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Red Hat releases Fedora 11

Nick Booth ZDNet UK | June 11, 2009 9:02 AM PDT

Summary

Fedora 11 comes with new virtualization features, support for fingerprint readers and the promised ability for any email client to tap into Microsoft Exchange.
Red Hat has officially released Fedora 11, a Linux distribution for developers that is a testbed for features for its flagship Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) product.

The new Linux distribution, named 'Leonidas', was made available for download on Tuesday. It includes OpenChange, which promises to give any email client native access to Microsoft Exchange. The technology uses an open-source version of Mapi, Microsoft's Messaging Application Programming Interface, to do this.

In addition, it provides several virtualisation improvements, including an upgraded console, a redesigned creation wizard for virtual-machine guests, and SELinux support for guests. Other new features are better support for fingerprint readers and the inclusion of the ext4 file system as default.

Fedora 11 also comes with the MinGW Windows cross compiler, which allows developers to cross-compile software for Windows while remaining in a Linux environment, according to Red Hat.

"Communities of users and developers are [now] empowered to make an impact on open-source software, to excellence in engineering, and to innovation," Max Spevack, Red Hat's community architecture team manager, told ZDNet UK.

"Significant work has continued on the boot process, and Fedora 11 should consistently boot for most users in somewhere around 20 seconds," he added.

End users will enjoy added benefits such as 'mime-type' detection and revamped volume control. The former allows for automatic detection (and installation if the user so desires) of applications that can handle unknown file-types. The latter simplifies the user's sound experience.

However, one analyst questioned whether Fedora 11's compatibility with Microsoft environments, or its improvements in sound or boot processes, will have an impact.

"Fedora is another small step for Linuxkind," said Clive Longbottom, service director at Quocirca. "It sounds really good, I'm sure it does what you want it to do and it has made improvements all round. And yet it isn't what people recognise or feel comfortable with. You can improve it all you want, but until it is a brand people demand, it will remain a techie toy."

A group of the Fedora Community's core release-engineering team members spent the release day conducting a review of Fedora's engineering and release processes, the fruits of which will begin to be seen in Fedora 12, Spevack said.

Red Hat releases a new Fedora distribution twice a year.

This article was first published on ZDNet UK.

Talkback Most Recent of 8 Talkback(s)

  • Comment translation
    Clive Longbottom says "It sounds really good, I'm sure it does what
    you want it to do and it has made improvements all round. And yet it
    isn't what people recognise or feel comfortable with. You can improve
    it all you want, but until it is a brand people demand, it will remain a
    techie toy."

    Translation:

    I've never used it. It isn't windows. I like to use windows because of
    the brand. I demand brands, so should you.

    Pathetic ZDNet!
    ZDNet Gravatar
    Richard Flude
    11th Jun 2009
  • is linux distro releases twice a year is doing any good?
    i'm tired to keep up with the distro releases twice a year. it is creating alot of ad-hoc work to keep up with it. is it necessary?

    Buddy Me and share your thoughts on free blog - http://www.buddymii.com
    ZDNet Gravatar
    kiazhi@...
    11th Jun 2009
  • There are a few distros that rarely do a full new release,
    such as Arch Linux and Gentoo Linux, these distros are definitely geared more towards the advanced users; however never having to do a full reinstall/full upgrade every few months to get the latest features is rather nice.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    g2g591
    11th Jun 2009
  • Then why choose a distribution that does?
    If you don't want to upgrade twice a year then why pick a distribution
    that releases twice a year?

    "You should be using Fedora because it includes the best, latest, and
    most robust collection of free and open source software available"
    http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FAQ#Why_should_I_be_using_Fedora.3F

    If that isn't you, find a better fit. If Red Hat is your style check out
    centos.org, or RHEL. These are maintained for several years.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    Richard Flude
    11th Jun 2009
  • quick boot up ... naah
    have downloaded and tried this distro, but wasn't too impressed ... didn't time the boot up, but it seemed very similar to ubuntu.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    siglostaffords
    12th Jun 2009
  • ZDNet Gravatar
    Parassassin
    12th Jun 2009
  • RE: Red Hat releases Fedora 11
    I've been using Fedora 8 till now but since it was recently EOL'd, I had no choice but to make the switch to a newer version. It turned out to be a big mistake. The damn LiveCD won't even boot. It goes upto the part where the USB devices are loaded, and it gets stuck after that. I tried various combinations of kernel parameters, like nomodeset, acpi=off, noacpi, nousb and it doesn't make a difference.

    I tried to get help from IRC, and everyone gives me suggestions that I've tried already. I filed a bug report on bugzilla and noone has responded. I asked on the forum and no response there either.

    I suppose you're all gonna call me a troll because it works "perfectly" for everyone else, right?
    ZDNet Gravatar
    perlcopter
    15th Jun 2009
  • RE: Red Hat releases Fedora 11
    Killed my box - After 3 successive generations of using Fedora over the last 2 years I finally hit a stonewall. I let the automatic update install 11 last night and now the box is dead - boots to a blinking cursor and nothing else on the screen. So now, instead of spending a day getting work done I'm going to learn all the nuances of a LINUX install until I find the problem - which appears to be USB-related on the surface. This makes it no better than Windows - thought we were shooting for a higher standard.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    AHA_z
    24th Jun 2009

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