Red Hat releases Fedora Core 5

Red Hat Inc. has released the latest version of its Fedora Core Linux community distribution with new desktop applications, security capabilities and virtualization technologies.

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Among the new desktop applications in FC 5 are fruits of the open-source Mono project, which include the Tomboy note-taking application; the F-spot digital photograph management tool; and the Beagle desktop search tool.

FC 5 also enhances support in multimedia applications for Xiph.org codecs; adds OpenDocument support and improved PDF (Portable Document Format) export capabilities through OpenOffice.org version 2.0.2; and includes support for AIGLX (Accelerated Indirect GLS) to enable GL-accelerated effects on a standard Linux desktop. The latest versions of GNOME 2.14 and KDE 3.5.1 also bring other enhancements, said the company.

As Red Hat announced earlier this month, FC 5 also includes a preview of the open-source Xen virtualization technology it plans to integrate into the next version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. FC 5 uses version 3.0 of the Xen development branch, with support for 32-bit and 64-bit x86 hardware, and adds a guest install script to ease the setup of virtual machines.

On the security side, FC 5 adds a new stack protecter to defend against buffer overflow exploits as well as a new reference policy for the SE (Security Enhanced) Linux security framework that allows policies to be incorporated into packages.