Fedora 12 one page release notes

What is Fedora 12?

Fedora is a Linux-based operating system that brings the latest in free and open source software to your desktop, laptop and server. Fedora is built by people across the globe who work together as a community: the Fedora Project. You can read more information about the Fedora Project on our Overview page.

Fedora is free to use, modify, and distribute, and includes software that helps you work, play, organize, and socialize.

IMAGE: nice F12 screenshot

What's new in Fedora 12?

Fedora 12 is filled with improvements that make Linux better than ever for all types of users. Here are a few of the new things you can expect to see when you try out Fedora 12.

Desktop Users

Fedora includes Empathy, an instant messenger that supports chat, video, and audio. You can talk to your friends who are on AIM, Yahoo, Google Chat, Jabber, MSN, MySpace, and many other platforms. By taking advantage of the latest improvements in webcam and video support embedded in Fedora 12, Empathy lets you experience the next generation of IM.

For watching videos on the web, next-generation (Ogg) Theora video provides crisp, vibrant streaming and downloadable media that works out of the box with Firefox 3.5+. Audio aficionados will enjoy PulseAudio enhancements that allowing streaming from their system to other clients, as well as pairing with Bluetooth audio devices.

IMAGE: screenshot that shows webcam and instant messaging and audio

IMAGE: happy person listening to music while talking with a friend via webcam

>

Office productivity made easy: no matter what you do -- email, web browsing, office applications, graphic design, robotics, electronic design automation, project management, personal databases, amateur radio, webcomics - you'll find it all here.

IMAGE: screenshots of graphic design, electronics, etc. applications

IMAGE: happy people playing with robots wearing a Fedora tshirt - Jef Spaleta?

System Administrators

It's Fast, it's Stable, it's Sizeable, it's Secure: it's Fedora 12.

A number of improvements are included Fedora 12 release. A new initial ramdisk setup tool called Dracut helps keep boot time as low as possible. There's now ext4 support for GRUB, and Kernel Mode Setting (KMS) is enabled by default on systems with NVIDIA, ATI and Intel video cards for a faster and smoother graphical boot.

For those who Samba, the addition of GFS2 Clustered Samba and improvements in HA (high availability) clustering makes sharing data across machines easier and more reliable. Fedora 12 also features constant security updates for bulletproof systems, and a number of virtualization improvements have emerged with this release that use memory more efficiently, provide more flexible hardware and network solutions, and boost the performance of virtual guest disk images.

IMAGE: screenshot of multiple virtual machines and graphical VM monitors laid out, all doing different things

IMAGE: something screenshot-ish for sysadmins... not sure what we want to do here, screenshot people can get creative, maybe an SELinux screen... or even something that's not a screenshot - a diagram illustrating how much faster the boot time is, etc maybe something corny comparing old vs. new? here's a screen shot after 30 seconds before, here's a screenshot of 30 seconds now... not sure. just braindumping

IMAGE: 4 or more VM monitors with different VMs -XP / Win 7 / 2003 / Fedora 11 - booting and an other window showing CPU & Memory monitor; or even better some VMs running SQL server (MySQL or whatever as long as it show the execution time) executing a query with a Task Manager CPU & Mem Utilization in first plan, while in the main Screen Fedora's system monitor will be displaying the real recourse consumption

<<IMAGE: screenshot of happy sysadmin sitting in front of a rack> or maybe in front of his/her single monitor / keyboard showing the cluster admin interface?>>

Developers

For developers, Fedora 12 includes a rich set of development tools, including all popular programming languages, IDEs, and an extensive set of libraries. The most recent versions of emacs, mercurial, and php are included - no need to worry about downloading the latest and greatest, we've got them all. And for developers using Eclipse, version 3.5 (Galileo) is included in Fedora 12, along with more Eclipse plug-ins than ever before.

These in addition to the well established web, SQL and application servers create a unique proposal for development and production environment at the same time.

IMAGE: Pretty eclipse screenshot here plz, with entertaining code

How to get started

Intrigued? Want to give Fedora 12 a try?

If you're running Fedora 11, upgrading is as easy as... <<LINK TO FINAL VERSION OF UPGRADE NOTEShttp://docs.fedoraproject.org/install-guide/f12/en-US/html/ch-upgrade-x86.html - whatever is linked to from the get.fp.o website on the "upgrade" section>>

Want to try out Fedora before you make a decision? You can also try out Fedora with a LiveCD regardless of what operating system you're running. This will give you a working version of Fedora, complete with common applications, all running off your CD drive - your hard drive won't be touched at all. And when you're ready, installation is just a click away. <<LINK TO LiveCD>>

<<Maybe a Live USB image for Atom??>>

Fedora: The Future, First.

Help make Fedora!

We'd love to hear your thoughts on Fedora 12. Have a suggestion? Find a bug? See <<<LINK TO BUG FILING PLACE, probably get this link from the QA team>>>

Want to join the Fedora community and help us make the best Linux distribution even better? Get started at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Join. Our diverse community from all over the globe welcomes contributors of all types, from artists to marketers to coders to testers to writers to translators and more. Share what you know or help with something you've always wanted to learn; mentors are always available to help you get started.

Search