   #copyright

Fedora Core

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Software

   CAPTION: Fedora Core

   Fedora Core 6 running GNOME
   Website:                fedoraproject.org
   Company/
   developer:              Fedora Project
   OS family:              Linux
   Source model:           Open source
   Latest stable release:  Core 6 / October 24, 2006
   Update method:          Yum
   Package manager:        RPM Package Manager
   Supported platforms:    i386, AMD64, PowerPC
   Kernel type:            Monolithic kernel
   Default user interface: GNOME
   License:                Various
   Working state:          Current

   Fedora Core is an RPM-based Linux distribution, developed by the
   community-supported Fedora Project and sponsored by Red Hat. The name
   derives from Red Hat's characteristic fedora used in its "Shadowman"
   logo. However, the Fedora community project had existed as a volunteer
   group providing extra software for the Red Hat Linux distribution
   before Red Hat got involved as a direct sponsor.

   Fedora aims to be a complete, general-purpose operating system
   containing only free and 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. The installation
   system includes an option to use GNU GRUB, a boot loader, facilitating
   the use of Fedora in conjunction with another operating system.
   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. Fedora ships with GNOME and KDE, and spans 5 CDs or a
   single DVD (although only the first two CDs are required). Network
   installations are available from a single small 6 MB boot.iso image.
   The installer supports installation via HTTP, FTP, and NFS, and remote
   installation progress can be monitored via VNC.

   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 and Fedora Core Linux, though
   this is not actually the official name.

Features

     * 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.
     * Fedora Core has many GUI configuration tools (written in PyGTK) for
       things such as firewall, printing, and user management.
     * Fedora Core and Fedora Extras combined has over 7000 packages.
       There is a list of major packages.

Versions

   Compiz- AIGLX support in Fedora Core 6
   Enlarge
   Compiz- AIGLX support in Fedora Core 6

Stable releases

   On October 24, 2006, The Fedora development Team released Fedora Core 6
   (FC6, release name Zod)

   CAPTION: Fedora Core

   Version    Name          Date
   6       Zod        October 24, 2006
   5       Bordeaux   March 20, 2006
   4       Stentz     June 13, 2005
   3       Heidelberg November 8, 2004
   2       Tettnang   May 18, 2004
   1       Yarrow     November 6, 2003

Test releases

   As a Fedora development cycle progresses, a series of test releases are
   delivered, giving users a preview of what is coming, and allowing for
   testing and feedback. Fedora Core 6 included three such test releases.

Development releases

   Development versions of distributions such as Red Hat are often
   referred to as the "bleeding edge" . In Red Hat and Fedora, this refers
   to the repositories known by their codename Rawhide. New packages that
   end up in Fedora (and later, Red Hat Enterprise Linux) are first added
   to Fedora development tree. Fedora development is very rapid and may
   break at any time, but some developers and testers do use it as their
   main distribution.

Maintained by Fedora Legacy

   The Fedora Legacy project is a community project that handles releases
   after Fedora Core team has stopped maintaining updates for those who do
   not wish to or cannot upgrade.

   Fedora Core 4 (FC4, release name Stentz) was released on June 13, 2005
   for the i386, AMD64, and PowerPC architectures, and was transferred to
   Fedora Legacy on August 7, 2006. It included 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
   Enlarge
   Fedora Core 3

   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.

Discontinued

   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-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 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 Legacy support for both Fedora Core 1 and 2 ended on August 7,
   2006, on the day that legacy support for Fedora Core 4 began.

Repositories of extra software

   Fedora Core only includes a core set of packages. For downloading and
   installing programs or codecs not distributed with Core, there are
   several repositories available. Packages are generally compatible
   between third-party repositories, though this has not always been the
   case. There are also occasional overlaps or packaging errors that cause
   one package to negatively affect packages distributed from different
   repositories.

Official repositories

   Fedora Core, Fedora Extras and Fedora Legacy are official repositories
   in this project. Fedora Core is maintained by Red Hat. Fedora Extras is
   maintained by a group of volunteers and affiliated with the official
   Fedora Project. Fedora Extras is currently included in the base
   distribution as a default repository and no extra configuration is
   required to enable it. Fedora Legacy repository is also included in
   Fedora Core 5 and above versions but it is not enabled by default.

Unofficial repositories

   These repositories are designed to be compatible with Fedora Core
   although they may not be compatible with each other. Some of the
   repositories have discontinued active support for earlier versions of
   Fedora Core but keep the repositories around for the convenience of
   users with previous versions.
     * Livna, a third-party repository maintained by a group of packagers,
       supporting Fedora Core 1 through 6.

          (Must use with Extras. Not compatible with RPMForge
          repositories.)

