Fedora Core

Fedora Core (sometimes incorrectly called Fedora Linux) is an RPM-based Linux distribution, developed by the community-supported Fedora Project, sponsored by Red Hat, and derived from the original Red Hat Linux distribution.

The Fedora Project has the goal of building a complete, general-purpose operating system from open source software. Fedora came about as a result of a new business strategy which Red Hat implemented late in 2003. The project envisages that conventional Linux home users will use Fedora Core, and intends that it replace the consumer distributions of Red Hat Linux. (Red Hat has positioned Red Hat Enterprise Linux as a business-oriented Linux distribution, and it offers software support for that distribution.) Support for Fedora comes from the greater community.

Versions

Stable

Fedora Core 3 (FC3, release name Heidelberg), the current stable version, was released on November 8, 2004 for the i386 and AMD64 architectures. It includes version 2.6.9 of the Linux kernel, Xorg 6.8.1, GNOME 2.8 and KDE 3.3.0.

Unstable

The current unstable release of Fedora Core is Fedora Core 4 Test 3, released on May 9, 2005. Changes from Fedora Core 3 include GCC 4.0 as the default system compiler, Linux kernel 2.6.11, GNOME 2.10, KDE 3.4, and the addition of a PPC port.

Fedora Core 4 Final will be the next release of Fedora Core, which will be released on June 6, 2005.

The Preliminary Release Schedule of Fedora Core 4 is shown as follows:

• March 15, 2005 – Fedora Core 4 Test 1
• April 11, 2005 – Fedora Core 4 Test 2
• May 9, 2005 – Fedora Core 4 Test 3
• June 6, 2005 – Fedora Core 4 Final (this release will be stable)

Discontinued

Fedora Core 1 (FC1, internal codename Cambridge, release name Yarrow) released on November 6, 2003 was discontinued on November 20, 2004 and moved to the Fedora Legacy Project. 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 2 (FC2, release name Tettnang), reached release on May 18, 2004 was discontinued on April 11, 2005 and moved to the Fedora Legacy Project. It includes version 2.6 of the Linux kernel, GNOME 2.6, KDE 3.2.1, and SELinux. This version also replaced XFree86 with the XOrg Foundation Open Source Public Implementation of X11. This release occasioned many complaints because of its problems with installation while dual-booting with Windows XP (actually caused by an issue with the 2.6 kernel's handling of partitions).

See also

• Red Hat Linux
• List of Linux distributions
• Comparison of Linux distributions

External links

Official sites

• Fedora Project homepage
  • Fedora Project release schedule
• Fedora Project overview page on redhat.com
• FedoraForum.org Official Fedora Support Forum since May 4th, 2005
• Fedora Project Wiki
  • instructions for Fedora Extras packages

Download sites

• Fedora Project download page
• BitTorrent downloads
• Fedora Core CVS server

Unofficial sites

• The Unofficial Fedora FAQ
• Fedora Forum @ LinuxQuestions.org Fedora Forum sponsored by Fedora Project
• Fedora Forum Gallery Screenshots and workstation layouts
• FedoraNEWS
• Fedora mailing lists on gmane.org
• Fedora Core Installation Notes