The Fedora project has released the beta of the Fedora 13 Linux distribution, named after rocket scientist Robert H. Goddard, and it is now available to download. Like the alpha version released five weeks ago, the first and only beta has been released a week later than originally planned. This has prompted the project administrators to postpone the final release date of Fedora 13 by a week and it is now rescheduled for the 18th of May.

Since the distribution, advertised with the release slogan "Rock it", went into feature freeze before the alpha version, the beta doesn't offer any major surprises; instead, the developers have focused on completing the more than 40 most important new features and on fixing bugs.

Today, the Fedora developers have also started the "Graphics Test Week" during which they invite users to test the open source graphics drivers used in Fedora 13 for compatibility and functional reliability; the tests can be run using Live images and don't require testers to install the Linux distribution. On Tuesday, testing is focused on NVIDIA's GeForce graphics hardware, Wednesday's focus wil be on Radeon GPUs by AMD/ATI and Thursday's focus will be on Intel graphics chips. As is customary during such test days, the distribution's developers are available on IRC channel #fedora-test-day on Freenode to answer questions and provide support.

See also:

(crve)