Fedora 21 Beta Release Announcement
The Fedora 21 beta release is here, and - as usual - is packed with amazing improvements to Fedora, as well as fantastic free and open source software, gently harvested for your enjoyment. No bits were harmed in the making of this beta.
What is the Beta Release?
The beta release is the last important milestone before the release of Fedora 21. A Beta release is code-complete and bears a very strong resemblance to the third and final release. Only critical bug fixes will be pushed as updates up to the general release of Fedora 21. The final release of Fedora 21 is expected in early December. Meanwhile, download the beta of Fedora 21 and help us make it even better:
http://fedoraproject.org/get-prerelease
We need your help to make Fedora 21 the best release yet, so please take some time to download and try out the beta 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 21 a rock-solid distribution. We have a culture of coordinating new features and pushing fixes upstream as much as feasible and your feedback will help improve not only Fedora but Linux and free software on the whole. (See the end of this announcement for more information on how to help.)
Since it's a beta release, some problems may still be lurking. A list of problems that we already know about can be found at the Common F21 bugs page, found at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F21_bugs.
Fedora.Next and Fedora 21 Products
As part of the Fedora.next initiative, Fedora 21 will boast three products: Cloud, Server, and Workstation. We encourage you to visit the wiki pages providing the details of these individual products for more information.
Spins
In addition to the new Fedora products, Fedora users also have the choice of Fedora Spins that highlight user favorites like KDE Plasma Workspaces, Xfce, LXDE, and Sugar on a Stick (SoaS). If you're interested in trying out one of the spins, head over to the prelease page for Fedora Spins and grab the spins you're interested in!
Fedora 21 Base
Each of the products will build on the "base" set of packages for Fedora. For instance, each product will use the same packages for the kernel, RPM, Yum, systemd, Anaconda, and so forth.
The Base Working Group develops the standard platform for all Fedora products, which includes the installer, compose tools, and basic platform for the other products. The Base set of packages is not a full product intended for use on its own, but to be kept as a small, stable platform for other products to build on.
Highlights in the Beta Release
A Note on Shellshocked
You've probably read all about the "Shellshocked" vulnerability in GNU Bash, which affected Fedora 19, 20, and 21 Alpha. Rest assured that Fedora 21 Beta has been patched to close this vulnerability.
Fedora 21 Cloud
The Fedora Cloud Working Group and Special Interest Group (SIG) has been busy leading up to Fedora 21. Cloud is now a top-level product for Fedora 21, and will include images for use in private cloud environments like OpenStack, as well as AMIs for use on Amazon, and a new image streamlined for running Docker containers.
Modular Kernel Packaging for Cloud
Space is precious, and there's little reason to include drivers for hardware that doesn't exist in the cloud. As part of the work for Fedora 21, the cloud SIG and kernel team split the kernel into two packages. One package contains the minimum modules for running in a virtualized environment, the other contains the larger set of modules for a more general installation. As a result, the F21 beta cloud image is 10% smaller than F20, making for faster deployment.
Fedora Atomic Host
In early April, Red Hat announced Project Atomic, an effort to provide the tools and patterns for a streamlined operating system to run Docker containers. The Fedora 21 release will be the first to offer an "Atomic" host for Fedora, which includes a minimal set of packages and an image composed with rpm-ostree.
While using the same RPMs as other Fedora offerings, the Atomic host will allow users to roll back updates (if necessary) as one atomic unit -- making update management much easier.
For users and organizations looking to run Docker containers, the Atomic host will be ideal.
Fedora 21 Server
The Fedora Server product is a common base platform that is meant to run featured application stacks, which are produced, tested, and distributed by the Server Working Group. Want to use Fedora as a Web server, file server, database server, or platform for an Infrastructure-as-a-Service? Fedora 21 Server is for you.
Fedora Server Management Features
The Fedora Server product introduces new Server management features aimed at making it easier to install discrete infrastructure services. The Fedora Server will introduce three new technologies in Fedora to handle this task, rolekit, Cockpit and OpenLMI.
Rolekit is a Role deployment and management toolkit that provides a consistent interface to administrators to install and configure all the packages needed to implement a specific server role. Rolekit is at an early stage of development in Fedora 21 Beta.
Cockpit is a user interface for configuring and monitoring your server or servers. It is accessible remotely via a web browser.
