Fedora (operating system)

Fedora [ fɨdɒr.ə ] is an RPM-based Linux distribution. Goal of the developers of the distribution is to promote free software and to make an operating system for a diverse audience as possible. Is organized in the development of the online community of the Fedora project, which is led by the company Red Hat. Fedora is the direct successor of Red Hat Linux. The English word Fedora refers to a special type of Filzhuts, the hallmark of the company Red Hat.

• 4.1 System
• 4.2 Hardware Support
• 4.3 Locations and spins
• 4.4 Installation Media
• 4.5 Applications
• 4.6 Distribution -Specific Software
• 4.7 Security
• 4.8 Package and Software Management 4.8.1 Official repositories
• 4.8.2 unofficial repositories
• 4.8.3 version update
• 4.8.4 EPEL

• 5.1 fedora.us
• 5.2 Fedora Core
• 5.3 Fedora Foundation
• 5.4 from Fedora Core Fedora
• 5.5 versions 5.5.1 development versions

Target group

Fedora is developed for general use on server and desktop systems. The Fedora Project himself describes his distribution for both beginners and experienced users as appropriate. Nevertheless, critics often emphasize that Fedora is not particularly suitable for Linux beginners, as it is too complicated in certain areas. This difference in perception could arise from the fact that the stronger the developer on the basis resulting from Fedora Enterprise Linux - whose users are to be found primarily in companies and government organizations - in mind than the average user.

Unlike other Linux distributions there is no long-term support. The life cycle of a Fedora version is applied to 13 months approximately every six months will see a new version, which is why Fedora for a long-planned use (eg on embedded systems or systems with years of uptime) is not suitable. There, in contrast to other distributions always very latest software.

If a use for extended periods of planned, it is advisable to use a class derived from Fedora Enterprise Linux distribution. Besides the commercial Red Hat Enterprise Linux ( RHEL), the free fall distributions: CentOS and Scientific Linux in this category.

Fedora Project

Principle

The Fedora Project formulated its objectives as follows:

"The Fedora Project is a partnership of free software community members from around the globe. The Fedora Project builds open source software communities and Produces a Linux distribution called Fedora. [ ... ] The Fedora Project Creates a world where,

• Free culture is welcoming and wide spread,
• Collaboration is commonplace, and

" The Fedora Project is a partnership between the free software community members around the world. The Fedora Project is an open- source community, to develop a Linux distribution called Fedora. [ ... ] The Fedora Project wants to create a world

• Are widely accepted and widely used in the free content,
• Cooperation is commonplace and
• People have control over their content and devices. "

These intentions are expressed in the four principles:

The " freedom " refers to the freedom of the software, unlike proprietary software. The promotion of such FLOSS software developers a concern, which is why Fedora free, open source and is offered expressly for further development. "Friends " represents the strength of the global community (Community) of different people working together to develop free software. " Functions " expresses the pursuit of versatility and flexibility to cover the needs of as many users as possible. "First " is the will to innovate and the desired pioneering role within the open-source movement.

Applies here as with the predecessor of Fedora, the principle that only computer programs with full free license are included in the distribution. The only exception is firmware binary (BLOB) that is provided with a license and the permits free use. The most prominent result of this licensing policy is that Fedora, for example, brings no support for MP3 or DVD video playback with it, but they must be installed from third party sources.

For Fedora community includes employees of the company Red Hat, as well as developers of other companies, independent volunteer developers, including students. In addition to software developers, there are specialists in marketing, linguistic translation or the graphic design. To facilitate the cooperation between these sometimes very inhomogeneous community, the Fedora Project are two principles:

Project management

The Fedora Project is run by a ten-member board called Fedora (English for Body). In addition to the chairman - which is determined by the company Red Hat and have a veto right - there is a board of four members appointed by the chairman, members and five elected by the Fedora community members. The Board decides on all strategic and financial needs of the project. The technical management and thus the responsibility for the development work of the project lies with the so-called Fedora Engineering Steering Committee ( FESCO short, Engl. Control for Technical Committee). FESCO consists of nine elected by the Fedora community members. The discussions and decisions of both boards are usually online and publicly traceable, since the regular meetings usually take place in an IRC channel. The chairman of the board simultaneously coordinated the implementation of the decisions of the board and FESCO as acting Fedora Project Leader (FPL ). Since February 2012 Robyn Bergeron is chairman and FPL.

