Fedora Core 6 Release Summary

The Fedora Project is pleased to announce the release of Fedora Core 6 (Zod). Install-time access to third-party package repositories, extensive performance improvements, support for Intel-based Macs, and a new GUI virtualization manager are some of the primary features. Additionally, Fedora Core 6 provides various improvements on the desktop, including a new default font and theme, the latest releases of GNOME and KDE, and additional options in window managers.

Getting Fedora Core 6

Download ISOs

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Other Distribution Methods

The Fedora Project recognizes that many people do not have sufficient bandwidth to download an entire operating system. We have several other distribution options, including purchasing from an online vendor, requesting free media, or sponsoring the delivery of Fedora to someone who otherwise could not download or afford it.

What's New in Fedora Core 6?

A series of screenshots and demonstration videos have been produced by the Fedora community, as an introduction to Fedora Core 6.

Desktop

There are a variety of additions to Fedora Core 6 that interesting to desktop users, including:

• A new theme is introduced, courtesy of the Fedora Artwork Project.

• The system's default font is now DejaVu, which increases Fedora's support for many languages that use the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic alphabets.

• The Compiz window manager provides better visual feedback and a variety of desktop effects, using the AIGLX framework. More information is available from the Fedora Rendering Project.

• Enhancements in package management by way of pirut and yum-updatesd, which combine to provide a notification applet, alerting the user when there is updated software available.

• A rewritten system-config-printer tool, which has several new features. Devices are detected on-demand as necessary, and support for per-user queues is available, so users can customize their printer settings without having to modify system-wide configurations. Additional technical details are available here and here.

• GNOME 2.16 and KDE 3.5.4, as well as the latest upstream versions of many standard open source applications, such as Firefox and OpenOffice.org.

• Fedora Core 6 includes Dogtail, which provides a graphical test and automation framework.

• Totem has replaced Helix Player as the default media player in Fedora Core 6.

Performance

• All Fedora Core applications have been rebuilt using `DT_GNU_HASH`, which provides a significant performance boost during start-up for applications using dynamic linking.

• This release improves package management and dependency solving by making dependencies as modular as possible. Packages rebuilt in this manner include beagle, evince, gnome-utils, and NetworkManager. More information is here.

• The performance of the Fedora's default ext3 filesystem has been boosted in recent versions of the 2.6 Linux kernel.

System Administration

• Arguably the most useful new feature in Fedora Core 6 are the improvements that have been made to Anaconda, the Fedora installer. At install-time, the user can specify third-party repositories, and if the install is network-aware, Fedora can reach out to those repositories and pull in additional packages. The obvious use case is accessing Fedora Extras, marking Fedora Core 6 as the release that tightens the integration between Core and Extras at install-time.

• IPv6 is supported in Anaconda.

• A graphical virtualization manager is included to simplify the creation and management of virtualized systems.

• SELinux is enhanced by means of a graphical troubleshooting tool and enhancements to the Nautilus file manager.

• Fedora now features integrated smart card capabilities, for secure authentication out of the box using the new Cool Key system.

• This release introduces a new tool, lvm2-cluster, for intuitively managing cluster volumes.

System Level Changes

• Fedora Core 6 ships with the 2.6.18 Linux kernel, and there are no longer separate kernels for multi-processor and single-processor architectures. A single kernel now automatically detects your processor.

• X.org 7.1 is included, and it dynamically configures monitor resolution and refresh rates to limit the amount of required user configuration.

• Fedora Core 6 runs on Intel-based Macs.

• Improved i18n support using the default SCIM input method, including more languages such as Sinhalase (Sri Lanka) and Oriya, Kannada, and Malayalam (India). Fedora Core now provides an easy interface to switch the input methods using im-chooser.

• The GNOME 1.x legacy stack has been removed from Fedora Core, and added to Fedora Extras.