Released this morning, Fedora Core 6 (FC6) includes many new features and performance enhancements that could potentially improve the desktop computing experience and simplify system management and administration. FC6 ships with GNOME 2.16 and KDE 3.5.4, X.org 7.1, and the 2.6.18 kernel.
The inclusion of X.org 7.1 is particularly exciting, since it provides complete support for accelerated indirect GLX (AIGLX) right out of the box. The Compiz window manager, which brings unique and innovative visual effects to the Linux desktop, is installed by default in FC6, but will have to be manually enabled. For this release, Metacity and KWin are still the default window managers. FC6 also introduces the Fedora Artwork Project's new "DNA" theme for GRUB, Anaconda, RHGB, GDM, and the GNOME splash screen.
FC6's improved package management features continue to narrow the gap between Yum and APT. Anaconda now supports installation from third party repositories over a network or the Internet, facilitating tighter integration of the Fedora "extras" repository. FC6 also supports automated update notification and integration of the Pirut graphical package management tool. With a new metadata parser written in C, Yum is now faster and more efficient. For system administrators, FC6 now includes a graphical virtualization manager for Xen that includes a built-in VNC client. A graphical tool has also been added for working with SELinux.
Due to the massive amount of traffic generated by a Fedora release, the FC6 release notes and other content at fedora.redhat.com have only been available intermittently. Users that wish to download FC6 now will probably have better luck using the official torrents, given the currently unreliable state of Fedora's servers.
[Update]
And I just received the news,
If you're curious what the appetite is for Fedora Core 6, Red Hat's newest version of Linux for hobbyists, the company has an answer is : 10,000 downloads in five hours.
Doing the math, that works out to one download every 1.8 seconds. And considering that the minimum size of Fedora Core 6 is 3.4GB, it's no surprise Red Hat's servers fell to their knees after the release Tuesday.
Although not all the downloads taxed the servers. The 10,000 statistic includes downloads through Bittorrent, a peer-to-peer file-sharing service that doesn't tax central download servers as much as direct downloads.
But still great number right?