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Fedora 8 – Werewolf on the loose

Thorsten Leemhuis

About five months after the release of Fedora 7, the Fedora Project has launched version 8 of the exclusively open source distribution. The software suite has become more comprehensive and has been thoroughly updated - for the first time, it now includes the IcedTea Java runtime environment, a modern PulseAudio sound server and Linux kernel version 2.6.23.

Fedora desktop on the Gnome Live CD

Fedora history

Five weeks after the release of OpenSuse 10.3 and three after that of Ubuntu 7.10, the Fedora Project follows suit by releasing a new Linux distribution: Fedora 8 (code name Werewolf). This is the first version of the Fedora Project - which Red Hat intended to be a community distribution - in which the community can really contribute directly: Since the Project merged the "Core" and "Extras" repositories just before the release of Fedora 7, all development areas are now also accessible to developers who aren't employed by Red Hat.

In typical Fedora fashion, the result is a distribution with the latest versions of components - while the recently released distributions of OpenSuse and Ubuntu are still based on Linux 2.6.22, Fedora is built on kernel version 2.6.23, which comes with numerous new drivers and technologies. In addition, Fedora is the first major distribution to include the PulseAudio sound server called "Compiz for Sound" by its developer. In addition, IcedTea is the first environment to offer the source code of Sun's Java runtime environment released under GPL to a wider audience.

Compiz provides the 3D desktop – here the Compiz Fusion Expo plug-in

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