F16 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.

The Fedora 16 "Verne" Alpha release is available! This release offers a preview of some of the best free and open source technology currently under development. Catch a glimpse of the future:

http://fedoraproject.org/get-prerelease

What is the Alpha release?

The Alpha release contains all the exciting features of Fedora 16 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 16 is due in October.

We need your help to make Fedora 16 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

This release of Fedora includes a variety of features both over and under the hood that show off the power and flexibility of the advancing state of free software. Examples include:

• System Boot Fedora 16 introduces GRUB2, the long-awaited next-generation boot-loader for Linux. GRUB2 automatically recognizes other operating systems, supports LVM2 and LUKS partitions, and is more customizable than the previous version.

• Services Management Fedora 15 introduced the Systemd services management program. Fedora 16 features better integration of Systemd via conversion to native systemd services from legacy init scripts in many software components --for desktop users, this means faster boot times; for system administrators it means more powerful management of services.

• Desktop The two major desktop environments have been updated to the latest releases: KDE Software Compilation 4.7 and GNOME 3.1 development release.

• Cloud Updates Fedora 16 includes a number of new and improved features to support cloud computing, including a "cloud ready" version of GlusterFS, including additional auth*/crypto/multi-tenancy; pacemaker-cloud, application service high availability in a cloud environment; Condor Cloud, an IaaS cloud implementation using Condor and the Deltacloud API, and Aeolus.

• Virtualization Once again Fedora raises the bar on virtualization support, including expanded virtual network support, an improved Spice for managing virtual machines, restored Xen support, a new virtual machine lock manager, improved ability to browse guest file systems, and a new sandbox tool to allow running individual applications within a virtualized sandbox.

• Developer Improvements Developers get many goodies with Verne, including updated Ada, Haskell and Perl environments, a new Python plugin for GCC, updating Eclipse to the Indigo version, and a number of new and improved APIs.

These and many other improvements provide a wide and solid base for future Fedora releases. This release increases the range of possibilities for developers and helps Fedora to maintain its position at the leading edge of free and open source technology.

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

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/16/FeatureList

We also have nightly composes of alternate spins available here:

http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/nightly-composes/

Issues and Details

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_16_Alpha_release_notes

A shorter list of common bugs can be found here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F16_bugs

Contributing

Bug reports are helpful, especially for Alpha. If you encounter any issues please report them and help make this release of Fedora the best ever.

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