| Fedora 10 dubbed a "solid" chapeau |
Dec. 10, 2008
 Exploring Fedora 10 is a great way for users to "peek at what they can expect to see in future Linux distributions," says an eWeek "walk-through." Reviewer Jason Brooks loves Fedora 10's new security features, but he still longs for a little tech support.
Released by the Fedora Project in November, the community sponsored Fedora 10 is a not quite identical twin to the subscription-based Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Notable for being "free for anyone to use, modify, and distribute," Fedora was recently claimed by the project to have about 10 million users, which would make it the world's largest Linux distribution. The new release features an improved NetworkManager, enhanced printer tools, and what eWeek Labs Executive Editor Jason Brooks suggests "may be the broadest security framework available in any general-purpose operating system."
In "Fedora 10 a Solid Linux Choice for Workstations, Development Servers," Brooks offers a screenshot "walk-through" slideshow of the upgrade process, as well as a summary of the new version's pros and cons. As with our own recent review, the pros seem to win out in the end.
Noting that Red Hat offers no support for Fedora, as it does for RHEL, Brooks suggests that Fedora is not ideal for the newbie. Still, because it forms the basis for future RHEL releases, Fedora "offers organizations and individuals early access to the state of the art in the Linux and open-source world."
Aside from a brief glitch with Fedora 10's autodetection of the monitor (solved by switching to a different virtual terminal), Brooks's installation appears to have rolled fairly smoothly. "Fedora 10 has continued to progress in its PackageKit software installation and update system, especially in its integration with the PolicyKit permissions management framework," writes Brooks. He also notes that Fedora is the easiest Linux distribution he has found to install with hard drive encryption.
Superior security
In our earlier look at Fedora, we found Fedora's proliferation of esoteric security tools to be confusing, overlapping, and ultimately a security hazard, since few users would really take time to understand the tools. Brooks, though, who is probably more familiar with the state of the art where graphical security wizards and GUIs are concerned, deemed Fedora 10's security features to be much improved. He points out that users can implement mandatory access control and multilevel security through SELinux. There is also "a full complement of firewall, privilege management, and buffer overflow protection facilities." Finally, Brooks is impressed with the new Sectool audit utility for testing permissions, firewall rules, and other security status.
Concludes Brooks, "For Linux enthusiasts who don't mind getting a little compiler grease on their hands, Fedora 10 can serve capably as a workstation or development server operating system."
Availability
The complete story from our sister publication eWeek, "Fedora 10 a Solid Linux Choice for Workstations, Development Servers," should be available here.
-- Eric Brown
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