Fedora 25 Adds Some Rust to Linux

Red Hat's Fedora community linux distribution debuted its second major milestone release of 2016 on November 22, with the general availability of Fedora 25. Fedora 25 is available in Server, Workstation and

container (atomic host) optimized versions.

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On the desktop, a key under-the-hood innovation that finally makes its official debut is the integration of the Wayland display server.

"Wayland has been under development for several years and seeks to provide a smoother, richer experience for graphical environments and better capabilities for modern graphics hardware," Matthew Miller, Fedora Project Leader, wrote in his mailing list announcement for Fedora 25.

Fedora 25 now also provides improved Flatpak support, making it easier to for users to install updates and remove application packages.

Fedora 25 Server Adds Improved Cockpit Management System

On the server side, Fedora 25 has improved its Cockpit management system with multiple enhancements. There is now a SELinux Troubleshooter module for Cockpit that helps users identify and fix security policy issues. Cockpit has also added support for mutli-factor authentication services.

Identity management gets a boost with the integrated FreeIPA 4.4 update, which now includes a refreshed user interface that can show a topology graph for large deployments. Additionally, subordinate Certificate Authorities (CAs) can now be created by the FreeIPA Certificate Authority to issue certificates with a specific scope.

On an architecture level, the release notes call attention to the fact that Fedora 25 is the first release where Fedora officially runs on the Raspberry Pi (versions 2 and 3). That said, there is an unofficial Fedora spin called "Pidora" that first debuted in May 2013, based on Fedora 18.

Fedora 25 Delivers Enhancements for Developers Too

Of note for developers, Fedora 25 includes the Go 1.7 programming language compiler as well as support for Unicode 9.0. The open-source Rust language, which is developed by Mozilla, also makes its debut in Fedora 25.

"Fedora 25 provides the Rust compiler and its Cargo package management tool," the release notes state. "Rust is a fast-compiled programming language that prevents segmentation faults, ensures thread safety, and supports both functional and imperative-procedural paradigms."

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at ServerWatch and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist