14 DAY TRIAL // Fedora fans are one step closer to getting their hands on the latest and greatest release to date. The Fedora 13 “Goddard” Beta was made available moments ago, after being delayed almost a week, and the developers are encouraging curious and eager users, who don’t mind running on pre-release software, to give it a spin and maybe uncover a bug or two. Fedora 13 promises to be a solid release with all-round improvements and enhancements. Usability is one of the themes of the upcoming release, with an emphasis on automating some of the more menial administrative tasks. An example is the automated installation of printer drivers, making it trivial to plug in your new printer and just start using it.
“The countdown is on: Fedora 13, ‘Goddard,’ is set to launch in mid-May. Fedora is the leading edge, free and open source operating system that continues to deliver innovative features to users worldwide, with a new release every six months,” the official announcement read. “But wait! What's that? You can't wait a whole month to try out the latest and greatest in Fedora's leading-edge technologies? You want to be the first to see what's new? Well, you're in luck. The Fedora 13 Beta release is available NOW. Hop on board and take a tour of the rocking new features,” it continued.
Highlights of Fedora 13 “Goddard” Beta:
- Printer drivers are automatically installed; - Experimental 3D support in the open source Nouveau drivers for Nvidia; - NetworkManager enhancements; - Improved iPod/iPhone support; - Improved DisplayPort support - AMD/ATI and Nvidia graphics cards now supported; - Python 3 can be installed alongside Python 2.6; - NetBeans 6.8 IDE with Java EE 6 support.
Release Schedule:
March 9th, 2010 - Alpha release;
April 13th, 2010 - Beta release;
May 6th, 2010 - Release Candidate;
May 18th, 2010 - Fedora 13 Final release.
Fedora 13 Beta 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. Please report bugs to the Red Hat Bugzilla.