The Fedora Project, a Red Hat sponsored and community-supported
open source collaboration, today announced the availability of
Fedora 9, the latest version of its open source operating system
distribution. Fedora 9 continues to build upon a tradition of
innovation as the community Linux distribution that offers the
latest, cutting-edge features with continued delivery of quality
and impact. It features the first non-destructive live USB with
persistence, and marks the first major KDE 4-based distribution.
Other highlights include improvements and enhancements for OpenJDK,
GNOME 2.22, NetworkManager, PackageKit, the Anaconda installer and
Firefox 3 Beta 5 browser, among others.
The Fedora 9 Live images can now be added to an existing USB key
using either a Linux or Windows application, without the need to
remove data, repartition or reformat the USB key, resulting in a
bootable, portable Fedora system. Using the persistence feature,
users can download and store data, and remove and add software as
on any normal Fedora system. We believe that this non-destructive,
persistent live USB system is the first of its kind, anywhere.
Fedora’s KDE team, a community effort led by volunteer
contributors, has integrated KDE 4 into Fedora 9. KDE 4 includes a
new desktop and panel with many enhanced concepts, an integrated
desktop search feature, a new visual style, and a new multimedia
API and hardware integration framework. Fedora 9 also
includes FreeIPA, a powerful new toolset for system administrators
to manage identity policy and auditing across mixed computing
environments. These additions to Fedora 9 are a testament to
Fedora’s focus on leading advancement in free and open source
software.
Fedora community developers also integrated OpenJDK6, a
completely open source implementation of Sun Microsystems, Inc.’s
Java SDK Standard Edition, into Fedora 9. This continues to build
upon the inclusion of IcedTea, an implementation of OpenJDK,
released in Fedora 8, and the Fedora community’s commitment to
delivering a stable, free software implementation based on OpenJDK.
The work completed by these Fedora developers has already been
adopted in other free and open source software communities,
demonstrating the effectiveness of Fedora’s policy for working
cooperatively with upstream projects.
“Fedora has come a long way over the past few years with a
broadening user base, influx of innovative ideas and a thriving
community,” said Paul Frields, Fedora project leader at Red Hat.
“Fedora 8 had 35 percent more torrent downloads than Fedora 7, and
there have been more than 35,000 downloads purely of our various
testing releases. We have more than two million unique IP addresses
regularly checking in for updates just for Fedora 8, and that
number continues to increase daily.”
Other Fedora 9 enhancements include improvements to
NetworkManager, which now serves the needs of virtually any system
owner with support for mobile broadband, multiple connections and
connection editing and sharing. PackageKit is used by default
for cross-distribution software package management, affording users
the flexibility to enjoy the same tools with any Linux flavor.
GNOME 2.22 adds new features including a helpful world time clock,
better file system performance, security improvements, power
management at the login screen, the ability to dynamically
configure displays, better Bluetooth integration and improved
podcast support.
The Fedora Project will host a Fedora Users and Developers
Conference (FUDCon) from June 19-21, 2008, in Boston. A free event
open to all attendees, FUDCon provides an opportunity for community
members and key contributors to come together and dedicate time
working on challenges of common interest, polishing code and
developing new features. For more information on FUDCon, please
visit http://fedoraproject.org/wiki
/FUDCon/FUDConF10.
For more information on Fedora 9, to download the distribution
or to join in this community effort, please visit http://fedoraproject.org.