The Fedora Project, a Red Hat, Inc. sponsored and community-supported open source collaboration,
today announced the availability of Fedora 17, the latest version of its free
open source operating system distribution. The Fedora operating system is free
of cost to download and includes free and open source software for users to
enjoy and share. Developed by a worldwide community, the Fedora Project
collaborates closely with upstream free software project teams to provide a
compelling experience for users and to access and integrate improvements and
innovation rapidly.
"I am extremely proud of the Fedora 17 release. The addition of projects such
as oVirt and JBoss Application Server 7, enhancements in OpenStack, and
continued support for fresh releases of desktop environments demonstrate the
Fedora Project's commitment to deliver rich features and capabilities," said
Robyn Bergeron, Fedora Project Leader. "This, combined with our leading-edge
innovations at the operating-system level, truly makes Fedora 17 a comprehensive
and robust operating system for all types of users."
An abundance of feature enhancements in Fedora 17 include:
- Desktop Features: GNOME 3.4 introduces many user experience improvements,
including new search capabilities in the Activities Overview, improved themes,
and enhancements to the Documents and Contacts application; and GIMP 2.8, the
newest version of the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), brings improvements
such as single-window mode, layer groups, and on-canvas text editing.
- Cloud, Virtualization, and Performance Features: OpenStack, a collection
of services that can be used to set up and run cloud compute and storage
infrastructure, is updated to the latest release, 2012.1 (Essex); oVirt, an open
virtualization platform, provides a feature-rich virtualization management
system with robust capabilities for both hosts and guests; and the Cluster stack
includes numerous and significant updates for both high availability and load
balancing applications.
- Developer Features: JBoss Application Server 7 is a fast, lightweight Java
EE-based application server, optimized for developing and launching Java EE
applications; a pre-release of Juno, the release of the Eclipse SDK expected
later this year; Java 7 (and OpenJDK7) is the default Java runtime and Java
build toolset.
The Fedora Project aims to release a new version of its free operating system
approximately every six months. This rapid development cycle encourages
collaboration and the inclusion of the latest, most cutting-edge open source
features available. Fedora is built by community members from across the globe,
and the Fedora Project's transparent and open collaboration process has
attracted thousands of registered contributors. The total of unique IPs across
Fedora releases since tracking was initiated at Fedora 7 is now approaching 38
million connections. Information about Fedora's statistics and collection
methodology is open and transparent to the public on the following wiki:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Statistics .
The Fedora Project has also held multiple Fedora User and Developer
Conferences (FUDCon) around the world during the past year including events in
Blacksburg, Virginia, USA; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Pune, India; and Milan,
Italy. Upcoming FUDCons are planned for August 23 - 25, 2012 in Valencia,
Venezuela; October 13 -- 15 in Paris, France; and January 18 -- 20, 2013 in
Lawrence, Kansas, USA.
For more information on Fedora 17 and to download the distribution or to join
this community effort, please visit www.fedoraproject.org .