Fedora Releases Optimized Pidora 18 Edition for Raspberry Pi

Fedora has released a special release of Fedora 18 that can run on the Raspberry Pi. The version, also known as a ‘Remix’, is called Pidora 18 and, according to the developers, is optimized for the ARMv6 architecture of the CPU used in the low-cost minicomputer.

The designation Remix on the special version of Fedora 18 is used by the developers to indicate that it contains proprietary software from the Raspberry Pi Foundation and Broadcom, the soc manufacturer. Pidora 18 also includes several optimizations for the ARMv6 architecture of the Broadcom soc, according to the developers, which should make the Linux distribution better than previous Fedora versions for the Raspberry Pi.

Within Pidora 18, which has an image size of 600MB, virtually all Fedora packages are available. These can be installed via the graphical desktop environment – optionally LXDE and XFCE – but it is also possible to install and use Pidora in a headless mode. No keyboard, mouse and monitor are connected to the Raspberry Pi and the configuration is done via the network connection. It is even possible to have the chosen IP address read out via a connected speaker during boot or to display it with flashing LEDs.

The developers warn that the graphics mode of Pidora 18 is not too fast yet because the 2d mode of X Windows is not yet hardware accelerated. Anyone who works in terminal mode on the Raspberry Pi will have access to a number of popular text editors and file manager Midnight Commander as standard.