Fedora 8 Test 1 Released

The Fedora Project is a Red-Hat-sponsored and community-supported open source project. It is also a proving ground for a new technology that may eventually make its way into Red Hat products. It is not a supported product of Red Hat, Inc.

The goal of The Fedora Project is to work with the Linux community in order to build a complete, general purpose operating system exclusively from free software. Development will be done in a public forum. The project will produce time-based releases of Fedora Core about 2-3 times a year with a public release schedule.

Fedora 8 is promising new features like:

• Optional replacement for GNOME panel that uses online services via mugshot;
• Enhanced Bluetooth support;
• Fedora 8 Bookmarks;
• Make core dumps self-identifying enough to find the exact correct versions of all relevant    binaries and debuginfo;
• Buddy Helper app promotes Free alternatives and guides users trying to play content under    restricted codecs;
• Fix the dictionary proliferation problem;
• Integrating KDE 4.0, a new major version of KDE;
• Improved support for using Fedora on Laptops;
• Support for Nepali Language;
• Nodoka, new default theme for GNOME;
• We need to remove pam_console and migrate all users to use the ACLs as set by HAL;
• Easy and painless administration;
• Using delta RPM updates by default. Saves heavy amount of bandwidth and time for updates;
• Feature rich sound server (Pulse Audio);
• Make rsyslog the new default syslog daemon. Rsyslog has an assorted set of new features that    make system administration easier;
• TeXLive 2007 inclusion;
• Make the default x86_64 kernel tickless;
• Secure remote mangement for Xen, KVM & QEMU virtualization;
• Powertop is included. Need to start tracking egregious offenders;
• Don't start XFS font server daemon by default and fix font packages. Savings on performance    and bootup time;
• Use and integrate XULRunner which is the Gecko browser engine separated from the user    interface.

Fedora 8 release schedule:

7 August 2007 - Fedora 8 Test1 release
28 August 2007 - Fedora 8 FEATURE freeze, Fedora 8 string freeze, Fedora 8 Test2 development freeze
6 September 2007 - Fedora 8 Test2 Release
25 September 2007 - Fedora 8 translation freeze, Fedora 8 Test3 development freeze
4 October 2007 - Fedora 8 Test3 Release
23 October 2007 - Final devel freeze
8 November 2007 - Fedora 8 General Availability

You can download Fedora 8 Test 1 now from Softpedia.