Account Links: Cart | Register | Log In

Skip to content

Fedora

The Fedora Project: Open Source Evolved


Download this video: [ogg]

More information



The Fedora Project is a Red Hat sponsored and community-supported open source collaboration project. Formed in 2003 as a partnership between Red Hat and volunteer participants from around the world, the Fedora Project supports a growing and thriving open source community with thousands of project members.

Download Fedora 13

Fast Facts:

  • New releases of Fedora come out every six months

  • Fedora is free to copy, modify and redistribute without any cost and license fees

  • Red Hat is the primary sponsor for the Fedora Project and a major contributor

  • There are over 20,000 Fedora Account System members who have signed the Contributor License Agreement that allows them to edit and provide new code and content in Fedora.

  • Around 65% of Fedora's code is maintained by volunteers

  • Fedora serves as a community R+D lab, where ideas can be turned into reality quickly

  • Innovation through Fedora often forms the basis for many Red Hat open source projects

  • There are over 16,000 installable software packages in Fedora 13

Fedora 13: Get the Future First

Fedora 13's feature list includes:

  • Improved performance for video cards using truly free software drivers
  • Innovative support for Python developers including system-wide tracing and enhanced debugging
  • Enhanced virtualization with stable device addresses and better performance in multi-processor guests

Fedora 13 also features numerous desktop improvements that all users can see and experience including:

  • Automatic installation of drivers for printers when attached
  • Simple, practical utilities for backing up and restoring important data, and for scanning
  • Enhanced network management for mobile broadband roaming, Bluetooth tethering, and command line accessEnhanced network management for mobile broadband roaming, Bluetooth tethering, and command line access
  • Color management for scanners, printers, monitors, and cameras

Some of the many new features in Fedora 13 include:

  • Better monitoring tools for developers using SystemTap static probes
  • New System Security Services Daemon (SSSD) for use with logging into managed domains
  • NFS version 4, and enhanced performance for NFS with IPv6 support
  • Improvements to the Automatic Bug Reporting Tool (ABRT) to identify and squash bugs
  • Enhanced support for experimental, next-generation btrfs file system
  • NetBeans 6.8 IDE supporting entire Java 6 EE specification
  • Dogtag Certificate System, an enterprise-class open source Certificate Authority (CA)
  • Open source editions of functional suites for groupware and integrated development

For a more complete list of Fedora 13 features, refer to the Fedora community's release announcement.

Fedora FAQs


[+] Show All

How can Fedora give away all of the code that people have contributed?

There are over 17,000 Fedora contributors that have signed the Contributor License which is an agreement that allows them to contribute to the Fedora Project. Further, all code and content produced in the Project is provided under a free and open source software license that preserves users' rights to copy, distribute and make derivative works.

What benefit does a contributor gain from participating in the Fedora community?

There are multiple benefits, and individual contributors sometimes realize very different individual benefits through their involvement. One major benefit contributors often cite is in the act of collaborating itself. Fedora community members enjoy working on new features, solving problems and interacting with other folks that share a common interest. Because Fedora is an open and transparent project, it also provides a way for people to demonstrate their skills at work to potential partners, customers, or employers.

Why such a short development cycle?

The development cycle is purposely restricted to six months to encourage rapid innovation and collaboration between thousands of Fedora project contributors worldwide. Six months gives us the best balance between providing the latest software with the quality that users expect from a release.

Where can I learn more?

For more information on Fedora 13, to download the distribution or to join this community effort, please visit http://fedoraproject.org/.