Financing

The Fedora Project is mainly determined by the company Red Hat financed. Red Hat would like Has the most complete and solid foundation for their commercial product Red Hat Enterprise Linux ( RHEL ) is obtained. The sponsorship by Red Hat is in addition to the provision of financial resources mainly from the cooperation of many Red Hat employee in the Fedora community. In addition, Red Hat 's infrastructure, such as servers or conference rooms to the Fedora Project for free.

In addition to Red Hat and individual private persons are the company Arrival Telecom Inc., Bodhost, Colocation America Inc., Dell Inc., Ibiblio, InterNetX, OSU Open Source Lab, proIO GmbH, ServerBeach, Technomonk Industries, TeliaSonera AB and tummy.com ltd known as sponsors of Fedora. Some of these companies sell hardware with pre-installed Fedora software or they are users of the distribution.

Meetings

The Fedora Project organized several times a year meetings that are called FUDCon (Fedora Users and Developers Conference ), to meet the Fedora users and developers for several days somewhere in the world. In addition to lectures, panel discussions, meetings and social occasions called hackfest be organized at the FUDCons, where a group of developers terms and programmed a specific question together.

Dissemination

Fedora enjoys, among other things as the successor of the old Red Hat Linux versions great popularity and has been replaced in many companies and institutions. Most commercial applications, daemons and drivers that were asked earlier for RHL available, are now also available for Fedora, so this distribution gets a wide -area support companies and institutions. According to the survey by Distrowatch Fedora since 2004 is one of the five major Linux distributions in the world.

A survey of the number of users is possible only by means of estimation, because unlike commercial software, no sales may be charged and no product activation for use is necessary. It can therefore be counted only the number of downloads of the installation media ( ISO image ) and the access to the update server ( repository ). These collection methods are subject to a high blur, as the system can be installed on many computers with a single installation media (CD -ROM or DVD) and in turn often IP addresses are used dynamically, which can lead to multiple counting.

Throughout the lifetime of Fedora 16 installation media have been downloaded a total of 2,143,906. From May 2007 to May 2012 in relation averaging about 5 million unique IP addresses per Fedora updates from a repository server.

Under Webhostern Fedora was the third most popular Linux distribution in December 2005. If all derivatives of Fedora together and refers Red Hat Enterprise Linux and its derivatives such as CentOS one, so 2005 is a spread of about 50 percent.

The end of 2008 the Fedora Project laid claim to the leadership in the Linux world. This happened because of similar statements by the Ubuntu developer Canonical. It is said to have given 8 million Ubuntu installations. The Fedora Project counted 3.4 million active installations of Fedora 7, Fedora 8 3.9 million and 1.8 million installations of Fedora 9 and ran from these figures his claim to the leading role in the Linux business from. Red Hat points out that its own figures - such as those offered by competitors - are vitiated by the large uncertainties described above.

Technical Features

System

For Fedora 19, a processor with a clock speed of 1 GHz, 1 GB RAM and 10 GB free space on the hard disk was named as minimum requirement. Fedora can be run without graphics hardware, which can be useful on a server, for example. For a graphical interface, a graphics processor, which is newer than Intel GMA900, Nvidia GeForce FX NV30 and ATI ( AMD ) Radeon 9500, recommended. To obtain a liquid graph powerful graphics processors are necessary. The work environment Xfce and LXDE are particularly optimized for low resource consumption and therefore require less powerful hardware than Gnome 3 or KDE.

Hardware Support

Fedora is built primarily for x86 and AMD64 architectures. There are also - usually after the official release finished - variants of the ARM, PowerPC (64 bit) and s390x architectures. As the importance of ARM platform has greatly increased in recent years, is planned for the Fedora 20 version of the ARM variant should be given the same priority as the x86 and AMD64 architectures. For any outdated versions of Fedora there were some variants for the following architectures: IA- 64, PowerPC ( 32-bit), SPARC (32 and 64 bit) and System/390.

Fedora includes drivers for most of the currently available PC hardware. On the installation media (CD- ROM or DVD) only part of the driver is included, which is why some drivers need to be installed and is subsequently reloaded. Fedora includes free drivers for AMD ( radeon and radeonhd ) and Nvidia graphics processors ( nouveau ), allow the hardware acceleration and 3D support. Fedora includes licensing reasons no proprietary drivers. Therefore, these drivers for AMD or Nvidia graphics processors from software repositories need to be installed later by third parties.

Work environments and spins

The prefer Desktop Environment is since Fedora 15 Gnome 3 in Fedora repository, and in particular the so-called spin the KDE, Xfce, LXDE, Cinnamon, MATE and Enlightenment desktop environments are included. In addition to these self- maintained by the Fedora Project spins there are further optimized for specific applications or interests spins. Among these spins are for: safety analysis, electronics development, Science, Creative & Design, students and robotics.

