The Pidora project at the Seneca Center for Development of Open Technology (CDOT) in Toronto (Canada) has developed a new version of the Fedora Linux operating system for the Raspberry Pi low-cost computer. Pidora 18 is an optimized Fedora remix for the Raspberry Pi, based on a brand new build of Fedora for the ARMv6 architecture with greater speed. Pidora 18 includes packages from the Fedora 18 package set as well as specific drivers for the Broadcom SoC on the board , which will not be included in future versions of the mainstream Fedora distribution.

 

The package has been compiled specifically to take advantage of the hardware built into the Raspberry Pi, with a graphical firstboot configuration and additional modules specifically made for the Raspberry Pi. The X-Windows interface is still slow because it cannot make full use of the 3D graphics core in the Broadcom SoC. However, the initial release of headless mode can be used with setups lacking a monitor or display.

 

Almost all of the Fedora 18 package set is available via yum, with thousands of packages built from the official Fedora repository and made available online. Auto swap creation is available to allow for larger memory usage. The C, Python and Perl programming languages are available and are included in the SD card image, and IP address information can be read over the speakers and flashed with the LED light. The new mix includes libraries capable of supporting external hardware, such as motors and robotics, via GPIO, I²C or SPI.