Fedora 12 'Constantine' has been released

Courtesy of Fedora.

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The release of Fedora 12 will mark the fourth major operating system update this fall.  Codenamed 'Constantine' and like the three previous OS releases, Windows 7, Ubuntu 9.10 openSUSE 11.2, the Linux based Fedora 12 comes packed with a variety of improvements and new features.

One of the major goals of the development team at Fedora was to decease significantly OS boot times.  Their reasoning behind this goal was that it was necessary to get Fedora users up and running as soon as possible when they turned on their computers.  As a result, Fedora 12 can boot in 20 seconds, rivaling Ubuntu 9.10 and Windows 7.  Like other recent Linux releases, Fedora 12 also uses the more efficient and speedier ext4 as the default file system.  Although Fedora 11 became the one of the first Linux distributions to use ext4 as its standard file system, users did encounter problems with it.  Fedora 12, however, corrects those issues making ext4 fully safe to use.  Consequently, F12 is a fast as well as rock stable Linux OS.

As of Fedora 12, the base x86 architecture is now i686.  This move away from i586 means the end of the road for older style processors in terms of F12.  It also means that faster binaries can be created because of the concentration on current and future processor designs.  Moreover, by removing the restrictions of i586, Fedora systems will see the benefit of better processor optimization.  For example, F12 systems using Intel Atom processors will have performance gains due to the optimization for this line of processors.

Fedora 12 now provides an easier way to install missing applications.  In the past, Fedora users, in many cases, had to resort to a terminal window and running yum commands as root to install certain applications.  As of F12, a PackageKit browser plugin allows users to go online to securely install applications from websites.  To make things easier for those who still like the command line, F12 includes by default the PackageKit command not found functionality.  This feature allows F12 to either automatically install missing commands or suggest command spelling corrections for the user.

On the security side of things, F12 has a completely restructured PolicyKit.  When it was introduced in Fedora 8, the PolicyKit was designed to be a flexible but structured way of granting user access to privileged system operations.  Its initial design was flawed in that it did not integrate with directory service providers that allowed easy access to Microsoft's Active Directory.  The redesigned PolicyKit is now implemented as a system bus service with pluggable backends which allow easy integration with directory services.

Miscreants who attempt an attack on a F12 system will find that it is a difficult task.  This is because Fedora 12 incorporates a new lower process capability that lowers the capabilities of all root daemons and some setuid applications.  This effectively hardens an F12 system from an attack by preventing hackers from using processes like root daemons to take control of it.

F12 now includes Fedora Studio which is essentially a restructured multimedia menu.  Instead of being faced with hard to navigate menus and sub menus, users are given a concisely categorized multimedia menu.  The new menu now has main sections for multimedia apps that are based on their functions like capture & import, creation and so forth.  Within each main section are subsections which define and list the applications that they contain based on their related functions.  The result is a easy to navigate multimedia menu for average users and professional media creators alike.

Aside from including Gnome 2.28 and KDE 4.3 as desktop options, F12 includes as well the Fedora Moblin desktop.  Designed and optimized to run on netbooks or Mobile Internet Devices (MID), Fedora Moblin gives users another alternative to Ubuntu or Microsoft as desktops for these devices.

All in all, Fedora 12 is a major and compelling upgrade to a venerable Linux OS.  With the plethora of new features that Fedora 12 has, both hard core as well as casual users will surely pleased.

You can get more info about Fedora 12 or download the distro at www.fedoraproject.org.