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Fedora Core 5 Now Available

New desktop applications, advances in security and Xen virtualization demonstrate the rapid rate of innovation delivered by open source collaboration

RALEIGH, NC—March 21, 2006—The Fedora Project, a Red-Hat-sponsored and community-supported open source collaboration, today announced that the latest version of the popular Fedora Core Linux distribution, Fedora Core 5, is now available. Fedora Core 5 features the best in leading edge technologies, including new desktop applications, advances in security and Xen virtualization.

"Fedora Core 5 is the first distribution I feel truly involved and excited by," said Thomas Chung, Fedora Community Ambassador. "I'm sure I share this feeling with many Fedora contributors who have witnessed the birth from the very beginning. I can almost feel what a expecting father will experience with his first child. Fedora Core 5 is truly a great accomplishment in technology."

Desktop Applications

Improvements to popular applications and a wide variety of new applications and desktop tools make Fedora Core 5 exceptionally flexible and user-friendly. Enhancements include:

  • Tomboy, an easy-to-use and efficient note-taking tool, is already changing the way that Fedora users and developers work.
  • F-Spot to make managing digital photographs easier than ever.
  • Accelerated Indirect GLX (AIGLX) support. Developed in partnership with the upstream Xorg community, AIGLX provides the foundation for GLX-accelerated effects on a standard desktop. While this can mean eye-catching effects, it also provides a platform for creating a high-performance, efficient, and visually elevated desktop.
  • Power management has been improved with GNOME Power Manager, included in this release. The GNOME screensaver package is included, with a new Fedora screensaver to accompany it.
  • Ongoing integration, testing, and development ensures that laptop 'suspend and hibernation' features work with a greatly increased number of hardware combinations.
  • Support for the widely-used Broadcom 43xx wireless chipsets in the Fedora Core 5 kernel, which is based on the 2.6.16 kernel release. This feature will be of particular interest to users of Apple hardware.
  • Advances in multimedia applications built around the free Xiph.org codecs.
  • The latest Firefox 1.5 web browser offers improvements in speed, stability, security, and accessibility.
  • The most recent version of OpenOffice.org 2.0.2 introduces OpenDocument support, a new enhanced database frontend, a mail merge wizard, and better PDF export capability.
  • New releases of both GNOME 2.14 and KDE 3.5 bring a many new features and improvements to the Fedora desktop.

Security

The release of Fedora Core 5 includes several interesting and exciting new security features. These enhancements make Fedora Core 5 one of the most secure general-use operating systems available. The security enhancements include:

  • The introduction of a stack protector to GCC 4.1 makes it harder than ever for hackers to exploit buffer overflows, one of the most common security vulnerabilities.
  • Fedora has adopted a new standardized reference policy for the SELinux security framework. This supports multiple binary modules, allowing SELinux policies to be incorporated into individual packages. Application providers can use this feature to ship site-specific policy customizations.
  • Fedora Core also supports the Multi-Category Security (MCS) SELinux policy by default, in addition to Type Enforcement (TE), Muti Level Security (MLS), and Role Base Access Control (RBAC) security policies.
  • Linux Unified Key Support (LUKS) provides hard disk encryption support in Fedora Core 5. Hard disk encryption provides one of the best physical security solutions available.

Virtualization

Xen, the leading open source virtualization project, is included in Fedora Core 5. This version of Xen is based on the latest Xen 3.0 development branch, with support for both 32-bit and 64-bit x86 hardware. A Xen guest install script, created by Fedora developers, allows users to set up virtual machines quickly and easily. Xen's advances in Fedora Core 5 represent a critical next step in the development of commercial-strength virtualization on Linux.

The Future of Fedora

Fedora contributors are already working toward the next release of the Fedora Core, which will feature continued advancements in Xen, and new integration work from the Fedora Rendering and One Laptop Per Child projects. Stateless Linux work is also progressing steadily. Further, work is underway to support Fedora Extras and other custom software repositories during installation. Continuous, community-based development on new releases of Fedora Core will ensure that it remains the best and most robust, freely available open source software. To see details of the Fedora roadmap, please visit: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/RoadMap

For more information on Fedora Core, to download or to join this community effort, please visit: http://fedoraproject.org. Members of the Fedora Community will also be holding the 3rd US Fedora Conference, FUDCon, April 7 in Boston. For more information please visit http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon/FUDConBoston2006.

About the Fedora Project

The Fedora Project is sponsored by Red Hat and is a collaborative effort between Red Hat and the open source community. Built exclusively from the latest open source technology, the Fedora operating system is community supported and freely available. The Fedora Project is not a supported product of Red Hat, Inc. For more information, please visit http://fedora.redhat.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

Any statements in this press release about future expectations, plans and prospects for the Company, including statements containing the words "believes," "anticipates," "plans," "expects," "will," and similar expressions, constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including: the factors discussed in our most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q filed with the SEC (a copy of which may be accessed through the SEC's website at http://www.sec.gov), reliance upon strategic relationships, management of growth, the possibility of undetected software errors, the risks of economic downturns generally, and in Red Hat's industry specifically, the risks associated with competition and competitive pricing pressures and the viability of the Internet. In addition, the forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the Company's views as of the date of this press release and these views could change. However, while the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company's views as of any date subsequent to the date of the press release.