Fedora Core
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Background
Fedora Core is an RPM-based Linux distribution, developed by the community-supported Fedora Project, sponsored by Red Hat. Fedora was derived from the original Red Hat Linux distribution series. The project envisages that conventional Linux home users will use Fedora Core, and intends that it replace the consumer distributions of Red Hat Linux. 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. 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 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 months. The name "Fedora Core" distinguishes the main Fedora packages from the Fedora Extras project, which provides add-ons to Fedora Core.
Versions
Stable
Fedora Core 4 (FC4, release name Stentz), the current 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.
Fedora Core 3 (FC3, release name Heidelberg), the previous stable version, was released on November 8, 2004 for the i386 and AMD64 architectures. It includes 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.
Unstable
Fedora Core 5 Test 1 will be the next unstable release of Fedora Core. Fedora Core 5 Final will be the next stable release of Fedora Core, which will be released on February 13, 2006.The Preliminary Release Schedule of Fedora Core 5 is shown as follows:
- November 7, 2005 - Fedora Core 5 Test 1
- December 12, 2005 - Fedora Core 5 Test 2
- January 9, 2006 - Fedora Core 5 Test 3
- February 13, 2006 - Fedora Core 5 Final (this release will be stable)
Bleeding-edge
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.
Discontinued
Fedora Core 2 (FC2, release name Tettnang), reached release on May 18, 2004, and was discontinued on April 11, 2005. 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 X.Org Server. 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).
Fedora Core 1 (FC1, internal codename Cambridge, release name Yarrow) was released on November 6, 2003, and discontinued 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.
The Fedora Legacy project handles discontinued releases for those who do not wish to or cannot upgrade.
See also
External links
Official sites
- Fedora Project homepage
- Fedora Project overview page on redhat.com
- FedoraForum.org Official Fedora Support Forum since May 4th, 2005
- Fedora Project Wiki
Download sites
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 Weekly News
- Fedora mailing lists on gmane.org
- Fedora Core Installation Notes
Some content adapted from the Wikinfo article "Fedora Core" under the GNU Free Documentation License.
