14 DAY TRIAL // Fedora 14, the latest update to the popular Red Hat-sponsored Linux distro, has been released. Fedora 14, codenamed Laughlin, comes with a number of new features and changes, as well updated packages. The new features should be of interest more to developers and system admins rather than regular desktop users.
"I'm very proud of the work that has been put into Fedora 14," Jared Smith, Fedora Project Leader, said in a statement. "A myriad of contributors have helped to make free and open source software more pervasive with this release."
Basic support for Spice (Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environments) has been implemented. Spice aims to overhaul the remote desktop features available on Linux.
For now, Fedora 14 includes support for hardware-accelerated 2D graphics, encryption and hardware cursor.
The new libjpeg-turbo has been included, promising to cut loading times for JPEG-encoded images in half.
Developers have more to look forward to. Fedora 14 implements support for the relatively modern D programing language. The Python libraries and tools have been upgraded as well.
There is also a version of Fedora 14 available for Amazon's Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2) platform. The new release includes a tool to make migrating from the older Xen-based virtual machines to the new technology pushed by Red Hat, KVM, easier, as well.
Highlights of Fedora 14:
· Linux kernel 2.6.35; · GNOME 2.32; · KDE 4.5; · X.Org Server 1.9; · Python 2.7; · Sugar 0.90.
Fedora 14 also comes with preview versions of a couple of technologies. The GNOME Shell environment, which is scheduled for release along with GNOME 3.0 next spring, is included as an alternative.
A preview of the Systemd startup system, which aims to replace the current Upstart and System V Init, is also included, but not enabled by default.
Fedora 14 is available now for download here on Softpedia.
