5tFTW: Five Things in Fedora This Week: Fedora 21 Beta Edition (2014-11-05)

[Matthew Miller]

Reposted from <http://fedoramagazine.org/5tftw-2014-11-05/>.

Fedora is a big project, and it’s hard to keep up with everything that
goes on. This series highlights interesting happenings in five
different areas every week. It isn’t comprehensive news coverage — just
quick summaries with links to each. Here are the five things for
November 5th, 2014:


How to get the Fedora 21 beta
-----------------------------

The Fedora 21 Beta went live yesterday, and you can get it from the
prerelease download page at <http://fedoraproject.org/get-prerelease>.
This includes all the new Fedora.next variants, ARM images, and Spins,
like the KDE and Xfce desktops.

You can also grab Live images and the Fedora Server installer via
BitTorrent. Either way, while you’re waiting for it to download, read
the release announcement and peruse known issues.

  * http://fedoraproject.org/get-prerelease
  * http://torrent.fedoraproject.org/
  * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/F21_Beta_release_announcement
  * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F21_bugs


Upgrading to F21 with FedUp
---------------------------

FedUp — the _Fed_ora _Up_grader — is our recommended tool to go
(relatively seamlessly) from one release to the next. Due to a
late-discovered issue, this isn’t currently available for the beta. See
this bit on the Common Bugs page for details. We will be producing test
`upgrade.img` files as part of the lead-up to F21 final, and *would*
appreciate testing of those when they’re ready.

  * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F21_bugs#FedUp_upgrade_to_Fedora_21_Beta_fails_.28no_upgrade.img_images.29


Fedora Cloud
------------

The Fedora Cloud release for F21 comes in two sub-variants of its own.
The first is the Fedora Cloud Base Image, which you can download for
use in OpenStack or launch directly in Amazon EC2. This is our more
traditional choice — a minimal selection of RPMs plus cloud-init for
boot-time configuration.

We also have Fedora Atomic, an image built around the Project Atomic
design patterns. (Flashback to Colin Walters’ talk at Fedora Day at
DevConf.cz last February, which kind of kicked this all off.) Atomic
upstream is moving really fast, and for this reason, Fedora Atomic is
kind of a preview in Fedora 21, and actually some of the things we want
in for the final release, like the Kubernetes orchestration engine,
weren’t quite ready for the beta cutoff. So, the Cloud Working Group is
planning to have some post-beta, pre-final test images in the next week
or so to give a better look at what Fedora Atomic will look like — stay
tuned!

  * http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/test/21-Beta/Cloud/Images/x86_64/Fedora-Cloud-Base-20141029-21_Beta.x86_64.qcow2
  * https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/v2/home?region=us-east-1#LaunchInstanceWizard:ami=ami-fa3dbf92
  * http://cloudinit.readthedocs.org/en/latest/
  * http://www.projectatomic.io/
  * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy0ZEHPXJ9Q&t=170
  * http://www.redhat.com/en/about/blog/red-hat-and-google-collaborate-kubernetes-manage-docker-containers-scale


Fedora Server
-------------

Fedora Server is all about providing easy-to-deploy application stacks
which run on a common base. This is done through a service called
RoleKit, and a command-line tool `rolectl` plus an API which you can
integrate with your configuration management tools. For more on this,
see our coverage of Stephen Gallagher’s Flock presentation, or install
the beta and go right to setting up a Domain Controller in just a few
lines.

  * http://fedoramagazine.org/flock-2014-day-2-fedora-server-role-ing-along/
  * https://fedorahosted.org/rolekit/wiki/DomainController


Fedora Workstation
------------------

And finally, Fedora Workstation is our desktop / laptop system targeted
at software developers — not just those of us working on Fedora, but
everyone out there building applications and services. One key feature
is DevAssistant, a tool for easy setup and management of project
environments. Like much of Fedora 21, this is under heavy development,
and we’d love your input on making this more useful for *your* daily
work.

F21 Workstation also features a preview of next-generation graphics
stack Wayland. This does not sound particularly developer-focused at
first glance, but is actually really important for features software
developers have told us matter to them, like better multi-monitor
support. As we continue with Fedora.next, expect to see a lot of
other fundamental improvements like this, based on needs gathered from
feedback we receive.

  * http://devassistant.org/
  * http://wayland.freedesktop.org/
  * http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OTA5Mg

-- 
Matthew Miller            mattdm at mattdm.org             <http://mattdm.org/>
Fedora Project Leader  mattdm at fedoraproject.org  <http://fedoraproject.org/>