Top 10 Features of Fedora 11 Leonidas

After reviewing the whole line-up of operating systems, namely Fedora 10, Windows 7, Ubuntu 8.10 and Open suse 11.1 last year, we started doing our bits of researches with Windows 8 and Ubuntu 9.10 overview recently. This time around its Fedora 11 Leonidas. After an extensive research on Fedora 11 which is due on 26th May, 2009, we have finally come out with top features of Leonidas. Let’s discuss.

20 Seconds Boot-up

After Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope registered a 19.5 seconds boot up time, Fedora 11 must match that by any means. So far so good. they claim to have recorded a boot up process within 20 seconds. There goal is to be at the login screen in 20 seconds and be as fast as possible after the login (gnome-session). Ideally bloated tasks in the boot process and making them faster and use less disk I/O is they key to a speedy boot-up.

To reduce boot time, the setroubleshoot daemon and several small bottlenecks are removed. Readahead now profiles the system every time the rpm database changes. The behavior of readahead can be tweaked by editing /etc/sysconfig/readahead.

ext 4 to be default file system

Ext4 File system is going to be the default one unlike Ubuntu 9.04. So is there a reason to migrate from ext3 to ext4? Yes I feel. For larger file size (single 4 GB file, write mode)the ext4 leaves its competitors way behind. Let me put up the benchmark screen-shot from phoronix.com. You will see a sizable lead.

The ext4 filesystem has more features and generally better performance than ext3, which is showing its age in the Linux filesystem world. Features include:

• Delayed allocation & mballoc allocator for better on-disk allocation
• Sub-second timestamps
• Space preallocation
• Journal checksumming
• Large (>2T) file support (this is an absolutely essential inclusion)
• Large (>16T) filesystem support
• Defragmentation support

[Note: This feature is yet to be fully functional and approved]

GNome 2.26

Gnome 2.26 comes with some cool features that you gotta like.

• Comprehensive New Disc Burning: GNOME 2.26 has been expanded to a whole application dedicated to disc creation: Brasero. Brasero delivers new features that were not supported by the CD burner, such as audio CD burning with audio track preview, track splitting, and volume normalization; full multisession support; integrity checks; a cover editor; and support for multiple burning backends.
• Simpler File Sharing: GNOME 2.26 now includes a plugin for its file manager to enable simple personal file sharing over WebDAV, HTTP and Bluetooth.
  
• Evolution Evolves its Migration from Windows:
  The biggest success of GNome 2.26 comes here.
  
  • First is the ability to import Microsoft Outlook Personal Folders (PST files) directly in Evolution.
  • Second is support for Microsoft Exchange’s MAPI protocol. This is the protocol that Microsoft Outlook uses to communicate with Exchange.
• Media Player Improvements:
• Volume Control Integrated with PulseAudio
• Support for multiple monitors and projectors: I feel the image below will be self explanatory. Another wonderful feature GNome includes.
  

  And if you are wondering why the hell will you use multiple monitor, here are 10 reasons to use multiple monitors

• Almost Telepathic Communication: The Empathy instant messaging application, which uses the Telepathy communications framework, has taken another step forward with features including file transfer where supported by Telepathy (currently Jabber and link-local XMPP), chat room invite support, sound themes and notifications, and an improved VoIP experience.
• Location Epiphany: GNOME’s web browser, Epiphany, gains an exciting new feature of an improved location bar
• Fingerprint Reader Integration and keyboard modifiers are there too.
  

KDE 4.2

KDE is popular desktop environment among Fedora users and KDE 4.2 brings to users missing features from previous releases of 4th generation KDE.

• New and improved applets include a Quicklauncher, weather information, newsfeeds, comics, quick file sharing. Plasma applets get a nod.
• KWin offers smooth and efficient window management. In KDE 4.2 it employs motion physics to give a natural feel to old and new effects like the “Cube” and “Magic Lamp”
• New and improved workspace tools increase productivity. PowerDevil supports mobile life by bringing modern and unobtrusive power management to laptops and mobile devices
• File management becomes faster and more efficient. The Dolphin file manager now has a slider to easily adjust the icon size.
• Support for IMAP and other protocols has also been improved making KMail much faster.
• The Konqueror web browser improves support for scalable vector graphics and receives many performance enhancements. Though Firefox 3.1 is already in built in Fedora 11.
• Technology previews of various KDE applications for Windows and Mac OS X are available.

