Fedora is a Linux-based operating system that showcases the latest in free and open source software

Fedora is a Linux-based operating system that showcases the latest in free and open source software. Fedora is always free for anyone to use, modify, and distribute.

It is built by people across the globe who work together as a community: the Fedora Project. The Fedora Project is open and anyone is welcome to join.

The Fedora Project is out front for you, leading the advancement of free, open software and content.

What is Fedora?

An operating system, a set of projects, and a mindset.

What is Fedora? Fedora is a Linux-based operating system that showcases the latest in free and open source software. Fedora is always free for anyone to use, modify, and distribute. It is built by people across the globe who work together as a community: the Fedora Project. The Fedora Project is open and anyone is welcome to join. The Fedora Project is out front for you, leading the advancement of free, open software and content.

The operating system is Fedora. It comes out twice a year. It's completely free, and we're committed to keeping it that way. It's the best combination of robust and latest software that exists in the free software world.

The mindset is doing the right thing. To us, that means providing free and open software and content, at no cost, freely usable, modifiable, redistributable, and unencumbered by software patents.

Updates (via Distrowatch)

Fedora 15, a new version of one of the leading and most widely used Linux distributions on the market, has been released. Some of the many new features include support for Btrfs file system, Indic typing booster, redesigned SELinux troubleshooter, better power management, LibreOffice productivity suite, and, of course, the brand-new GNOME 3 desktop: "GNOME 3 is the next generation of GNOME with a brand new user interface. It provides a completely new and modern desktop that has been designed for today's users and technologies. Fedora 15 is the first major distribution to include GNOME 3 by default. GNOME 3 is being developed with extensive upstream participation from Red Hat developers and Fedora volunteers, and GNOME 3 is tightly integrated in Fedora 15."

Read the release announcement and the release notes for detailed information about the product.

Download (mirrors, torrents): Fedora-15-i686-Live-Desktop.iso (565MB, SHA256, torrent), Fedora-15-i686-Live-KDE.iso (692MB, SHA256, torrent), Fedora-15-x86_64-Live-Desktop.iso (567MB, SHA256, torrent), Fedora-15-x86_64-Live-KDE.iso (692MB, SHA256, torrent).

Recent versions:

• 2011-05-24: Distribution Release: Fedora 15
• 2011-04-19: Development Release: Fedora 15 Beta
• 2011-03-08: Development Release: Fedora 15 Alpha
• 2010-11-02: Distribution Release: Fedora 14
• 2010-09-28: Development Release: Fedora 14 Beta
• 2010-08-24: Development Release: Fedora 14 Alpha

History

The Fedora Project was created in late 2003, when Red Hat Linux was discontinued. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) would continue to be Red Hat's only officially supported Linux distribution, while Fedora was to be a community project and distribution. RHEL branches its releases from versions of Fedora.

The name of Fedora derives from Fedora Linux, a volunteer project that provided extra software for the Red Hat Linux distribution, and from the characteristic fedora used in Red Hat "Shadowman" logo. Fedora Linux was eventually absorbed into the Fedora Project. Fedora is a trademark of Red Hat. Although this has previously been disputed by the creators of the Fedora repository management software, the issue has now been resolved.

Distribution

The Fedora Project distributes Fedora in many different ways:

Fedora DVD - a DVD of all major Fedora packages at time of shipping;
Live Images - CD or DVD sized images that can also be easily installed to a USB device;
Minimal CD or USB image - used for installing over HTTP, FTP or NFS;
Rescue CD or USB image - used if some part of the system has failed and needs to be fixed, or for installing over the Internet.

The Fedora Project also distributes custom variations of Fedora which are called Fedora spins. These are built from a specific set of software packages and have a combination of software to meet the requirements of a specific kind of end user. Fedora spins are developed by several different Fedora special interest groups. These are available from their Fedora Spins website.

Software package management is primarily handled by the yum utility. Graphical interfaces, such as pirut and pup are provided, as well as puplet, which provides visual notifications in the panel when updates are available. apt-rpm is an alternative to yum, and may be more familiar to people coming from a Debian/Ubuntu background, where apt-get is used to manage packages. Additionally, extra repositories can be added to the system, so that packages not available in Fedora can be installed.

Software repositories

Before Fedora 7, there were two main repositories - the Fedora Core and Fedora Extras. Fedora Core (also the name of the distribution) contained all the base packages that were required by the operating system, as well as other packages that were distributed along with the installation CD/DVDs. Fedora Extras, the secondary repository that was included from Fedora Core 3, was community-maintained and not distributed along with the installation CD/DVDs. Since Fedora 7, the Core and Extras repositories have been merged, hence the distribution's dropping the Core from its name.

Also prior to Fedora 7 being released, there was a third repository called Fedora Legacy. This repository was community-maintained and was mainly concerned with extending the life cycle of older Fedora Core distributions and selected Red Hat Linux releases that were no longer officially maintained. Fedora Legacy was shut down in December 2006.

Security features

One of the many security features in Fedora is Security-Enhanced Linux, a Linux feature that implements a variety of security policies, including U.S. Department of Defense style mandatory access controls, through the use of Linux Security Modules (LSM) in the Linux kernel. Fedora is leading the way with SELinux-based distributions, having introduced it in Fedora Core 2. It was disabled by default, as it radically altered how the operating system worked, but was enabled by default in Fedora Core 3 and introduced a less strict, targeted policy. Fedora also has methods in place to prevent buffer overflow exploits and root kits from functioning. Compile time buffer checks, Exec Shield and restrictions on how kernel memory in /dev/mem can be accessed help to prevent this.

