TWO days ago Fedora 20 was released [1,2,3], delivering better hardware support [4,5] after a lot of testing [6] (incurring delays but matching deadlines). Putting aside features [7,8] and performance [9], the important thing about Fedora is innovation and its insistence -- although not absolute -- on Free/libre components. The next release of Fedora [10] will improve management of components (not entirely unpredictable), but again, this is a bit of "lipstick on a pig" as some people put it. Codenames will, as always, matter next time. ⬆
The biggest addition is Apache Hadoop, the distributed computing platform. Hadoop processes large datasets. It is popular in supercomputing for tasks like large distributed science projects, financial services, and it's even supported on Cray supercomputers. Adding Hadoop to Fedora was a big task that involved satisfying a number of difficult dependencies, so now Fedora users can install it the easy way with Yum. Even if you don't have your own computing cluster you can still get acquainted with Hadoop on a single PC or laptop.
Latest version of Red Hat's edition of Linux has ARM support, JBoss and Ruby on Rails updates, and much more
The Fedora 20 release is tantalizingly close, but even without the final gold seal of approval we have a clear picture of the features that users will be enjoying very soon. One of the additions to Fedora 20 is the inclusion of Apache Hadoop packages, which will let users easily get up and running with Hadoop right out of the box. Fedora contributor Matthew Farrellee talked to us about the packaging effort, what this means for Fedora 20, and what's coming in Fedora 21 and beyond.