  In this paper we study fractional coloring from the angle of distributed
computing. Fractional coloring is the linear relaxation of the classical notion
of coloring, and has many applications, in particular in scheduling. It was
proved by Hasemann, Hirvonen, Rybicki and Suomela (2016) that for every real
$\alpha>1$ and integer $\Delta$, a fractional coloring of total weight at most
$\alpha(\Delta+1)$ can be obtained deterministically in a single round in
graphs of maximum degree $\Delta$, in the LOCAL model of computation. However,
a major issue of this result is that the output of each vertex has unbounded
size. Here we prove that even if we impose the more realistic assumption that
the output of each vertex has constant size, we can find fractional colorings
of total weight arbitrarily close to known tight bounds for the fractional
chromatic number in several cases of interest. More precisely, we show that for
any fixed $\epsilon > 0$ and $\Delta$, a fractional coloring of total weight at
most $\Delta+\epsilon$ can be found in $O(\log^*n)$ rounds in graphs of maximum
degree $\Delta$ with no $K_{\Delta+1}$, while finding a fractional coloring of
total weight at most $\Delta$ in this case requires $\Omega(\log \log n)$
rounds for randomized algorithms and $\Omega( \log n)$ rounds for deterministic
algorithms. We also show how to obtain fractional colorings of total weight at
most $2+\epsilon$ in grids of any fixed dimension, for any $\epsilon>0$, in
$O(\log^*n)$ rounds. Finally, we prove that in sparse graphs of large girth
from any proper minor-closed family we can find a fractional coloring of total
weight at most $2+\epsilon$, for any $\epsilon>0$, in $O(\log n)$ rounds.
