Fedora Core

On September 22, 2003, it was announced that the Fedora project, which created packages for the Red Hat Linux operating system, would be merging with the main Red Hat Linux project. The new distribution was named Fedora Core, and Fedora Core 1 has already been released. Fedora Core 2 is expected to carry the new 2.6.0 kernel and arrive in February 2004.

Feature list of FC1

• GNOME 2.4
• KDE 3.1.4
• OpenOffice.org 1.1
• XFree86 4.3
• Mozilla 1.4.1
• Evolution 1.4.5
• The GIMP 1.2.5

The new distro also includes the package management system yum by standard. In look and feel it is virtually identical to Red Hat 9, with the same icon set being used. However, Fedora have added a new graphical boot sequence and a GUI for the bootloader configuration. The installer, anaconda, has also been tweaked, and it now takes less time to install with more packages being included (such as the GNOME iTunes alike Rhythmbox).

Fedora Core is the name of the community-supported Linux distribution descended from Red Hat Linux. Even though Red Hat no longer sells a boxed version of Red Hat Linux (instead focusing on Red Hat Enterprise products), Fedora Core is the "consumer" version of the Red Hat Linux family.

As of right now, Fedora Core 2 is in the testing phase. Notable features are:

• Kernel 2.6.x (with SELinux patches - yes, from the NSA)
• Gnome 2.6
• KDE 3.2.1
• xorg X11 Server (~XFree86 4.4)

The current Fedora Core 2 release is Test 2. Try fedora.redhat.com if you aren't afraid of testing bleeding edge software. I use it and the only thing that doesn't work for me is my stupid scanner, which isn't much of a loss at all.