Look, up in the sky! It's a bird, it's a plane, it's... the beta release of Beefy Miracle! Flying 'round the world at the speed of the intertubes, delivering progress, mustard, and freedom to the masses.

We are delighted to announce the availability of the beta release of Fedora 17. Want to get a taste of the future? Download it now:

http://fedoraproject.org/get-prerelease

What is the Beta Release?

The Beta release is the last important milestone of Fedora 17. Only critical bug fixes will be pushed as updates leading to the general release of Fedora 17 in May. We invite you to join us in making Fedora 17 a solid release by downloading, testing, and providing your valuable feedback.

Of course, this is a beta release, meaning that some problems may still be lurking. A list of the problems we already know about is found at the Common F17 bugs page, seen here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F17_bugs

Features

This release of Fedora includes a variety of features both over and under the hood that show off the power and flexibility of the advancing state of free software. Here are just a few of the new features:

On the desktop: 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 applications. A new application, GNOME-boxes, provides easy access to virtual machines. Additionally, GIMP 2.8, the newest version of the GNU Image Manipulation Program, brings new improvements such as single-window mode, layer groups, and on-canvas editing.

For developers: You never sausage a great array of development tools! Fedora 17 includes a pre-release of Juno, the release of the Eclipse SDK expected in June 2012. Java 7 (and OpenJDK 7) is the default Java runtime and Java build toolset, and GCC 4.7.x is now the primary compiler in Fedora. About D programming update to 2.058, in more fedora ship now several D libraries: gtkd, derelict, phobos, tango... Other language refreshes include shipping Ruby 1.9.3, the latest stable version of the Ruby language, PHP 5.4, the latest PHP stack, and Erlang has also been updated to the R15 release.

Under the hood, and in the cloud: The Cluster stack in Fedora includes numerous and significant updates for both high availability and load-balancing applications. Fedora 17 utilizes Linux kernel 3.3, with improved btrfs and ext4 filesystems, GMA (poulsbo) graphics and Broadcom wireless chipset support, and numerous other bug fixes and enhancements. Firewalld is now the default firewall solution in Fedora, providing dynamic firewall configuration capabilities. Finally, OpenStack, a collection of services that can be used to set up and run cloud compute and storage infrastructure, has been updated to the latest release, 2012.1 (Essex).

And that's only the beginning. A more complete list and details of all the new features in Fedora 17 is available here:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/17/FeatureList

We have nightly composes of alternate spins available here:

http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/nightly-composes/

Contributing to Fedora

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

http://docs.fedoraproject.org

There are many ways to contribute beyond bug reporting. You can help translate software and content, test and give feedback on software updates, write and edit documentation, help with all sorts of promotional activities, and package free software for use by millions of Fedora users worldwide. To get started, visit http://join.fedoraproject.org today!