Fedora Core Archive

A review of Fedora Core 6 from 3 perspectives - the end user, the developer and the power user. Also explores the implications of the release as an indicator that the Linux platform is coming together to form a significant competitor to proprietary products.

"After working with FC4 for more than a year, I decided that it is not time to upgrade my distribution. FC5 has been available for more than 7 months now and I did some testing on it. But instead of installing FC5 and then upgrading to FC6, I thought it would make more sense to upgrade only once."

"I got to install Fedora Core 6 twice yesterday, in very different contexts, and I'm so far rather pleased with the outcome of my stay in Zod-land. This, despite minor setbacks which were very much due to my requirements, and some not truly Fedora related." More here.

"Fedora Core 6 was released on the 24th, not the 24th of December, but the 24th of October. I can't remember who said that on the Fedora IRC channel, but for him a new Fedora release was a bit like Christmas." More here.

"We have already used Fedora Core 6 Zod for several days now and have been extremely pleased by this release. The changes are extensive from default AIGLX + Compiz support to a great deal of performance improvements. Another nice feature is the immediate availability of Extras packages built for Fedora Core 6". More here.

Fedora Core 6 has been released to mirrors, as Linux-Noob has found out. They also have a screenshot tour. Highlights of this release include support for Compiz/AIGLX, GNOME 2.16, KDE 3.5.4, a new theme, performance improvements, and much more, as can be found in the release notes. Update: More screenshots.

"We regret to announce a slip of the Fedora Core 6 release schedule. A few issues are still present that we would like to see fixed before we release: a possible ext3 corruption bug; package ordering issues on multilib platforms (x86_64, ppc64); SELinux issue with updating kernels on ppc platforms; and iSCSI based installations are not functional. There are obviously other issues and bugs still open, but these are the ones that are really 'blocking' the release. To give enough time to fix these issues, we've extended the release date 6 days to Tuesday, Oct 17th. Freezes are still in place (even more so now)."

The Fedora Project has a pre-release of Fedora Core 6 available for testers. More information on the new features that will be available in Fedora Core 6 is detailed in the release summary draft. This release comes with Compiz/AIGLX which provides all those fancy effects.

"The Fedora Unity Project is proud to announce the release of new DVD ISO Re-Spins of Fedora Core 5 (as well as the live CD). These Re-Spin ISOs are based upon Fedora Core 5 and all updates released as of August 18th, 2006. The ISO images are available for i386 and x86_64 architectures via BitTorrent starting Monday, August 28th, 2006."

Slashdot published an interview with Fedora Project leader Max Spevack where he answers questions on everything from what has changed since the birth of Fedora Project and its goals, driver support in Linux up to what he considers the worst aspect of the Fedora.

The libferris virtual filesystem project now provides a yum repository for installation on Fedora Core 5 machines. With libferris you can mount PostgreSQL, XML, db4 files as a filesystem and also expose it to all applications using ferrisfuse. Extensive support for indexing and searching ferris filesystems is also available in the binary packages.

The Fedora Project announces the availability of Fedora Core 6 Test 2. One of noticeable features is the ability for Anaconda, the Fedora Core installer, to use other repositories, the support for MacIntel and for the first time, Firefox can now use Java through gcjplugweb. This distribution is aimed for testers due to bugs needed to be sorted. Download are available through torrent and mirror servers. Update by AS: Fixed typo. Update by ELQ: OSDir put up some shots of the FC6-test2.

"With Fedora Core 6 Test 2 set to be released July 26th, it is time we announce the End of Life of our various Legacy supported releases. After much discussion on fedora-legacy-list and the #fedora-legacy IRC channel on the freenode network, we have decided to end of life the following releases when FC6 Test2 is released: Fedora Core 1 & 2, Red Hat Linux 7.3 & 9." In the mean time, Red Hat is prepping its next big release, RHEL 5, supposedly a rival to Novell's SLED 10.

Will Woods, the new test lead for the Fedora Project, has only been in his position a few weeks, but already he has a clear goal in mind. Whenever Fedora is mentioned on Slashdot, he notes, "There's always someone who will comment that Fedora is just Red Hat's beta test for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It's not true, and I want no one to have cause to say that ever again."