Fedora 7 Release Summary

Fedora Tour

You can find a tour filled with pictures and videos of this exciting new release at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Tours/Fedora7.

Fedora 7 FAQ

• http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora7/FAQ

New in Fedora

This release includes significant new versions of many key components and technologies. The following sections provide a brief overview of major changes from the last release of Fedora.

Spins

For the first time, Fedora includes several different spins, which are variations of Fedora built from a specific set of software packages. Each spin has a combination of software to meet the requirements of a specific kind of end user. In addition to a very small boot.iso image for network installation, users have the following spin choices:

• GNOME and KDE desktop environment based bootable Live images that can be installed to a hard disk. These spins are meant for desktop users who prefer a single disk installation and for sharing Fedora with friends, family, and event attendees.
• A regular image for desktops, workstations and server users. This spin provides a good upgrade path and similar environment for users of previous releases of Fedora.

Desktop

• This release features GNOME 2.22 and KDE 4.0.3.

• Fast User Switching is well integrated within this release. Developers have enabled this feature through extensive development work on ConsoleKit and full integration throughout the distribution.

• Display devices can be hot plugged and work automatically, thanks to the inclusion of Xorg Server 1.3.

• This release provides a number of firmware packages for enhanced wireless networking. NetworkManager presents a graphical interface that allows users to quickly switch between wireless and wired networks for increased mobility. NetworkManager is installed by default in both GNOME and KDE Live CDs.

• Fedora 8 includes a refreshing new "Flying High" theme, which is part of a continuous team effort from the community and the Fedora Artwork Project.

• Firefox 2 includes a host of new features including an inline speller checker, built-in phishing protection, and the ability to resume browsing sessions.

• I18N support is much improved by the presence the SCIM input methods, which now work after installation automatically without any configuration. SCIM can handle nearly every alphabet/set of characters in use. Fedora is now more accessible to a wider audience by the default inclusion of a number of language packages and input methods in the GNOME based Live CD.

• A new comprehensive graphical administration tool for SELinux, system-config-selinux is available by default in this release. SELinux boolean settings have been removed from the system-config-securitylevel tool and added to this new administration tool instead.

• The SELinux troubleshooting tool 'setroubleshoot' is enabled by default in this release. This tool provides notifications and detailed information to desktop users about any access denials by SELinux policy, along with suggestions on handling them.

• This release features integration of a new FireWire stack in the kernel for more robust device handling.

• Fedora now includes improved power management through implementation of dynamic ticks in the kernel.

• This release partially consolidates dictionaries used by desktop applications, which provides a consistent desktop experience while saving resources.

• Fedora now integrates the experimental nouveau driver within Xorg and the kernel. The nouveau driver, which is disabled by default in this release, aims to provide free and open source 3D drivers for nVidia cards. End users are asked to provide feedback on this feature to the project developers, to further the goal of having fully functional 3D drivers by default.

Performance

• In this release, the performance of yum, Pirut, and Pup has been significantly improved.

System Level Changes

• This is the first release to include support for Sony Playstation 3.

• This release includes the 2.6.21 based kernel which integrates Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) technology with Fedora's graphical virt-manager and command-line virsh tools. KVM provides a hardware accelerated virtualization solution, and users have a choice between KVM and Xen, along with Qemu, in this release.

• In this release, all hard disk partitions follow a /dev/sd* naming convention due to a new libata driver interface in the kernel. The Anaconda installer eases the transition for release upgrades.

• The mac80211 (formerly called Devicescape) wireless stack has been integrated with the kernel.

• Smolt, an opt-in tool that sends anonymous hardware profile information to the Fedora Project, is integrated with firstboot in the installer. All data is available on the Smolt homepage. This profile information is used to leverage cooperation from vendors in improving end user hardware experience, and to priortize development and quality assurance on commonly used hardware.

• The Fedora Directory Server base is now part of the Fedora software repository. The graphical console and administration servers are available on the website and are planned to be included in the repository after a review process.

• Python 2.5 is included in this release, and all of the Python software available in the repository uses it.

• This release of Fedora includes Liberation fonts, which are metric equivalents for several well-known proprietary fonts found throughout the Internet. These fonts give users better results when viewing and printing shared or downloaded documents.

Road Map

The proposed plans for the next release of Fedora are available at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/RoadMap.