Fedora Core Archive

First, allow me to say that I have only been using Linux for about 5 months, so I'm a comparative newbie to many in the Linux world. I don't make presumptions to know everything. With that in mind, this review is not geared toward the Linux veteran, but for people who have more curiosity than experience with Linux.

Linux Compatible has published a review on Fedora Core 2 with 30 screenshots: "Fedora Core 2 is the latest release of Red Hat's community supported Linux distribution. This release is available on 4 CDs (+ 4 CDs sources) or 1 DVD, and for x86-compatible (32-bit) and AMD64 (64-bit) platforms."

Many readers wrote in to tell us that Red Hat's Fedora Core 2 has been released. The torrents are available here, or it can be downloaded from a mirror.

Konstantin Ryabitsev sent a funny message to the development discussions related to Fedora Core, published at LWN. In the meantime, Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik answered to this querstion: "So is Red Hat Consumer Desktop next?": "Now that's interesting. That won't be function-based, it'll be form-based. And when you look at the computing you and I will be using over the next 10 years, we won't have software resident on our hard drive. You'll go to somebody -- it may well be Red Hat -- and you'll get an e-mail package, a calendaring function, and it will be a subscription-based Web service. It's not that far away, look at what people do with their cellular phones today."

zed was one of many to tell us about the availability of Fedora Core 2 Test 3. Release notes here, downloads here, torrents here.

Test 2 of Fedora Core 2 is now available. You can download it from here or, if you want maximum speed, you can grab the torrent from the Duke LUG. BitTorrent info can be found here. Update: Great. Just spent 4 hours downloading the 4 Fedora CDs (md5sum'ed) and the first CD won't boot on a machine that is fully compatible (apparently it is a new bug, there is already a bug report about it). Fedora's poor testing before the distribution (even for a beta) continues to amaze me each time a new version is out.

Distrowatch reports that a port of Fedora Core 1 to the AMD64 architecture has been released: "The port of Fedora Core 1 to AMD64 is now available. Everyone is encouraged to download it and participate by either submitting bugs or submitting fixes. All bugs, requests for enhancements, and fixes should be submitted via Bugzilla. Please keep up to date via the Update methods." Read the full announcement and the release notes for more information.

"When asked about Fedora, I’ve always offered the same response – it’s meant for those who want to stay on the bleeding edge of Linux development. I feel that Fedora is more a change of concept and mindset for Red Hat users and developers rather than being merely a Linux distribution." Read the review at Star-TechCentral.

"Normally I don't review early test releases of software, but the opportunity to test drive Fedora's first distribution based on the 2.6 kernel was too irresistible to pass up. The conclusion: Bravo, Red Hat!"

A test release of Fedora Core 2 is now available from Red Hat and at distinguished mirror sites near you, and is also available in the torrent. Fedora Core has expanded in this release to four binary ISO images and four source ISO images. This test release is specifically designed for testing the 2.6 kernel, GNOME 2.5, and KDE 3.2. Please file bugs via Bugzilla, Product Fedora Core, Version test1, Architecture i386 so that they are noticed and appropriately classified.

Red Hat has an 'aggressive' schedule for Fedora Core 2. Red Hat considers two items absolutely "stop-ship" — that is, they will slip the release if necessary to include them. These two items are the 2.6 Linux kernel and SELinux functionality integrated into the distribution.

Fedora Core 1 has been out now for a few days now and many faithful Linux fans have already installed it. Red Hat's Linux is still one of my favorite distributions because of one main reason: compatibility with Linux software. Red Hat is a market leader and following the market leader assures the least trouble for most users. But is this the case with Fedora Core?

I have installed Fedora Core 1 (Yarrow) to see what has changed between it and Red Hat Linux 9 and to get a feel for this new and powerful Linux operating system. For some people, the name Fedora will not be a familiar name, for others (Red Hat Linux or OS enthusiasts), Fedora could (In some ways) be considered to be the 'new' Red Hat Linux 9.x or 10 release, the not so long awaited sequel to Red Hat Linux 9, which came out in late March 2003. However, Fedora Core 1 is not Red Hat Linux 10 (as I try to explain below), and to quote from the front page of the Fedora Project website:

After a few coasters because of the bad quality CDs we bought at Fry's for 8 bucks some time ago (avoid the "GQ, Great Quality" brand at all costs, they only seem to work well with selected burners no matter the burning speed used), I burned and installed Fedora Core 1 successfully. Update: Get mp3 support for your Fedora's XMMS 1.2.8 from here (mirror). Also, here are four screenshots: