14 DAY TRIAL // The Fedora Project proudly announced a few minutes ago, September 18th, the immediate availability for download and testing of the Alpha version of the upcoming Fedora 18 operating system, due for release at the end of November.
Dubbed Spherical Cow, Fedora 18 Alpha is powered by a development release of the upcoming Linux kernel 3.6 and brings numerous features, improvements and bug fixes over previous releases.
Fedora 18 Alpha is distributed as an installable DVD and Live CD ISO images with GNOME, KDE, Xfc, LXDE and Sugar on a Stick (SoaS) editions, for both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures.
Click here for Fedora 18 Alpha GNOME LiveCD Screenshot Tour
Click here for Fedora 18 Alpha KDE LiveCD Screenshot Tour
Highlights of Fedora 18 Alpha:
· Linux kernel 3.6 RC2; · GNOME 3.5.5; · KDE SC 4.9; · Xfce 4.10; · RPM 4.10; · Implemented Offline Updates using PackageKit and systemd; · Fontconfig 2.10; · GHC (Glasgow Haskell Compiler) 7.4.1; · Liberation Fonts 2; · Support for FedFS (Federated File System); · Hawkey package management library; · DNF package management utility; · DragonEgg GCC plugin; · Dwarf compressor for smaller debug files; · New ibus Pinyin engine for Simplified Chinese input; · Ibus-Typing Booster predictive input method; · IPA v3 with Trusts to Active Directory domains; · KRB5 Credential Cache move; · MiniDebugInfo for better bug reports; · NFSometer performance measurement framework; · Package Service Presets; · PCRE (Perl-Compatible Regular Expression) 8.30; · Perl 5.16; · procps-ng, the next-gen procps tools; · Rails 3.2; · Riak; · Server KMS drivers; · Syscall filters; · tmpfs is now mounted on /tmp; · Virtual Guest suspend/hibernate support; · Virtual Machine Live snapshots.
September 18th, 2012 - Fedora 18 Alpha release
October 23rd, 2012 - Fedora 18 Beta release
November 27th, 2012 - Fedora 18 final release
Download Fedora 18 Alpha right now from Softpedia.
Remember that this is an alpha release and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended to be used for testing purposes only. If you encounter bugs please report them to the Red Hat Bugzilla.