Product SiteDocumentation Site

3. Changes in Fedora for Desktop Users

3.1. Desktop

3.1.1. Cinnamon

The latest release of the popular desktop environment Cinnamon brings new features and polish to Fedora 19:
nemo, the file manager, has been heavily modified to integrate its behavior with Cinnamon.
screensaver has been improved, including a lock screen with customizable away message.
control center is more comprehensive.
desklets are desktop applets, and the Cinnamon community offers a variety of them.
spices are Cinnamon customizations, such as desklets, applets, themes, and extensions. They can now be installed with a desktop utility.
While originally based on GNOME, Cinnamon is maturing into an independent, fully featured fork. For news and details about the Cinnamon project, visit http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com

3.1.2. GNOME

Fedora 19 includes the latest version of the GNOME desktop, 3.8. For more information about what is new in this GNOME release, visit the project's release notes at http://library.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/3.8
3.1.2.1. Session logs moved into journal
User session logs, previously stored in $HOME/.cache/gdm/session.log, have moved into the journal.
To view your user session log, identify your user ID and view the journal for that UID :
	  $ id
	  uid=1000(username) gid=1000(username) groups=1000(username) context=unconfined_u:unconfined_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c1023
	  $ journalctl _UID=1000
3.1.2.2. Support for extracting RAR files
File Roller, the graphical archive manager for GNOME, can support extraction of files from RAR archives after installation of the unar package. unar is a free and open source command line multi-format extractor that is part of The Unarchiver project for extracting RAR files, including encrypted and multi-volume archives. In previous Fedora releases, users have had to install the non-free unrar tool from a third party repository for the same purpose. This is not necessary anymore.
Fedora still does not have any default support for creating new RAR files since there is no free and open source tool that provides this functionality. Fedora however includes support for several free and open source compression formats that are generally considered to be more efficient than RAR, such as the popular XZ format and it is recommended that you use it to distribute compressed files.

3.1.3. KDE

Fedora 19 features KDE Plasma Workspaces version 4.10 and the newest version of KDE Platform and Applications. To learn more about the release, consult http://www.kde.org/announcements/4.10/
3.1.3.1. KScreen
Configuration of multiple displays is improved with KScreen, a new screen management software for KDE. It has a new UI for monitors configuration and automatic saving and restoring of profiles for connected monitors.

3.1.4. MATE

The latest version of a familiar favorite, MATE 1.6 builds on modern functionality to provide a polished, stable desktop environment.
Read more about changes in MATE from the project's release announcement at http://mate-desktop.org/2013/04/02/mate-1-6-released/

3.2. Productivity

3.2.1. LibreOffice 4.0

LibreOffice has been updated to version 4.0, with many notable features and fixes. For detailed information on these changes, read http://www.libreoffice.org/download/4-0-new-features-and-fixes/

3.2.2. Command line tools

findutils has been updated to version 4.5.11, bringing several functional changes. Users of find should consult /usr/share/doc/findutils-*/NEWS for changes, including xargs, printf and regex functions.
sed gains the new command F to print the input file names, a new option -z or --null-data to separate lines by ASCII NULL characters, and other fixes described in /usr/share/doc/sed-*/NEWS

3.3. Networking

3.3.1. Federated VoIP

Fedora 19 offers better support for truly federated VoIP, with the reSIProcate (repro) SIP proxy and reTurnServer, an ICE, STUN, and TURN server for both SIP and XMPP (Jabber) networks.

3.3.2. Improved Mobile Broadband support

Fedora 19 includes a new, more capable version of ModemManager for interacting with mobile broadband devices. This version provides better support for multi-mode devices like Qualcomm Gobi WWAN cards and other devices that support the CDMA/EVDO/LTE standards, the GSM/UMTS/LTE standards, or devices that can support either. To provide this support, the D-Bus API of ModemManager has changed, which may require updates in applications that interact with ModemManager to control WWAN devices.
Many devices will connect and authenticate using the NetworkManager GUI. nm-cli has added features to configure mobile connections. For more detailed usage information, consult http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MoreMobileBroadband .

