It is a long time since my last post. I was intended to publish a post about Fedora 17 Alpha, and written a draft but published nothing until now; well after Fedora 17 release! So, here is a summary of things I’d liked to post during this period:
Fedora 17: Fedora 17 released with a number of interesting features like GCC 4.7 and Gimp 2.8. Also, Gnome 3.4 came with some visual improvements. Other interesting features are: Eclipse Juno, English Typing Booster, Automatic Multi-seat, Gnome shell software rendering, Private /tmp for some services (a security feature), Mingw64, and a major update to Ruby(1.9.3) among other things.
Simultaneously, there are a number of promised features missing from Fedora 17, like Network Zones, Firewalld, and NetworkManager Enterprise features (some of which appear to be completed for Fedora 17, but I can’t find them!). And I was eagerly waiting for Anaconda UI redesing (I’m waiting for it since Fedora 15!) which seems to be seriously scheduled for Fedora 18.
Offline Updates: it is a feature planned to be ready for Fedora 18. And as far as I can see, it is the feature that I’ll heartedly hate! While I rarely used PackageKit already (since it doesn’t provide required information about its downloading, which is really needed when you don’t have a reliable high speed internet connection), I hoped it’ll become more usable (or my internet access might improve!) and I’ll use it more in future. But with this mandatory feature, I’m sure that I’d never return back to PackageKit. It makes update process much like Windows, and actually even worse (Windows requires one reboot but it requires two). Its good that you can skip the updates when you need your system (unlike Windows which don’t give you any options and starts updating on reboot), but I still hate it when I’m unable to use my system and update it simultaneously. I really hate it, since it tends to “do MOST of the updates offline” as mentioned in its discussion page. It’s overkill: while updating kernel has absolutely no harm when you are using your system, it’ll be done “offline”. Do you want to update vim? wget? aria2? It’ll be done offline. What about system services (daemons) which are assumed to be able to be updated cleanly and restart themselves on update? They will be updated offline too. Surprisingly, Firefox might be updated online and not notify you that you should restart it to avoid problems (Actually, it should not be updated offline, just you should be notified to restart firefox or at least to log out and relogin). So, I’ll stick to yum, and look forward to DNF forgetting about PakageKit.
Parsidora 17: we have not released it yet, but hopefully very soon with a number of new features and hopefully a live version!
YFD Plugin: If you were using my yum-fast-downloader plugin version 0.5.9 or older on Fedora 17, you have faced an error message trying to use yum after the recent python-urlgrabber update. If you have not already done, you must update to version 0.5.10 to be able to continue using it on Fedora 17. The latest urlgrabber has support for external downloaders, it’ll help YFD to provide better support. Considering the latest updates to presto to use URLGrabber’s async download, presto support can also come to YFD more easily.
Nokia N9: While this mobile phone (the only MeeGo phone) was already dead when it launched, I really liked it and I finally decided to buy it. I bought it recently and I’m really enjoying it. I will probably provide some packages for it or I might even start developing some applications for this platform. Yes, I’m going to learn .deb packaging! Fortunately, the dead phone has received 3 updates from Nokia which is probably the support you expect for a phone. 🙂
Hedayat's Blog 
Good Post Hedayat!
But I think low Internet Connection is becoming a loose excuse these days! we can not expect that there should be good support for old dial-up connection. I think we have to invite people to migrate to a better connection and about the whole land problem I have nothing to say but I know at least that it’s our weakness not the others!
Thanks. 🙂
But, it is not necessarily a problem with dial-up connections. As I said, there is also the problem of “unreliable” connection which can even happen elsewhere. Also, the problem might be a slow mirror. If you know that you are downloading very slowly, you might be able to solve it by using a different mirror. But if you don’t know anything about the current download speed, you’ll just wait and pray so that downloads will finish sooner.
Anyway, downloading about 700MB can take some time even on many “broadband” connections.
Yes, deb will blow your mind. Use it, wisely!
As I’m already familiar with .deb to some extent, I doubt if it “blows my mind”! 😉
The secret to slow net connection is to schedule (with “at”) a download without install,
yum -y –downloadonly upgrade
(add “–secure” if your net is REALLY slow). Then you can actually run the update when you want, perhaps after reading the RSS feeds on updates and security fixes.
Anyway, I’m talking about how PackageKit is not suitable for these cases, and also why I don’t like “offline updates” regardless of the network speed.