F25 general release announcement

The Fedora Project is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Fedora 25, the next big step on the Fedora journey into modular and cloud development!

The Fedora Project is a global community that works together to lead the advancement of free and open source software. As part of the community’s mission the project delivers three editions, each one a free, Linux-based operating system tailored to meet specific use cases: Fedora 25 Atomic Host, Fedora 25 Server, and Fedora 25 Workstation.

Each edition is built from a common set of base packages, which form the core foundation of the Fedora operating system. As with all new versions of Fedora, Fedora 25 provides many minor bug fixes and tweaks to these underlying components, as well as new and enhanced packages, including:

• Docker 1.12 for building and running containerized applications
• Node.js 6.5, the latest version of the popular server-side JavaScript engine
• Support for Rust, a faster and more stable system programming language
• Multiple Python versions - 2.6, 2.7, 3.3, 3.4 and 3.5 - to help run test suites across several Python configurations, as well as PyPy, PyPy3, and Jython

Official release here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/F25_general_release_announcement

Fedora Workstation

Providing many of the latest developer and desktop tools, Fedora 25 Workstation delivers a host of new features, including the long-awaited official debut of the Wayland display server. Replacing the legacy X11 system, Wayland has been under development for several years and aims to provide a smoother, more user-friendly experience when navigating Fedora Workstation as well as enhanced security with client windows. To further enhance ease-of-use, Fedora 25 Workstation also features GNOME 3.22, which offers multiple file renaming, a redesigned keyboard settings tool and additional user interface improvements.

The new Fedora Media Writer now makes it easier than ever to download and install the Fedora Workstation, or other Fedora editions, spins, or labs. This tool helps users find and download the current Fedora release and write it to removable media, like a USB stick. Potential Fedora users can then “test drive” the operating system from that media environment. If they like what they experience, Fedora can then be installed to their system with the same process. While the Live USB has been around for a while, the Fedora Media Writer offers a more polished and user-friendly experience.

For developers, Fedora 25 Workstation introduces improved Flatpak support. This tweak makes it easier to install, update and remove Flatpak software and enables this application packaging standard to be more user friendly at the workstation level.

Finally, GNOME Shell extensions are no longer checked for compatibility with the current version of the Shell. This was originally required because the GNOME interfaces were changing rapidly during the early days of GNOME 3. Now these interfaces have stabilized, and extensions can generally be expected to work with new releases.

Fedora Server

Beyond the flexible multi-role functions provided by rolekit, Fedora 25 Server now delivers a new SELinux Troubleshooter module for Cockpit. Similar to what is available on Fedora Workstation, the module helps provide suggestions for a user when an SELinux denial is encountered, which otherwise requires log checking and manual workarounds.

Fedora 25 Server also will now display SSH keys in the system dashboard to make it easier for administrators to see what keys are connecting to a given machine. Additionally, support is now included for multi-step (including two-factor) authentication services.

Support will be included for network teaming, Docker volume and storage management, virtual machine monitoring, as well as the creation of systemd timer units.

FreeIPA identity management system has also been upgraded to 4.4 series:

• Topology management: FreeIPA web UI can now be used to visually manage topology graph for large deployments
• DNS sites: DNS management in FreeIPA now supports location-specific placement of services
• Subordinate Certificate Authorities: FreeIPA Certificate Authority now is able to create subordinate CAs to issue certificates with a specific scope
• Kerberos Authentication Indicators: Kerberos KDC now takes Authentication Indicators into account when issuing service tickets. This allows, for example, to require two-factor authenticated Kerberos credentials prior to obtaining tickets to a VPN service (supported by OpenConnect Server).
• Client certificate authentication in Web UI: FreeIPA Web UI and API end-points now can be configured to log-in with client certificates and smart cards.
• Active Directory integration improvements: a number of features were added for enterprise environments
  • FreeIPA now supports alternative user principal names and suffixes from Active Directory and allows FreeIPA users to have Kerberos aliases
  • Active Directory users can now manage own details through the command line interface (CLI), including public SSH keys and certificates
  • In case of trusting multiple Active Directory forests, FreeIPA is now capable to automatically solve DNS namespace routing conflicts
• FreeIPA framework gained support for external plugins
• Performance of FreeIPA has been optimized for large environments

Fedora Atomic

The Fedora Project has changed Fedora Atomic Host to be on Fedora 25 packages with this general release. Fedora Atomic includes a base image suitable for booting virtual machines in local or cloud environments. Fedora Atomic Host enables creating hosts that are immediately ready for container deployment, and can be upgraded and rolled back in an atomic manner. This aspect of Fedora represents some of the most exciting changes, as we build more cloud- and container-ready tools into Fedora to create a fantastic developer platform.

Fedora Atomic has a two-week refresh release cycle with major releases every six months. It has an easy upgrade path to accommodate rapid development for supporting the latest applications.

Fedora Atomic will allow the typical Fedora user to easily provision cloud services. User contributions and experience reports are particularly welcome in preparing for future versions.

Fedora Atomic will replace Fedora Cloud as one of our three Fedora Editions. The Fedora Cloud Base image will continue to be available for users wanting to build on a more traditional yum/rpm foundation in a cloud environment.

Spins and More

These are not the only iterations of Fedora that are seeing changes in the release today. Our KDE spin features new and improved packages for music, video, and personal information management. Xfce includes improvements to the terminal, notifications, and power management. Mate-Compiz features an update to Mate 1.16 and a complete switch to the GTK+3 toolkit.

You can download the new Fedora 25 starting today! Download Fedora 25 from our Get Fedora site:

• Get Fedora 25 Workstation
• Get Fedora 25 Server
• Get Fedora 25 Atomic

Or, check out one of our popular variants:

• Get Fedora 25 Spins
• Get Fedora 25 Labs
• Get Fedora 25 ARM

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