The Fedora Project’s latest version of the open source Fedora operating system have released Fedora 21.
It comes about a month after the launch of a public beta, and not much has changed since my last article… it’s just that the operating system is now considered stable enough to drop the beta label.
Fedora is sponsored by Red Hat, but unlike the commercial Red Hat Linux, Fedora is a community-based project.
What’s new in Fedora 21 is that the operating system now comes in three different versions: Cloud, Server, and WorkStation.
They all use the same Linux kernel, RPM and yum package management system (which works sort of like an app store… but which predates Apple, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft’s app stores), and many other features.
But if you plan to install Fedora 21 on a notebook or desktop computer, you’ll probably want the Workstation variant which includes experimental support for the Wayland display server, a new software installer, and the GNOME 3 desktop environment.
Fedora 21 Server can be used to set up web servers, file servers, database servers, or other software which will be run on a remote system, while Fedora 21 Cloud lets you create private clouds using OpenStack, Amazon Web Services, or other platforms.
You can find out more about each version in the release announcement or at the Fedora website.