Fedora 14 - A Take On Its New Features

Fedora 14 named after physicist "Robert B. Laughlin" has been released. In my opinion, Fedora is geared more towards developers and system administrators than the ordinary users. However, it is perfectly usable as a Desktop too - baring a few exceptions (See the drawbacks below).

What Is New In Fedora 14

Libjpeg-Turbo - has replaced its older counterpart Libjpeg. Libjpeg-Turbo provides much faster JPEG compression/decompression.

Better Cloud Computing support - Fedora 14 will be made available directly on Amazon's EC2 cloud service. Read an interview with Justin Forbes to know more.

SPICE - is an acronym for Simple Protocol for Improved Computing Environments. It allows remote access for a physical machine, and provides a virtual machine front-end for local users. By including SPICE, Fedora 14 makes virtualisation of Desktop PCs far more easier.

Simplifies security management through the implementation of OpenSCAP.

Perl has been updated to version 5.12, Boost to version 1.44, Python to version 2.7, Netbeans to version 6.9, KDE to version 4.5, Eclipse to the Helios Release, and Sugar to version 0.90.

Linux kernel is 2.6.35.6 and not the latest 2.6.36. However, the Fedora kernel includes an updated Nouveau driver and Utrace, a userspace tracing framework which has long been maintained outside the kernel.

Some Perceived Drawbacks For Desktop Users

Fedora does not offer the out-of-the-box support for some Wi-Fi components available in openSUSE or Ubuntu.

Flash player included is the open source version and not the closed source one from Adobe.

Proprietary drivers from AMD and NVIDIA are omitted from the default Fedora package.

How To Get Fedora

Fedora 14 has by default the GNOME Desktop. However, various spins of Fedora are available for KDE, XFCE, and LXDE as well.

To download Fedora 14 visit the Get Fedora page.