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The Fedora Project, a
Red-Hat-sponsored and community-supported open source collaboration, today
announced that the latest version of the popular Fedora Core Linux distribution,
Fedora Core 5, is now available. Fedora Core 5 features the best in leading edge
technologies, including new desktop applications, advances in security and Xen
virtualization.
"Fedora Core 5 is the first distribution I feel truly involved and excited by,"
said Thomas Chung, Fedora Community Ambassador. "I'm sure I share this feeling
with many Fedora contributors who have witnessed the birth from the very
beginning. I can almost feel what a expecting father will experience with his
first child. Fedora Core 5 is truly a great accomplishment in technology."
Desktop Applications
Improvements to popular applications and a wide variety of new applications and
desktop tools make Fedora Core 5 exceptionally flexible and user-friendly.
Enhancements include:
- Tomboy, an easy-to-use and efficient note-taking tool Tomboy is already
changing the way that Fedora users and developers work.
- F-Spot to make managing digital photographs easier than ever.
- Accelerated Indirect GLX (AIGLX) support. Developed in partnership with the
upstream Xorg community, AIGLX provides the foundation for GLX-accelerated
effects on a standard desktop. While this can mean eye-catching effects, it also
provides a platform for creating a high-performance, efficient, and visually
elevated desktop.
- Power management has been improved with GNOME Power Manager, included in this
release. The GNOME screensaver package is included, with a new Fedora
screensaver to accompany it.
- Ongoing integration, testing, and development ensures that laptop 'suspend and
hibernation' features work with a greatly increased number of hardware
combinations.
- Support for the widely-used Broadcom 43xx wireless chipsets in the Fedora Core
5 kernel, which is based on the 2.6.16 kernel release. This feature will be of
particular interest to users of Apple hardware.
- Advances in multimedia applications built around the free Xiph.org codecs.
- The latest Firefox 1.5 web browser offers improvements in speed, stability,
security, and accessibility.
- The most recent version of OpenOffice.org 2.0.2 introduces OpenDocument
support, a new enhanced database frontend, a mail merge wizard, and better PDF
export capability.
- New releases of both GNOME 2.14 and KDE 3.5 bring a many new features and
improvements to the Fedora desktop.
Security
The release of Fedora Core 5 includes several interesting and exciting new
security features. These enhancements make Fedora Core 5 one of the most secure
general-use operating systems available. The security enhancements include:
- The introduction of a stack protector to GCC 4.1 makes it harder than ever for
hackers to exploit buffer overflows, one of the most common security
vulnerabilities.
- Fedora has adopted a new standardized reference policy for the SELinux
security framework. This supports multiple binary modules, allowing SELinux
policies to be incorporated into individual packages. Application providers can
use this feature to ship site-specific policy customizations.
- Fedora Core also supports the Multi-Category Security (MCS) SELinux policy by
default, in addition to Type Enforcement (TE), Muti Level Security (MLS), and
Role Base Access Control (RBAC) security policies.
- Linux Unified Key Support (LUKS) provides hard disk encryption support in
Fedora Core 5. Hard disk encryption provides one of the best physical security
solutions available.
Virtualization
Xen, the leading open source virtualization project, is
included in Fedora Core 5. This version of Xen is based on the latest Xen 3.0
development branch, with support for both 32-bit and 64-bit x86 hardware. A Xen
guest install script, created by Fedora developers, allows users to set up
virtual machines quickly and easily. Xen's advances in Fedora Core 5 represent a
critical next step in the development of commercial-strength virtualization on
Linux.
The Future of Fedora
Fedora contributors are already working toward the next release of the Fedora
Core, which will feature continued advancements in Xen, and new integration work
from the Fedora Rendering and One Laptop Per Child projects. Stateless Linux
work is also progressing steadily. Further, work is underway to support Fedora
Extras and other custom software repositories during installation. Continuous,
community-based development on new releases of Fedora Core will ensure that it
remains the best and most robust, freely available open source software. To see
details of the Fedora
roadmap, please visit:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/RoadMap
For more information on Fedora Core, to download or to join this community
effort, please visit:
http://fedoraproject.org. Members of the Fedora Community will also be
holding the 3rd US Fedora Conference, FUDCon, April 7 in Boston. For more
information please visit
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon/FUDConBoston2006.
The Fedora Project is sponsored by Red Hat and is a collaborative effort between
Red Hat and the open source community. Built exclusively from the latest open
source technology, the Fedora operating system is community supported and freely
available. The Fedora Project is not a supported product of Red Hat, Inc. For
more information, please visit
http://fedora.redhat.com.
