Tuesday, May 28, 2013: The best part about open source and Linux is that it can be tweaked! The latest is that folks at Fedora have added a twist to their Linux operating system and created an all new distro for the low cost mini computer, Raspberry Pi.
Known as Pidora 18, the operating system is definitely not the first one of its kind. The developers have already released two versions in the past, however, they were not optimised for the ARMv6 architecture. This is what makes Pidora 18 stand apart in the crowd! It is ready to work on Raspberry Pi.
The Fedora team has used the word ‘remix’ to describe its new operating system because it includes “proprietary software provided by the Raspberry Pi Foundation and the SOC vendor Broadcom cannot be included directly in Fedora.”
As reported by The Register, here are the list of features that Fedora-on-Pi can offer:
Almost all of the Fedora 18 package set available via yum(thousands of packages were built from the official Fedora repository and made available online)
Compiled specifically to take advantage of the hardware already built into the Raspberry Pi
Graphical firstboot configuration (with additional modules specifically made for the Raspberry Pi)
Compact initial image size (for fast downloads) and auto-resize(for maximum storage afterwards)
Auto swap creation available to allow for larger memory usage
C, Python and Perl programming languages available and included in the SD card
Initial release of headless mode can be used with setups lacking a monitor or display
IP address information can be read over the speakers and flashed with the LED light
For graphical operation, Gedit text editor can be used with plugins (python console, file manager, syntax highlighting) to serve as a mini-graphical IDE
For console operation, easy-to-use text editors are included (nled, nano, vi) plus Midnight Commander for file management
Includes libraries capable of supporting external hardware such as motors and robotics (via GPIO, I2C, SPI)
The team puts it, “The GUI in particular is slow, because the 2D graphics (the X Window System) are not yet connected to the 3D graphics processing unit on the SOC.”
