Releases/8/Test/F8Test1/ReleaseNotes

= Fedora 8 Test 1 Release Notes =

This is the time for all developers, maintainers and testers to contribute to the Release Notes. See http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject/ReleaseNotes/Process for details.

This document is a highly abridged version of the release notes used during the test1 and test2 phases of development. The full complement of release notes follow during the test3 phase, according to developer and community participation in the release notes process.

Welcome to Fedora 8 Test 1
Fedora is a set of projects sponsored by Red Hat and guided by the contributors. These projects are developed by a large community of people who strive to provide and maintain the very best in free, open source software and standards. The central Fedora project is an operating system and platform based on Linux that is always free for anyone to use, modify, and distribute, now and forever.

You can help the Fedora Project community continue to improve Fedora if you file bug reports and enhancement requests. Refer to this page for more information. Thank you for your participation.

To find out more general information about Fedora, refer to the following Web pages:


 * Fedora Overview (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Overview)


 * Fedora FAQ (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FAQ)


 * Help and Support (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate)


 * Participate in the Fedora Project (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/HelpWanted)

Official Announcement
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2007-August/msg00001.html

New in Fedora 8 Test 1
This test 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.

Desktop

 * This test release features GNOME 2.19.


 * KDE 3.5.7 is included in this release. We are evaluating the inclusion of KDE 4 before the next test release. KDE specific notes are available at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/KDE/F8Test1

System Level Changes

 * Rsyslog, a new system logging daemon is now the default in Fedora replacing sysklogd which has been a dormant project. Rsyslog is backward compatible with the existing syslog configuration and offers a number of additional features including TCP based network transport, realtime analysis for log messages and MySQL database backend.


 * The X font service (XFS) is no longer started by default. As a result, Fedora graphical subsystem will be more robust, use less resources and the system will boot faster. This background service is only required for applications using the legacy core font mechanism. Modern desktop applications use the newer and more fontconfig mechanism and no longer need this service. Several X and font related software packages have been fixed as a result of this change.


 * Fedora 8 Test 1 features a 2.6.23 based kernel.

Road Map And Release Schedule

 * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/8/

Intended Audience for Test Releases
Test 1 is targeted for developers, who use it "at your own risk", and contains many bleeding edge packages.

Test 2 is for early adopters. Most things should work and we really need your help to find what is broken.

Test 3 is for beta users. This is the time when we must have full community participation. Without this participation both hardware and software functionality suffers.

Quality Assurance for Test Releases
The Fedora Project has a process in place for ensuring the highest possible quality even in our test releases. Many bugs are identified, prioritized and fixed during the testing process. We also have a list of known bugs in this release. Refer to this page  for more details.

Translations of Release Notes
Due to the rapidly changing nature of test releases, translations of release notes for test releases are not practical. The initial goal is to have a translation of the release notes included in the third test release and to allow community review and correction before the general release. As always, the general release is translated following the established practices for localization  (l10n) and internationalization (i18n), which result in comprehensive, high-quality release notes in a variety of languages.