Fedora is a Linux-based operating system that showcases the latest in free and open source software. Fedora is always free for anyone to use, modify, and distribute. It is built by people across the globe who work together as a community: the Fedora Project. The Fedora Project is open and anyone is welcome to join. The Fedora Project is out front for you, leading the advancement of free, open software and content.
The operating system is Fedora. It comes out twice a year or so. It's completely free, and we're committed to keeping it that way. It's the best combination of robust and latest software that exists in the free software world. The mindset is doing the right thing. To us, that means providing free and open software and content, at no cost, freely usable, modifiable, redistributable, and unencumbered by software patents.

The Fedora Project is a Red Hat sponsored and community supported open source project. Its goal is the rapid progress of free and open source software and content. The Fedora Project makes use of public forums, open processes, rapid innovation, meritocracy, and transparency in pursuit of the best operating system and platform that free and open source software can provide.

Features:
* This release features GNOME 2.22. GNOME now includes a webcam photo and video creation utility called Cheese, improved network filesystem support, a new international clock applet, Google Calendar support and custom email labels in Evolution, a new Remote Desktop Viewer, improved accessibility features, and PolicyKit integration.
* KDE 4.0.3 is available in the KDE Live image as well as the regular DVD.
* Xfce 4.4.2 is available as part of this release.
* NetworkManager 0.7 provides improved mobile broadband support, including GSM and CDMA devices, and now supports multiple devices and ad-hoc networking for sharing connections. It is now enabled by default on installations from DVD, CD, the network, and Live images.
* The Fedora installer, Anaconda, now supports partition resizing for ext2/3, NTFS filesystems, creating and installing to encrypted file systems, improved Rescue Mode with FirstAidKit, independent locations for the second stage installer and the software packages. A redesigned, larger netboot.iso image now features a second stage installer partly for this reason.
* Live USB images now support persistence, so your data and setting changes will be preserved even after rebooting.
* PackageKit, a new set of graphical and console tools, with a framework for cross-distribution software management, has replaced Pirut in this release of Fedora. The PackageKit graphical updater is available instead of Pup. Behind PackageKit, the performance of yum has been significantly improved.
* FreeIPA makes managing auditing, identity and policy processes easier by providing web-based and command line provisioning, and administration tools to ease system administration. FreeIPA combines the power of the Fedora Directory Server with FreeRADIUS, MIT Kerberos, NTP and DNS to provide an easy, out of the box solution.
* Ext4, the next version of the mature and stable ext3 filesystem is available as a option in this release. Ext4 features better performance, higher storage capacity and several other new features.
* This release of Fedora uses Upstart, an event-based replacement for the /sbin/init daemon.
* Firefox 3 brings a number of major improvements including a native look and feel, desktop integration, the new Places replacement for bookmarks, and a re-worked address bar.
* The completely free and open source Java environment OpenJDK 6 is installed by default. IcedTea 7, derived from OpenJDK 1.7, is no longer the default. IcedTea includes a browser plug-in based on GCJ, and is available for both x86 and x86_64 architectures. GCJ is still the default on PPC architecture.
* OpenOffice.org 2.4, with many new features, is available as part of Fedora 9.
* Fedora now includes Perl 5.10.0, which features a smaller memory footprint and other improvements.
* Fedora now includes TeXLive to replace the older, unmaintained TeX distribution.
* Fedora 9 features a 2.6.25 based kernel.
* Kernel crashes can be more automatically reported to http://www.kerneloops.org/ and diagnosed in a friendly way via the kerneloops package installed by default. Crash signatures are commonly referred to as oopses in Linux.
* Work on the start-up and shutdown in X has yielded noticeable improvements.

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