Installation media

Fedora installation media can be downloaded for free in various formats and versions as ISO images. Before installation, the user is burning the ISO image to a writable CD -ROM or DVD. Alternatively, it is (for example, with the liveusb -creator or the dd command ) also possible to transfer an ISO image on a USB flash drive or a memory card and boot it.

The bootable DVD image includes the largest number of software packages. For the individual spins there is so-called live media containing a live system, but which can be also installed as the DVD. A network installation CD contains only a minimal Fedora system that only just allowed to boot up a computer and start the installation. All software to be installed packages are not installed from the CD but downloaded during the installation over the Internet.

There are dealers who supply the Fedora installation media for a small fee by mail.

Applications

The software repository for Fedora 19 contained more than 36,000 different packages that covered a large part of the available Linux applications and tools. On the installation media, only a fraction of them is included. The default installation includes a Desktop environment and applications for common areas of application ( e -mail client, browser, office suite, image editor, media player, etc.). Depending on spinning different applications are installed as the default selection, so the KDE spin the Calligra Suite includes while some other spins LibreOffice included as office suite. After installation, the user can install it with the package manager any application from the software scope of the repository, or from third party sources.

Distribution-specific software

The installation routine Anaconda allows graphically guided to install a Fedora system, while the program kickstart to automate this, which is helpful especially when multiple Installation on corporate machines. To configure the system, the so-called system-config -* programs are available that have graphical user interfaces. The system-config -* tools are programmed according to the usual Fedora principles. The principles require that " management tools " to meet (support tools for system administration ) only targeted a single task and do not require exclusive control of configuration files. Administrators of a system are characterized in spite of these management tools able to make any changes in configuration files manually.

Security

Fedora fully integrates the kernel extension SELinux in order to enforce Mandatory Access Control system-wide. SELinux is enabled by default on a Fedora installation, which protects the system against a variety of threats. During installation, the firewall daemon firewalld is established. The firewall prevents all coming from the outside network connections to the system and allows connections only from the system to the outside.

On a Fedora system newly installed stop SELinux and the firewall communication between all server services, such as Apache or Samba. Only after the adjustment of the SELinux and firewall rules by an administrator server services can communicate with other systems. For the configuration of the firewall and SELinux graphical tools system-config- selinux and firewall- config available.

Package and Software Management

Fedora uses developed by Red Hat Package Manager RPM to install packages locally and to manage. Dependencies between the packages are provided with the help of the internet package collections - resolved with the YUM program - the so-called repositories. On a Fedora system already installed YUM used to automatically apply any patches and keep the system up to date. The Administrator may at any time with YUM install or remove additional software packages. PackageKit and YumExtender (aka yumex ) are graphical user interfaces for YUM.

In the early days there was a support for up2date and APT. The support of the latter was adjusted with Fedora Core 4, since the development of APT- RPM rested. From Fedora Core 5 can be used APT- RPM again, since this can natively since access YUM repositories.

Official repositories

In the Fedora official repositories Fedora Project are set up by default. These contain all tended by the Fedora Project packages. This includes repositories for patches ( updates), experimental packages, source packages and debugging information.

Unofficial repositories

Apart from using the official repositories the user has the option to configure additional package third-party sources.

The most common source of additional software packages that are not included due to licensing reasons in the official repositories, is RPM Fusion. There you will find, for example, proprietary multimedia codecs (MP3, MPEG ... ) and proprietary graphics drivers.

In addition, more and more software projects and companies, such as Google, Skype or Adobe, own repositories for Fedora available.

Version Update

Starting with Fedora 18, the tool can FEDUP to upgrade to a more recent version of Fedora is available and replaces the previous support upgrade methods via PreUpgrade and Anaconda. Fedup first loads all the software packages of the next version of Fedora to the hard drive and then updates the system during the next reboot.

A possible, but not officially recommended method is to use YUM to undergo a Fedora update on the fly.

EPEL

EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux) is a well maintained by the Fedora Project repository that provides ported packages of software that are included in Fedora itself, but not in RHEL, CentOS or Scientific Linux. Because this enterprise distributions are developed on the basis of Fedora, only very small adjustments to the packages are usually necessary. EPEL extends the enterprise distributions to there not contained applications and drivers. Since the porting packages from Fedora to EPEL repository dependent solely on the use of the community, be neither Red Hat nor the Fedora Project packages for such a guarantee, support or certification, as is common for packages in the official RHEL repository.

