A few minutes ago, the Fedora project team released the first Alpha of the upcoming Fedora 8 Linux distribution: "We interrupt your rawhide for a moment to make a small announcement. Fedora 8 Test one has been loosed upon the world today. Test 1 is for "alpha" users. This is the time when we would like to have full community participation. Without this participation both hardware and software functionality suffers. We need your help. Join us!"

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

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 8 Test 1 now from Softpedia.

You can download Fedora 7 now from Softpedia.