Fedora Core Archive

Fedora 11 Preview Release has been announced with a large number of new features, even more so than previous general releases. This includes Presto (delta RPM updates reducing bandwidth usage over 80% typically), automatic font and mime installer via PackageKit, Nouveau as the default driver for Nvidia cards (3D support is not mature and disabled however), simplified Anaconda text mode installation and minimal installation support, automatic Bug Reporting tool, native access to Microsoft Exchange using OpenChange, Firefox 3.1 and ThunderBird 3.0, Windows Cross Compiler (MinGW and a comprehensive set of cross compiled libraries), Ext4 as the default filesystem, experimental support for the next generation Btrfs filesystem, improved I18N with the switch to IBus input system by default, much improved Kernel Mode Support, many virtualization and security improvements, RPM 4.7, GNOME 2.26, KDE 4.2, Xfce 4.6, Linux Kernel 2.6.29, Python 2.6. GCC 4.4 and several other changes.

PCPlus has a tutorial on building your own Linux distribution with the customizations you want, derived from Fedora, using the graphical interface called Revisor. "We're used to thinking of Linux distributions being set in stone. They're either KDE or Gnome, use a certain kernel and bundle certain applications. But this doesn't have to be the case. If you find yourself making the same adjustments each time you install a new distribution, it's worth creating your own customised version. Revisor is a tool that lets you do just this, and in this tutorial, we'll show you how."

Internet News writes about a major mark for Fedora 10 release. Fedora remains the only distribution to publish it's statistics and gathering methods openly and transparently. In any case, they reached 1 million active installations of Fedora Linux 10.

Among the many new features for Fedora 11, a newly added one is Nouveau becoming the default driver for Nvidia cards in Rawhide. Nouveau is an effort to create a completely free and open source 3D driver for Nvidia cards. Fedora 7 originally included this driver installed but not enabled by default. Red Hat recently hired Ben Skeggs, one of the primary Nouveau developers and Nouveau driver has been accepted by the Fedora Engineering team to be the default driver for Nvidia cards with the legacy nv driver as a fallback option. Nouvaeu already supports more chipsets, RANR 1.1 support, Accelerated XRENDER, Textured Video support for many cards that are not covered by the nv driver which has been hampered by a lot of obfuscated code as well. Phoronix has other details.

Fedora 11 Alpha includes a number of major features including Ext4 as default filesystem, A Windows cross compiler with dozens of libraries available in the repository, PackageKit Firmware support, experimental support for the next generation Btrfs filesystem, GNOME 2.26 development snapshot, KDE 4.2 RC 2 (general release available as an update), Xfce 4.6 Beta, Python 2.6 and more. Download it from here. The general release is targeted to be released at the end of May this year and will have many more enhancements available.

The latest Fedora development snapshot makes Ext4 the default file system and adds experimental support for the next generation btrfs filesystem. "According to current plans, version 11 of Fedora, which is expected to arrive in late May, will use Ext4 as its standard file system. That's what the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo) recently decided, following a heated discussion in an IRC meeting. If however Ext3's successor encounters big problems with the pre-release versions of Fedora 11, the developers will dump that plan and revert to Ext3."

Earlier this week Phoronix published a set of comparative benchmarks regarding Ubuntu, testing various recent releases to compare their performance figures on all sorts of different tasks. They've now done the same thing for Fedora, so we can compare Fedora and Ubuntu in terms of performance.

OLPC Project uses a derivative of Fedora as the operating system for it's XO laptops. One of the unique features of these laptops, is an environment called Sugar developed as a collaboration between Red Hat and other developers and now being maintained by Sugarlabs, an independent non-profit organization. The Fedora Project has released a new spin, a live CD with the Sugar environment by default and a number of additional activities including sugar-browse based on XULRunner and sugar-write based on Abiword. Furthermore, the Fedora liveusb-creator software has been updated to include support for this spin. For people developing the Sugar environment or those curious about it but don't have an OLPC system, this live cd can be a handy way to dive in.

A Fedora user takes a brief look at what he considers 13 of the prime features in the upcoming Fedora 10 release on end of November. "Fedora has many a projects finished or in the queue for Fedora 10. It is a mammoth and obviously unimportant to take all of them out here. So I have sorted some to best of your interests. If you are a developer, then don't worry. You have your goodie too."

OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project originally based on Fedora 7 has done a revamp of its core system to Fedora 9 and added a number of new interesting features and many bug fixes. These include updates on applications on the XO laptop called activities such as home view and journal, new control panel for common system settings, a update system, better backup integration and many others.

Do we need even more Linux distros? That's a contentious topic, but if you'd like to make your own flavour of Fedora, see this guide to using Revisor, Fedora's re-build application. With some intermediate Linux knowledge (and a spare few hours), you can customise Fedora DVDs with your own software selection and updates.

Early on, it was a bit of a challenge to get Linux natively installed on the PS3. Time has passed, and a great deal has changed. Fedora 7 installs on the PS3 out of the box, with the most challenging installation steps eliminated. This article introduces the basic configuration knobs and widgets specific to the PS3 running Linux, shows you how to use them effectively, and suggests the kind of trickery that gets improved performance.

For many, their first experience with Fedora leaves them in awe of the incredible artwork. This is an important part of Fedora's reputation, so if you're a fan of Fedora art, you should definitely check out what the art team has come up with.

Though features are not yet being officially accepted for Fedora 10, there are already plenty of great proposed features. We can only hope they make it into the final release!