The Fedora Project is celebrating 15 years since it released Fedora Core 1, the start of a very popular Linux distribution. As a present to the community, a virtual disk image of Fedora Core 1 has been compiled for users to try out in GNOME Boxes – virtualisation software that comes bundled with Fedora Workstation by default.
The Fedora Linux Project was initially established by a community of Red Hat Linux users with the aim of packaging software that was not a part of the core Red Hat Linux product. Just a few months after launching the Fedora.us homepage it was announced that Red Hat Linux Project was merging with Fedora Linux Project to create the Fedora Project. Explaining what happened next, Fedora user Link Dupont, said:
“The Fedora Project was now a single, community-based team of passionate Linux developers, many of whom were still Red Hat employees. However, the projects were still somewhat separate. Red Hat Linux became Fedora Core; an openly developed project but was restricted to Red Hat employees. Fedora.us (or Fedora Linux) became Fedora Extras, where community members could continue to contribute packages and enhancements on top of Fedora Core.
This structure continued to exist for six releases of Fedora Core. With the release of Fedora 7, the distinction between Fedora Core and Fedora Extras was dropped, and Fedora was one big, happy family!”
Fedora Core 1 which launched 15 years ago, today, introducing several packages that are familiar to a lot of Linux users, including dbus, epiphany, nano, rhythmbox, and yum. The then-new distribution shipped with GNOME 2.4 which was released in September 2003.
Fedora Core 1 shipped with Mozilla Suite as the default browser because the browser maker, Mozilla, was still to release Firefox as a stand-alone browser at the time. It also shipped with OpenOffice.org, Evolution, gAIM (now known as Pidgin), and X-Chat (an IRC client that’s still in use today).
On the hardware front, Fedora Core 1 was optimised for Pentium PRO CPUs but support other Pentium-class CPUs. A 400 MHz Pentium II was recommended for a graphical install while a 200 MHz Pentium-class or better could handle text-mode. In terms of memory, it was recommended to use 256 MB for a graphical install but 192 MB was also acceptable. Text-mode could be used with just 64 MB. It was also recommended that you have 2.4 GB storage for a Workstation installation and just 1.9 GB for the ‘Personal Desktop’.
If you grabbed a copy of Fedora 29 the other day or have a machine with GNOME Boxes installed and want to try out this legacy release of Fedora, be sure to grab the pre-compiled virtual image.
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