Fedora 18 "Spherical Cow" Beta Finally Released

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Fedora 18 "Spherical Cow" Beta Finally Released

After an embarrassing number of delays that put the entire release in question, the Fedora 18 Beta of the "Spherical Cow" was finally released today...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTIzNzM

[mark45]

So this release finally ships with GRUB2 by default, right?

[r1348]

So this release finally ships with GRUB2 by default, right?

It's default since at least F16...

[mark45]

It's default since at least F16...

You're wrong. Anyone with real knowledge?

[disi]

You're wrong. Anyone with real knowledge?

lol

Some glitches here and there, main problem is still with the installer (which supports btrfs layouts, kind of at the moment). You have to use the installer as if you never installed Linux or partitioned a drive using GPT,DOS,LVM or BTRFS.

Once installed it works fine, a distribution to install the forget about with smooth Gnome3

[r1348]

You're wrong. Anyone with real knowledge?

[[email protected] ~]$ uname -a
Linux dario-laptop 3.6.8-1.fc17.x86_64 #1 SMP Mon Nov 26 22:11:44 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
[[email protected] ~]$ rpm -qa | grep grub2
grub2-tools-2.0-0.38.beta6.fc17.x86_64
grub2-2.0-0.38.beta6.fc17.x86_64

Straight from the laptop I'm writing from.

[mark45]

[[email protected] ~]$ uname -a
Linux dario-laptop 3.6.8-1.fc17.x86_64 #1 SMP Mon Nov 26 22:11:44 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
[[email protected] ~]$ rpm -qa | grep grub2
grub2-tools-2.0-0.38.beta6.fc17.x86_64
grub2-2.0-0.38.beta6.fc17.x86_64

Straight from the laptop I'm writing from.

Having grub2 packaged in repos and having it installed by default are different things. Also, your Fedora 17 != F16.

As the history goes they targeted F16 for Grub2 by default and failed - you probably googled, found their F16 release plans mentioning grub2 and hurried telling me it was by default since F16 - bullshit.

Then they targeted F17 with GRUB2 by default but they either didn't install it by default or it sucked as a backend cause I recall using F17 and it wasn't as simple to use as grub-install and update-grub in Ubuntu, and as usual in such situations, the folks tried to portray it the other way around.

[TomcaT-SdB]

Grub 2 is in F16

FWIW From my machine:

[[email protected] Downloads]$ more /etc/redhat-release
Fedora release 16 (Verne)
[[email protected] Downloads]$ rpm -qa | grep grub
grubby-8.8-2.fc16.x86_64
grub2-1.99-13.fc16.3.x86_64

Perhaps there were some cases where grub2 wsn't the default, but at least in some cases, F16 installed w/ it.
Also, the release announcement: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/F16_release_announcement

So grub2 was there, and IIRC I didn't have to do any specific thing to enable it, it came out of the box fcor me. Maybe for some architectures or specific cases it wasn't the default?

[mark45]

FWIW From my machine:

[[email protected] Downloads]$ more /etc/redhat-release
Fedora release 16 (Verne)
[[email protected] Downloads]$ rpm -qa | grep grub
grubby-8.8-2.fc16.x86_64
grub2-1.99-13.fc16.3.x86_64

Perhaps there were some cases where grub2 wsn't the default, but at least in some cases, F16 installed w/ it.
Also, the release announcement: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/F16_release_announcement

So grub2 was there, and IIRC I didn't have to do any specific thing to enable it, it came out of the box fcor me. Maybe for some architectures or specific cases it wasn't the default?

I remember that Fedora, which usually ships bleeding edge packages, was very late with grub2 adoption, and the link you're giving only talks about grub2 shipping, it doesn't say it has become the default one, and the F16 feature list for grub2 still says 85% completion.


When I say "installed by default" I also mean used as the default one, afaik Fedora shipped with both of them (I'm not sure which one was the main one) for a while because they realized that they were too late with grub2 adoption yet grub2 wasn't quite ready yet even by Fedora's quality standards.

[AdamW]

mark45: r1348 was correct and you were wrong all along. When being brusque and authoritative in manner on forum threads, it helps to make sure of your facts first (believe me)...

We went to grub2 by default for x86 BIOS fresh installs in Fedora 16. Fedora 16 would also migrate existing installations to grub2 on upgrade if you upgraded via anaconda or preupgrade. Migration was not automatic if upgrading from a previous release via yum, but instructions for manual migration were provided on the yum upgrade instruction page - https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Upgra...-.3E_Fedora_16 .

Neither grub-legacy nor grub2 is used for PPC or s390x installs, obviously. For x86 UEFI-native installs we stuck with grub-efi (based on grub-legacy) in Fedora 16 and Fedora 17, and are switching to grub2-efi for such installs only in Fedora 18. However, UEFI-native is still a fairly niche install case, and you made no indication in your original post you were talking about UEFI, so it seems reasonable to assume you were talking about BIOS. We felt grub2-efi was not ready for primetime during the F16 and F17 cycles, but we're happy with it for F18.

FWIW, 'grub-install' is a command from upstream grub, nothing specific to Ubuntu, and also exists in Fedora (we rename it to 'grub2-install' to avoid collision with grub-legacy, but it's the same thing). 'update-grub' on Ubuntu is just a convenience alias for 'grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg', and grub-mkconfig is similarly an upstream command available on Fedora as grub2-mkconfig. However, while Ubuntu just uses grub-mkconfig to maintain the grub config file after system installation, Fedora uses grub2-mkconfig on initial installation but on subsequent updates, uses the helper tool 'grubby' to update the grub config file rather than using grub2-mkconfig. This is basically because it's how we did things with grub-legacy (which had no inbuilt configuration file updater tool). There are arguments both for and against switching to the upstream grub2-mkconfig for post-install config file maintenance; personally I'd be happier if we just did that and ditched grubby, but I can see the arguments the other way.