Chapter 1: An Overview of Fedora

Overview

Linux was a phenomenon waiting to happen. The computer industry suffered from a rift. In the 1980s and 1990s, people had to choose between inexpensive, market-driven PC operating systems from Microsoft and expensive, technology-driven operating systems such as UNIX. Free software was being created all over the world, but lacked a common platform to rally around. Linux has become that common platform.

For several years, Red Hat Linux has been the most popular commercial distribution of Linux. In 2003, Red Hat, Inc. changed the name of the distribution from Red Hat Linux to Fedora Core and moved its commercial efforts toward its Red Hat Enterprise Linux products. It then set up Fedora to be:

• Sponsored by Red Hat

• Supported by the Linux community

• Inclusive of high-quality, cutting-edge open source technology

• A proving ground for software slated for commercial Red Hat deployment and support

The complete Fedora operating system (referred to as Fedora Core 3) is included on the DVD that comes with this book and is described in this book.