Hat's Enterprise Linux products for stable, robust, scalable, and inexpensive solutions for various platform hosting. Storage requirements in the terabyte range, no lengthy file system checks, and no downtime are just a few of the minimum requirements in such environments.
However, Fedora can be used in many of these environments by customers with widely disparate computing needs. Some of the applications for Fedora include desktop support; small file, print, or mail servers; intranet web servers; and security firewalls deployed at strategic points inside and outside company LANs.
Commercial Red Hat customers will benefit from Red Hat's engineering and support teams because Red Hat works closely with many computer industry leaders, such as HP, Fujitsu Limited, and IBM. This enables Red Hat Enterprise Linux to work well on a wide range of computers such as laptops, mid-range Intel Xeon and Itanium platforms, and some of the most powerful enterprise-class servers in the world.
Red Hat also develops platform and development tools for other CPUs, such as the Xstormy16 CPU from Sanyo, NEC's VR5500 MIPS, Motorola's 128-bit AltiVec and Book E PowerPC e500, SuperH's SuperH SH-5, and Intel's XScale-based chips.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux has a presence in many government entities at various levels across the world. For example, the New Jersey State Police use a Red Hat-based Oracle system, whereas India's Centre for Development of Advanced Computing uses Red Hat Linux in its high-performance computing lab.
Use of Linux is expanding rapidly in the U.S. federal sector. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is on the General Services Administration Schedule, and the U.S. National Security Agency has offered a series of kernel patches to assist in building secure versions of Linux. This has quickened the development of SELinux within both Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Other agencies and departments, such as the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Marine Corps, Federal Aviation Administration, NASA, and the Departments of Defense, Agriculture, and Energy also use Linux-enabled platform solutions from IBM and Hewlett-Packard.
Small business owners can earn great rewards by stepping off the software licensing and upgrade treadmill and adopting a Linux-based solution. Using Fedora not only avoids the need for licensing accounting and the threat of software audits, but also provides viable alternatives to many types of commercial productivity software.
Using Fedora in a small business setting makes a lot of sense for other reasons, too, such as not having to invest in cutting-edge hardware to set up a productive shop. Fedora easily supports older, or legacy, hardware, and savings compound over time as unnecessary hardware upgrades are avoided. Additional savings will be realized because software and upgrades are free. New versions of applications can be downloaded and installed at little or no cost, and the office suite software is free.
Fedora is easy to install and network and plays well with others, meaning it works well in a mixed- computing situation with other operating systems such as Windows or Mac OS X. A simple Fedora server can be put to work as an initial partial solution or made to mimic file, mail, or print servers of other operating systems. Clerical help will quickly adapt to using familiar Internet and productivity tools, while your business gets the additional benefits of stability, security, and a virus-free computing platform.
When monies spent on server hardware are allocated carefully, a productive and efficient multiuser system can be built for much less than the cost of comparable commercial soft ware. Combine these benefits with support for laptops, PDAs, and remote access, and you will find that Fedora supports the creation and use of an inexpensive yet efficient work environment.
Fedora in Your Home
Fedora's basic install option copies a special set of preselected software packages onto your hard drive; these are suitable for
The basic installation option requires nearly 2GB of hard drive space but should easily fit onto smaller hard drives in older Pentium-class PCs. The install also contains administrative tools, additional authoring and publishing clients, a variety of editors, a Gnome- based desktop, support for sound, graphics editing programs, and graphical and text-based Internet tools. You can customize the selection to include or sidestep installation of unwanted software.
Connecting to the Internet is a snap, and Fedora supports modem dialup and other broadband connections, such as cable modems or
If you have a digital camera, run F-Spot client to download, organize, and manage your digital images. You can then fine-tune your pictures by editing them with one of the finest digital image editors in the world: the GIMP.
Fedora can be used for a variety of purposes, and every user has different needs. Fortunately Fedora and Linux offer many different programs to assist you in what you are attempting to do. I personally use Fedora mainly as a server to hold an extensive collection of OGG music files, as well as a growing collection of digital images. They are all available to my local network, and I can also upload files from wherever I am in the world by using the FTP server, or retrieve photos when I am visiting family and friends abroad.
64-Bit Fedora
Advances in computing saw the introduction of 64-bit, x86-compatible CPUs from AMD in the spring of 2003. The only platform at launch to support the new technology was Linux. Intel's EM64T extensions for x86, which largely mirror the advances made by AMD, have further increased the availability of commodity x86-64 hardware.
As a direct response to the growing 64-bit user base, Fedora released a 64-bit version, allowing the use of Fedora on AMD64 and Intel hardware. If you have a 64-bit CPU, you are strongly encouraged to get involved and give it a try — just bear in mind that, because the architecture is still quite new, there might not be a 64-bit version of all the software you require.
However, because the Intel Itanium platform uses a radically different set of instructions that are not compatible with the x86 instruction set, the 64-bit version of Fedora does not support Itanium or Itanium2. There are members of the community who are working toward making the Itanium a supported platform, but the niche nature of the platform means that this is unlikely.
Fedora on the PPC Platform
In recognition of the wide availability of the Power architecture, The Fedora Project decided to simultaneously release a PPC version of Fedora starting with Fedora 4. Fedora 8 continues in this vein, and you are able to run Fedora natively on Apple power-based hardware such as PowerMacs, iMacs, and the Mac mini, not to mention the very tasty PowerBooks.
Of course, now that Apple has moved across to Intel processors, it will leave a large gap in the market. Vendors such as IBM and Genesis will still produce and in IBM's case, develop the PowerPC platform beyond the current crop of G4- and G5-based machines.
You maybe didn't realize it, but your PlayStation 3 can run Fedora, because the Cell processor is part of the PPC family. Check out the release notes for more information on using your PS3 console.
