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Fedora Linux Core Release 1

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PCQ Bureau
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One of the major recent developments on the Linux front is Red Hat’s discontinuation of Red Hat Linux. Within the next six months, it will also stop providing support for all the previous versions of Red Hat Linux. In its place are two products: the existing RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) and the new Fedora. You will have to pay for the RHEL distro, but Red Hat will assure you support for it. Fedora, on the other hand, is free like the earlier versions of Red Hat Linux. The difference now is that Red Hat will not support it; the Fedora team will. PCQuest checked out Fedora Core Release 1, the first version of Fedora. And, here is our verdict on it. 

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Fedora is based on Kernel-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl. Here nptl means Native POSIX Thread Library, which is a new implementation of POSIX threads for Linux. The release notes claim that this library will improve the performance and scalability of the

distro. 

You can remotely install this version of Linux using VNC

The minimal requirement for the graphical installation of this distro is a P400 MHz or equivalent processor with a minimum RAM of 192 MB. The installation size varies from 520 MB (for the Minimal version) to 5.3 GB (for the Everything version).

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We tested the distribution on machines with various configurations and found that on a machine with AMD 3000+ processor and 256 MB RAM, a full installation took a little more than an hour. If you have a machine with lower specs, the installation will take longer.

During installation, the first thing that you will notice is the new Fedora theme instead of the Red Hat theme. In fact, the color combination of the new theme is much better than the older ones. 

Installation 



The installer (Anaconda 9.2) in Fedora supports some improved and new installation methods, such as VNC (Virtual

Network Computing), http and ftp installation. An advantage of VNC installation is that if you have a VNC client, you can control the installation (but, obviously not initiate it) remotely from anywhere. For example, an administrator can remotely monitor the installation.

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For a remote-controlled installation through VNC, pass ‘linux vnc’ statement at the installation boot prompt on the machine where Fedora is being installed. It will then ask you to give the IP address of the machine either manually or through

DHCP.

Then it will show you the assigned IP and the display port, which you can use to access the installation from any VNC client. 



Another advantage of a VNC install is that you can do a headless installation. To do so, you need to first automate the above steps by editing the kickstart file and then you can proceed with the installation from a remote machine. You could use VNC if graphical Linux installation does not support your monitor. 

Fedora’s installation is an improvement over Red Hat Linux as in Fedora, you can even do a graphical ftp and http installation.

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Though, the default method is still text based. You can start the graphical installation by passing ‘graphical’ as a boot time option. In the case of a hard-disk installation, the default installation is graphical. 

Fedora installation screen

The firewall installation has also been simplified in Fedora. The firewall screen in Red Hat Linux had only three options: No firewall, Medium and High. In Fedora, it is more comprehensive, with options for selecting the services or ports that should be allowed to pass through the firewall appearing on the screen itself. Here, some of the options are http, ftp, ssh, telnet and mail.

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One more thing–in Fedora, you won’t see LILO (LInux LOader) during the installation process. But, the RPMs for it are still there, so that you can manually install it afterwards.

Booting



The booting process has changed quite a bit. By default, Fedora supports graphical boot and this boot screen loads just after the kernel gets loaded. If you don’t need this graphical boot screen because of any reason, you can disable it permanently by changing the value of graphical to ‘no’ in /etc/sysconfig/init file. If you have upgraded from any of its previous version , then this functionality won’t be enabled by default.

Secondly, Fedora has a graphical command to set up boot loader parameters such as default OS and ‘Time to wait for default OS to load’. The tool is called

redhat-config-boot. 

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Graphics



In Fedora, you’ll see the Gnome 2.4 (Red Hat 9 had Gnome 2.2) and KDE 3.1.4 interfaces. (For more on Gnome 2.4, read Eyes and Hands on Gnome 2.4, page 106, PCQuest, November 2003). In Fedora, while Gnome is quite enhanced, KDE is not as much so. Also, in Gnome 2.4, the Galion browser has been replaced by the lightweight Epiphany. This Gnome version also has a new Bluetooth subsystem.

Other changes



There are some other small, but significant modifications, in Fedora. It has dvd+rw+tool to write DVD +Rs (for more on DVD writing, read DVD Writing in Linux, page 68, PCQuest, October 2003). 

There’s also a graphical network boot configuration tool to configure pxe-booting called

redhat-config-netboot.

Anindya Roy

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