After a long wait, compensated by the appearance of some «remixes» along the way, the Fedora distro finally adds official support for the Raspberry Pi with the beta of its version 25. There are still many things in the pipeline, such as WiFi support on the Raspberry Pi 3 or sound, and not all versions of the mini computer will be able to run the operating system, but it's still great news for Fedora fans and those who want to try something different on their Pi.
With the latest Raspberry Pi, the mini computer has not only increased its performance, but also added wireless connectivity, something many users demanded from the start. On the software side, things have improved considerably. The Raspberry Pi Foundation now has an operating system called PIXEL, which is based on Raspbian, though there are other alternatives. One that has taken quite a while to arrive is Fedora. Linux enthusiasts will be quick to point out that the Pidora project has been active for a while and works fairly well, but what we have here is more official: the beta of Fedora 25 has just added support for the Raspberry Pi 2 and 3.
Why did it take so long?
In essence, a lack of more robust hardware support (open drivers, etc.), firmware redistribution, the need to include support in Fedora ARM without turning everything upside down, and of course, time. Still, there are several sharp edges. The Raspberry Pi 2 has superior compatibility compared to the Raspberry Pi 3, whose WiFi-BT module is still out of the picture. There's also the reported absence of audio (waiting for upstream), accelerated multimedia decoding (same reason), and the camera. As a temporary alternative, users can connect different dongles WiFi and external sound cards via USB.
What about older models?
Now, it's worth noting that the announcement only mentions the Raspberry Pi 2 and 3. When will there be support for the rest? In official Fedora versions, the answer is never. All first-generation variants, the Raspberry Pi Zero, and the Compute Module use the ARMv6 architecture, which isn't compatible with Fedora. What they recommend on the official site is to explore Pignus, which has several dedicated optimizations. So it's worth following its progress. The stable release of Fedora 25 will be on the upcoming November 15.
