Title: Fedora Linux

Author: Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier

Date: June 19, 2007 4:45:43 PM or Tue, 19 June 2007 16:45:43

Summary: 

Fedora, formerly known as Fedora Core, is a Linux distribution sponsored primarily by Red Hat, with significant community participation. The Fedora Linux distro produced by the Fedora Project was based on the original Red Hat Linux distribution and is made up entirely of free and open source software.

Body: 

For many years, Red Hat Linux was available to all users, but Red Hat decided to focus on its enterprise offerings and stop making its flagship distribution available for download. Red Hat continues to publish the source for its distributions, which is the basis for CentOS, but Red Hat doesn't publish the ISOs for Red Hat Enterprise Linux for general download.

At the same time, Red Hat launched Fedora as an unsupported alternative to its RHEL line, with the promise that Fedora would be developed in conjunction with the community. The Fedora distribution typically has cutting edge, and bleeding edge, technologies long before they are considered standard in other distributions. Many technologies pioneered in Fedora Linux, like SELinux and Xen, are later rolled into Red Hat's enterprise products.

Prior to the Fedora 7 release, Fedora maintained two software repositories -- Fedora Core, and Fedora Extras. The Core repository contained the base packages shipped with Fedora and maintained by Red Hat employees, Fedora Extras contained additional packages not found in the Core release and often maintained by volunteers. With the Fedora 7 release, both repositories were merged, and the Fedora team is working on allowing more work on the distribution to be done by volunteers.

Installer and packaging system

Fedora uses the Anaconda installer, which is also used by RHEL and a number of other projects. Anaconda offers a text-mode and GUI mode, so users can install Fedora on a wide range of systems.

Since Fedora was descendant of Red Hat Linux, it utilizes the RPM package format and ships with the Yellowdog Updater Modified (YUM) for automatic updates, and easy package installation, upgrades, and removal. The Fedora repository contains thousands of packages, all under free or open source licenses.

Supported platforms

The Fedora Project ships its distribution for x86, AMD64, and PowerPC computers.

If you're using a system with less than 192MB of RAM, the Fedora project recommends using Anaconda's text mode to install Fedora rather than the GUI installer.

Derivative distros

Fedora has been a popular foundation for other distributions. Yellow Dog Linux, which runs on PowerPC hardware and the PlayStation 3, is based on Fedora and includes a number of modifications. The YUM package management utility was developed initially by Yellow Dog, and is a good example of the open source principle at work. Innovation in one project often makes its way into additional projects.

Yoper Linux is a distro that's optimized for computers with 686 or better processors, and not only builds on Fedora, but also includes tools from KNOPPIX. Yoper is a single CD download, and uses KDE as its default desktop.

Since Fedora only supports PowerPC, x86, and AMD64 machines, a few projects have sprung up to support Fedora on alternative platforms. For example, Aurora SPARC Linux is based on Fedora, but compiled for Sun's SPARC processors.

Getting Fedora

Fedora is available from the Fedora mirror system or via BitTorrent. Note that the Fedora Project produces several "spins," including live CDs, DVDs containing the full set of Fedora packages, and boot ISOs for Internet installations of Fedora. See the installation guide to figure out which version of Fedora is right for you.

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