     * RPMforge, containing the packages of Matthias Saou, Dag Wieers and
       Dries that were previously available in three different
       repositories, supporting Fedora Core 1 through 5. RPMforge is
       compatible with Fedora Extras, similar to Livna.
          + FreshRPMS, maintained by Matthias Saou, supporting Fedora Core
            1 through 6
          + Dag, maintained by Dag Wieers, supporting Fedora Core 1
            through 3
          + Dries, maintained by Dries Verachtert, supporting Fedora Core
            1 through 6
          + PlanetCCRMA, maintained by Fernando Lopez-Lezcano, supporting
            Fedora Core 1 through 5
     * kde-redhat, Excellent source for KDE support in Fedora Core
       maintained by a group of packagers that support Fedora Core. Has
       updated KDE desktop RPMS, general KDE applications such as
       Bluetooth support.
     * The Grey Sector, containing mostly MPlayer related packages and
       binary packaged codecs (which have some legal issues). The
       repository is maintained by MPlayer developer.
     * fedora-xgl, containing packages required to enable Xgl on Fedora.
     * dribble, containing packages with a focus on fun software
       (multimedia, games, emulators). It is recommended that this
       repository be used with Livna.
     * ATrpms, maintained by Axel Thimm and supporting Fedora Core 1
       through 6.

          + Updates base packages ahead of Core. Some administrators
            consider it a bad idea to update base packages outside of
            their official channel.
          + ATrpms is also used extensively by Fedora Myth(TV)ology - a
            popular how-to resource for installing MythTV on Fedora Core,
            maintained by Jarod Wilson.

Legal status

   Fedora Core, Fedora Extras and Fedora Legacy projects follow the same
   packaging guidelines in the Fedora project, and they all only maintain
   packages that are Free, open source software and legally distributable
   anywhere in the world. Other repositories may have different policies.
   For example, the Livna project maintains packages that may have legal
   issues within the United States or can be downloaded only by the end
   user.

   Some repositories also maintain "source-only" packages that require the
   user to download pre-built binaries that may not be available to the
   public. The package script then unpacks and repacks the binaries in a
   format more suitable for deployment on RPM-based systems.

Software update utilities

   The main tool to install software from repositories is the command yum.
   A graphical tool called pirut (available in the upper menu bar with the
   name "Package Manager") is, together with the update program pup
   ("Package Update"), part of the standard installation since Fedora Core
   5. Yumex and Synaptic are two graphical alternatives preferred by some
   reviewers, and are available in Extras. Kyum is also a nice graphical
   frontend for those who use KDE.

   Software updates from the installation CDROM are not possible directly
   with yum or pup in FC5. Pup will die at startup if you are not
   connected to the network. A workaround is possible defining in the yum
   configuration file a new installation source that points to the local
   mounted cdrom (file:///media/cdrom). Using this functionality should be
   also possible to dump a repository onto a DVD and actualize the
   computer from there.

   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. For Fedora Core 5 a new version of apt is included in
   extras which is capable of using native yum metadata and is multi-lib
   capable. Refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Tools/Apt for more
   information.

   Another useful tool to work with repositories is Fedora Helper . It
   installs and configures the "missing codecs" - MP3 support, for
   example. It uses the livna.org repository. Another tool that helps to
   mix repositories is Fedora Frog.

Off-line repositories

   If a machine needs to be updated that is not connected to the network,
   a repository can be created and updated from there. To create such a
   portable repository do :
     * make the directories ./yum, ./yum/base and ./yum/updates. (if you
       want your local apache to serve as repository of your intranet, do
       it inside /var/www/html)
     * copy all RPMs of your distribution inside ./base
     * create the headers of the packets with the command createrepo
       ./base (use /var/www/html/yum/base if you did set it for Apache)
     * Download the updates. To do that, look for a real mirror (there is
       a list of them here ) and rsync with it to pick up changes (they
       will be stored in the ./updates repository). To rsync use the
       command rsync -avrt rsync://repository --exclude=debug/
       /your-path/yum/updates

Fedora Core and Red Hat Enterprise 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. 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.

   See the Red Hat Enterprise Linux page for the versions of Fedora Core
   and their corresponding Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions.

Trademark dispute

   Red Hat has been tangled in disputes with the creators of the Fedora
   repository management software over the name, on which Red Hat has
   attempted to secure trademark rights.

Trivia

     * Linux's website is powered by Fedora Core.
     * The servers that run Wikimedia are mostly powered by Fedora Core.
     * Sony's PlayStation 3 supports Fedora (Fedora is the only OS besides
       Yellow Dog Linux to work on the PS3 yet.)

Distributions based on Fedora Core

     * Berry Linux—A medium-sized Fedora Core-based distribution that
       provides support in Japanese and English.
     * Fox Linux—A Fedora Core-based distribution made in Italy, designed
       for basic home computing tasks such as browsing the Web, writing
       and printing documents, using multimedia and burning discs.
     * Linux Mobile System—A Fedora Core-based distribution designed to
       boot from USB Mass Storage devices, such as keydrives.
     * LinuxTLE, a Thai distribution produced by NECTEC
     * RAQTweak's RackStar Appliance Server
     * Yellow Dog Linux—A Fedora Core-based distribution for the PowerPC
       platform.
     * Aurora SPARC Linux—A Fedora Core-based distribution for the SPARC
       platform.
     * YOPER

   Fedora's wiki also has a list of derived distributions.

Commercial and community distributions by the same vendor

   Red Hat's release of Fedora Core started a popular trend amongst
   commercial Linux distribution vendors, that of creating a community
   distribution closely related to a commercial distribution, with the
   community distribution acting as a open development lab leading to the
   commercial distribution.

   See Commercial and community Linux distributions by the same vendor.

   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedora_Core"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
   Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.
