14 DAY TRIAL // While the upcoming Fedora 26 Linux operating system is yet to get its first Alpha development snapshot, due for release on March 21, 2017, Red Hat's Fedora Program Manager Jan Kurik announced that Alpha builds would be dropped for Fedora 27.
Yes, believe it or not, the Fedora developers have decided that Alpha versions should be removed from the development cycle of a new Fedora Linux release, starting with Fedora 27, whose release schedule is yet to be published. Why? Because it looks like the Rawhide version of Fedora is considered of Alpha quality, always.
"This will make it more generally useful to people as a daily driver and development platform, and mean we no longer need to go through the process of building, testing and shipping Alpha releases," reads the new proposal. "The initial testing will be ensuring that a package is installable and that it does not break existing packages installation."
Fedora 27 should offer only a Beta release to public testers
If approved, this decision should significantly simplify the development cycle of any new Fedora Linux release that will be published after the release of Fedora 26 in June. Already Fedora Linux was one of the few GNU/Linux distributions to offer only one Alpha and one Beta, but not public testers will have access only to the Beta version.
As for early adopters, they should learn to install Fedora Rawhide, which is usually branched for the next major release of the operating system during the development cycle of the upcoming version. For example, next week on February 28, Fedora 26 will be branched from Rawhide, which becomes Fedora 27.
However, until then, public testers should concentrate their attention on the upcoming and probably last Alpha release for Fedora 26 Linux. This release should be out March 21, if nothing changes in the meantime, as a first delay already occurred, and it now looks like the final Fedora 26 release is landing on June 13, 2017. Happy testing!