Fedora Core 4 is the latest version of the free and popular Fedora Core platform with a number of unique features and significant improvements over previous versions. This section provides an overview of the major highlights in this release.
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Desktop Enhancements — The Fedora desktop brings to you the latest software such as GNOME 2.10 and KDE 3.4 with a new look and feel. GNOME has the new simple and elegant Clearlooks default theme that is inspired by the classic Red Hat Bluecurve theme.
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Improved Productivity
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Evince (http://www.gnome.org/projects/evince/) is a document viewer for multiple document formats such as pdf, postscript, and many others. Evince replaces a whole category of document viewers with a single simple application.
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OpenOffice.org 2.0 (http://www.openoffice.org/product2/index.php) is an office productivity suite. This latest version includes several enhancements such as improved Microsoft Office compatibility, completely revamped Impress presentation software, and native support for the OpenDocument format. This version also introduces Base, a fully integrated database management software. You can find the extensive list of new features at http://marketing.openoffice.org/2.0/featureguide.html.
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Eclipse 3.1 is an open and extensible platform and Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that can be used to develop software in any language.
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Support for PowerPC (PPC) Architecture — Refer to Section 3.4, “PPC Hardware Requirements” and Section 5.1, “PPC Installation Notes”.
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Improved Security — SELinux is a security architecture that protects applications and uses through finely grained security controls. The targeted policy that has been active since Fedora Core 3 has been improved to cover dozens of more daemons. You can read more in the technical release notes Section 4, “Overview of This Release”.
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Integrated Clustering Technology — Global File System (GFS) is an open source clustering file system that allows a cluster of Linux servers to share a common storage pool. Fedora Core 4 has integrated GFS within the system to manage your storage in an efficient way. You can read more at http://www.redhat.com/software/rha/gfs/.
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Built-in Virtualization — Xen is a virtual machine that can securely run multiple operating systems in their own sandboxed domains. Xen has been integrated into Fedora Core to work in a seamless fashion. You can read more about Xen at http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/virtualization/.
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Solid Platform — Fedora Core 4 includes and integrates the latest 4.0 version of GNU Compiler Collection which has a rewritten optimisation infrastructure and improved support for a native Free Java software stack. This includes parts of OpenOffice.org 2.0., Eclipse, and Apache Jakarta, among others.