OpenLMI is a remote management system built atop DMTF-CIM. It can be used for scripting management functions across many machines as well as querying for capabilities and monitoring for system events.
Domain Controller Server Role
As part of the server role offerings available for Fedora 21, the server product ships with a role deployment mechanism. One of the roles offered in 21 is the Domain Controller Service.
The Domain Controller Service packages up the freeIPA integrated Identity and Authentication solution for Linux/UNIX networked environments. A FreeIPA server provides centralized authentication, authorization and account information by storing data about user, groups, hosts and other objects necessary to manage the security aspects of a network of computers. As with Rolekit itself, this role is at an early stage of development in Fedora 21 Beta.
Fedora 21 Workstation
The Fedora Workstation is a new take on desktop development from the Fedora Community. Our goal is to pick the best components, and integrate and polish them. This work results in a more polished and targeted product than you've previously seen from the Fedora desktop. We want our desktop operating system to solve your problems, not be your problem.
Easy access to all your software
The cornerstone of the Fedora Workstation is the Software installer. It provides a modern and fast interface for finding all kinds of applications for your Fedora Workstation. The improvements to the Software installer in Fedora 21 provide a responsive and fast user experience. In addition, Fedora packagers have worked ardently with the relevant upstreams to greatly improve the number of applications featured in the Software installer.
Improvements to the Terminal application
We want to make sure developers have a great experience, and a strong Terminal application is a core part of that. So we've worked to integrate a set of additional features in the Terminal, such as:
- Support for transparent backgrounds
- Automatic title updates to help you identify different terminals
- A simple toggle for system keybindings in both the Terminal and GNOME desktop overview that helps you search for Terminals by name.
Experimental Wayland support
Wayland is a new and exciting technology that will power Linux desktops of the future. With Fedora Workstation 21 you can visit the future now, and see how well your applications work with Wayland. You can also experiment with making your applications take advantage of Wayland's new capabilities. Much of the core Wayland development comes from Fedora Workstation contributors, so this is your chance to try out Wayland straight from the source.
DevAssistant
We recognize you as a developer need an easy and straightforward way to set up many different development environments. In Fedora Workstation, we offer the DevAssistant developer helper, which takes care of this setup for a wide range of language runtimes and IDEs. And thanks to its integration with new Fedora Software Collections, now multiple versions of different languages are available to suit your needs.
Ease of installation
We want the installation of the Fedora Workstation to be as straightforward and simple as possible. In Fedora Workstation we've distilled this process down to selecting the layout of your physical media, and then pressing "Install." Or you can even let the installer choose the disk layout for you. We also realize the future of installations is not optical disks. That's why we ship with an easy to use tool for creating a bootable USB stick.
Toolkit integration
We recognize you have a job to do, and you want to use the tools that let you get it done. That's why we've been hard at work to make all your applications in Fedora Workstation look and feel the same. From the new theming for Qt to the ability to run HTML5 web services in a chromeless window, we aim to make your apps feel like a natural extension to your desktop.
Support for extremely high resolution displays (HiDPI)
Technology never stands still, and as a software developer you are used to using the best technology available. So we've spent a lot of time and effort on supporting the new generation of HiDPI displays. That's probably why Fedora has been called "the best of HiDPI."
Exciting roadmap
This Fedora Workstation release is not the end. It's the beginning of a new era for Fedora on the desktop. We have a roadmap lined up to bring a range of exciting new technologies to the Linux desktop:
- Containers
- Smarter virtual machines
- Better development tools
- More web integration
- ...and much more
So if you want to be part of the future of the Linux desktop, get on board now!
Release Schedule
The full release schedule is available on the Fedora wiki. The current schedule currently calls for the final release to come out on December 9th.
Dates are subject to change, pending any major bugs or issues found during the development process.
Issues and Details
This is a Beta release. As such, we expect that you may encounter bugs or missing features. To report issues encountered during testing, contact the Fedora QA team via the test mailing list or in #fedora-qa on freenode.
As testing progresses, common issues are tracked on the Common F21 Bugs page.
For tips on reporting a bug effectively, read "How to file a bug report"
Thanks much to all the contributors who've helped bring Fedora 21 this far! We're very excited about this release, and we hope that you'll enjoy it too.