The Fedora Project is incredibly delighted to announce the release of Fedora 18
("Spherical Cow"). Heck, we'd even say that getting this release to you has
been a mooving experience.
Fedora is a leading-edge, free and open source operating system that continues
to deliver innovative features to many users, with a new release about every
six months...or so. :-D But no bull: Spherical Cow, is of course, Fedora's
best release yet. You'll go through the hoof when you hear about the Grade A
Prime F18 features. You can always cownt on us to bring you the best features
first.
Can't wait for a taste? You can get started downloading now:
http://fedoraproject.org/get-fedora
Detailed information about this release can be seen in the release notes:
http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/18/html/Release_Notes/
== What's New in Fedora 18? ==
The Fedora Project takes great pride in being able to show off features for all
types of use cases, including traditional desktop users, systems
administration, development, the cloud, and many more. But a few new features
are guaranteed to be seen by nearly anyone installing Fedora and are
improvements that deserve to be called out on their own.
The user interface for Fedora's installation software, Anaconda, has been
completely re-written from the ground up. Making its debut in Fedora 18, the
new UI introduces major improvements to the installation experience. It uses a
hub-and-spoke model that makes installation easier for new users, offering them
concise explanations about their choices. Advanced users and system
administrators are of course still able to take advantage of more complex
options. The general look and feel of the installation experience has been
vastly upgraded, providing modern, clean, and comprehensible visuals during the
process. While the new installer should work well for most users in most
configurations, there are inevitably a few teething problems in the first
release of such a major revision.
Known design limitations of the new installer in F18 are listed here:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda/NewInstaller
Known significant bugs can be seen here:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F18_bugs#Installation_issues
We welcome your constructive and specific feedback as we continue to work on
refining the installer for future releases.
The upgrade process for Fedora now uses a new tool called FedUp (Fedora
Upgrader). FedUp replaces pre-upgrade as well as the DVD methods for upgrading
that have been used in previous Fedora releases. FedUp integrates with systemd
to enable the upgrade functionality, doing the work in a pristine boot
environment.
Of course, it wouldn't be a release announcement without a spotted -- er,
dotted -- list of all the other fantastic features you'll see in Fedora 18:
=== For desktop users ===
Moooove over, stale desktops. We've got a small herd of choices udderly suited
to your preferences.
* GNOME 3.6: The newest version of the GNOME desktop provides an enhanced
Messaging Tray, support for Microsoft Exchange and Skydrive, and many more new
features.
* Cinnamon: Fedora users now have the option of using Cinnamon, an advanced
desktop environment based on GNOME 3. Cinnamon takes advantage of advanced
features provided by the GNOME backend while providing users with a more
traditional desktop experience.
* MATE Desktop: The MATE desktop provides users with a classic GNOME 2.x style
user interface. This desktop is perfect for users who have been running GNOME
Classic or other window managers like XFCE as an alternative to GNOME 3.
* KDE Plasma Workspaces 4.9: KDE Plasma Workspaces has been updated with many
new features and improved stability and performance, including updates to the
Dolphin File Manager, Konsole, and KWin Window manager.
* Xfce 4.10: The lightweight and easy-to-use Xfce desktop has been updated to
the 4.10 version with many bug fixes and enhancements, including a new MIME
type editor, a reworked xfce4-run dialog, improved mouse settings, tabs in the
Thunar file manager, and options to tile windows in xfwm4. Through all of these
and more, Xfce continues to improve without getting in your way.
Regardless of your desktop choice, Fedora 18 offers...
* Improved storage management: SSM (System Storage Manager) is an easy-to-use
command-line interface tool that presents a unified view of storage management
tools. Devices, storage pools, volumes, and snapshots can now be managed with
one tool, with the same syntax for managing all of your storage. (It's great
for systems administrators, too!)
=== For developers ===
For developers there are all sorts of moo-tivating goodies:
* Fresh versions of programming languages: Using Perl, Rails, or Python? All
three of these languages are updated in Fedora 18. We've got Rails 3.2, Python
3.3, and Perl 5.16 fresh off the farm.
* Clojure gets more love with the addition of tooling packages, including the
Leinengen build tool, as well as Clojure libraries and frameworks, including
Korma and Noir.
* DragonEgg connects GCC and LLVM: DragonEgg is a plugin for the GCC compilers
to allow use of the LLVM optimization and code-generation framework. DragonEgg
provides software developers with more optimization and code-generation options
for use with the GCC compilers. DragonEgg also allows GCC to be used for
cross-compilation to target architectures supported by LLVM without requiring
any special cross-compilation compiler packages. Fedora continues to develop
and use GCC as the standard default compiler.
