Red Hat releases Fedora 13

The Fedora Project has released version 13 of its open source operating system.

The Red Hat-sponsored group said that the new release includes features designed to boost desktop productivity, assist developers and increase its use in virtualisation.

The release comes just six months after Fedora 12, and incorporates technologies built by software developers around the globe, according to a company announcement.

The Fedora Project reciprocates by "contributing everything built in Fedora back to the open source community", the firm said.

Improvements include a smaller installation process, thanks to Fedora's Anaconda installer which has been designed to better handle storage devices and partitioning.

Fedora will automatically offer a driver installation prompt when the user plugs in a printer, for example, while improved colour management tools make it easier to print and produce high quality images.

Fedora 13 can be used in conjunction with a variety of Nvidia cards to enable 3D displays, the firm said, and new DisplayPort connectors are also supported on Nvidia and ATI cards.

The software now has extended support for stable PCI addresses and new shared network interface technology. Fedora 13 also features improvements in performance for KVM networking and large multi-processor systems.

Developers working in mixed libraries (Python and C/C++) will have new tools, and will get more complex information when debugging applications. A new SystemTap utility adds support for static probes, giving programmers better visibility over coding errors.

Delegates at the 2010 Red Hat Summit and JBoss World on 22 to 25 June in Boston can take away Fedora 13 on a free USB key.