Fedora 11, the next release of the popular Linux distribution, is now available from the Fedora website. You can find full details of the major improvements and changes in this latest release in our previous post about the launch of Fedora 11, but to mention just a few, the release claims to have major speed improvements, boasting a 20 second startup, as well as overall speed improvements as ext4 is now used as the default file-system.Another interesting feature is the ability to perform a minimal install, which amounts to about 500MB (at mount-point '/'), which should make this release more appealing to users running servers, or machines with older hardware. However, this does of course come at the cost of features.In addition, the latest versions of GNOME and KDE are included with the respective versions. The release was delayed several times due to last minute issues, however it is now officially available. You can see the screenshot tour here, showing the installation process and the desktops for both GNOME and KDE.
The release is now available through BitTorrent and direct download, however, at the time of writing, not all mirrors had Fedora 11 to download, so you may be better off using torrents if you cannot find a mirror. Custom Fedora 11 spins are also available, including the Fedora Games Spin and Fedora Xfce spin. For those wishing to upgrade, you must be using version 10 in order to upgrade to Fedora 11 through Yum. Users running Fedora 9 must upgrade to version 10 first, because of this. In case you aren't familiar with Fedora, it is a free, open-source Linux operating system, and the whole project is sponsored by Red Hat, a company providing enterprise Linux solutions.
The following are major features for Fedora 11:
*Automatic font and mime-type installation - PackageKit was introduced in Fedora 9 as a cross-distro software management application for users. The capabilities it offers thanks to integration with the desktop became more visible in Fedora 10, where it provided automatic codec installation. Now in Fedora 11, PackageKit extends this functionality with the ability to automatically install fonts where needed for viewing and editing documents. It also includes the capability to install handlers for specific content types as needed. Some work is still being completed to provide automatic installation of applications.
*Volume Control - Currently, people using Fedora have to go through many levels of mixers in different applications to properly set up sound sources. These are all exposed in the volume control on the desktop, making for a very confusing user experience. PulseAudio allows us to unify the volume controls in one interface that makes setting up sound easier and more pain-free.
*Intel, ATI and Nvidia kernel modsetting - Fedora 10 provided the first steps by a major distribution into using the kernel modesetting (KMS) feature to speed up graphical boot. We indicated at the time that we would be adding greater support for additional video cards as time went on. KMS originally was featured only on some ATI cards. In Fedora 11, this work is extended to include many more video cards, including Intel and Nvidia, and additional ATI as well. Although not fully complete, we have increased enormously the video card coverage of the KMS feature, with more to come.
*Fingerprint - Extensive work has been done to make fingerprint readers easy to use as an authentication mechanism. Currently, using fingerprint readers is a bit of a pain, and installing/using fprint and its pam module take more time than should ever be necessary. The goal of this feature is to make it painless by providing all the required pieces in Fedora, together with nicely integrated configuration. To enable this functionality the user will register their fingerprints on the system as part of user account creation. After doing so, they will easily be able to log in and authenticate seamlessly using a simple finger swipe. This greatly simplifies one element of identity management and is a great step in the evolution of the linux desktop.
*IBus input method system - ibus has been rewritten in C and is the new default input method for Asian languages. It allows input methods to be added and removed dynamically during a desktop session. It supports Chinese (pinyin, libchewing, tables), Indic (m17n), Japanese (anthy), Korean (libhangul), and more. There are still some features missing compared to scim so testing is strongly encouraged and reports of problems and suggestions for improvements welcome.
*Presto - Normally when you update a package in Fedora, you download an entire replacement package. Most of the time (especially for the larger packages), most of the actual data in the updated package is the same as the original package, but you still end up downloading the full package. Presto allows you to download the difference (called the delta) between the package you have installed and the one you want to update to. This can reduce the download size of updates by 60% – 80%. It is not enabled by default for this release. To make use of this feature you must install the yum-presto plugin with yum install yum-presto.
For further details refer to the Presto wiki page
Some other features in this release include:
*Ext4 filesystem - The ext3 file system has remained the mature standard in Linux for a long time. The ext4 file system is a major update that has an improved design, even better performance and reliability, support for much larger storage, and very fast file system checks and file deletions. It is now the default filesystem for new installations.
*Virt Improved Console - In Fedora 10 and earlier the virtual guest console is limited to a screen resolution of 800x600. In Fedora 11 the goal is to have the screen default to at least 1024x768 resolution out of the box. New installations of F11 provide the ability to use other interface devices in the virtual guest, such as a USB tablet, which the guest will automatically detect and configure. Among the results is a mouse pointer that tracks the local client pointer one-for-one, and providing expanded capabilities.
*MinGW (Windows cross compiler) - Fedora 11 provides MinGW, a development environment for Fedora users who wish to cross-compile their programs to run on Windows without having to use Windows. In the past developers have had to port and compile all of the libraries and tools they have needed, and this huge effort has happened independently many times over. MinGW eliminates duplication of work for application developers by providing a range of libraries and development tools already ported to the cross-compiler environment. Developers don't have to recompile the application stack themselves, but can concentrate just on the changes needed to their own application.
Hardware Requirements
Processor and memory requirements for PPC Architectures
*Minimum CPU: PowerPC G3 / POWER3
*Fedora 11 supports the New World generation of Apple Power Macintosh, shipped from circa 1999 onward. Although Old World machines should work, they require a special bootloader which is not included in the Fedora distribution. Fedora has also been installed and tested on POWER5 and POWER6 machines.
*Fedora 11 supports pSeries and Cell Broadband Engine machines.
*Fedora 11 also supports the Sony PlayStation 3 and Genesi Pegasos II and Efika.
*Fedora 11 includes new hardware support for the P.A. Semiconductor 'Electra' machines.
*Fedora 11 also includes support for Terrasoft Solutions powerstation workstations.
*Recommended for text-mode: 233 MHz G3 or better, 128MiB RAM.
*Recommended for graphical: 400 MHz G3 or better, 256MiB RAM.
1.2.2. Processor and memory requirements for x86 Architectures
The following CPU specifications are stated in terms of Intel processors. Other processors, such as those from AMD, Cyrix, and VIA that are compatible with and equivalent to the following Intel processors, may also be used with Fedora. Fedora 11 requires an Intel Pentium or better processor, and is optimized for Pentium 4 and later processors.
*Recommended for text-mode: 200 MHz Pentium-class or better
*Recommended for graphical: 400 MHz Pentium II or better
*Minimum RAM for text-mode: 128MiB
*Minimum RAM for graphical: 192MiB
*Recommended RAM for graphical: 256MiB
1.2.3. Processor and memory requirements for x86_64 architectures
*Minimum RAM for text-mode: 256MiB
*Minimum RAM for graphical: 384MiB
*Recommended RAM for graphical: 512MiB
1.2.4. Hard disk space requirements for all architectures
Download (Official link)
or Mirror 1 (yandex.ru)
This is for both Intel and AMD; AMD users please also refer iATKOS version in the reply. Developed by Layne and iHackintosh Team. This relase is based on Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.8 including the last updates. Continue reading to know how to install this Mac, with the help of Windows Vista. This tutorial was taken from ihackintosh.com.
