The Fedora Project releases a new version of Fedora approximately every 6 months and provides updated packages (maintenance) to these releases for approximately 13 months. This allows users to "skip a release" while still being able to always have a system that is still receiving updates.
Development Schedule
We say developed and released approximately every 6 months because like many things, they don't always go exactly as planned.
The schedule for the release currently under development, Fedora 42, is on its release schedule page. Alpha, Beta, and General Availability (final) releases happen at 10:00am Eastern US Time, which is either 1500UTC or 1400UTC depending on whether or not daylight savings is in effect.
Schedule Methodology
Fedora release schedules are proposed by the Release Engineering team and ratified by Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo). FESCo is responsible for overseeing the technical direction of the Fedora distribution. A core schedule is created using the key tasks listed below. Detailed team schedules are built around these dates.
| Task/Milestone | Start Day | Length |
|---|---|---|
| Planning and Development | Day After GA of Previous Release | Depends on GA date and working backwards from all the tasks below |
| Feature Acceptance Deadline | Tuesday--Two weeks before Feature Freeze | n/a |
| Feature Freeze | Tuesday--1 week before Alpha Change Deadline | Until GA |
| Branch Freeze Event | Tuesday--One week before Alpha Change Deadline | Branch Freeze Policy in effect until GA. |
| Alpha Change Deadline | Tuesday--Two weeks before the Alpha Release | |
| String Freeze | Same time as Alpha Change Deadline | Software String Freeze Policy in effect until GA. |
| Alpha Compose | Thursday--Two days after the Alpha Change Deadline | 1 day |
| Alpha Go/No-Go Meeting | Wednesday @ 17:00 E{D,S}T--six days after Alpha Compose | n/a |
| Alpha Release | Tuesday--Two weeks after Branch Freeze and 12 days after Alpha Compose | Public testing of Alpha lasts 3 weeks |
| Beta Change Deadline | Tuesday--Two weeks before the Beta Release | |
| Feature Complete | Tuesday--Same as the Beta Change Deadeline | n/a |
| Beta Compose | Thursday--Two days after the Beta Change Deadline | 1 day |
| Beta Go/No-Go Meeting | Wednesday @ 17:00 E{D,S}T--six days after Beta Compose | n/a |
| Beta Release | Tuesday--Two weeks after the Beta Change Deadline and 12 days after Beta Compose | Public testing of Beta lasts 2 weeks + 6 days (ends on a Monday) |
| Final Change Deadline | Monday--End of Beta Release Testing | In effect until GA |
| Compose Final RC | Thursday--three days after Final Change Deadline | 1 day |
| Test Final RC | Thursday to Tuesday | 6 days |
| Final Go/No-Go Meeting | Tuesday @ 17:00 E{D,S}T after Test Final RC | n/a |
| GA Release | Tuesday--Seven days after Test Final RC ends | n/a |
| Maintenance | Tuesday--GA release day | ~13 Months |
| End of Life | One month after GA of current release + 2 releases | n/a |
Steps to Construct a New Schedule
This is admittedly an unusual methodology, but it is fairly easy to generate using the the TaskJuggler schedules John Poelstra creates.
- Pick GA date (the Tuesday before May 1st or October 31st)
- Work backwards using consistent spacing for freezes, composes, and releases for Alpha, Beta, and Final, as described above
- Set the feature submission and completion dates working backwards from the Branch Freeze date
- The time between the feature submission deadline and the GA of the previous release is the time dedicated to development
- Development time varies from from release to release based on how when the previous release finished
- The freeze and testing time (from Branch Freeze until GA) is held constant from release to release
Development Schedule Rationale
Fedora generally develops new releases over a six month period to provide a regular and predictable release schedule. The bi-annual targeted release dates are May Day (May 1st) and Halloween (October 31) making them easy to remember and avoiding significant holiday breaks. Changes to this standard must be approved by the community-elected Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo).
A six month release schedule also follows the precedence of Red Hat Linux (precursor to Fedora). Former Red Hat software engineer Havoc Pennington offers a historical perspective here. GNOME started following a time based release based on the ideas and success of Red Hat Linux and other distributions following Fedora having adopted a similar release cycle. Several other major components, including the Linux kernel, Openoffice.org, Xorg, have started following a time based release schedule. While the exact release schedules vary between these components and other upstream projects, the interactions between these components and Fedora makes a six month time based release schedule a good balance.
Schedule Contingency Planning
If the Alpha, Beta, or Final Go/No Go meetings result in a "No Go" determination, that milestone and subsequent milestones will be pushed back by one week.
One week is the added to the schedule to maintain the practice of releasing on Tuesdays. Tuesdays are the designated release day because they are good days for news coverage and the established day we synchronize our content with the mirrors that carry our releases. Go/No Go meetings receive input from representatives of FESCo, Release Engineering, and Quality Assurance.
Maintenance Schedule
We say maintained for approximately 13 months because the supported period for releases is dependent on the date the release under development goes final. As a result, Release X is supported until one month after the release of Release X+2.
This translates into:
- Fedora 40 will be maintained until 1 month after the release of Fedora 42.
- Fedora 41 will be maintained until 1 month after the release of Fedora 43.
Maintenance Schedule Rationale
Fedora is focused on free and open source software innovations and moves quickly. If you want a distribution that moves slower but has a longer lifecycle, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which is derivative of Fedora or free rebuilds of that such as CentOS might be more suitable for you. Refer to the RHEL page for more details.
Historically, the Fedora Project has found supporting two releases plus Rawhide and the pre-release Branched code to be a manageable work load.
End of Life (EOL)
When the a release reaches the point where it no longer supported, updates are no longer created for it and it is considered End of Life (EOL). Branches for new packages in the SCM are not allowed for distribution X after the Fedora X+2 release and new builds are no longer allowed.
The tasks performed at EOL are documented in the End of life SOP.
Additional Release Schedule Information
- Overview of Releases, including currently supported releases
- Unsupported Releases
- Historical Release Information