14 DAY TRIAL // The first and only alpha release of the upcoming Fedora 15 is now available. Fedora 15 Alpha, codenamed Lovelock, is feature-complete, but it may be lacking the polish of a more stable release. The biggest change in Fedora 15 is the switch to GNOME 3, the next generation desktop environments.
Systemd is now finally being used by default, after being offered only as an alternative in Fedora 14. Fedora 15 Alpha also comes with pre-release versions of Linux kernel 2.6.38 and GCC 4.6.0.
"The Fedora 15 'Lovelock' Alpha release is available! This release offers a preview of some of the best free and open source technology currently under development," Fedora announced.
"The Alpha release contains all the beefy features of Fedora 15 in a form that anyone can help test," the announcement explained.
"We need your help to make Fedora 15 the best release yet, so please take a moment of your time to download and try out the Alpha and make sure the things that are important to you are working," it added.
Fedora 15 will offer a variety of up to date desktop environments. The revamped GNOME 3 will be making its debut, the first mainstream Linux distro to switch to the new desktop environment. Fedora is also slated to be the flag-bearer of GNOME 3 since Ubuntu has decided to develop its own Unity desktop, dropping GNOME.
If you're not a fan of GNOME or GNOME 3 in particular, KDE 4.6 will be an alternative as well as XFCE 4.8. LibreOffice continues to be the default office suite, replacing OpenOffice.org.
An underlying change is the introduction of systemd as the default system and session manager, replacing Upstart and SysVinit. Systemd was scheduled to be included in Fedora 14 but was eventually offered only as an alternative not the default. You can check out some of the other new features and packages in the release notes.
Fedora 15 release schedule:
March 08, 2011 - Alpha release
April 14, 2011 - Beta release
May 17, 2011 - Final release
Fedora 15 Alpha is available for download here on Softpedia. Remember that this is a beta release and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended to be used for testing purposes only. If you encounter bugs please report them to the Red Hat Bugzilla.
