The fourth and final development release of Fedora 7 includes a 2.6.20 kernel and is reproduced in three installable live images: an i386 GNOME live CD, an x86_64 live DVD, and an i386 KDE live CD.

“Fedora 7 development has focused on improving the manner in which all Fedora releases will be made,” said Max Spevack, Fedora Project Leader at Red Hat. “Beyond the usual set of upstream changes and improvements, our latest release is by far the most exciting and flexible to date. With our new open source build process, our community of contributors will enjoy much greater influence and authority in advancing Fedora. The ability to create appliances to suit very particular user needs is incredibly powerful.”

Through Fedora 7, the community is given an enhanced role that encourages greater openness and collaboration. As a result of its flexible, public build environment, Fedora 7 provides users with the ability to customize like never before. With these capabilities, combined with live CD, DVD and USB technology, the possibilities for appliance creation are endless. After customization, Fedora can be loaded onto various forms of bootable media, allowing users to run their operating system without a hard disk installation.

GNOME 2.18 is new default desktop. KDE and Xfce desktops, among several other packages, are included in the development repositories, but not on the media. The Internet messaging program called Gaim is now known as Pidgin. Standard features include: OpenOffice.org 2.2.0 office suite, amaroK 1.4.5. media player, eMacs 22.0.95 real-time display editor, Firefox 2.0.0.3 browser, GIMP 2.2.13 graphics editor, Thunderbird 2.0 email client, MySQL 5.0.37 database.

Fedora 7 features Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) and Qemu virtualization technologies in addition to Xen. All implementations can be managed using the Fedora graphical virtualization manager.

The Fedora 7 release also marks a significant milestone in Fedora’s emergence as a leading community-driven project. Formerly, the packages in Fedora Core were maintained only by Red Hat employees, while the packages in Fedora Extras were maintained by community members. Fedora 7 does away with this distinction; the new single Fedora repository is accessible to Red Hat employees and community members alike, giving the community more influence over Fedora than ever before.