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Up-to-date

As is customary with Fedora, the distribution's software range is largely up-to-date – while Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex), which was released a few weeks ago, still relies on OpenOffice 2.4.1, Cambridge already includes version 3.0. Eclipse 3.4, Gimp 2.6.2 and Firefox 3.0.4 are also current versions, but Thunderbird isn't. However, version 2.0.0.18 of the mail client which was released simultaneously with Cambridge at the end of last week has been available as an update since the release of Fedora 10.

OpenOffice 3.0 under Fedora 10

GNOME 2.24.1 is included in the standard installation, offering various improvements introduced with version 2.24 – for example tabs in the Nautilus file manager. The Fedora project originally intended to use Empathy, which comes with GNOME 2.24, instead of Pidgin as the standard IM client for Cambridge – however, this plan was abandoned after developers experienced problems during testing. KDE 4.1.2 can be selected with a few mouse clicks during installation – its version 4.1.3 is already part of the updates-testing package repository and should, therefore, soon arrive as a regular update on the virtual doorsteps of Fedora 10 users. XFCE is not included on the standard installation media and can only be selected during installation once the online repositories have been activated as an additional installation source.

Apart from the usual installation media (one DVD, six CDs), the Fedora project also provides numerous "spins" – ISO images of live media which can not only be transferred to CDs but also to USB sticks. Each of the spins offers a range of software selected for a specific purpose – next to the desktop spin with GNOME and a spin with KDE, there is also one that includes XFCE. As the spins can be used for installation, the XFCE spin may be the preferred Fedora installation medium for many XFCE users.

In addition to the three spins mentioned there are several others, for example Fedora Education Math and Fedora Electronic Labs (FEL). The tools included in Fedora have also for quite some time allowed custom spins to be created with relatively little effort. As long as users observe the recently introduced guidelines, they can now share these custom spins as "Fedora remixes" without violating the project's trademarks.

More optimisations

Apart from the new features we have already mentioned, the developers also included numerous other improvements in Fedora 10. The printer configuration program – which is maintained by a Red Hat developer, was originally developed for Fedora and is now also used by Ubuntu – received a new user interface and returns better status information about current processes, amongst other things. While the software components of Fedora are usually quite current, this doesn't apply to its printer drivers: The HPLIP drivers for HP printers and multifunction devices are provided in their version 2.8.7 – meanwhile, the HPLIP project has introduced three new versions to support a large number of recent HP devices. The Gutenprint driver collection is also included in a rather dusty version 5.0.2 while Gutenprint 5.2.1, which was introduced a month ago, would offer numerous advantages – for example, it supports 655 printers that the collection's series 5.0 drivers don't know anything about.

New in Cambridge is also the "glitch free" version of the PulseAudio audio server. This server has received major work by its author, who is a Red Hat employee. Like in MacOS X or Vista, the audio output is now time-based rather than driven by interrupts – this approach is not only designed to help avoid interruptions, but also to unburden the CPU during audio playback, which reduces power consumption and prolongs the battery life of notebooks. Further improvements were included for netbooks and notebooks – however, the project does not offer a dedicated netbook spin.

The NetworkManager for establishing LAN, WLAN, VPN, GPRS or UMTS connections now also supports the connection sharing feature, which makes it suitable for setting up ad-hoc networks. For webcams, Fedora 10 includes drivers like uvcvideo and the gspca driver collection, suitable for a large number of webcams by various manufacturers. In addition to several other improvements for webcams, the Fedora community have also developed the libv4l software library. Instead of handling everything themselves, applications can now access this library for webcam control. The Fedora developers also claim to have optimised the use and configuration of infrared remote controls.

The gnome-lirc-properties program simplifies the configuration of IR remote controls

A likely virtualisation contender in Fedora 10 is KVM, which relies on the CPU's virtualisation technology. The support for Xen host operation (Host/Xen Dom0) was already ditched in Fedora 9. In Fedora 10, this functionality remains unsupported because the official Xen Dom0 patches are still only available for obsolete kernel versions that don't offer much support for new hardware. The Fedora developers are, however, considering providing users with the option of running privileged Xen domains as soon as the kernel hackers have incorporated the necessary code into the main development branch of Linux – this could already be the case in Linux 2.6.29. Cambridge is still capable of operating as a Xen guest and accesses the Xen support integrated into the kernel since 2.6.23 to do so. Several changes to libvirt and the virt-manager (1, 2) tool based on this library improve network installation and the management of (virtual) volumes for virtual machines.

The RPM package system now included is version 4.6, which was recently released by rpm.org. The Yum package management tool, known for its sluggish operation, is noticeably faster in Cambridge. However, users don't necessarily need the command line program for installing and updating applications, as Fedora offers PackageKit frontends for GNOME and KDE and is installed by default.

Further additions to Fedora included with Cambridge are the Sectool security audit and intrusion detection system and the Netbeans development environment. While Fedora didn't used to include the /sbin and /usr/sbin directories that hold system administration programs in the path of normal users, this strategy has now been abandoned. The Sugar desktop familiar from OLPC laptops is now also available in Fedora, as is the not quite as hardware-hungry LXDE desktop environment. FirstAidKit now helps with the troubleshooting if there are any problems. Fedora now also offers tools for implementing appliances and comes with the AMQP (Advanced Message Queuing Protocol) infrastructure (AMQPI) – the latter is essentially the messaging component of Red Hat Enterprise MRG.

The new Sectool security audit and intrusion detection system

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