The Fedora Project is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Fedora 27 Beta, the next big step on our journey to the exciting Fedora 27 release in October.
Official release here: Release Announcement on the Fedora Magazine
Since we skipped the Alpha release for this cycle we just push out the Beta. We had some delays to grant the best stability and operability for our users.
For this cycle, the server edition won't be shipped at the same time due to big changes happening inside the edition itself. This is due to the major change of building the server edition with modularity. For more informations, please read the Fedora Magazine article
Download the Workstation prerelease from our Get Fedora site:
Or, check out one of our popular variants, including KDE Plasma, Xfce, and other desktop environments, as well as images for ARM devices like the Raspberry Pi 2 and 3:
Looking for Fedora Cloud Base? This is replaced by Atomic as a Fedora Edition for the container use case, but we still produce it for those of you who want to build up your own cloud-computing environment in a more traditional way — see Alternative Downloads below.
Fedora’s journey is not simply about updating one operating system with the latest and greatest packages. It’s also about innovation for the many different platforms represented in the Fedora Project: Workstation, Server, Atomic, and the various Spins. Coordinating the efforts across the many working groups is no small task, and serves as a testament to the talent and professionalism found within the Fedora community.
As we move into this Beta phase of the Fedora 27 release cycle, what can users expect?
Fedora-Wide Changes
Fedora, always in the path of innovation, will ship with the latest version of the GNU Compiler Collection, also known as GCC, bringing the latest language features and optimizations to users and to the software we build.
Also, we’ve made and included many improvements in security, improving user experience and reducing the risks of the digital life.
Fedora Editions
Fedora Workstation
Both the Display and Network areas have been updated to make it simpler to configure these settings. This update come along with the overall Settings panel appearance improvement. The layout improvement has involved also the system search that now shows more results at once (including the system actions) and also the antiquated system tray has been removed to reduce visual clutter and confusion (the Topicons extension is available for use with any applications that have not yet updated to make use of modern GNOME 3 standards.
- Applications
- LibreOffice 5.4 - New functions and improvements related mainly to Writer and Calc and also in EMF+ vector images import. Now we can use OpenPGP keys to sign ODF documents.
- Fedora Media Writer - the new version allows you to create bootable SD cards with Fedora for ARM devices such as Raspberry Pi. Support for Windows 7 and screenshot handling have been improved. The utility also notifies you when a new release of Fedora is available. -- TODO: NEEDS NEWER INFO HERE
The Workstation edition of Fedora 27 Beta features GNOME 3.26, which includes important changes like an improved and better organized Settings panel, color emoji support, better system search functions, folder sharing in Boxes, and numerous improvements in the Builder IDE tool. Many thanks to the GNOME community for their work on these features. For more information refer to the upstream release notes at <https://help.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/3.26/>.
Fedora Atomic Host
Fedora Atomic 27 now default to a more simple container storage setup, furthermore offer containerized Kubernetes, flannel and etcd. This allows flexibility for users to choose different versions of Kubernetes, or to not use Kubernetes at all. This release is shipped with the latest rpm-ostree, now with support for base package overrides. Cockpit is also updated to the last wersion and includes support for Cockpit Dashboard installation on Atomic Host via rpm package layering
Spins and Labs
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Alternative Architectures and Other Downloads
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What is the Beta Release?
A Beta release is code-complete and bears a very strong resemblance to the third and final release. The final release of Fedora 27 is expected in October. If you take the time to download and try out the Beta, you can check and make sure the things that are important to you are working. Every bug you find and report doesn’t just help you, it improves the experience of millions of Fedora users worldwide! Together, we can make Fedora rock-solid. We have a culture of coordinating new features and pushing fixes upstream as much as we can, and your feedback improves not only Fedora, but Linux and Free software as a whole.
Issues and Details
Since this is a Beta release, we expect that you may encounter bugs or missing features. To report issues encountered during testing, contact the Fedora QA team via the mailing list or in #fedora-qa on Freenode. As testing progresses, common issues are tracked on the Common F27 Bugs page.
For tips on reporting a bug effectively, read how to file a bug report.
More information
For more detailed information about what's new on Fedora 26 Beta Release, you can consult our Talking Points and the F27 Change Set. They contain more technical information about the new packages and improvements shipped with this release.