Fedora 11 Alpha release notes

General information

No GPG signatures

The Fedora 11 Alpha release is not GPG-signed. The release engineering team is working on upgrades to the build system to add support for SHA-256 signatures. Once those upgrades are done, the following test releases will be GPG-signed.

Feature and package notes

The following sections document new features and changes in the Fedora 11 Alpha distribution.

Windows cross compiler (mingw32-*)

The alpha release contains a preview of the Windows cross-compiler and some supporting libraries. You can install the cross-compiler and environment by yum-installing mingw32-gcc and/or mingw32-gcc-c++. This will give you the mingw32-configure command which you can use to replace ordinary ./configure, so that:

mingw32-configure
make

will build a Windows executable (*.EXE) or Windows DLL (*.DLL) of your program/library.

If your program requires any libraries, you can install the mingw32-library, and mingw32-configure will find it.

The following libraries are available in the alpha release:

• bzip2, zlib for data compression
• dlfcn (dlopen workalike for Windows)
• freetype
• gdbm
• gettext, iconv, pdcurses, readline, termcap for text/terminal/i18n
• libpng
• pthreads (based on Sourceware pthreads-win32)
• SDL for graphics
• sqlite

Many more libraries will be available by the time of the full Fedora 11 release.

ext4 file system

The ext4 file system has been a experimentally supported option from Fedora 9 release and is now the default filesystem for the Fedora 11 Alpha release. The list of new features for ext4 is available at:

http://kernelnewbies.org/Ext4

A file system shrink capability is not supported yet, but planned for Fedora 11 release. Please backup your data for safety if you test this feature in Fedora 11 Alpha.

Backward compatibility issues
Backward compatibility for ext4 to ext2/3 is limited. If you convert a file system formatted with ext2/3 to the new ext4 system, be aware that converting back to ext2/3 can be difficult in some situations.

btrfs file system

The btrfs next-generation file system is an experimentally supported option in this release. To enable it within the installer, pass icantbelieveitsnotbtr at the installation boot prompt.

A screenshot and reference is available at:

http://www.heise-online.co.uk/news/Ext4-to-be-standard-for-Fedora-11-Btrfs-also-included--/112467

More information is available at the Linux kernel project here:

http://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page

More testing and feedback for btrfs is requested. Please backup your data for safety if you test this feature in Fedora 11 Alpha.

New volume control

add more info including the new volume control and provide a screenshot

GNOME 2.26

The GNOME 2.26 development snapshot is part of this release, and is the default environment used in the Fedora Desktop Live image. The Desktop Live image is a downloadable CD you can use to test the new GNOME environment with or without installing it. The image can be written to CD, or to a USB flash disk using these instructions.

ADD MORE INFO.

KDE 4.2 RC2

The KDE 4.2 RC2 snapshot is part of this release and is the default environment in the Fedora KDE Desktop Live image. The KDE Desktop Live image is a downloadable CD you can use to test the new KDE environment with or without installing it. The image can be written to a CD, or to a USB flash disk using these instructions.

Xfce 4.6 Beta

A major new release of Xfce, Xfce 4.6 Beta, is available in the repository and is the default environment in the Fedora Xfce Live Spin. The Xfce Live Spin is a downloadable CD you can use to test the new Xfce environment with or without isntalling it. The image can be written to a CD, or to a USB flash disk using these instructions.

Python 2.6

Python 2.6 has been integrated into the release and all the software in the distribution has been made compatible with it. This effort leads the way to Python 3.0, a major release that is not backward compatible with the Python 2.x series.

Git 1.6.1

Git has been updated to 1.6.1. Among the changes is that the Fedora packages follow upstream defaults and install the majority of git-* commands are installed out side of the default PATH. If you have scripts that call git-* binaries, you are encouraged to change them to use the "git foo" style. If this is not feasible, you can adjust your PATH. Git provides a convenient method to do this:

PATH=$(git --exec-path):$PATH

It is worth noting that git hooks are run with $(git --exec-path) in their PATH.

NetBeans 6.5

The NetBeans has been updated to version 6.5. NetBeans 6.5 is a significant update of the NetBeans 6.1 and includes the following changes:

• PHP support with code completion, Xdebug and web service features.
• JavaFX 1.0 supports animation, graphics and media codecs for rich content application development.
• New Support for Groovy and Grails.
• Improved JavaScript, AJAX and Ruby support.
• Automatic Compile and Deploy on Save for Java and Java EE applications.
• Improved database support: SQL history, SQL completion, and results viewing and editing improvements.
• Improved Java ME support for Data Binding, SVG and Custom Component creation.
• GUI Builder: Support for Nimbus and simple class names.
• JUnit: single test method support.
• Debugger: Redesign of Step into feature.

For information about the main development features in NetBeans IDE, see:

• NetBeans IDE 6.5 Release Information
• New and Note Worthy NB65
• NetBeans IDE 6.5 Release Notes