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. 

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 Fedora Project.

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

Update.

Fedora  project has announced the launch of Fedora 25. The new version of the Red Hat sponsored community project features version 3.22 of the GNOME desktop environment, a new media writer to make it easier to download and copy the distribution to a USB stick, improved Flatpak support and MP3 playback is now included in the project's official software repositories. " This release includes a plugin for MP3 decoding such as playing music. If you play a MP3 file from your collection, GNOME Software detects it and helps you install the plugin. For developers, Fedora 25 Workstation introduces improved Flatpak support. These enhancements now make it easier to install, update and remove Flatpak software. The improvements make this application packaging standard more user friendly." 
Additional information can be found in the release announcement. Fedora 25 is available in Workstation, Server and Cloud editions as well as many community spins featuring alternative software and desktop environments. 
Download (pkglist): Fedora-Workstation-Live-x86_64-25-1.3.iso (1,374MB, SHA256, torrent), Fedora-Server-dvd-x86_64-25-1.3.iso (1,925MB, SHA256, torrent). Also available from OSDisc.

 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.

Read also: 2012 Best Linux Distributions For Your Computer.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.Screenshots.

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