Friendlier version of Fedora Linux desktop now available

A new and easier-to-use edition of Fedora -- the Red Hat-sponsored open source Linux desktop OS -- is available for free download starting today from the Fedora Project's Web site.

"There are far too many improvements to list them all, but certainly even to the naked eye there are worlds of difference between our present and our past -- and the change is overwhelmingly for the better!" contended Fedora Project Leader Paul W. Fields.

"In about 12 hours, more of less, the official release of Fedora 9 will be out the door, and we'll all immediately start looking toward Fedora 10's release, approximately six months from now," he wrote in a blog entry posted on the Red Hat site last night.

In one change in Fedora 9, targeted largely at current Windows users, a bootable, portable Fedora desktop can now be be created on a USB key through the use of either a Linux or Windows application, without the need to repartition or reformat the USB key in either case. This is done by adding Fedora 9 Live images to the key.

This "persistence" feature -- viewed by project members as the first of its kind -- is aimed at letting users of a USB system remove and add software -- and download and store data -- in the same way as with any other desktop system.

Also new in version 9 is support for the latest versions of the two competing open source Linux desktops traditionally used with the Fedora OS: KDE and Gnome. New capabilities in KDE 4, for example, include integrated desktop search, a new multimedia API, and a hardware integration framework.

Gnome 2.22 adds a world time clock; power management at the log-in screen; and improvements to system integration, security, Bluetooth integration, and podcast support.

The five-year-old Fedora also now adds improvements and enhancements such as OpenJDK support, the Firefox 3 Beta 5 Browser, the Anaconda installer, and NetworkManager, with first-time support for mobile broadband.

For the commercial Linux market, the company produces Red Hat Enteprise Desktop, a desktop OS designed to work with Red Hat Enterprise Server (RHES). Red Hat has also announced another desktop OS, Red Hat Global Desktop (RHGD), which might have given Red Hat a stronger edge against its rival Novell on the commercial side. But Red Hat recently delayed the release of RHGD indefinitely.