=== For systems administrators ===
Keep track of your infrastructure herds with these new features:
* Offline system updates: Systems can now be updated offline, allowing for a
more stable update of critical system components. This functionality is only
integrated with GNOME Desktop Environment in this release but uses the
distribution neutral PackageKit and systemd API's and hence can be made
available for other desktop environments as well based on the interest from
upstream developers.
* Storage enhancements: StorageManagement is a collection of tools and
libraries for managing storage area networks (SAN) and network attached storage
(NAS).
* Samba 4: This popular suite of tools has long provided file- and
print-sharing services in heterogeneous operating system environments. The
long-awaited Samba 4 introduces the first free and open source implementation
of Active Directory protocols and includes a new scripting interface, allowing
Python programs to interface to Samba's internals.
* Riak: A fault-tolerant key-value store, Riak provides easy operations and
predictable scaling as a NoSQL database.
=== For clouds and virtualization ===
Do you spend your days <strike>grazing</strike> gazing into the clouds? Here's
just a taste of some of the cloud and virt features you'll see in Fedora 18:
* Eucalyptus makes its first appearance in Fedora, with their 3.2 release
included in F18. This platform for on-premise (private)
Infrastructure-as-a-Service clouds uses existing infrastructure to create
scalable and secure AWS-compatible cloud resources for compute, network, and
storage.
* OpenStack: With the Folsom release in Fedora 18, OpenStack continues to have
the newest releases in Fedora. This open source cloud computing platform
enables users to deploy their own cloud infrastructures for private or public
cloud deployments. Heat, an incubated OpenStack project, is also available in
F18, providing an API that enables the orchestration of cloud applications
using file or web based templates.
* oVirt Engine: The management application for the oVirt virtualization
platform, oVirt Engine, is updated to the newest version, 3.1. This release
includes extensive new features, including support for live snapshots, cloning
virtual machines from snapshots, quotas, and more.
* Suspend and resume support for virt guests: Virtual machines get love with
this feature, enabling the ability to suspend and resume guests, with the close
of a laptop lid or menu option or via the command line.
And that's only the beginning. For a more complete list with details of all the
new features in Fedora 18, steer over to:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/18/FeatureList
== Downloads, upgrades, documentation, and common bugs ==
The steaks are high--don't miss out on installing the best version of Fedora
yet! Get it now:
http://get.fedoraproject.org/
If you are upgrading from a previous release of Fedora, refer to:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Upgrading
Fedora has replaced pre-upgrade with FedUp (excuse the pun.. or don't), a more
robust solution, and pushed several bug fixes to older releases of Fedora to
enable an easy upgrade to Fedora 18.
Graze...er, gaze...upon the full release notes for Fedora 18, guides for
several languages, and learn about known bugs and how to report new ones, here:
http://docs.fedoraproject.org/
With all the changes to the installer, we particularly recommend reading the
Installation Guide:
http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/18/html/Installation_Guide/index.html
Everyone makes missteaks. Fedora 18 common bugs are documented at:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F18_bugs
This page includes information on several known bugs in the installer, so we
recommend reading it before installing Fedora 18.
== Fedora Spins ==
Fedora spins are alternate versions of Fedora tailored for various types of
users via hand-picked application set or customizations, from desktop options
to spins for those interested in gaming, robotics, or design software. More
information on our various spins is available at:
http://spins.fedoraproject.org
== Contributing ==
There are many ways to contribute beyond bug reporting. You can help translate
software and content, test and give feedback on software updates, write and
edit documentation, design and do artwork, help with all sorts of promotional
activities, and package free software for use by millions of Fedora users
worldwide. To get started, visit http://join.fedoraproject.org today!
== Fedora 19 ==
Even as we continue to provide updates with enhancements and bug fixes to
improve the Fedora number experience, our next release, Fedora 19, is already
being developed in parallel and has been open for active development for
several months already. We have an early plan for release at the end of May
2013, and the final schedule for F19 is going to be based on the results of the
planning process:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/19/Schedule
== Feature Deprecation ==
Fedora has always been full of great features, but sometimes we need to cull
the herd. Saying good-bye is always hard, but here are the ones we had to put
out to pasture this time around.
* /etc/sysconfig Deprecations: Several system configurations have moved out of
/etc/sysconfig. The goal of these changes is to reduce - as described in
http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/the-new-configuration-files.html - the
unnecessary differences between Linux distributions and share a standard
location for common settings.
For a full list of changes read the release notes.
http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/18/html/Release_Notes/index.html
== Contact information ==
If you are a journalist or reporter, you can find additional information here:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Press
Enjoy!
-Robyn Bergeron
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