F13 Alpha release announcement

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It is still under construction and content may change. Do not rely on the information on this page. more coming soon!

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

What's an 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 April.

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.

https://bugzilla.redhat.com

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 this makes adding printers easier for everyone.

• Automatic installation of language packs Yum langpack support makes software installation smarter and easier for everyone worldwide.

• Redesigned user management interface The user account tool has been completely redesigned, and now makes it easy to configure personal information, make a personal profile picture or icon, generate a strong passphrase, and set up login options.

• Color management Color Management allows you to better control your colors when doing print work.

• NetworkManager improvements include CLI NetworkManager is now a one stop shop for all of your networking needs, be it dial-up, broadband, wifi, or even bluetooh. And now it can all be done in the commandline if you are into that sort of thing.

• Experimental 3D extended to free Nouveau driver In this release we are one step closer to having 3D supported on completely free and open source software (FOSS) drivers. Last round we got a lot of ATi chips working so this time we focused on Nvida.

For developers there are all sorts of additional goodies:

• SystemTap static probesWe have expanded the visibility of monitoring on a higher level what is happening inside language runtimes like Java, Python and TCL.

• Easier Python debugging We've added new support that allows developers working with mixed libraries (Python and C/C++) to get more complete information when debugging.

• Parallel-installable Python 3 The parallel-installable Python 3 stack that will help programmers write and test code for use in both Python 2.6 and Python 3 environments.

• 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 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.

• Authconfig UI redesign Makes it much easier to configure your Fedora system to work in a number of different authentication environments.

• Pioneering NFS features With NFSv4 Default, the latest version of the NFS protocol is implemented for better performance and with the NFS Client IPv6 in conjunction with recent kernel modifications allows for IPv6 support.

• Zarafa 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.

• Experimenting with btrfs 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 is only the beginning.

A more complete list and details of each new cited feature is available here:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/13/FeatureList

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_notes

Thank you, and we hope to see you in the Fedora project!