The Fedora 13 "Goddard" Alpha is here, the first step towards the final release due in May. The Linux distro comes with a lot of new features and updates catering to all user groups, regular users, developers and system administrators. Ease of use was a main focus and Fedora 13 comes with automatic printer drivers and language packs installation, saving the users quite a bit of time.

An updated NetworkManager should make networking in Fedora a lot easier and seamless, as everything having to do with connectivity - dial-up, broadband, WiFi and even Bluetooth - can now be done from one place. And for the nostalgics, all this can be done from the command-line too. Also on the hardware side, Fedora 13 Alpha gets experimental support for the promising open-source Nvidia driver, Nouveau. However, it is not available by default, you need to install the mesa-dri-drivers-experimental package to try it out.

Highlights of Fedora 13 "Goddard" Alpha:

· Linux Kernel 2.6.32;
· KDE SC 4.4;
· Support for webcams;
· Mozilla Firefox 3.6 web browser;
· Enhanced Init System;
· Topology Awareness;
· Improved Anaconda Installer;
· Improved software management;
· 3D Support for Nvidia Systems;
· Automatic installation of printer drivers;
· Language packs are automatically installed;
· Revamped user management interface;
· Improved NetworkManager;
· Color management;
· SystemTap static probes;
· Zarafa Groupware;
· NetBeans 6.8;
· Python 3 support;
· Btrfs snapshots integration.


Release Schedule:

March 9th, 2010 - Alpha release
April 6th, 2010 - Beta release
April 29th, 2010 - Release Candidate
May 11th, 2010 - Fedora 13 Final release

About Fedora:

The Fedora Project is a Red-Hat-sponsored and community-supported open-source project. It was originally based on Red Hat, but now serves as a proving ground for new technology that may eventually make its way into Red Hat products. However, it is not a supported product of Red Hat. 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.

Download Fedora 13 Alpha right now from Softpedia. Remember that this is an alpha release and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended to be used for testing purposes only. Please report bugs to the Red Hat Bugzilla.