| Fedora Core 6 arrives |
Oct. 24, 2006
 The Red Hat-sponsored, community-supported Fedora Project announced on Oct. 24 that Fedora Core 6 is now available. The latest version of this popular Linux distribution boastsimproved desktop performance, new tools for system administrators and developers, and simplified virtualization management, among other enhancements.
On the desktop, Fedora Core 6 now comes with KDE 3.5.4 and GNOME 2.16, as well as its own improved fonts and artwork. In addition, Core 6 include a new platform that enables GL-accelerated effects on a standard desktop, better and faster software updating tools, and the latest upstream versions of favorite open-source applications.
It also includes a newly rewritten printer configuration tool. With the improvements to CUPS and GTK printer control, printers are now detected on-demand as necessary. In addition, it now supports per-user queues, so users can customize their printer settings without having to modify system-wide configurations.
Red Hat also claims that the latest Fedora provides a noticeable performance increase during the start-up of applications such as OpenOffice.org. This has been accomplished in general by enhancements to the underlying systems -- for example, the start-up boost that applications such as OpenOffice.org receive comes from them being rebuilt with DT_GNU_HASH. This hash is optimized for speed and data cache accesses. Network file system performance has also been improved.
The new Fedora also offers significant new features and improvements for system administrators. One major gain, according to Max Spevack, Red Hat's Fedora project leader, is that administrators can now specify external repositories during installation time. While it has long been possible to install from a local or specific network location, with this change managers can also select third-party package repositories during installation. "The impetus for this change is quite simple -- choice. Fedora installation is now more customizable than in previous releases," Spevack said.
According to Spevack, Fedora's program installer also features greatly improved YUM (Yellow Dog Updater, Modified) functionality. YUM is an automatic updater and package installer/remover for RPM (RPM Package Manager) systems.
Core 6 also includes new GUI-based management tools such as a virtualization manager for Xen, a SELinux troubleshooting tool, and an improved LVM cluster management tool. Smart card services are provided through the new CoolKey technology. Other system improvements include support for IPv6 and a single 2.6.18-based Linux kernel that automatically detects and configures for the number of processors on a machine.
In particular, Spevack believes that the virtualization manager will make it much easier to install and administer virtual machines. "We were missing a tool to bring virtualization to the masses," said Spevack. "This will make it possible for people who aren't virtualization wizards to use Xen."
In addition to the previously supported x86, x86-64, and Power PC chip architectures, this release features support for Intel-based Macs.
You can download Fedora Core 6 at the Fedora Project website.
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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