A new Fedora development release

Aug 7, 2006 14:28 GMT  ·  By

The Fedora Project team has announced a few minutes ago the second of 3 testing releases of Fedora Core 6: "The Fedora Project announces the second release of the Fedora Core 6 development cycle, available for the i386, x86_64, and ppc/ppc64 architectures, including Intel based Macintosh computers. Beware that Test releases are recommended only for Linux experts/enthusiasts or for the technology evaluation, as many parts are likely to be broken and the rate of change is rapid.

Test 3 is scheduled for release September 11, marking the continual freeze point of the Fedora Core 6 release. Only critical bugs fixed after this point. It is important that we get your help in testing, reporting and suggesting fixes for bugs, and directing the technological improvements we attempt with this release of Fedora Core. Please direct bugs to http://bugzilla.redhat.com, product Fedora Core, Version fc6test2. As always, be sure that your bug is not already fixed by updates and search for existing bugs before filing.

Thanks to all in the Fedora Project Community who have contributed to this release. Your continued efforts are what makes Fedora possible."

Jeremy Katz has announced on August the 2nd the new date for Fedora Core 6 Test 2 as today: "Later than expected, we have now gotten to where Xen is working with current kernels and are ready to actually freeze and release test2. We are currently working with the already frozen bits to get a tree ready and plan to release to the world on Monday, 7 August 2006."

Notable features of this testing release are:

* All packages recompiled (minus Thunderbird) - Introduction of DT_GU_HASH, a far more efficient symbol lookup table for dynamic linking. Improves dynamic linking performance by up to 50% - Packages built with new build system based on Mock. - Packages now have proper BuildRequires * Ability to install from additional yum repositories during anaconda installations and kickstarts. * Functional Java applet plugin for Firefox due to gcjwebplugin * A new default font, DejaVu, replaces Vera. * Numerous package updates and upgrades * 1600+ Extras packages conveniently available via yum

The initial date of this release was officially set for the 12th of July. Fedora Core 6 is expected to be available around 9 October 2006 (initial date was 20 September) but I think this date will be delayed 'till the end of October.

Fedora Core is an operating system and platform based on Linux that is always free for anyone to use, modify and distribute, now and forever. It is developed by a large community of people who strive to provide and maintain the very best in free, open source software and standards. Fedora Core is part of the Fedora Project, sponsored by Red Hat, Inc.

Fedora Core is available for x86, x86_64 and PPC systems.

You can download and test this second release of what will become Fedora Core 6 from Softpedia.