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With Fedora 13, codenamed Goddard, to be released in the mid of May, Fedora community has started accepting the name suggestions for their next major release, Fedora 14. So, if you have a name in your mind, with an 'is-a' connected to the upcoming release Goddard then go on and post it here.

You can see the names that have been suggested till now, and how they are connected to 'Goddard'. So, get started and be the one to name Fedora 14.

Fedora 13, Goddard, Beta is now available for download. Take a tour of the new existing features that Goddard is going to come with. This Beta release is going to be the last milestone in the development cycle of Fedora 13 followed by the Release Candidate on 6th May before the Final release on 18th May. Major emphasis is on usability improvement and integrate more automation to ease tasks for users.

This is a Beta release, so, you might expect some bugs and broken features. Other major Highlights in Fedora 13 Beta are,

• Experimental 3D graphics support extended to free Nouveau driver for NVidia cards.
• The user account tool has been completely redesigned, and the introduction of new packages - accountsdialog and accountsservice test packages, to maintain your personal profile and login options.
• NetworkManager enhancement
• Improved iPod/iPhone support
• Printer drivers are automatically installed.

You can find the full feature list at here. If you are a developer, help out the fedora community by reporting and fixing some common bugs.

Fedora 13, Goddard, Beta is now available for download. Take a tour of the new existing features that Goddard is going to come with. This Beta release is going to be the last milestone in the development cycle of Fedora 13 followed by the Release Candidate on 6th May before the Final release on 18th May. Major emphasis is on usability improvement and integrate more automation to ease tasks for users.

This is a Beta release, so, you might expect some bugs and broken features. Other major Highlights in Fedora 13 Beta are,

• Experimental 3D graphics support extended to free Nouveau driver for NVidia cards.
• The user account tool has been completely redesigned, and the introduction of new packages - accountsdialog and accountsservice test packages, to maintain your personal profile and login options.
• NetworkManager enhancement
• Improved iPod/iPhone support
• Printer drivers are automatically installed.

You can find the full feature list at here. If you are a developer, help out the fedora community by reporting and fixing some common bugs.

Recently, I have been a little out of touch with Fedora news. With the release of Fedora 13 alpha, I finally got a chance to get back to work. Went through the list of new additions in Fedora 13 alpha and as expected, Goddard has some really cool new features. I have jotted down some of my favourites in this article.

boot.fedoraproject.org

boot.fedoraproject.org (BFO) is one of the unique features in Fedora. This effort by Fedora community hopes to completely remove DVD installations in long term. It allows users to download a single, tiny image and install current and future versions of Fedora without having to download additional images.

This method is similar to Pxeboot, can also be considered as a Fedora branded version of boot.kernel.org.

System Rollback feature with Btrfs

Btrfs lets you take light weight snapshots of the filesystem which can be mounted or booted into selectively. This means, before doing something crazy with your system, you can easily take a snapshot of the partition and in case something bad happens, just boot into the older snapshot.

In Fedora 13, codenamed Goddard, if you have selected one or more partitions as btrfs, then it will automatically create new snapshots with every yum operation. You will also be allowed to select which snapshot to boot into. This is indeed an amazing addition.

Design Suite Spin, to make Fedora look even better

This suite will contain all the required applications targeted at designers. Here is a list of the applications that are going to be included.

The Fedora Design Suite includes well-selected applications, fitting a variety of use cases. Whether you decide to work on publishing documents, creating images and pictures or even 3D content, the Design Suite has a fitting tool.

Network Manager finally has a Command Line

I have always been a command line fan but when it comes to managing multiple network connections(including wireless), I always ended up using Network Manager, wondering if they will ever add a command line support. I am sure this added support would have brought a smile on all of the CLI junkies like me .

Zarafa, a complete Open Source groupware suite is now available in Goddard

Zarafa is an open source groupware suite that can be used as a drop-in Exchange replacement for Web-based mail, calendaring, collaboration and tasks. Features include IMAP/POP and iCal/CalDAV capabilities, native mobile phone support, the ability to integrate with existing Linux mail servers, a full set of programming interfaces, and a comfortable look and feel using modern Ajax technologies.

NFSv4

NFSv4 aims to offer increase performance and seamless transition for the end-user. Fedora is the only distro till now using it.

You might want to check out some other Fedora spins coming out with Fedora 13, Goddard.

A whole list of the main, new features  in Fedora 13 can be found here.

