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Fedora 13 Alpha released
The Fedora 13 "Goddard" Alpha release is available! What's next for the free operating system that shows off the best new technology of tomorrow? You can see the future now at: http://fedoraproject.org/get-prerelease?anF13a == What is the Alpha release? == The Alpha release contains all the features of Fedora 13 in a form that anyone can help test. This testing, guided by the Fedora QA team, helps us target and identify bugs. When these bugs are fixed, we make a Beta release available. A Beta release is code-complete, and bears a very strong resemblance to the third and final release. The final release of Fedora 13 is due in May. We need your help to make Fedora 13 the best release yet, so please take a moment of your time to download and try out the Alpha and make sure the things that are important to you are working. If you find a bug, please report it -- every bug you uncover is a chance to improve the experience for millions of Fedora users worldwide. Together, we can make Fedora a rock-solid distribution. (Read down to the end of the announcement for more information on how to help.) == Features == Among the top features for end users, we have: * Automatic print driver installation. We're using RPM and PackageKit for automatic installation of printer drivers, so when you plug in a USB printer, Fedora will automatically offer to install drivers for it if needed. * Automatic installation of language packs. Yum language packs plugin support makes software installation smarter and easier for everyone worldwide, by automatically downloading language support for large suites of Fedora software when the user's environment requires it. * Redesigned user management interface. The user account tool has been completely redesigned, and the accountsdialog and accountsservice test packages are available to make it easy to configure personal information, make a personal profile picture or icon, generate a strong passphrase, and set up login options for your Fedora system. * Color management. Color Management allows you to better set and control your colors for displays, printers, and scanners, through the gnome-color-manager package. * NetworkManager improvements include CLI. NetworkManager is now a one stop shop for all of your networking needs in Fedora, be it dial-up, broadband, wifi, or even Bluetooth. And now it can all be done in the command line, if you're into that sort of thing. * Experimental 3D extended to free Nouveau driver for NVidia cards. In this release we are one step closer to having 3D supported on completely free and open source software (FOSS) drivers. In Fedora 12 we got a lot of ATI chips working, and this time we've added a wide range of NVidia cards. You can install the mesa-dri-drivers-experimental package to try out the work in progress. For developers there are all sorts of additional goodies: * SystemTap static probes. SystemTap now has expanded capabilities to monitor higher-level language runtimes like Java, Python and Tcl, and also user space applications starting with PostgreSQL. In the future Fedora will add support for even more user space applications, greatly increasing the scope and power of monitoring for application developers. * Easier Python debugging. We've added new support that allows developers working with mixed libraries (Python and C/C++) in Fedora to get more complete information when debugging with gdb, making Fedora an exceptional platform for powerful, rapid application development. * Parallel-installable Python 3 stack. The parallel-installable Python 3 stack will will help programmers write and test code for use in both Python 2.6 and Python 3 environments, so you can future-proof your applications now using Fedora. * NetBeans 6.8 first IDE to support entire Java 6 EE spec. NetBeans IDE 6.8 is the first IDE to offer complete support for the entire Java EE 6 specification. And don't think we forgot the system administrators: * boot.fedoraproject.org. (BFO) allows users to download a single, tiny image (could fit on a floppy) and install current and future versions of Fedora without having to download additional images. * System Security Services Daemon (SSSD). SSSD provides expanded features for logging into managed domains, including caching for offline authentication. This means that, for example, users on laptops can still login when disconnected from the company's managed network. The authentication configuration tool in Fedora has already been updated to support SSSD, and work is underway to make it even more attractive and functional. * Pioneering NFS features. Fedora offers the latest version 4 of the NFS protocol for better performance, and in conjunction with recent kernel modifications includes IPv6 support for NFS as well. * Zarafa Groupware. Zarafa now makes available a complete Open Source groupware suite that can be used as a drop-in Exchange replacement for Web-based mail, calendaring, collaboration and tasks. Features include IMAP/POP and iCal/CalDAV capabilities, native mobile phone support, the ability to integrate with existing Linux mail servers, a full set of programming interfaces, and a comfortable look and feel using modern Ajax technologies. * Btrfs snapshots integration. Btrfs is capable of creating lightweight filesystem snapshots that can be mounted (and booted into) selectively. The created snapshots are copy-on-write snapshots, so there is no file duplication overhead involved for files that do not change between snapshots. It allows developers to feel comfortable experimenting with new software without fear of an unusable install, since automated snapshots allow them to easily revert to the previous day's filesystem. And that's only the beginning. A more complete list and details of each new cited feature is available here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/13/FeatureList?anF13a We have nightly composes of alternate spins available here: http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/nightly-composes/?an... == Contributing == For more information including common and known bugs, tips on how to report bugs, and the official release schedule, please refer to the release notes: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_13_Alpha_release_not... Thank you, and we hope to see you in the Fedora project! -- Jesse Keating Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature! identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating -- announce mailing list announce@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/announce (Log in to post comments)
Fedora 13 Alpha released, RHEL6 early glimpse? Posted Mar 9, 2010 16:12 UTC (Tue) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link]
Will F13 be the basis for RHEL6? Or will there never be a RHEL6? Or at least not this years. It used to be 2 years .. now it is obviously over 3 years. I think RH should come clean what the new release strategy is. Otherwise a lot of people will use something with more dependable release schedules.
