Red Hat Announces Availability of Fedora 21 

The Fedora Project, a Red Hat, Inc., sponsored and community-driven open source collaboration, today announced the general availability of Fedora 21. This is the first Fedora release influenced by the Fedora.next initiative, which emphasizes increased modularity and flexibility from the Fedora operating system. As part of this effort, Fedora 21 offers three variants: Fedora 21 Cloud, Fedora 21 Server, and Fedora 21 Workstation.

While each variant aims to meet specific user demands, all are built from a common base set of packages that includes the same Linux kernel, RPM, yum, systemd, and Anaconda. This small, stable set of components allows for a solid foundation upon which to base the Fedora 21 variants.

Fedora 21 Cloud

Designed to handle the myriad of computing requirements across different cloud deployments, Fedora 21 Cloud provides images for use in private cloud environments, like OpenStack, and Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) for use on Amazon Web Services (AWS), as well as a base image to enable creation of Fedora containers. Key features of Fedora 21 Cloud include:

• Modular Kernel Packaging for Cloud Compuing – To save space and reduce “bloat” in cloud computing deployments, the Fedora 21 Cloud kernel contains the minimum modules needed for running in a virtualized environment; coupled with other size reduction work, the Fedora 21 Cloud image is roughly 25 percent smaller than that of previous Fedora releases, enabling faster deployment and increasing available space for critical applications.
• Fedora Atomic Host – Using tools and patterns made available through Project Atomic, Fedora 21 offers the first “Atomic” host for Fedora, which includes a minimal package set and an image composed with only the run-times and packages needed to serve as an optimized host for Linux containers. Fedora Atomic Host allows for ”atomic” updates as a single unit, simplifying update management and providing the ability to roll-back updates if necessary. Fedora Atomic Host also includes Kubernetes for container orchestration and Cockpit for container management.

Fedora 21 Server

The Fedora 21 Server variant offers a common base platform for running featured application stacks (produced, tested, and distributed by the Fedora Server Working Group), providing a flexible foundation for Web servers, file servers, database servers, and even Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) deployments. Fedora 21 Server delivers:

• New Management Features – Fedora 21 Server introduces three new technologies to handle the management and installation of discrete infrastructure services.
  • Rolekit provides a Role deployment and management toolkit that helps administrators to install and configure a specific server role.
  • Cockpit is a Web-based user interface for configuring, managing, and monitoring servers, accessible remotely via a Web browser.
  • OpenLMI delivers a remote management system built on top of Distributed Management Taskforce – Common Information Model (DMTF-CIM), offering scripting management functions across machines, capabilities querying and system event monitoring.
• Domain Controller – One of the roles offered through Rolekit, Fedora 21 Server packages free IPA’s integrated identity and authentication solution for Linux/UNIX networked environments; machines running Fedora 21 Server can now offer centralized authentication, authorization, and account information by storing user, group, host, and other object data necessary to manage network security.

Fedora 21 Workstation

Revitalizing the Linux desktop, Fedora Workstation provides a polished, targeted system designed to offer a smooth experience for general desktop use as well as software development, from independent Web developers to corporate coders. New features in Fedora 21 Workstation include:

• Streamlined Software Installation – The Software installer, a cornerstone component to Fedora 21 Workstation, allows users to quickly and easily locate their applications. It provides a responsive and fast user experience, going hand-in-hand with a greatly improved number of featured Fedora applications included with Fedora 21 Workstation.
• Wayland Support (Experimental) – Wayland, a powerful next-generation display server technology, is included in Fedora 21 Workstation as an experimental build, allowing developers to test and integrate their applications with Wayland’s new capabilities.
• DevAssistant – A developer “helper,” DevAssistant automates the setup process for a large number of language runtimes and integrated development environments (IDEs); DevAssistant also integrates with Fedora Software Collections, offering access to multiple versions of different languages without worrying about system software conflicts.