Technical thoughts:

I installed goddard on my eeepc 900 and have some issues. Right after the first boot gnote crashed and activated the Automatic Bug Reporting Tool (ABRT). So I lol’d and started getting my WPA key put in so that I could report it. Only one problem. The ABRT window is bigger than my screen size, it cuts off just above where you can attach files. So I have no way of easily reporting the gnote bug.

If that wasn’t enough I can’t update it because of a discrepancy in Open Office core versions, and for some reason yum upgrade –skip-broken isnt working, nor is trying to let the GUI update tool handle it.

Non-Technical Thoughts:

I was almost pissed yesterday when I saw the “official” shortened urls for linking to the Alpha yesterday. The “official” shortened urls were setup so that we (the project) could have some data on how popular this release was. My issue was the services that were used are non-free; is.gd, bit.ly, and tinyurl. I was prepared to loose my mind and then I decided that before loosing my cool I should mention this in the mailing list. So I went through my trash folder (I’m so glad I don’t ever clear that out, it is now a personal procedure to keep all “trashed” email [and I don't worry because my hard drive is encrypted]) and replied that I was bad form for us to use non-free url shortners and let everyone know about ur1.ca and 2tu.us. No one knew these existed and it even prompted Paul Frields to edit his blog post to add them to the list.

Sometimes a little checking before you fly off the handle and run your mouth on the interwebs is good. Damn this whole turning 25 and deciding I should act like an adult thing

So please tryout Goddard; see how it works for you, and please post your thoughts about it in the comments or drop a link to your thoughts if you post them else where.

Fedora 13 “Goddard” Alpha release is available TODAY! What’s next for the free operating system that shows off the best new technology of tomorrow? You can see the future now at:

http://fedoraproject.org/get-prerelease

What’s an Alpha release? The Alpha release contains all the features of Fedora 13 in a form that anyone can help test. This testing, guided by the Fedora QA team, helps us target and identify bugs. When these bugs are fixed, we make a Beta release available. A Beta release is code-complete, and bears a very strong resemblance to the third and final release. The final release of Fedora 13 is due in April.

We need your help to make Fedora 13 the best release yet, so please take a moment of your time to download and try out the Alpha and make sure the things that are important to you are working. If you find a bug, please report it – every bug you uncover is a chance to improve the experience for millions of Fedora users worldwide. Together, we can make Fedora a rock-solid distribution.

https://bugzilla.redhat.com

Among the top features for end users, we have:

* Automatic print driver installation. We’re using RPM and PackageKit for automatic installation of printer drivers, so when you plug in a USB printer, Fedora will automatically offer to install drivers for it if needed.

* Automatic installation of language packs. Yum language packs plugin support makes software installation smarter and easier for everyone worldwide, by automatically downloading language support for large suites of Fedora software when the user’s environment requires it.

* Redesigned user management interface. The user account tool has been completely redesigned, and test packages are available to make it easy to configure personal information, make a personal profile picture or icon, generate a strong passphrase, and set up login options for your Fedora system.

* Color management. Color Management allows you to better set and control your colors for displays, printers, and scanners.

* NetworkManager improvements include CLI. NetworkManager is now a one stop shop for all of your networking needs in Fedora, be it dial-up, broadband, wifi, or even Bluetooth. And now it can all be done in the command line, if you’re into that sort of thing.

* Experimental 3D extended to free Nouveau driver for NVidia cards. In this release we are one step closer to having 3D supported on completely free and open source software (FOSS) drivers. In Fedora 12 we got a lot of ATI chips working, and this time we’ve added a wide range of NVidia cards.

For developers there are all sorts of additional goodies:

* SystemTap static probes. SystemTap now has expanded capabilities to monitor higher-level language runtimes like Java, Python and Tcl, and also user space applications starting with PostgreSQL.

* Easier Python debugging. We’ve added new support that allows developers working with mixed libraries (Python and C/C++) in Fedora to get more complete information when debugging with gdb.

* Parallel-installable Python 3 stack. The parallel-installable Python 3 stack will will help programmers write and test code for use in both Python 2.6 and Python 3 environments, so you can future-proof your applications now using Fedora.

* NetBeans 6.8 first IDE to support entire Java 6 EE spec. NetBeans IDE 6.8 is the first IDE to offer complete support for the entire Java EE 6 specification.

