Fedora Core 5 Test 1 Released

The Fedora Team has released the first test release of the upcoming Fedora Core 5 (FC5).

Notable Features of FC5 Test1

• Modular X.org
• Vastly improved Asian language input support with SCIM
• Kernel based on 2.6.15-rc1-git3
• GCC 4.0.2
• GNOME 2.12
• KDE 3.4.92
• Xen 3.0 snapshot for i386
• Improved Open Source Java including gcj, classpath, tomcat, jonas, eclipse, and much more
• 1600+ Extras packages conveniently available via yum
• Major installer changes to use yum for package handling
• Pup!

The bold comments above are what interest me. I really hope that all the included packages have matured enough to support native GCC4 and that the Gnome update will have some (of the many) GUI problems addressed. The big news on the development mailing list is the move to a modular Xorg (i.e. X-server) implementation which has apparently been a great deal of work. It was about time, the X11 layout has always been quirky to me. And finally the ever-flawed yum will become prevalent in the installer. Of course, this should have and could have been done earlier. But I doubt it will address the “mixing repository” nightmare that has affected many Fedora newbies.

If it was not the day before Thanksgiving I would be downloading the release and “tearing it apart”. Oh well. I plan to thoroughly review it sometime in the next week.

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