Introducing Fedora - First Draft

[Markus McLaughlin]

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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