History

Fedora.us

The fedora.us Project was founded in November or December 2002 by Warren Togami. The aim was to create a high quality RPM repository for Red Hat Linux, which contained additional applications that were not included in RHL. The basic idea was: official guidance, but open to everyone. First, the project dealt mainly with rules for the package name. There were major problems with the coexistence of original Red Hat Linux and fedora.us packages. It developed also the still valid Fedora naming guidelines. However, the resources of the project were to establishing the Fedora Project together with the company Red Hat rather modest. But for fedora.us offered well-functioning structures and processes for a developer community.

Fedora Core

On 22 September 2003 the Company announced Red Hat, abandoning its own consumer Linux distribution in favor of a merger with the fedora.us project and carry it on as a community project. Red Hat took the source code of RHL and a large workforce into the new founded Fedora Project. fedora.us brought a functioning online developer community with in the Fedora Project. On 5 November 2003 the Fedora Project released the first stable version of the new distribution under the name of Fedora Core, which was a direct development of the old Red Hat Linux 9 at that time.

Legally delicate pieces of software ( packages ) derived from the work of fedora.us were removed from the Fedora repositories. The remaining parts of the distribution were divided into sub-projects Fedora Core and Fedora Extra. Fedora Core contained all packages that were included on the downloadable media ( ISO image ) of the first Fedora Core version. Fedora extra packages included which were not included in Fedora Core, but the licensing guidelines Fedora Project met the same extent as the packages in Fedora Core. The third sub-project was Fedora Legacy. It served the maintenance of versions of Fedora that have been replaced more than two to three months earlier of their successors version. In Fedora Legacy updates are created and tested only by the initiative of individual developers. The Fedora Project itself presented only the infrastructure ready for it and refused any responsibility for the packets itself.

Fedora Foundation

In 2005, Red Hat started with the Fedora Foundation, an independent foundation that should be responsible for the Fedora Project. The aim of the foundation project was more developers to obtain their cooperation on the Fedora Project, which remains the basis for Red Hat Enterprise Linux should remain. Red Hat wanted to support financially and technically the Fedora Foundation for this reason. Since the tax law support such a Foundation of the part Red Hat would have allowed only within certain limits, Red Hat announced in April 2006 that the Foundation should be dissolved. Instead, the Fedora community should be strengthened and integrated into the Fedora Board.

From Fedora Core Fedora

In November 2006, a major restructuring in the Fedora project have been decided: the various repositories of Fedora Extra and Fedora Core were merged. Fedora Legacy was discontinued without replacement and the additional name Core is omitted since version 7. The merged repository has in the meantime also called Fedora Package Universe. In May 2008, Red Hat announced from the majority of votes in the Fedora Board to the Fedora community, which since 5 out of 9 votes, a majority.

On November 5, 2013 Fedora celebrated its tenth anniversary.

Versions

Even Red Hat Linux had special versions for its respective code names. This tradition is continued. A list of these names and what it has with them on himself, finds himself under Fedora and Red Hat version name.

The biggest change to Fedora 18 was the completely redesigned Anaconda installer. Fedora 18 now support Secure Boot and for the desktop environments MATE and Cinnamon there was now a live medium. The then-new tool FEDUP simplified the version change. By Samba 4 Fedora was capable Windows server as a domain controller to completely replace. For network security, the firewalld daemon was now responsible, who can manage a dynamic firewall configuration (Stateful Packet Inspection ). PackageKit can now save between certain update packages and install them during the next system startup, which is intended to reduce conflicts in the current system.

To the designation of network cards cares systemd since version 19. The functions of the cron daemon systemd could now replace. The First Boot program was replaced by various rewritten Anaconda modules. For the first time the ARM variant was released with the x86 and AMD64 variant simultaneously. The PowerPC and System z variants followed, as usual, a few weeks later.

Periodically, the company Red Hat developed, usually with only minor changes, from a Fedora release the product Red Hat Enterprise Linux ( RHEL) versions which are maintained as opposed to Fedora for a long time:

Development versions

The development work for Fedora to find a distro named Rawhide: instead of (engl Rohleder ). In this distribution all the new features is currently in development for the Fedora version are incorporated and tested by the developers. The development cycle nears the first alpha release, an upcoming version of Fedora, is of the Rawhide a Branched ( engl: branched) called branch derived, stabilized by the alpha and beta releases phase and then to the final release completed. The Branched already carries the version number of the next release of Fedora. Parallel to Branched Rawhide is developed for the next- release of Fedora.

