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.

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.