| Fedora 12 optimized for Atom-powered netbooks |
Oct. 21, 2009
 The Fedora Project released the beta version of Fedora 12 "Constantine," adding the Moblin desktop environment and speed optimizations for i686 and the Intel Atom. The latest version of the Red Hat-related Linux distribution also offers IPv6 support plus enhanced Bluetooth, virtualization, multimedia, and power management.
This is the sole beta for Fedora 12, which, as a community-sponsored distro with Red Hat roots, is likely to foreshadow coming improvements to Red Hat's similar, but not identical, subscription-based Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.
The Fedora Project released the final version of Fedora 11 in June, along with a new "Fedora Community" portal for package maintainer collaboration. Other Fedora 11 improvements included better package management, ext4 support, virtualization features, audio enhancements, and faster boots. Fedora 10, which shipped last November, was notable for vastly improving its NetworkManager application.
Atom optimization and "Moblin Fedora Remix"
Compared to an alpha version released in August, the Fedora 12 beta offers no significant new features, says the project. However, the beta should be faster due to compiling the release for i686 x86 architectures instead of the previous i586. The release also offers performance optimizations for the Intel Atom CPU, typically used on netbooks, as well as adding the netbook-focused Moblin v2.0 GUI and applications.
Users can install the Moblin Desktop Environment package group using yum or Fedora's graphical software management tools, and then select Moblin from the login manager, says the project. A Fedora 12 Moblin Fedora Remix edition for netbooks will also be made available on an installable Live CD when the final Fedora 12 ships in November, says Fedora.
Based on a 2.6.3x kernel, Fedora 12 offers ext4 as the default, as well as an updated GRUB. Fedora now uses the Dracut initial RAM disk generation and boot tool, which is said to offer an event-based framework designed to be distribution-independent as opposed to "monolithic."
Fedora 12 offers improved network configurations via its NetworkManager, making both system-wide connections and mobile broadband connections easier, says the project. Related improvements include enhanced IPv6 support, and a Bluetooth "service on demand" connectivity feature, says Fedora.
"Thusnelda" delivers "near-H264" video
Video playback is said to be enhanced by incorporating the open source Ogg Theora 1.1 video encoding program and streaming video format, which offers a new "Thusnelda" encoder that is touted as providing "near-H.264 quality." There is also improved webcam support, Pulse Audio improvements, and "some primary support" for Nvidia and AMD's Radeon HD graphic cards, says the project. Other additions include a new automatic bug reporting tool (ABRT), improvements to the PackageKit installer, better power management, and various security improvements.
Fedora 12 offers the KDE 4.3 desktop as an alternative to the default GNOME 2.28, which reflects GNOME's move to the Empathy instant messenger in placed of Pidgin, as well as an early version of the Gnome Shell UI. (For more on the latest KDE and GNOME desktops, see our recent stories on OpenSUSE 11.2, Mandriva 2010, and Ubuntu 9.10.)
Fedora 12 replaces the controversial, Mono-based note-taking application called Tomboy with Gnote, a port of Tomboy from Mono to C++ that is said to consume fewer resources. Gnote is both an applet that can sit in a GNOME panel, and an individual application that can run within other desktop environments, says the Fedora project. Meanwhile, the latest version of Xorg included in the release is said to support displays that span dual monitors.
Virtualization enhancements
Virtualization continues to be a key focus of Fedora and RHEL, and Fedora 12 further supports the technology with the addition of the libguestfs library and guestfish shell, which are said to enable virtual machine images to be controlled outside of the KVM or Xen hypervisor environments.
Other virtualization features include support for Kernel SamePage Merging (KSM), which enables identical memory pages to be merged by the kernel into a single page that is shared by two processes, as well as KVM Huge Page Backed memory, which is said to reduce cache pressure.
Availability
The Fedora 12 beta is available now for free download, with the final release targeted for November. More information may be found in the beta announcement, here, as well as the feature list, here, which points to download sources.
-- Eric Brown
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