is an
RPM -based
Linux Distribution , developed by the community-supported
Fedora Project , sponsored by
Red Hat . The name derives from Red Hat's characteristic
Fedora used in its "Shadowman" logo.
Fedora aims to be a complete, general-purpose
Operating System from
Open Source Software . Fedora is designed to be easily installed and configured with a simple graphical installer and the 'system-config' suite of configuration tools. Packages and their dependencies can be easily downloaded and installed with the
Yum utility. New releases of Fedora come out every six to eight months.
The name Fedora Core distinguishes the main Fedora packages from those of the
Fedora Extras project, which provides add-ons to Fedora Core.
Fedora was derived from the original
Red Hat Linux distribution. The project envisages that conventional Linux home users will use Fedora Core, and intends that it replace the consumer distributions of Red Hat Linux. Support for Fedora comes from the greater community (although Red Hat staff work on it, Red Hat does not provide official support for Fedora).
Fedora is sometimes called
Fedora Linux , though this is not actually the official name.
- Fedora Core uses GNOME as its default desktop environment. The Fedora developers' attention to usability improvements in the GNOME codebase has meant that they have on occasions backported improvements such as the no-focus-steal feature in GNOME, for Fedora Core 4 .
- Many of the administration tools in Fedora Core are written in Python - an object oriented language that makes programs easy to maintain, but like most "scripting" languages is slow to execute.
On
March 20 ,
2006 , Fedora Core 5 (FC5, release name ''
Bordeaux '') was released. It includes
GNOME 2.14,
KDE 3.5.1,
Xorg 7.0,
GCC 4.1, version 2.6.16 of the
Linux Kernel , and, for the first time, the
Mono Development Platform . Mono has not been included until now due to an unclear state of software patents of Microsoft.
Fedora Core 4 (FC4, release name ''Stentz''), the previous stable version, was released on
June 13 ,
2005 for the
I386 ,
AMD64 , and
PowerPC architectures. It includes
GNOME 2.10 and
KDE 3.4, GCC 4.0, a
Gcj -compiled version of the
Eclipse IDE , and version 2.6.11 of the
Linux Kernel .
There are currently no unstable packaged releases of Fedora Core. The latest release is considered stable. The next unstable release of Fedora Core 6 is developing.
Fedora Core 6 Test 1 is the current unstable release of Fedora Core.
Fedora Core 6 Final will be the next stable release of Fedora Core, which will be released on
November ,
2006 .
The preliminary release schedule of Fedora Core 6
1 is shown as follows:
- 14 June, 2006 - Fedora Core 6 Test 1
- 12 July, 2006 - Fedora Core 6 Test 2
- 16 August, 2006 - Fedora Core 6 Test 3
- 20 September, 2006 - Fedora Core 6 Final (this release will be stable)
New packages that end up in Fedora (and later,
Red Hat Enterprise Linux ) are first added to Fedora
Rawhide . Rawhide is in perpetual beta, and may break at any time, but some developers do use it as their main distribution.
The
Fedora Legacy project is a community project that handles releases after Red Hat has stopped maintaining updates for those who do not wish to or cannot upgrade.
Fedora Core 3 (FC3, release name ''
Heidelberg '') was released on
November 8 ,
2004 for the
I386 and
AMD64 architectures, and was transferred to Fedora Legacy on
January 16 ,
2006 . It included
GNOME 2.8 and
KDE 3.3.0,
X.Org Server 6.8.1, the
Xen virtualizer, and version 2.6.9 of the
Linux Kernel .
Fedora Core 2 (FC2, release name ''
Tettnang '') reached release on
May 18 ,
2004 , and was transferred to Fedora Legacy on
April 11 ,
2005 . It included version 2.6 of the
Linux Kernel ,
GNOME 2.6,
KDE 3.2.1, and
SELinux . This version also replaced
XFree86 with the
X.Org Server . This release occasioned many complaints because of its problems with installation while
Dual-boot ing with
Windows XP (actually caused by an issue with the 2.6 kernel's handling of partitions).
Fedora Core 1 (FC1, internal codename ''
Cambridge '', release name ''
Yarrow '') was released on
November 6 ,
2003 , and transferred to Fedora Legacy on
November 20 ,
2004 . Improvements over Red Hat Linux 9 included automated updates with
Yum , improved
Laptop support with
ACPI and cpufreq, and prelinking for faster program start time. An
AMD64 version appeared in
March 2004 .
Fedora Core only includes a core set of packages. For downloading and installing programs or
Codec s not distributed with Core, there are several
Repositories available. Currently there are two families of repositories. Packages are compatible inside the same family, but incompatible with the other.
- claim to be compatible with Extras.
- FreshRPMS (maintained by Matthias Saou), Dag (maintained by Dag Wieers, FC 1-3 only), Dries (FC 1-4 only), and ATrpms (maintained by Axel Thimm)
Packages from both families, in general, cannot be mixed.
The first family has the packages divided according to the license. Extras maintains packages legally distributable in the United States, while Livna maintains packages that may have legal issues within the United States or can be downloaded only by the end user.
The second family has the packages divided according to the opinion of the maintainers.
The incompatibility between the repositories is a subject of some contention within the larger Fedora community. Recently, the second group of packagers have begun working together at a larger project called
RPMforge , which claims to be compatible with Extras.
The main tool to install software from repositories is the command yum. A graphical tool called pirut is, together with the
Update Program pup, part of the standard installation since Fedora Core 5. Yumex http://yumex.python-hosting.com/ is a graphical alternative preferred by some reviewers, and available in Extras.
Up until Fedora Core 4, maintainers of some of the extra repositories advocated the use of
Apt-rpm for update management - being written in C, it uses fewer CPU cycles and is therefore suitable for older computers, too. No release of apt-rpm for Fedora Core 5 has been made yet.
Fedora came about as a result of a new
Business Strategy which
Red Hat implemented late in
2003 - Red Hat now positions
Red Hat Enterprise Linux as a
Business -oriented Linux distribution, and all official support is for that distribution. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) releases are branched off Fedora Core, which has led some critics to observe that Fedora Core users are in effect beta testers for RHEL.
The distribution most likely got its name from the
Fedora used in Red Hat's "Shadowman" logo. Red Hat has been tangled in disputes with the creators of the
Fedora Repository Management Software over the name, which the company has attempted to secure trademark rights on.
Red Hat Inc.'s Use of The Fedora Name
Similar to the Red Hat products the Fedora Core Project is using codenames for their distributions.
