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Fedora Core 2 reflects Red Hat's commitment to making the Fedora Project a platform for rapid development and adoption of Linux technology. Although we are recommending Fedora Core 1 as a more stable Linux distribution to follow along with this book, you may want to use Fedora Core 2 to take advantage of some of its new features.
If you are sitting down to use this book with Fedora Core 2, you should be aware of several differences from Fedora Core 1. Here are some of the major ones:
Linux 2.6.5 kernel-The Linux 2.6 kernel is a major upgrade from the 2.4.22 kernel included in Fedora Core 1. New features should result in improved performance, more supported hardware, and better scalability. For the most part, the new kernel shouldn't change how you use this book. However, visible reflections of the new kernel include a new /sys file system (where you can view and change kernel information) and device files represented by .ko instead of .o suffixes.
Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA)-The underlying mechanism for sound in Fedora Core 2 is ALSA, replacing the Open Source Sound system (OSS) used in Fedora Core 1 and earlier Red Hat Linux distributions.
system-config tools-To give a more generic feel, commands to launch graphical administration tools that previously began with redhat-config now begin with system-config. For example, the redhat-config-network command is now system-config-network. Anytime you encounter a command beginning with redhat-config, try system-config in Fedora Core 2 instead.
Security Enhanced Linux-The SE Linux feature pervades many aspects of the Fedora Core 2 operating system. This new security model can be used to overcome the monolithic "root owns the world" approach to security in earlier Linux and UNIX systems. Using access control lists (ACLs), a system with SE Linux enabled can finely define administrative control over the files, processes, and devices in that system. By default, SE Linux is turned off in Fedora Core 2.
X.org X server-The X server delivered with Fedora Core 2 changed from the XFree86 server to the X server software available from X.org. While this shouldn't have much impact on the average desktop user (who sees mostly the GNOME or KDE desktop environment, colored by the metacity window manager and Bluecurve theme), it does change some of the tools available for configuring your video cards from the command line.
Many new packages-More than 200 new packages were added to Fedora Core 2 after Fedora Core 1. While many of these packages were added to improve support for application development (especially Java applications), some new administrative features were added such as IPSEC (VPN software replacing cipe) and the exim mail transfer agent (which could be used instead of sendmail or postfix).
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