Introducing Fedora - First Draft
Markus McLaughlin
markmc34 at verizon.net
Mon Oct 16 05:06:04 UTC 2006
Chapter One
Introducing Fedora Core 6
Welcome to a brand new Operating System that shines above all of the
other Operating Systems available to choose from! Thank you for
choosing Fedora Core 6 to be your Operating System! What is an
Operating System, you ask? Well, it is an interface for a
collection of software all working together to bring you the
information you need to run tasks. Once you get past the
Installation process, the GNOME desktop opens with a screen
consisting of a menu bar on the top, empty space in the middle that
can be used to display icons or graphics, and a task bar that shows
which “window” is open. With the KDE desktop, there is one
“windows”-like menu-bar on the bottom. Finally, with the Xfce
desktop, it is arranged in a different manner than GNOME or KDE.
This sounds complicated but all they describe is the screen you see
every time Fedora Core runs.
Here is a brief history of how it was developed. Fedora Core began
life as Red Hat Linux. It was one of the "middle-aged" Linux
distributions; 1.0 was released in November 3, 1994. It is not as old
as Slackware, but certainly older than many other distributions. It
was the first Linux distribution to use RPM as its packaging format,
and over time has served as the starting point for several other
distributions, such as the desktop-oriented Mandriva Linux
(originally Red Hat Linux with KDE), Yellow Dog Linux (which started
from Red Hat Linux with PowerPC support), and ASPLinux (Red Hat Linux
with better non-Latin character support). Since 2003, Red Hat has
discontinued the Red Hat Linux line in favor of its new Red Hat
Enterprise Linux for enterprise environments and Fedora Core for the
free version. Red Hat Linux 9, the final release, hit its official
end-of-life on April 30, 2004, although the Fedora Legacy project
continues to publish updates.
Fedora Core is an RPM-based Linux distribution, developed by the
community-supported Fedora Project and sponsored by Red Hat. The name
derives from Red Hat's characteristic fedora used in its "Shadowman"
logo. However, the Fedora community project had existed as a
volunteer group providing extra software for the Red Hat Linux
distribution before Red Hat got involved as a direct sponsor. Fedora
aims to be a complete, general-purpose operating system containing
only free and open source software. Fedora is designed to be easily
installed and configured with a simple graphical installer and the
'system-config' suite of configuration tools. The installation system
includes an option to use GNU GRUB, a boot loader, facilitating the
use of Fedora in conjunction with another operating system. Packages
and their dependencies can be easily downloaded and installed with
the yum utility. New releases of Fedora come out every six to eight
months. Fedora ships with GNOME and KDE, and spans 5 CDs or a single
DVD. Network installations are available from a single small 6 MB
boot.iso image. The installer supports installation via HTTP, FTP,
and NFS, and remote installation progress can be monitored via VNC.
The name Fedora Core distinguishes the main Fedora packages from
those of the Fedora Extras project, which provides add-ons to Fedora
Core. Fedora was derived from the original Red Hat Linux
distribution. The project envisages that conventional Linux home
users will use Fedora Core, and intends that it replace the consumer
distributions of Red Hat Linux. Support for Fedora comes from the
greater community (although Red Hat staff work on it, Red Hat does
not provide official support for Fedora). Fedora came about as a
result of a new business strategy which Red Hat implemented late in
2003 - Red Hat now positions Red Hat Enterprise Linux as a business-
oriented Linux distribution, and all official support is for that
distribution. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) releases are branched
off Fedora Core, which has led some critics to observe that Fedora
Core users are in effect beta testers for RHEL.
In some ways, it is true that Fedora Core is a testbed for RHEL but
it is a very good consumer Operating System in its own right. The
community develops and supports 90 percent of Fedora Core. It is
good to have a major sponsor such as Red Hat so Fedora will be around
for a long long time. You can trust Fedora to be YOUR Operating System!
This needs a lot of revision, please offer constructive criticism and
good changes/additions to make it compatible with our efforts....
Good Night from Hudson, MA....
Mark McLaughlin

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