Announcing CSE Fedora 11

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F11 Rollout Timeline (Subject to Change) Beta Test: July 22 – August 4, 2009 Jul  22: fenwick (GWS - CSE 602-4) Jul  22: bicycle (res cycle server - /scratch wiped) Jul  22: smurf (IWS - CSE 002) Jul  22: mchan (IWS - CSE 022) Jul  22: echo (res file server) Rollout to Lab-   managed machines:   (As many as possible before Sep 30, 2009) Aug 5 – Dec 4, 2009 End of support for previous CSE Linux (F9):   Dec 4, 2009

The new CSE Linux distribution, for 2009-2010 will be installed on most Lab-supported Linux machines during August and September of 2009. All Lab-supported Linux machines should be updated by early December, 2009.

This new CSE Linux distribution for 2009-2010 is based on Fedora 11 (F11), with our usual local customizing.

Some highlighted changes for Fedora 11 are listed below.

Specific Changes:

Here are some of the highlights, and things to watch for, with the new CSE Linux Fedora 11 distribution:

GCC

The new compiler is gcc version 4.4. As usual, you should check any existing code to be sure it will compile and run under the new system. You may need to make code modifications. See

        http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.4/changes.html
        

for details about changes, new features, and fixes in GCC 4.4.

Firefox

Fedora 11 includes Firefox 3.5. Firefox version 3.5 purports many changes to improve performance, stability, rendering correctness, and code sustainability, plus some new features. Be aware that some addon plugins may not be available yet for this version of Firefox.

Thunderbird

Fedora 11 includes a preview of Thunderbird 3.0. Thunderbird 3 aims to improve stability, extensibility, and fix many bugs. Be aware that some addon plugins may not be available yet for this version of Thunderbird.

OpenOffice

We've added OpenOffice version 3.1, from OpenOffice.ORG on desktop machines. OpenOffice provides a robust and featureful open-source alternative to Microsoft Office, with the 3.1 release featuring the ability to read the XML-based Office 2007 document formats such as docx.

Bash

Fedora 11 includes bash 4.0. This is a significant upgrade with new features.

Some new packages

Here are a few of the optional Fedora packages that we've added to our release this year:

Package	Description
meld:	A visual diff and merge tool. (installed on desktops)
pdfjam:	Utilities to join, rotate and align PDFs.
pdfedit:	A pdf document editing solution
diffpdf:	Compare PDF files
wv:	MSWord 6/7/8/9 binary file format to HTML converter.
highlight:	Source code to formatted text converter.

Package Versions

As with all Linux upgrades, many packages have newer versions. (Note that package versions may change during the course of a release.) Here are some examples at the time of F11 beta:

Package	F11 (at beta)	F9
bash	4.0	3.2
emacs	22.3	22.2
firefox	3.5	3.0
gcc	4.4.0	4.3.0
glibc	2.10	2.8
thunderbird	3.0beta	2.0.0.21
xorg-x11-server	1.6.1.901	1.5.2
GNOME	2.26	2.22

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