Partner links

Top features for desktop users of Fedora 17

Fedora 17 Network Zones

Fedora 17 Alpha, code-named Beefy Miracle, was released yesterday (February 28). Made available for testing were Live CD images for the main edition, which uses the GNOME 3 desktop environment, the KDE edition and for the other Spins. Also released was a DVD installation image of the main edition, and a bfo image for network-based installs.

I have downloaded all available images and, so far, I have not been able to install any in a virtual environment. However, I do have the KDE Spin running on real hardware. Screen shots from that installation should follow in a separate post.

Like previous editions of Fedora, Fedora 17 will ship with several major feature enhancements. Some will be of interest only to enterprise users, while others will be mainly for desktop users. Other features will, of course, appeal to the needs of both enterprise and desktop users. Here is a list of the top features that desktop users should expect on Fedora 17 when the final stable version is released in May (2012):

  • Interface bonding support for NetworkManager – Desktop users will be able to configure network interface bonding using NetworkManager. In addition, enterprise users will be able to configure IP-over-Infiniband, bridges and VLANs.
  • Ext4 and 16 TB file systems – Users will be able to setup up ext4 file systems, the default file system in almost all Linux distributions, larger than 16 TB. Ok, how many desktop users will need this feature? Not me – not at this time anyway, but you never know who is out there doing fancy stuff.
  • Dynamic firewall configuration – On Fedora 17, firewall configurations will be handled by firewalld, a daemon which will dynamically manage the firewall and apply configuration changes without restarting the whole firewall.
  • Multitouch – All the foundational elements needed for multitouch on multitouch-capable hardware are in place. All that is needed now are the applications to take advantage of this feature.
  • Network Zones – This feature will bring trust-level classification to network connections, making it possible to apply different firewall profiles to network connections, depending on their trust level. The network zones that have so far being defined are shown in the image below. (Image taken from here.)
    Fedora 17 Network Zones
  • Password quality checking – On Fedora 17, users will be able to set the quality or strength of system and user account passwords. Also, the system will be able to generate passwords that are pronounceable, not the usual jumble of alphanumeric and special characters that only a person with a magnetic memory can remember.

Want to test Fedora 17 Alpha yourself? Download installation images from here. Note that all my attempts to install this release in a virtual environment has, so far, not been successful. So download it if you are willing to install it on real hardware.

Share:

Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
LinkedIn

Partner links

Newsletter: Subscribe for updates

Subscribe
Notify of
guest
5 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
jo13
jo13
12 years ago

i have been download. will be install on my laptop. on my experience, gnome 3 cannot load if running under virtual machine,but when i boot from the cd/flashdisk, gnome 3 on fedora can running.. this is why i wanna installing fedora 17.. i now it’s still alpha.. but i am a tester, broken system is a risk . chears fedora, and indonesian fedora user!!!

TomG
12 years ago

I’ve not had a problem installing F17 into the newest version of Virtualbox (on a Win7 host). It ran fine live, and I installed easily to an 8 GB vdi and have been checking it out.

Adam Williamson
12 years ago

It’s kind of important *what* virtual environment you use, so it might be a good idea to specify that.

Get the latest

On social media

Security distros

Hacker
Linux distros for hacking and pentesting

Crypto mining OS

Bitcoin
Distros for mining bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

Crypto hardware

MSI GeForce GTX 1070
Installing Nvidia GTX 1070 GPU drivers on Ubuntu

Disk guide

LVM
Beginner's guide to disks & disk partitions in Linux

Bash guide

Bash shell terminal
How to set the PATH variable in Bash
Categories
Archives
5
0
Hya, what do you think? Please comment.x
()
x