Fedora 7 Test 4 Released

Test 4, the last one until the final release of Fedora 7 (due for release on 24 May) has started appearing today on the mirrors worldwide, just as I am writing this:

"The Fedora Project is pleased to announce the release of the fourth and final test release of Fedora 7! Test 4 is for beta users. This is the time when we MUST have full community participation. Without this participation both hardware and software functionality suffers. We need your help. Join us!"

Here are some of the release notes:

• The 2.6.21 kernel uses new IDE drivers which use the same 'libata' subsystem as the SATA drivers;
• GNOME 2.18 is the default dektop;
• The new Echo icon theme is no longer the default;
• KDE and Xfce, among several other packages, are included in the development repositories, but not on the media;
• Fast User Switching is now available via the fast-user-switch-applet;
• The internet messaging program called "Gaim" is now known as "Pidgin";
• Yum and rpm performance should be better in this release than previous Fedora 7 test releases;
• Users of e1000 (Intel gigabit ethernet) devices should be on the lookout for device lockups, although we believe this is fixed.

Fedora 7 is promising new features like:

• Rock solid wireless networking support;
• Wireless firmware;
• Pungi will be used for tree building;
• Fast user switching;
• RandR 1.2;
• KVM virtualization support;
• Boot and shutdown speed-up;
• New init system;
• rpm and yum enhancements;
• libata will be used for PATA support;
• syslog to be replaced with syslog-ng;
• Improved firewire support;
• Real-time kernel;
• Tickless kernel support;
• Fix wakeups across the distribution;
• Encrypted file systems.

About Fedora:

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.

You can download Fedora 7 Test 4 now from Softpedia.

You can download Fedora Core 6 now from Softpedia.

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