Netbeans 6.5

Netbeans 6.5 is one of the most significant updates of Fedora 11 leonidas. To highlight the newest features,

• PHP support with code completion, Xdebug and web service features.
• JavaFX 1.0 supports animation, graphics and media codecs for rich content application development.
• New Support for Groovy and Grails.
• Improved JavaScript, AJAX and Ruby support.
• Automatic Compile and Deploy on Save for Java and Java EE applications.
• Improved database support: SQL history, SQL completion, and results viewing and editing improvements.
• Improved Java ME support for Data Binding, SVG and Custom Component creation.
• GUI Builder: Support for Nimbus and simple class names.
• JUnit: single test method support.
• Debugger: Redesign of Step into feature.

The NetBeans IDE is oriented on wide audience of developers from beginners up to experts. Each of them can find useful set of the development tools that are embedded in the IDE or can be integrated with.

Thunderbird 3, OpenChange

Thunderbird 3 is integrated with Fedora 11.

• Message Archive: You can now file messages from your Inbox or other folders into the new Archive folder system.
• Activity Manage: The Activity Manager records all the interactions between Thunderbird and your email provider in one place.
• Faster Message Loading for IMAPThunderbird will now download IMAP messages by default in the background to allow for faster message loading, and better offline operation.

OpenChange

Just to re-establish what I already discussed under Gnome 2.26, Fedora 11 will include the OpenChange library, to improve access to Microsoft’s Exchange servers (including Exchange 2007) from Linux clients, by using the native MAPI protocols. To use this support from Evolution, you will have to install the evolution-mapi package.

UEFI, Xfce 4.6

UEFI stands for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface. The UEFI specification defines a new model for the interface between personal-computer operating systems and platform firmware. Together, these provide a standard environment for booting an operating system and running pre-boot applications.

Now as you have booted into your operating system and have your desktop running, for better management why don’t you go for Xfce 4.6. Xfce 4.6 features a new configuration backend, a new settings manager, a brand new sound mixer, and several huge improvements to the session manager and the rest of Xfce’s core components.

Eclipse Profiling Tool

Developers can smile. This is another very useful venture going to be integrated with Fedora 11. F11 is attempting to bring the power of various native profiling tools into the Eclipse IDE and integrate with the rest of the development environment. The target audience is people developing with and for Linux distributions. The first section in target is native application developers programming in C and C++.

GCC 4.4 , RPM 4.7

GCC 4.4 features a new, rewritten, register allocator (integrated register allocator (IRA))and a bunch of other improvements. Some more command line switches have been added.

The new RPM changes are very little, but still some noteworthy ones are there:

• Much faster upgrades
• Some annoying bugs have been fixed
• Much improved handling of failed upgrades

Virtual Authentication and Console

This feature aims to improve the user experience for virtual guests’ graphical console, by providing an accurate mouse pointer and higher screen resolution, without requiring manual configuration.

Fedora 11 introduces the ability to use the SASL protocol for authenticating VNC connection to KVM and QEMU virtual machines. SASL is a pluggable system, allowing many different authentication mechanisms to be configured without changing the application code.

This new authentication capability obsoletes the traditional VNC password scheme which is not sufficiently secure.

Conclusion

Its too early to commit anything about Fedora 11. But there are some really important features that can make Fedora 11 another significant release. Ubuntu 9.04 and Ubuntu 9.10 have lined up with pretty big guns now. Fedora 11 I guess is talking a bit low. I, personally won’t have any high expectation from it coz despite promising some decent enough improvements, Fedora 11 doesn’t yet sizzle with that spark that is needed for the next generation crowd to convert from the current to that of the next. What’s your views?