Releases

First four cores

Fedora Core 1 was the first version of Fedora and was released on November 6, 2003, and was codenamed Yarrow. Fedora Core 1 was based on Red Hat Linux 9 and shipped with version 2.4.19 of the Linux kernel, version 2.4.0-1 of the GNOME desktop environment, and version 3.1.4-6 of KDE (the K Desktop Environment).

Fedora Core 2 was released on May 18, 2004, codenamed Tettnang. It shipped with version 2.6 of the Linux kernel, GNOME 2.6, KDE 3.2.2, and SELinux (SELinux was disabled by default due to concerns that it radically altered the way that Fedora Core ran). XFree86 was replaced by the newer X.org, a merger of the previous official X11R6 release, which additionally included a number of updates to Xrender, Xft, Xcursor, fontconfig libraries, and other significant improvements.
Fedora Core 3 was released on November 8, 2004, codenamed Heidelberg.This was the first release of Fedora Core to include the Mozilla Firefox web browser, as well as support for the Indic languages. This release also saw the Lilo boot loader deprecated in favour of GRUB.

SELinux was also enabled by default, but with a new targeted policy, which was less strict than the policy used in Fedora Core 2. Fedora Core 3 shipped with version 2.6 of the Linux kernel, version 2.8 of GNOME and version 3.3.0 of KDE. Fedora Core 3 was also the first distribution to include the new Fedora Extras repository.

Fedora Core 4 was released on June 13, 2005, with the codename Stentz. It shipped with version 2.6.11 of the Linux kernel, version 3.4 of KDE and version 2.10 of GNOME. This version introduced the new Clearlooks theme, which was inspired by the Red Hat Bluecurve theme. This release also shipped with the latest version of the office suite, OpenOffice.orgXen, a high performance and secure open source virtualization framework. It also introduced support for the PowerPC CPU architecture, and over 80 new policies for SELinux. 2.0, as well as
None of these distributions are maintained by the Fedora Project.

Last two cores

The last two cores introduced specific artwork that defined them – Fedora Core 5 was Bubbles, and Fedora Core 6 was DNA. This is a trend that has continued in later Fedora versions.

Fedora Core 5 was released on March 20, 2006, with the codename Bordeaux, and introduced the Fedora Bubbles artwork. It was the first Fedora release to include Mono and tools built with it such as Beagle, F-Spot and Tomboy. It also introduced new package management tools such as pup and pirut (see Yellow dog Updater, Modified). It also was the first Fedora release not to include the long deprecated (but kept for compatibility) LinuxThreads, replaced by the Native POSIX Thread Library. It is no longer maintained by the Fedora Project.

Fedora Core 6 was released on October 24, 2006, codenamed Zod. This release introduced the Fedora DNA artwork, replacing the Fedora Bubbles artwork used in Fedora Core 5. The codename is derived from the infamous villain, General Zod, from the Superman DC Comic Books.

This version introduced support for Compiz (a compositing window manager for the X Window System) and AIGLX (a technology that enables GL-accelerated effects on a standard desktop). It shipped with Firefox 1.5 as the default web browser, and Smolt, a tool that allows users to inform developers about the hardware they use. According to the Fedora Project, there are nearly three million users of Fedora Core 6. As of 7 December 2007, this release is no longer supported by the Fedora Project.

Fedora 7
Fedora 7, codenamed Moonshine, was released on May 31, 2007. The biggest difference between Fedora Core 6 and Fedora 7 was the merging of the Core and Extras repositories, and the new build system put in place to manage those packages. This release uses entirely new build and compose tools that enable the user to build fully-customized Fedora distributions that can also include packages from any third party provider.
There are three official spins available for Fedora 7:

Live – two Live CDs (one for GNOME and one for KDE);
Fedora – a DVD that includes all the major packages available at shipping;
Everything – simply an installation tree for use by yum and internet installations.

Fedora 7 features GNOME 2.18 and KDE 3.5.6, a new theme entitled Flying High, and Firefox 2.0. Fast user switching is, for the first time, fully integrated and enabled by default.Also, there were a number of updates to SELinux, including a new setroubleshoot tool for debugging SELinux security notifications, and a new, comprehensive system-config-selinux tool for fine-tuning the SELinux setup. Fedora 7 is currently supported by the Fedora Project.

Fedora 8
Fedora 8, codenamed Werewolf, was released on 8 November 2007.
Some of the new features and updates in Fedora 8 include:

PulseAudio – a sound daemon that lets you control the audio in different applications. Fedora is the first distribution to enable it by default.
system-config-firewall – a new firewall configuration tool that replaces system-config-securitylevel from previous releases.
CodecBuddy – a tool that guides users using content under proprietary or patent encumbered formats to open formats. It can optionally install multimedia codecs at the user's request.
IcedTea – a project that attempts to bring OpenJDK to Fedora by replacing encumbered code.
NetworkManager – faster, more reliable connections; better security (through the use of the keyring; clearer display of wireless networks; better D-Bus integration.
Better laptop support – enhancements to the kernel to reduce battery load, disabling of background cron jobs when running on the battery, and additional wireless drivers.

Fedora 8 also includes a new desktop artwork entitled Infinity, and a new desktop theme called Nodoka. A unique feature of Infinity is that the wallpaper can change during the day to reflect the time of day.