Fedora 10 Lays Out Roadmap For the Future of Open Source Computing.

Virtualization Enhancements, On-Demand Software Installation and Connection Sharing Technologies Mark Fedora's Tenth Release

RALEIGH, N.C. -- The Fedora Project, a Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) sponsored and community-supported open source collaboration project, today announced the availability of Fedora 10, the latest version of its free open source operating system distribution. Fedora 10 features numerous leading-edge technologies and continues to lay the groundwork for derivative open source distributions throughout the enterprise.

"Fedora volunteer contributors and Red Hat engineers worked together to develop the cutting-edge features found in Fedora 10. Their widespread appeal, combined with Fedora's policy of collaborating with upstream free software communities, means that many of these features will be found in other Linux distributions in the future," said Paul Frields, Fedora project leader at Red Hat.

Approximately every six months, contributors from Fedora's membership of over 17,000 people collaborate to produce a complete, general-purpose, no-cost software platform. Since its inception, Fedora has adopted a leadership role in the development of open source software and continuously demonstrates its potential across the enterprise. This community of users and developers have blazed the trail in key feature development and actively forms the roadmap for open source technologies found in many platforms, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Fedora 10, the tenth release in five years, features substantial virtualization improvements for remote installation and management of storage provisioning. These features will make system administration of virtual machine hosts and guests easier and more capable of automation, especially as they are integrated into Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Additionally, Fedora 10 includes NetworkManager connection sharing, allowing laptop users with an Ethernet or mobile broadband connection to provide Internet routing to others through the laptop wireless interface, for instant collaboration anywhere, anytime.

"With the release of Fedora 10, the Fedora Project continues its tradition of innovation and community. Fedora sets the standards for technical features that are relevant to everyone from desktop users to the business enterprise, and advance free software worldwide," said Frields.

This release includes the premiere of a new graphical boot system called Plymouth, designed to speed up the boot process by taking advantage of a new kernel mode setting feature. Plymouth was designed by Fedora contributors and targeted primarily at ATI cards, but will be expanded in the future to support a broader range of media cards. Fedora 10 also features increased hardware support for a vast array of webcams, and better handling of printers via both direct physical connections and networks. Further, PackageKit, a software management tool that originally debuted in Fedora 9, has been extended in this release to provide on-demand codec software installation.

Fedora 10 also enhances its commitment to security with a new security auditing and detection toolkit called SecTool, and a brand-new set of Python bindings that allow programmers to use the FIPS-140 validated NSS library for rapid development of secure applications. The distribution also extends the Live USB persistence feature that was pioneered in Fedora 9, adding support for a separate user data area with optional encryption for the ultimate experience in secure, portable computing. Among the many new and enhanced features, Fedora 10 includes the all-new OpenOffice.org 3.0 and GNOME 2.24.1, for maximum desktop productivity and ease of use; a rewritten audio system for faster response and lower power usage; a full set of appliance building tools; and support for more hardware than any other operating system.

The Fedora Project will host a Fedora Users and Developers Conference (FUDCon) from January 9-11, 2009, in Boston, Mass. A free event open to all attendees, FUDCon provides an opportunity for community members and key contributors to come together and dedicate time working on challenges of common interest, polishing code and developing new features for the next groundbreaking release of Fedora.

For more information on FUDCon, please visit http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon/FUDConF11.

For more information on Fedora 10, to download the distribution or to join this community effort, please visit http://fedoraproject.org/.

About Red Hat, Inc.

Red Hat, the world's leading open source solutions provider, is headquartered in Raleigh, NC with over 65 offices spanning the globe. CIOs have ranked Red Hat first for value in Enterprise Software for four consecutive years in the CIO Insight Magazine Vendor Value survey. Red Hat provides high-quality, affordable technology with its operating system platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, together with applications, management and Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) solutions, including the JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite. Red Hat also offers support, training and consulting services to its customers worldwide. Learn more: http://www.redhat.com.

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