F22 Alpha release announcement

Fedora 22 Alpha Release Announcement

The Fedora 22 Alpha release has arrived, with a preview of the latest free and open source technology under development. Take a peek inside!

• Get Fedora 22 Alpha Workstation
• Get Fedora 22 Alpha Server
• Get Fedora 22 Alpha Cloud
• Get Fedora 22 Alpha Spins

What is the Alpha release?

The Alpha release contains all the exciting features of Fedora 22's editions 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 22 is expected in May.

We need your help to make Fedora 22 the best release yet, so please take some 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 rock-solid. We have a culture of coordinating new features and pushing fixes upstream as much as feasible, and your feedback will help improve not only Fedora but Linux and free software on the whole.

Fedora 22 Cloud

The Fedora 22 Cloud Edition builds on the work completed during the Fedora 21 cycle, and brings in a number of improvements that make Fedora 22 a superb choice for running Linux in the cloud.

Ready for the Fedora 22 release, we have:

• The latest versions of rpm-ostree and rpm-ostree-toolbox. You can even use rpm-ostree-toolbox to generate your own Atomic hosts from a custom set of packages.

• A Vagrant image for Fedora 22 Atomic Host and Cloud Images. We're supplying Vagrant boxes that work with KVM or VirtualBox, so users on Fedora will be able to easily consume the Vagrant images with KVM, and users on Mac OS X or Windows can use the VirtualBox image.

• Tunir: A new, lightweight Continuous Integration (CI) tool for rapid testing of cloud images. While being driven by the need for simple CI for the Cloud Working Group, it's generic enough to be used by anyone to configure and run jobs/tests on their local system.

Fedora 22 Server

Fedora 22 Server Edition brings several changes that will improve Fedora for use as a server in your environment.

• Database Server Role: Fedora 21 introduced Rolekit, a daemon for Linux systems that provides a stable D-Bus interface to manage deployment of server roles. The Fedora 22 release adds onto that work with a database server role based on PostgreSQL.

• Cockpit Updates: The Cockpit Web-based management application has been updated to the latest upstream release which adds many new features as well as a modular design for adding new functionality.

Fedora 22 Workstation

As always, Fedora carries a number of improvements to make life better for its desktop users! Here's some of the goodness you'll get in Fedora 22 Workstation edition.

Enhancements:

• The GNOME Shell notification system has been redesigned and subsumed into the calendar widget.
• The Terminal now notifies you when a long running job completes.
• The login screen now uses Wayland by default. This is a step towards replacing X with Wayland, and users should not actually notice the difference.
• Installation of GStreamer codecs, fonts, and certain document types is now handled by Software, instead of gnome-packagekit.
• The Automatic Bug Reporting Tool (ABRT) now features better notifications, and uses the privacy control panel in GNOME to control information sent.

Appearance:

• The Nautilus file manager has been improved to use GActions, from the deprecated GtkAction APIs, for a better, more consistent experience.
• The GNOME Shell has a refreshed theme for better usability.
• The Qt/Adwaita theme is now code complete, and Qt notifications have been improved for smoother experience using Qt-based apps in Workstation.

Under the covers:

• The libinput library is now used for both X11 and Wayland for consistent input device handling.

Spins

• Plasma 5, the successor to KDE Plasma 4, is now the default workspace in the Fedora KDE spin.

• The Xfce spin has been updated to Xfce 4.12 just in time for the Alpha release. This release has an enormous number of improvements, including HiDPI support, improvements to window tiling, support for Gtk3 plugins, and many improvements for multi-monitor support.

Issues and Details

This is an Alpha release. As such, we expect that you may encounter bugs or missing features. To report issues encountered during testing, contact the Fedora QA team via the test mailing list or in #fedora-qa on freenode.

As testing progresses, common issues are tracked on the Common F22 Bugs page.

For tips on reporting a bug effectively, read "how to file a bug report."

Release Schedule

The full release schedule is available on the Fedora wiki. The current schedule calls for a beta release in the middle of April, and a final release in the second half of May.

These dates are subject to change, pending any major bugs or issues found during the development process.