RHEL5 is getting old.
RHEL 6 Posted Mar 9, 2010 16:56 UTC (Tue) by dowdle (subscriber, #659) [Link]
There seems to be quite a bit of discussion about RHEL 6 lately (see latest issue of DistroWatch Weekly).
From the Red Hat employees I've talked to, it appears that RHEL 6 will be based on Fedora 12 and have a 2.6.32 kernel. There have already been a couple of Red Hat internal RHEL 6 alpha releases. Hopefully a beta release of RHEL 6 will be available in the not too distant future. Expect the GA version to hit sometime this summer.
So far as Red Hat not announcing things way in advance... that's just how they are.
Fedora 13 Alpha released Posted Mar 9, 2010 16:34 UTC (Tue) by alexbk (subscriber, #37839) [Link]
One thing that is mentioned nowhere - PowerPC support has been dropped. Which is a shame because I'll probably have to move to Ubuntu after 12 years with Red Hat.
Fedora 13 Alpha released Posted Mar 9, 2010 16:44 UTC (Tue) by dgilmore (subscriber, #40144) [Link]
PPC is still being supported as part of our secondary arch initiative.
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures we are still working out some road bumps but we will have a Fedora 13 ppc release.
Fedora 13 Alpha released Posted Mar 9, 2010 18:27 UTC (Tue) by alexbk (subscriber, #37839) [Link]
As far as I see the fedora ppc buildsystem is there and working, but there's no repository or installable images available anymore. Which makes it rather hard for me to help or test :)
Ubuntu PPC, while officially also being community-supported, has both.
Fedora 13 Alpha released Posted Mar 9, 2010 18:30 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
The secondary architecture systems require more community participation and
you can get in touch with the existing teams to find out how you can help out and I am sure that would be very welcome.
Fedora 13 Alpha released Posted Mar 18, 2010 22:18 UTC (Thu) by alexbk (subscriber, #37839) [Link]
I did, but there was a complete lack of response:
http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/fedora-ppc/2010-Marc...
Fedora 13 Alpha released Posted Mar 28, 2010 21:52 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
You have your response. Patience is a virtue esp if you volunteering to
contribute towards PPC support :-)
Fedora 13 Alpha released Posted Mar 9, 2010 16:45 UTC (Tue) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link] One thing that is mentioned nowhere - PowerPC support has been dropped. Which is a shame because I'll probably have to move to Ubuntu after 12 years with Red Hat. Having just inherited couple of old G4 iMacs, I had the same concern. However, PowerPC Fedora isn't dead -- it's just no longer a primary architecture. This means that as long as there are enough people interested in keeping it going, it will be. (And if there are not enough people interested in doing that, well....)
PowerPC distros Posted Mar 9, 2010 16:54 UTC (Tue) by dowdle (subscriber, #659) [Link]
To the best of my knowledge, Ubuntu dropped PowerPC a while back... or at least I don't see it on their website for download.
PowerPC distros Posted Mar 9, 2010 18:32 UTC (Tue) by alexbk (subscriber, #37839) [Link]
It's a bit hidden, but they do have it all the way to the latest verison
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PowerPCFAQ I tried the live-cd of 9.10 (something Fedora never provided actually) and it booted all the way to the desktop just fine. Not bad for an unsupported architecture.
Fedora 13 Alpha released Posted Mar 9, 2010 17:05 UTC (Tue) by jordi (subscriber, #14325) [Link]
As far as I can tell, Ubuntu themselves dropped PPC more than 3 years ago (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PowerPC). If you want an officially supported distro, Debian is probably your current strong bet.
Fedora 13 Alpha released Posted Mar 11, 2010 23:41 UTC (Thu) by jmorris42 (subscriber, #2203) [Link]
> PowerPC support has been dropped.
Kinda hard to get very worked up over a dead platform being dropped. The Playstation 3 was the last hardware a mortal could buy and the current revision of it dropped Linux support.
Apple hasn't made any PPC hardware for years so that leaves a few embedded users who don't need a full distro like Fedora and a few blades that still use Power/Cell.
PowerPC is fast heading to the graveyard of good CPU arches that went up against the Wintel juggernaught and failed. Alpha, MC680X0 and SPARC await the arrival of PowerPC into silicon heaven.
Fedora 13 Alpha released Posted Mar 12, 2010 10:59 UTC (Fri) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]
Not really true for game consoles though: the top selling consoles (Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and Wii) are all based on PowerPC architecture, and in fact Microsoft moved from x86 in the original Xbox to PowerPC in its successor. It's also used in IBM's mainframe architectures (zSeries, iSeries or whatever) as well as AIX boxes (pSeries).
Fedora 13 Alpha released Posted Mar 24, 2010 12:27 UTC (Wed) by robbe (subscriber, #16131) [Link]
There are also other appliances based on PowerPC. Examples that I've seen
myself are a video conferencing server and a wireless access point manager.
Sparc is also alive and kicking, albeit in an even smaller niche.
Fedora 13 Alpha released Posted Mar 9, 2010 22:33 UTC (Tue) by xav (subscriber, #18536) [Link]
that Zarafa groupware looks nice. Did Redhat sign some kind of deal with them ?
Fedora 13 Alpha released Posted Mar 9, 2010 22:56 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Zarafa
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Zarafa
At this point, the large majority of packages in Fedora is maintained by
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