General Information
To download Fedora 18 Alpha, visit http://fedoraproject.org/get-prerelease. Download options are available for BitTorrent and direct download. This release is available for all 32-bit and 64-bit Intel-compatible platforms. Note that Fedora uses SHA256 instead of MD5 or SHA-1 to verify images in a more secure way. For more information, refer to #How_to_Try_Alpha on this page.
Filing Bug Reports
Please file bug reports on this Alpha release if you find any problems.
Known Issues
Refer to the Common F18 bugs page for a listing of issues, and any known resolutions, commonly found with this release. This page is maintained throughout the Fedora 18 developmental cycle.
Release Overview
As always, Fedora continues to develop and integrate the latest free and open source software. The following sections provide a brief overview of major changes from the last release of Fedora. For more details about other features that are set for inclusion in Fedora 18, refer to their individual wiki pages that detail feature goals and progress. Features for this release are tracked on the feature list page.
The Purpose of the Alpha Release
This release is an installable, testable version of the code and features being developed for Fedora 18 (Spherical Cow). The software has bugs, problems, and incomplete features. It is not likely to milk your data or parts of your computer, but you should be aware that it could.
You have an important part to play in this release. Either install or run a Fedora Live instance of the Fedora 18 Alpha release, then try using a few applications or activities that are important to you. If it doesn't work, file a bug. This release gives the wider community a set of code to test against as a very important step in the process of making a solid Fedora 18 release. You can make the Fedora 18 release better by testing this release and reporting your findings.
What's New in Fedora 18 Alpha
We can't go round Spherical Cow new features as it is too big, but here is an overview to what you're gonna find.
To began small, terminals can now used 256 colors instead of theirs old 8 colors. It is a well make-up improvement for yours eyes. Desktops have their share of new, new upstream version of Gnome version : 3.6 and for those you prefer old venerable Gnome at version 2 then your call have been heard with integration of MATE desktop. Students and schools have now their desktop too with integration of Sugar learning environment.
For the cloud milk in your coffee, Fedora packaged Owncloud which bring you a good alternative to proprietary solution such as Dropbox and get back home your personal data.
Firewalld is now the default firewall software over iptables, no more need to restart your firewall to make any rules changes and now Fedora will discovering printers and other mDNS devices
Sysadmins will find some tasted features too with finally the final release of Samba 4 and possibility to join an Active Directory out of the box. Even more about your servers with management agents that let's you access many vital and useful informations of your hardware health and advanced remote control. Fedora bring you an integrated and unified way to access to that data and manage yours servers with an unique native management software instead of the different proprietary software. And as cream hazelnut, a Storage System Management CLI tools which simplify the user interface by providing unified abstraction and interface for multiple storage technologies, like lvm, btrfs and md raid while implementing set of commands with the same syntax regardless of the technology used.
And Dev aren't forgotten with an updated D environment, lastest Fedora Haskell packages as well as latest stack of Perl and Python.
Additional Information
How to Try Alpha
This release is accompanied by installable live media of both the GNOME and KDE desktops. With live media users can perform testing and demonstration without installing any software to the hard disk. As this release is largely targeted at developers and contains many bleeding edge packages, this is the best method for less experienced users who want to get involved with testing. The Live media also have an option to install Fedora to an hard disk for the more intrepid users.
The best way to download this release is through BitTorrent -- visit the Fedora torrent server for a listing of available images. Release images can also be downloaded from any of our mirrors. Remember that live images can be used on USB media via the livecd-iso-to-disk utility available in the livecd-tools package on existing Fedora systems. Refer to the USB How-to for more instructions.
Verify Fedora
Fedora does not publish MD5 or SHA1 hashes to verify images since they are not secure enough. Instead we have been using SHA256 since Fedora 11. In Linux, you can use sha256sum command (part of coreutils and installed by default) to verify the Fedora image:
sha256sum -c *-CHECKSUM
Windows users can use the free to download utility HashCalc.
Mac OS X users can use the free to download utility hashtab.
Fedora GPG signatures can be verified following the instructions here.
Debugging Information And Performance
Fedora kernels have many extensive debugging options during the developmental cycle that have a negative impact on performance but provide developers with more information automatically, in the case of bug reports. If you are running performance analysis on Rawhide or test releases such as Alpha or Beta, make sure you take this into account.
Fedora 18 Release Schedule And Feature Details
Development continues on Rawhide during and after this release, leading to the beta, then the final release. The links below provide the release schedule for both the pre-releases and the final release, as well as the wiki's pages for tracking the various features planned for inclusion in Fedora 18.