Announcing CSE Fedora 9

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F9 Rollout Timeline (Subject to Change) Beta Test: July 1 – July 15, 2008 Jul  1: fenwick (GWS - CSE 410-3) Jul  1: bicycle (res cycle server - /scratch wiped) Jul  1: linus (IWS - CSE 002) Jul  1: davem (IWS - CSE 006) Jul  1: fubar (IWS - CSE 022) Jul  6: tebo (res file server) Rollout to Lab-   managed machines:   July 16 – Sep 23, 2008 End of support for previous CSE Linux (F7):   Sep 30, 2008

The new CSE Linux distribution, for 2008-2009 will be installed on Lab supported Linux machines mid-July through September of 2008.

This new CSE Linux distribution for 2008-2009 is based on Fedora 9 (F9), with our usual local customizing.

Some highlighted changes for Fedora 9 are listed below.

Specific Changes:

Here are some of the highlights, and things to watch for, with the new CSE Linux Fedora 9 distribution:

GCC

The new compiler is gcc version 4.3. 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-4.3/changes.html
        

for details about changes, new features, and fixes in GCC 4.3.

Default Desktop

GNOME is once again the default desktop environment. XFCE4 was deprecated in CSE Linux Fedora 7, and is no longer available on CSE Fedora 9 systems.

Screen Locking

Gnome-screensaver, which is both a screensaver and a screen locking program, remains the default screensaver/screenlocker on most desktop systems. The primary exception is in the instructional labs. The build-in 'user switching' feature of gnome-screensaver caused a myriad of problems during the Fedora 7 cycle. Therefore, for Fedora 9, gnome-screensaver is being replaced by the combination of xlock and xautolock on Linux systems in the instructional labs.

X Window System

The X Window System in Fedora 9 has been upgraded to a pre-release version of the much anticipated X.Org X11R7.4 window system. Desktop users can experiment with the xrandr(1) utility to manipulate screen settings from the command line.

Perl

Fedora 9 now includes perl version 5.10.0, the first "major" update in perl5 in some time. See

        http://perldoc.perl.org/perldelta.html
        

for details. Especially note the incompatible changes section.

TeX/LaTeX

The old, unmaintained teTeX distribution has been replaced by TeXLive packages. TeXLive offers new style packages and fixes many security problems with the old distribution.

Firefox

Fedora 9 includes Firefox 3.0. Firefox version 3 purports many changes to improve performance, stability, rendering correctness, and code sustainability.

Octave

GNU Octave, a high-level language, primarily intended for numerical computations, has been added to our software set for Fedora 9. According to the package description, "it provides a convenient command line interface for solving linear and nonlinear problems numerically, and for performing other numerical experiments using a language that is mostly compatible with Matlab." We are hoping that some people will find it a useful alternative when Matlab licenses are in short supply.

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL moves from version 8.2 to version 8.3. Few changes will affect legacy code, but some may. In particular, if you depend upon implicit casting of non-character data types to text, code will break. The tsearch2 contributed full text search functionality is now integrated into the core, with some syntax changes. Changes in this version are listed here.

Qt

Fedora 9 contains version 4 of the Qt package. If you have applications using version 3 of Qt, you may want to read about Porting to Qt 4.

Packages

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 F9 beta:

Package	F9 (at beta)	F7
emacs	22.5	22.1
firefox	3.0	2.0.0.14
gcc	4.3.0	4.1.2
ghostscript	8.62	8.15.4
glibc	2.8	2.6
postgresql	8.3.3	8.2.9
qt	4.3.5	3.3.8b
xorg-x11	R7.4pre	R7.2
GNOME	2.22	2.18

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