Noncommercial Linux distro no. 1: Fedora

Ryan Arsenault, Assistant Site Editor

 

Distro no. 1: Fedora

Fedora logo
(Image credit: Fedora)
Fedora

Most current version: 13
Supported hardware platforms: IA-32, x86-64, PowerPC
Code base: Fedora
Number of users: 22.4 million total unique IP connections for all Fedora versions

Fedora shares the code base with the commercial Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) distribution, the dominant enterprise Linux platform. Because Fedora is the foundational code for RHEL, industries such as financial services use it to boost the value of their RHEL subscriptions. System architects, for example, can evaluate new features in a stable form before they appear in RHEL.

Fedora's close partnership with a commercial vendor is also beneficial. "Because Red Hat embraces the open source methodology, Fedora is not pressured to create artificial lock-in technologies or optimize Fedora for profitability," says Paul Frields, Fedora's project leader.

Fedora's community leanings are also a plus for the distro, The Fedora Project, Frields said, enabling IT leaders to contribute to and influence a technology that they rely on. A key feature of Fedora is the Automatic Bug Reporting Tool. The tool enables Linux admins to easily report errors and troubleshoot bugs for a quick response from package maintainers.

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This was first published in July 2010

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