Richard Petersen

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 online repository software orientation. Using YUM-based repositories, the new software management tools, Pirut Package Manager and PUP updater, will download and install added and new software from Fe... (more)

Linux.SYS-CON.com: Device Management with udev and HAL on Fedora Core 4

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). Pre... (more)

Red Hat's Global File System on Fedora Core 4

With Fedora Core 4, Red Hat, for the first time, released its Global File System (GFS) as an open sourced, freely available distributed network file system. A distributed network file system builds on the basic concept of NFS as well as RAID techniques to create a file system implemented on multiple hosts across a large network, in effect, distributing the same file system among differen... (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 c... (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, a... (more)