And don’t think we forgot the Administrators:

* boot.fedoraproject.org. (BFO) allows users to download a single, tiny image (could fit on a floppy) and install current and future versions of Fedora without having to download additional images.

* System Security Services Daemon (SSSD). SSSD provides expanded features for logging into managed domains, including caching for offline authentication. This means that, for example, users on laptops can still login when disconnected from the company’s managed network. The authentication configuration tool in Fedora has already been updated to support SSSD, and work is underway to make it even more attractive and functional.

* Pioneering NFS features. Fedora offers the latest version 4 of the NFS protocol for better performance, and in conjunction with recent kernel modifications includes IPv6 support for NFS as well.

* Zarafa Groupware. Zarafa now makes available a complete Open Source groupware suite that can be used as a drop-in Exchange replacement for Web-based mail, calendaring, collaboration and tasks. Features include IMAP/POP and iCal/CalDAV capabilities, native mobile phone support, the ability to integrate with existing Linux mail servers, a full set of programming interfaces, and a comfortable look and feel using modern Ajax technologies.

* Btrfs snapshots integration. Btrfs is capable of creating lightweight filesystem snapshots that can be mounted (and booted into) selectively. The created snapshots are copy-on-write snapshots, so there is no file duplication overhead involved for files that do not change between snapshots. It allows developers to feel comfortable experimenting with new software without fear of an unusable install, since automated snapshots allow them to easily revert to the previous day’s filesystem.

And that is only the beginning.

A more complete list and details of each new cited feature is available here:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/13/FeatureList

For more information including common and known bugs, tips on how to report bugs, and the official release schedule, please refer to the release notes:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_13_Alpha_release_notes

Thank you, and we hope to see you in the Fedora project!

EVERYTHING!

No, the Marketing Team busted their butts [I actually was slacking off and don't think I contributed as much as I could have some I'm going to leave myself out of the celebration, there is still much work to do that I can take more credit for than I deserve ] and they have come up with a list of the coolest features that you can expect in Fedora 13 codenamed “Goddard” after “Dr. Robert Hutchings Goddard (October 5, 1882 – August 10, 1945), U.S. professor of physics and scientist, was a pioneer of controlled, liquid-fueled rocketry. On March 16, 1926, he became the first person in the world to build and launch a liquid-fueled rocket” -wikipedia.

If you can’t tell from the artwork and the codename we are going for a rocket/space theme.

Here are the features broken down into groups based on who will be happiest to see it.

* 1 For desktop users and everyone

o 1.1 Automatic print driver installation
o 1.2 Automatic installation of language packs
o 1.3 Redesigned user management interface
o 1.4 Color management
o 1.5 NetworkManager improvements include CLI
o 1.6 Experimental 3D extended to free Nouveau driver

* 2 For administrators

o 2.1 BFO
o 2.2 Authconfig UI redesign
o 2.3 Pioneering NSF features
o 2.4 Zarafa
o 2.5 Experimenting with btrfs

* 3 For developers

o 3.1 SystemTap static probes
o 3.2 Easier Python debugging
o 3.3 Parallel-installable Python 3
o 3.4 NetBeans 6.8 first IDE to support entire Java 6 EE spec

* 4 Spins

o 4.1 Moblin Spin
o 4.2 Sugar on a Stick Spin
o 4.3 Design Studio Spin
o 4.4 Security Spin

Here is the full list of features and how far along we think we are on them. It’s also a good place to do some reading up if you are wondering what all that mess above means.

By now you would know that the next Fedora release, Fedora 13, will be named "Goddard", after the famous Rocket scientist Robert H Goddard. After deciding on the name, fedora contributors have started working on the designs, themes and other artwork for the next release. There are a few ideas in the air about Rocketry related artwork but they are also looking of other fedora users and enthusiasts to come up with their more innovative stuff.

This was actually in the lastest (206) FWN(fedora weekly news). There was some suggestion about organizing a hackfest to share and brainstorm some new ideas. I am not sure what's the theme going to be but lets hope we don't see a countdown with Rocket Fedora as the splash image (see the image above) while booting Goddard . 

10, 9, 8, 7... 3, 2,1 .... Time to Login

Btw.. this pic submitted by Luya (a fedora contributor) could give you a better idea about the theme.

Well, if any one of you linuxers have idea(s) to share, you can chk out the Fedora 13 artwork page for more info ( I won't mind comments either ;) ).