[smc-discuss] Re: Review of Fedora 10 beta

[Hari Vishnu]

>"I think Fedora 10 may be the first GNU/Linux distribution with
> complete Malayalam rendering and input methods. "

Thats a Great milestone eh...

By the way Fedora 10 comes with Gnome 2.24 right, means the
translations we just completed have been included too?


On Oct 8, 2:13 pm, Santhosh Thottingal <santhos... at gmail.com> wrote:
> A nice review of  Fedora 10 beta by Manilal
>
> http://libregeek.blogspot.com/2008/10/quick-glance-at-fedora-10-beta....
>
> "
> Note: This article is not a comprehensive review of all the features  
> in Fedora 10 beta.
>
> The Fedora 10 beta or more precisely Fedora 9.92 was released on 30th  
> September 2008. I decided to give it a try using Xen virtualization in  
> Fedora 9, as I don't want to install a "bleeding edge" distro in my  
> desktop. But unfortunately, Fedora 9 has an issue with Xen  
> Virtualization and the only work around was to get it installed  
> through qemu. The documentation at the Fedora wiki is enough to get it  
> started.
>
> However, I had a bad luck with with CD-ROM image, except that I was  
> able to run anaconda. The first thing I noticed is the Malayalam  
> strings in anaconda interface was not properly displayed. I discussed  
> this matter in the IRC channel of SMC, and filed a bug in Redhat  
> Bugzilla. I was also struck with another bug when I tried to disable  
> the installation media and use only the Rawhide repository. The good  
> news is that Fedora developers responded quickly to the two bug  
> reports. Since I didn't bothered to download minimal set of the CD-ROM  
> images, I decided to proceed with netinstall image available at Fedora  
> download server.
>
> A fresh installation attempt using the netinstall image was  
> problematic. But after several failed attempts I could connect to the  
> fedora mirrors and start the installation. The installation took more  
> than 4 hours. All the packages where downloaded from Internet and qemu  
> environment was also slow. At the end anaconda hanged with the message  
> "installing kernel-2.6.xx... ". I just closed the qemu window and boot  
> the newly installed system using the following command:
>
> # qemu fedora.qcow -boot c -net nic -net user -m 512 -localtime -no-kqemu
>
> The graphical boot loader, rhgb has been replaced by Plymouth and if  
> you press ESC key, then you can view the entire boot messages. After  
> several minutes of wait, I was able to login to the new Fedora 10  
> desktop. may be the virtualized environment degraded the performance  
> of the desktop.
>
> As soon as I logged in, the first major change I noticed is the new  
> Echo-Icon theme. The icon set is great and gave the desktop an elegant  
> look and feel.
>
> Malayalam Support
>
> I was curious about the Malayalam rendering and language support.  
> Fortunately, Malayalam rendering was perfect with the patches from SMC  
> and the new Malayalam font, Meera developed by SMC itself. Mozilla  
> Firefox 3 and OpenOffice.org 3.0 rendered Malayalam perfectly.  
> However, in OpenOffice there were some issues with some complex  
> conjucts. But I won't think that these are used frequently in  
> Malayalam content.
>
> The font size problem which was a major issue in the prior release was  
> resolved and it's really cool to see Malayalam on the desktop without  
> any rendering errors.
>
> Fedora also has 7 other unicode Malayalam fonts - smc-anjalioldlipi,  
> smc-kalyani(previously MalOtf), smc-rachana, smc-raghumalayalam,  
> smc-dhyuthi, samyak-malayalam and lohit-malayalam. However, I'm not  
> sure whether the issues with lohit-malayalam is resolved.
>
> The input method configuration is also very easy. The im-chooser  
> application guided me to configure all the required input methods in  
> different languages. There are 4 Input schemes for Malayalam -  
> inscript, itrans, mozhi and swanalekha.
>
> I think Fedora 10 may be the first GNU/Linux distribution with  
> complete Malayalam rendering and input methods.
>
> Other Applications
>
> Fedora 10 comes loaded with GNOME-2.24 which provides many robust  
> desktop applications. The prominent change is the inclusion of Empathy  
> instant messenger which supports gtalk(voice and video), yahoo and  
> several other IM protocols.
>
> I was also curious about the webkit powered Epiphany. But the webkit  
> switch was not complete and the version 2.24 still uses the Gecko  
> engine. Visit here for more details.
>
> This release also has better webcam support through the GNOME  
> application called Cheese.
>
> There is also some menu re-arrangements in the new desktop. The  
> Dictionary application have been moved to the Office section, earlier  
> it was included in the Accessories section.
>
> To summarize, I believe that Fedora 10 is a distribution which is  
> worth waiting for. Here is the schedule. The stable release is planned  
> for November 2008.
> "
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