3.3.3. firewalld improvements

The firewall daemon, firewalld, introduced as the default firewall solution in Fedora 18, adds new features to allow easy configuration of this powerful firewall.
3.3.3.1. Locking the firewall and whitelisting changes
Dynamic firewall configuration by applications can now be locked down completely, or limited to a whitelist. The whitelist can contain commands, users, UIDs, and SELinux contexts.
To lock down the firewall, set Lockdown=yes in /etc/firewalld/firewalld.conf and reload the firewall.
          firewall-cmd --reload
The firewall should be reloaded for any changes to the whitelist to take effect.
The whitelist configuration is located in /etc/firewalld/lockdown-whitelist.xml and is empty by default. The whitelist below will allow only firewall-cmd to make changes to the firewall. The '*' character allows the rule to match arguments passed to firewall-cmd
        
<whitelist>
  <command name="/usr/bin/python /bin/firewall-cmd*" />
</whitelist>

For more information on firewalld lockdown, consult the feature page at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/FirewalldLockdown
3.3.3.2. Rich Language for rule configuration
Fedora 19 includes the latest firewalld version, which supports a rich language to be able to create more complex firewalls in a easy way. To take advantage of the new system, read http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/FirewalldRichLanguage

3.3.4. OpenVPN 2.3

OpenVPN has been updated to version 2.3, bringing numerous feature enhancements, bugfixes, and expanded documentation. For detailed information on these changes, consult https://community.openvpn.net/openvpn/wiki/ChangesInOpenvpn23

3.3.5. OpenConnect

OpenConnect has been updated to version 4.99, adding XML POST support for solutions such as AnyConnect, the --os switch to report a different OS type to the gateway, and SecurID token support using libstoken.

3.3.6. BIND10

The BIND10 suite is now shipped in the Fedora repositories. This includes the DNS server daemon named, the dhcpd server daemon, and related utilities. Documentation is available at http://bind10.isc.org/wiki and the BIND10 Guide.
Starting with Fedora 19, the named PID file has been moved from /var/run/named/named.pid to /run/named/named.pid. Users with a custom named.conf migrating to Fedora 19 should add a pid-file statement to the options section:

options {
        ...
        pid-file      "/run/named/named.pid";
        ...
        };

3.3.7. Stable network interface naming

The udevd service has a long history of providing predictable names for block devices and others. Fedora will now also use udev naming for network interfaces by default, providing more reliable interface names on systems with multiple network devices. Alternative naming schemes, such as custom udev rules or biosdevname, will override this default. Users upgrading from previous releases may need to update the device names referenced in /etc/system/network-scripts/, although in most cases biosdevname will continue to manage naming.

3.4. Internationalization

3.4.1. Input Methods

  • ibus
    Default keybinding to turn Input Method on and off has been changed to Super+space
    IME switcher dialog is implemented on GNOME Desktop
    ibus-setup provides two options for desktops other than GNOME: use system keyboard and Embed preedit test in application window
  • ibus-kkc, or Kana Kanji Conversion, is the new default Japanese input method engine using the new libkkc backend. It replaces ibus-anthy.
  • ibus-libpinyin, an intelligent pinyin engine using libpinyin, now supports configuring enabled dictionaries and importing third party dictionaries from the setup dialog.
  • ibus-bogo is a new Vietnamese engine for ibus.
  • ibus-typing-booster now makes better use of hunspell when making suggestions, and supports Tab completion.
  • imsettings now checks the org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.plugins.keyboard.active gsettings key to determine if imsettings should manage input methods on GNOME and Cinnamon desktops. If you do not want to use IBus integration for them, set the key to false.

3.4.2. Fonts

fonts-tweak-tool now has support for embedded bitmaps, font substitution configuration, and OpenType Feature Tags.
Lohit fonts have a number of improvements:
Dropped reserved font name from OLF license.
lohit-devanagari-fonts has corrected "श्री" syllable with mr_IN locale.
lohit-gujarati-fonts has fixed shape of character "Dha" U+0AA7.
lohit-kannada-fonts has fix for vowel signs syllables and NGA and NYA glyphs attachment with vowel signs.
lohit-malayalam-fonts now supports Dot Reph (u0D4E), works well with harfbuzz-ng.
lohit-tamil-fonts has modified zero to five numerals, Rupee sign (u0BF9) and correct rendering of Tamil Letter RA,RI,RII as per GoTN standards.
lohit-telugu-fonts now connect NYU ఞ + ు and NYUU ఞ + ూ combination properly.
paktype-naskh-basic-fonts, paktype-naqsh-fonts, paktype-tehreer-fonts and paktype-ajrak-fonts have gained the Turkish Lira symbol and bug fixes with Hamza Below Ye
A new font family for Hebrew, shofar, is available in the culmus-shofar-fonts package.
New hinted open type fonts for Latin, Armenian, Devanagari Ethiopic Georgian, Hebrew, Khmer, Lao, Tamil and Thai scripts are available in the package google-noto-fonts

3.4.3. Translation tools

Fedora has gained a translation tool, tw. It translates words between languages using internal dictionaries, Google Translation, and FreeTranslation.