Red Hat is readying the first major update to its free Fedora Core Linux distribution since November 2004.
Expected Monday, Fedora Core 4 will be the first release of the company’s Linux operating system to include support for the Xen virtualization software. It will also mark the first time the company has included community-contributed features, called Extras, in a new release.
Fedora Core 4 will include a number of performance enhancements, integration with the Red Hat Global File System, and updated versions of the compiler and desktop software used in Red Hat’s Linux.
But perhaps the most high-profile new feature will be the Xen software, which allows users to run more than one copy of an operating system on the same computer. When used in combination with Intel’s Vanderpool Technology, expected to soon begin appearing in chipsets, Xen allows users to run copies of Windows and Linux simultaneously on the same computer.
Xen is still in the early stages of development, but over the next year Red Hat plans to develop tools that will make it easier for administrators to configure and manage “virtual” copies of the operating system using Xen, says Rik van Riel, a Red Hat engineer. Red Hat originally released Fedora as an unsupported alternative to its Red Hat Enterprise Linux product.
Fedora includes many cutting-edge features, such as Xen, that are intended for inclusion in upcoming versions of the enterprise edition. Unlike Red Hat’s commercial products, however, users are free to make as many copies of Fedora as they wish, without paying for support licenses.
Red Hat was initially criticized for dictating what features would and would not be in the Fedora release. This year, however, it launched the Extras project as a way to let contributors outside of Red Hat decide what features to add to the release.
Jeffery Tillotson, a systems administrator with healthcare equipment maker Elekta AB, says he will rush to download the new release, but will wait a few months before deploying it, in order to get more comfortable with the software. Elekta uses an earlier version of Fedora Core on about 25 of the company’s Intel-based servers to handle file sharing and software development, he says.
Though the Xen technology may be interesting, Tillotson says he has no plans to take advantage of it at present. “We spend so little on each box, it would cost us more to put (our applications] all on one big box,” he says.
