Announcing the release of Fedora 21 Beta!

Tue Nov 4 15:01:02 UTC 2014

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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
[https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/21/Schedule] 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:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_file_a_bug_report

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.

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Staying_close_to_upstream_projects

(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:

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:

* Cloud: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Cloud
* Server: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Server
* Workstation: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/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: 

http://fedoraproject.org/get-spin-prerelease

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
==============================

In this section, we'll look at some of the things that are new or
interesting 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
- ------------------

Red Hat announced Project Atomic (http://projectatomic.io/),
in early April of this year as 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 (https://fedorahosted.org/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 (http://cockpit-project.org/) is a user interface for
configuring and monitoring your server or servers. It is
accessible remotely via a web browser.

OpenLMI (http://www.openlmi.org/) 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:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/DomainControllerServerRole

The Domain Controller Service packages FreeIPA's
(http://www.freeipa.org/) 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 product is a reliable, user-friendly, and
powerful operating system for laptops and PC hardware. Fedora 21
Workstation is aimed at providing a platform for development of
server side and client applications that is attractive to
developers of all stripes. Whether you're a student or hobbyist,
or a developer working in a corporate environment, Fedora
Workstation is for you.

Latest GNOME
- ------------

Fedora 21 Workstation includes the latest GNOME desktop. Fedora
21 is using GNOME 3.14, which was released in late September. 
GNOME 3.14 includes many new features such as integration of 
Picasaweb and DNLA media server support in GNOME Photos, a new 
game called Hitori similar to Sudoku, and much more.

Wayland Technology Preview
- --------------------------

A Wayland (http://wayland.freedesktop.org/) technology preview is
included in this release for GNOME. 

Please refer to "GNOME on Wayland in Fedora 21" on Fedora Magazine 
for the current status and known issues. The Fedora Project is 
planning to make Wayland the default in the next Fedora Workstation 
release and we invite you to provide us your feedback. 

http://fedoramagazine.org/gnome-on-wayland-in-fedora-21/

Select "Wayland on GNOME" in the GNOME login screen to try it out and 
provide your feedback via Bugzilla if you run into any problems.

DevAssistant
- ------------

Fedora 21 Workstation includes the new DevAssistant tool by
default. DevAssistant helps developers set up environments for
their projects, so they can concentrate on writing code. For more
information on DevAssistant, visit the website at:
http://devassistant.org

*** 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:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/21/Schedule

Dates are subject to change, pending any major bugs or issues
found during the development process.

Issues and Details
- ------------------

This is an 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
QA mailing list (test at lists.fedoraproject.org) or in
#fedora-qa on freenode.

As testing progresses, common issues are tracked on the
Common F21 Bugs page:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F21_bugs

For tips on reporting a bug effectively, read "How to file a bug 
report:"

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/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.
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