Linux distribution Fedora released their latest version this week. Fedora 14 was released Tuesday and brings along with it some new interesting features.

• Framework software for Spice, a rapidly advancing infrastructure for desktop virtualization
• New debugging features for developers, such as support for dynamic/unplanned memory usage tracking and faster launch thanks to pre-generated indexes
• Powerful remote and out-of-band management capabilities with Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) support
• Updated tech preview of the GNOME shell environment, part of the upcoming GNOME 3.0 release
• A subset of new and innovative software from the MeeGo™ community for an enhanced experience on netbooks and small devices
• OpenSCAP, an open-source framework for the Security Content Automation Protocol, which provides a framework and approach to maintaining system security backed by NIST standards
• Support for emergent programming languages like D, and refreshed versions of popular languages such as Python 2.7, Erlang R14, and the Rakudo Star implementation of Perl 6

While not as popular as Ubuntu, Fedora is still one of the more popular distributions, targeted more towards system administrators and developers than Ubuntu. RedHat says there are approximatively 25 million Fedora users. Also updated was the fedoraproject.org website, which now is a little more user friendly and provides more information about the release. You can download the release at the project website.

First Apple decides to discontinue their Xserve lineup and now Ubuntu is planning to ditch their X server too. Confused? X is the underlying display server in the Ubuntu Linux distro. In an announcement today by Mark Shuttleworth, in the future Ubuntu will be ditching X.org and moving to Wayland display server.

The next major transition for Unity will be to deliver it on Wayland, the OpenGL-based display management system. We’d like to embrace Wayland early, as much of the work we’re doing on uTouch and other input systems will be relevant for Wayland and it’s an area we can make a useful contribution to the project.

Ubuntu is setting out to change the look and feel (and performance) of Linux. The upcoming Ubuntu 11.04 will ditch the GNOME interface for their new Unity styling, but there is no specific timeline for the departure of X.org in Ubuntu. Due to the integration of X into nearly all of Linux it's possible it could take years to rip it all out in favor of Wayland. Also, Wayland is still an extremely immature codebase compared to X.org, which is used in nearly every Linux distribution and was first released in 2004 (and was forked from XFree86 which was released in 1991.) In contrast Wayland hasn't been used in any major Linux distro yet. via Digitzor

Remember back in 2000 when Steve Ballmer called Linux communist? Turns out it's not that far from the truth.

In a move likely to irritate as many people as it satisfies, Mark Shuttleworth announced today that the next version of the Ubuntu Linux distribution, due in April of 2011, will dump GNOME as the default desktop manager in favor of their Unity interface. The Unity interface is currently the interface used by the Netbook specific Ubuntu distribution, present since version 10.04 LTS.

Read the rest of this post »