Richard Petersen

This article discusses the implementation details for the new device management methods udev and HAL, now used on all Fedora Core 3 and 4 systems for all devices. It's time to relearn how devices are managed! On Fedora Core 4, device files are no longer handled in a static way. Instead they're now dynamically generated as needed by udev and managed by HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer). Previously a device file was created for each possible device, leading to a very large number of device files in the /etc/dev directory. Now, your system will detect only those devices it uses and create device files for those only, giving you a much smaller listing of device files. Both udev and HAL are hotplug systems, with udev used for creating devices and HAL designed for providing information about them, as well as managing the configuration for removable devices such as those wit... (more)

Stateless Network Auto Configuration With IPv6

IPv6 can be used to automatically connect a host to a network using stateless auto-configuration, doing away with the need for any IP addressing support like a DHCP server. In an IPv6 network, the IPv6 protocol includes information that can directly configure a host. With IPv4 you either have to manually configure each host or rely on a DHCP server to provide configuration information. With IPv6, configuration information is integrated into the Internet protocol directly. IPv6 autoconfiguration capabilities are known as stateless, meaning that it can directly configure a host wi... (more)

Getting Started with Red Hat Linux

This article provides a glimpse into Red Hat: The Complete Reference Enterprise Linux and Fedora Edition (with DVD), published by McGraw-Hill/Osborne. It covers what you need to get started with Red Hat Linux - including the overall design of Linux, Linux distributions, and online resources. As an operating system, Linux performs many of the same functions as Unix, Macintosh, Windows, and Windows NT. However, Linux is distinguished by its power and flexibility, along with being freely available. Most PC operating systems, such as Windows, began their development within the confi... (more)

Getting the Cool Stuff on Fedora Software Repositories

One of the more frustrating features of a Fedora Core installation is its lack of popular multimedia and driver support as well as alternative applications like Abiword. But, with a few simple steps you can easily access a large collection of such software from your system using YUM. Though Fedora Core 4 software is extensive, the available software has grown so large that many packages can no longer be included with the Fedora Core releases. There's also specialized software that for various reasons such as possible licensing issues aren't included. This is particularly true of ... (more)

Fedora Core 5 New Features

If one term could be applied to the new Fedora Core 5, it could well be streamlined. The focus of this release seems to be more on the desktop user because of the changes in software management, applications support, and security configuration. The changes make the distribution much easier to use, with a new and simpler install procedure. Greater software functionality has been added with support for .NET using Mono. Software management has undergone a major shift in orientation, from the disk-based software installation of the old system-config-packages tool to an entirely onli... (more)