Fedora Core Archive

"There has been a long standing rumor regarding NASA running Fedora which all of us in the Fedora community have been always intrigued by. Is it true? What are they doing with it there? Why don't they run RHEL. Fortunately enough, a couple of weeks ago, I got to experience NASA behind the scenes, first hand, and hang out with the coolest members of the Fedora community, and find out the answer to these questions and lots more."

"KDE 4 is seen by many to be the next big step on the free software desktop, while others think releasing 4.0 in its current condition was misleading and a mistake. Either way, it's an innovative release and inline with Fedora's goal of providing the latest and greatest free software it is set to be the default KDE environment in the next major release of Fedora. We caught up with two members of the KDE SIG to talk about the work they're doing to get it ready for release, their own opinions on the software and what they think about the progress made by Fedora in getting over its GNOME centric reputation."

Phoronix has published a brief preview of Fedora 9. Among the features being worked on are encrypted file-system support, updating KDE to 4.0, PackageKit integration, and switching to upstart initialization. In this article, we are taking a brief look at Fedora 9 Alpha and the features planned for Fedora 9.

The Fedora Project has announced the alpha release of Fedora 9. Highlights of the Fedora 9 alpha release include partition resizing support for ext2, ext3, NTFS, and encrypted filesystems in the Anaconda installer, faster and more efficient yum dependency resolver, PackageKit, FreeIPA, GNOME 2.21 development release, KDE 4.0, Firefox 3 beta 2, 2.6.24 Linux kernel, and many others.

"Java is a popular programming language used both on the desktop and the net. Until recently users who wanted to use just free software have had to struggle with partial support for Java, but now that Sun have begun freeing their Java implementation the way has opened for free software developers to create an entirely free implementation. This free Java, IcedTea, was shipped by default with Fedora 8, and so we talked to Thomas Fitzsimmons, the lead developer behind this feature."

"We all appreciate that when we turn on our Linux systems they're pretty secure. Thanks to continuing improvements to SELinux, it is increasingly easy for users to take advantage of this powerful security tool. Read on to find an interview with Daniel Walsh, the principal developer of SELinux in Fedora from Red Hat, where he tells us more about what SELinux does and how it's improved in Fedora 8. At the end of the article are some screenshots which show-off the new policy creation GUI."

DistroWatch has reviewed Fedora 8. They conclude: "Overall, I truly believe that Fedora 8 is by far the best Fedora release to date (and I've tried every one of them). From the look and feel of the system, to the out-of-the-box configuration during installation, I couldn't be happier with a cutting edge release. As I mentioned before, the biggest aspects of a successful distribution for me are suspend/hibernate, correct screen resolution and the the ability to change the screen resolution in a GUI if it didn't configure it correctly the first time, system stability, and overall look and feel of a distribution. For me, Fedora 8 has excelled in all categories when I evaluate and review a system and I hope that Fedora continues to release versions that are put together as good as Fedora 8 has been."

Fedora 8 has been released. It sports a new look and feel, a codec installation program, the first signs of the GNOME online desktop, various security improvements, support for Compiz and Compiz-Fusion, Java support via Iced-Tea, and much more. Get it from the download page. Update: A couple of articles about the release: 1, 2, 3. Update II: One more: 4.

"Not all major software versions carry the same weight. Consider the last two releases of the Fedora distribution. Fedora 7 offered little that was obvious to desktop users, despite some behind-the-scenes improvements and the opening of the release process to public scrutiny. By contrast, if Test 3 of Fedora 8 is any indication, the upcoming release, scheduled for next month, returns to the distribution's tradition of introducing a variety of innovations. Some of these innovations, like the new firewall tool, are minor, if still welcome. Others, like the IcedTea version of Java and Codec Buddy, are flawed, but may eventually find their way into other distributions."

Fedora 8 Test 3 has been released. "Fedora 8 Test 3 is here! This is the last test release before the development freeze and a great time to test all those packages that you know and love. Test 3 is for beta users. This is the time when we must have full community participation. Without this participation both hardware and software functionality suffers."

"Purpose-built Fedora distributions, called 'spins', are a recent addition to that community in an attempt to reach additional users. The idea is to use tools like Revisor to create a custom collection of software that work well together for a particular set of tasks. This collection can then be installed or run from a live CD, providing an easy means to have the right collection of tools immediately, rather than after a lengthy yum install pass."

"For a while now, Clearlooks has been the default theme in Fedora; in fact, for a long time, Clearlooks has been the default theme in a number of distros thanks to its place as Gnome's default. Aiming to give Fedora its own distinct and modern appearance is Nodoka: based on its own theme engine it's extremely fast, and when seen in combination with the rest of the artwork for Fedora 8 is beautiful. Read on for an interview with Martin Sourada and some screenshots of the theme."

If you're a Fedora user the end of May means one thing... time for a new release! This year was no different as the Fedora project continued its aggressive six month release schedule. Fedora 7, code named “Moonshine”, is the latest version of the Red Hat influenced Linux distribution. Read the Fedora 7 review. Meanwhile, this Red Hat Magazine article details how to "remix" Fedora.

Fedora 8 Test 1 has been released. "Fedora 8 Test one has been loosed upon the world today. Included in this release is a 'Fedora' installable 'choose your own adventure' style set of isos and trees for i386, x86_64, and ppc(64). Also included are Live images of both the Fedora Desktop and the Fedora KDE desktop." And there are screenshots.