The Rawhide knows - in contrast to the Branched - no versions but only daily Rolling releases. Daily created a service on a server Fedora Project, from the source code of Rawhide and the Branched, an installable ISO image. Since these nightly builds mentioned Releases reproduce live the straight existing level of development, is expected to gross instabilities. Also, loss of data or damage to hardware, can not be ruled out, which is why the nightly live builds for any kind of end-users are unsuitable. Not infrequently, it also happens that no nightly build can be created live, because temporary inconsistencies in the Rawhide make this impossible.

For developers are not part of the distribution software and people who want to inform themselves, are the nightly builds of live Rawhide and Branched the easiest way to test and use before an alpha release or between alpha and beta releases of future Fedora.

Ethnicity and derivatives

Fedora Core 1 was based on Red Hat Linux 9 ( RHL ) and thus came of this from. Red Hat Linux itself is completely gone up in Fedora Core and is no longer being developed independently. Instead, the company Red Hat distributes the product Red Hat Enterprise Linux ( RHEL) which in its first versions of Red Hat Linux and builds on current versions of Fedora.

There are a number of Linux distributions that are based on Fedora or even descended from the Red Hat distribution. Among the best known are:

• ASPLinux: a Russian Linux distribution with very good multimedia support
• Aurox Linux: a now- set, developed in Poland Distribution for the European market
• Berry Linux, a distribution from Japan
• BLAG GNU / Linux: A CD distribution optimized for desktop users
• Fuduntu: A distribution that is extremely energy efficient and are therefore particularly well suited for mobile computers such as laptops and netbooks. Since early November 2011 Fuduntu Fedora is split off and since then uses separate codes. End of April 2013 was taken by the project, the decision that Fuduntu is set with version 2013.3. By the end of September 2013 there will be bug fixes and support.
• Kororaa: distribution which is aimed at beginners and KDE used as a desktop
• Linpus Linux: known as the Chinese Linux, spread worldwide by delivering on netbooks
• MythDora: a video recorder based on MythTV and Fedora
• Noys is primarily aimed at web developers
• Omega brings non-free audio and video codecs, as well as additional multimedia players such as Xine or MPlayer with
• The OLPC $ 100 laptop has a customized version of Fedora.
• Red Flag Linux: A distribution developed in cooperation between China, Japan and South Korea.
• Trustix Secure Linux is a trimmed on security distribution ( inter alia for the server mode).
• Open Xange: A Portuguese Linux distribution whose appearance is based on Windows Vista
• Ojuba: a distribution for the Arab- speaking world
• Qubes OS: A distribution that tries to achieve a high level of security through virtualization.
• Yellow Dog Linux: a tailored PPC distribution

Criticism

• The lack of media codecs ( eg for MP3 or DVD playback ) and proprietary graphics drivers in existence since the existence of the Fedora distributions always cause for criticism.
• Also criticized is the " compulsion to update " by no later than 13 months and the frequent updates. While this ensures you get very latest software, but also brings many changes and the long term support is missing. The may be challenged on the ground that RHEL, CentOS or Scientific Linux and Fedora offer just that, therefore, is the wrong choice.
• It is often stressed that Fedora is not suitable for Linux beginners, as it is too complicated in certain areas, what the developers themselves but assess different.
• In version 18, there was strong criticism of the revised installer, as it is sometimes quite flawed and even partially transparent difficult for experts.
• The package management consisting of RPM and YUM is slower perceived by some users than comparable systems.

Fedora Gallery

Each Fedora release is designed to match the code name graphically:

Fedora Core 2 (Tettnang)

Fedora Core 3 (Heidelberg )

Fedora Core 4 ( Stentz )

Fedora Core 5 (Bordeaux)

Fedora Core 6 ( Zod )

Fedora 7 ( Moonshine )

Fedora 8 ( Werewolf )

Fedora 9 ( Sulphur )

Fedora 10 (Cambridge)

Fedora 11 ( Leonidas )

Fedora 12 (Constantine )

Fedora 13 ( Goddard )

Fedora 14 ( Laughlin )

Fedora 15 KDE ( Lovelock )

Fedora 16 ( Verne )

Fedora 17 ( Beefy Miracle )

Fedora 18 KDE ( Spherical Cow)

Fedora 18 with Mate ( Spherical Cow)

Fedora 19 ( Schrödinger 's Cat )

Fedora 19 KDE ( Schrödinger 's Cat )

Fedora 20 KDE ( Heisenbug )

Fedora 20 with Enlightenment ( Heisenbug )