MP3 plugin for GStreamer that has the necessary patent license for end users. This plugin enables MP3 support in applications that use the GStreamer framework as a backend. Fedora does not include this plugin since we prefer to support and encourage the use of patent unrestricted open formats instead. For more information about the MP3 plugin, visit Fluendo's website at http://www.fluendo.com/.

Fedora software repositories includes a variety of tools for easily mastering and burning CDs and DVDs. GNOME users can burn directly from the Nautilus file manager, choose the gnomebaker or graveman packages, or utilize the older xcdroast package from Fedora. KDE users can use the robust k3b package for these tasks. Console tools include cdrecord, readcd, mkisofs, and other popular applications.

You can use Fedora to create and play back screencasts, which are recorded desktop sessions, using open technologies. Fedora Package Collection software repository includes istanbul, which creates screencasts using the Theora video format. These videos can be played back using one of several players included in Fedora. This is the preferred way to submit screencasts to the Fedora Project for either developer or end-user use. For a more comprehensive how-to, refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ScreenCasting.

Most of the media players in Fedora software repositories can use plugins to add support for additional media formats and sound output systems. Some use powerful multimedia frameworks, like the gstreamer package, to handle media format support and sound output. Fedora software repositories offer plugin packages for these backends and for individual applications. Third parties may provide additional plugins to add even greater capabilities.

Fedora 7 includes version 0.5.6 of the Nazghul old-school role playing game engine and its companion game Haxima. This version is not compatible with saved games from previous Nazghul versions, so those with Haxima games in progress need to restart their games after updating to Fedora 7.

The following improvements have been made in the virtualization packages in Fedora 8:

The X.org 7.2 X server has been modified to automatically detect and configure most hardware, eliminating the need for users or administrators to modify the /etc/X11/xorg.conf configuration file. The only hardware configured by default in the xorg.conf file written by anaconda is:

All other hardware, such as monitors (both LCD and CRT), USB mice, and touchpads should be detected and configured automatically.

The X server queries the attached monitor for supported resolution ranges, and attempts to pick the highest resolution available with the correct aspect ratio for the display. Users can set their preferred resolution in System → Preferences → Screen Resolution, and the default resolution for the system can be changed with System → Administration → Display.

If the /etc/X11/xorg.conf configuration file is not present, X also automatically detects the appropriate driver, and assumes a 105-key US keyboard layout.

Fedora 7 contains two drivers for Intel integrated graphics controllers:

The i810 driver is limited to resolutions available in the BIOS. If you need support for non-standard resolutions, such as those used in some widescreen displays, you may want to switch to the intel driver. You may switch drivers by using system-config-display, available in the menus under System → Administration → Display.

We welcome feedback on the experimental intel driver. Please report success in Bugzilla, attaching the full output of lspci -vn for your machine. Given success reports, various chipsets may be switched to use the intel driver by default.

If you intend to use third party video drivers, refer to the Xorg third party drivers page for detailed guidelines:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Xorg/3rdPartyVideoDrivers

Fedora now provides MySQL 5.0.45. For a list of the enhancements provided by this version, refer to http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/mysql-5-0-nutshell.html.

For more information on upgrading databases from previous releases of MySQL, refer to the MySQL website at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/upgrade.html.

This release of Fedora includes PostgreSQL 8.2.4. For more information on this new version, refer to http://www.postgresql.org/docs/whatsnew.

	Upgrading Databases
	Before upgrading an existing Fedora system with a PostgreSQL database, it could be necessary to follow the procedure described at http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.2/interactive/install-upgrading.html. Otherwise the data may be not accessible by the new version of PostgreSQL.

In Fedora 8 fonts for all available languages are now installed by default on the desktop to give good default language coverage. Most of the fonts in generically named font packages have been moved to their own packages to reflect the upstream name and make font choices easier.

The compat-gcc-34 package has been included for compatibility reasons:

https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2006-August/msg00409.html

... and many more translators. Refer to the Web-updated version of these release notes as we add translators after release:

http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/

Beat writers produce the release notes directly on the Fedora Project Wiki. They collaborate with other subject matter experts during the test release phase of Fedora to explain important changes and enhancements. The editorial team ensures consistency and quality of the finished beats, and ports the Wiki material to DocBook XML in a revision control repository. At this point, the team of translators produces other language versions of the release notes, and then they become available to the general public as part of Fedora. The publication team also makes them, and subsequent errata, available via the Web.