The open source Fedora Linux distribution is out this week with the first alpha development build of its Fedora 20 release, along with a long list of proposed changes.

One of the key additions set to land in Fedora 20 is a set of Apache Hadoop application packages. Hadoop is an open source collection of projects that has become synonymous with the term "Big Data" in recent years. Fedora Project Leader Robyn Bergeron told ServerWatch that Fedora 20 will include "all" the different Hadoop projects.

"I have looked into this and my recollection is that no other Linux distribution has Apache Hadoop packaged," Bergeron said. "There are lots of packages that you can import into your own distro, but this is all packaged properly into Fedora itself."

The integration of Hadoop into Fedora 20 is all part of the Fedora project's natural evolution to continue to engage with users and bring them the technologies they want to run.

ARM

With Fedora 20, ARM is now for the first time being promoted to become a primary architecture.

Bergeron explained that Fedora has supported ARM before but never as a primary architecture. She noted that up until now it has been support on a "hope it works" sort of basis that didn't block development or overall releases. As a primary architecture, Fedora is now committed to make sure ARM works as expected and is supported in the same ways as all the traditional architectures.

WildFly

Fedora 20 will also include the Wildfly Java middleware server. Earlier this year, Red Hat rebranded and re-invented its JBoss Application Server Community Edition as the Wildfly project. Bergeron commented that it's always good to see different projects that are supported by Red Hat collaborating with each other.

"There was a long time when there was never any JBoss anything in Fedora," Bergeron said. "But now we have built bridges across the communities."

Fedora 20 is currently in alpha development with the final release set for December 3rd.



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

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