What is Fedora?

- [Narrator] Fedora is a distribution of Linux sponsored by Red Hat. It's supported by an organization called the Fedora Project, and it's intended to be on the cutting edge of new technologies, software, and features. As new features develop and stabilize in the Fedora environment, they're evaluated and incorporated back into Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This means that Fedora is upstream from Red Hat Enterprise Linux. You could say that Fedora is the testing area, or sandbox, for updates and cool new stuff. If you read about a new Linux technology, chances are you'll see it in Fedora pretty quickly, but it'll be a while before it shows up in Red Hat Enterprise Linux and CentOS. Because Fedora is intended to be cutting edge, it doesn't have as long of a support life cycle as the other distributions do, usually just about 13 months. So if you're deploying workstations for office workers, or production systems in a data center, and you expect to keep them on the same software version for a few years, and have active support from the community, Fedora probably isn't your best bet. But if you're a fairly savvy user, and want to use Linux on the desktop, and you want access to the latest technologies, Fedora is an excellent choice. While Fedora generally has a desktop or workstation focus, there's Fedora Server as well, intended for classical servers or VM's, and Fedora CoreOS, intended for use on cloud hosts. The Fedora Workstation environment is intended for desktop use with a GUI, or a graphical user interface. Fedora ships with the GNOME desktop as standard, using the Wayland display server for protocol. Fedora Workstation is available in various Spins though, which are slightly different installers that come with different desktops, like KDE, XFCE, and so on. It's all the same Fedora behind the scenes, though. Fedora Workstation is also available as various Labs, which are installers that have a collection of packages focused on specific fields or topics. There's Labs for media production, astronomy, and more. Everything that's available in the Spins and Labs can be installed separately too. The idea of Labs and Spins is to provide a starting point that's easier to get up and running if you want something different than the regular GNOME desktop with a basic set of apps. Workstation comes in two flavors; the regular one and the one called Silverblue, which takes a different approach to managing packages and updates on the system. Silverblue uses an immutable, or read-only, version of the operating system, and a project called OSTree to layer changes and updates on top of it, rather than installing within and modifying the real file system. This means the operating system is versioned, like a software repository, and you can move back and forth between branches. Silverblue uses the Flatpak package manager, which is also based on OSTree for managing the installation of desktop applications. from conflicting with the operating system itself. Because Silverblue is not the default image yet, we won't go over it here, but it's important to know what it is. The idea of package layering, and a containerized approach to the operating system is part of Fedora CoreOS as well. Fedora is available as a server version, intended for headless operation. So, if you're working on something that resides on a server, Fedora Server can be a good way to test it against the latest software that's coming available. Just keep in mind though, Fedora Server probably shouldn't be used in production because of its comparatively short support cycle and the possibility of breaking changes. I mentioned Fedora CoreOS earlier. That's the successor to Atomic Host, a project focusing on containerized, minimal installation for cloud hosts. One other version I want to mention here is Rawhide. As Fedora releases are finalized, new development moves into a pre-released version called Rawhide. Unlike Fedora releases, Rawhide is a rolling release, meaning it's always up-to-date when you update that are being worked on. That also means it's inherently less stable than numbered releases. who needs to always keep up with the bleeding edge versions of new things, and you don't mind a bit of troubleshooting here and there, Rawhide may be a good choice for you. But, if you're intending to use Fedora as a stable desktop, it's best to stick to numbered releases. In this course, we'll take a look at using Fedora Workstation. I do want to be clear before we start, though. This isn't an introduction to Linux itself, or a deep-dive into all the brand-new packages and features that the latest release of Fedora offers. Fedora changes quickly, so this course isn't really focused on a specific version, though I did use Release 30 when recording. Every new release will bring new features, changes, and deprecations. So, if you're using the later version, be sure to check out the change set, the list of important differences from previous versions for this release, and any other release you might be curious about. You can see the change set at this URL, replacing the release number as appropriate. And, you can keep up-to-date with postings about changes and updates at Planet Fedora. This course is intended to get you familiar with using the common tools Fedora provides if you're coming from another distro or from another operating system. If you're new to the command line, check out my course, "Learning Linux Command Line." And if you want to explore the specifics of managing systems in the Red Hat ecosystem, take a look at our system administration courses here on LinkedIn Learning. Fedora, like any other distro, is a collection of packages and choices. Most of the time, you'll be using common things, like Bash, GNOME, a package manager, and system administration tools. and system administration tools. So, we'll take a look at those here, So, we'll take a look at those here, laying the ground work for you to use, laying the ground work for you to use, and further explore Fedora. and further explore Fedora.