Fedora 7

From: Bill Nottingham <notting redhat com>

To: fedora-devel-list redhat com

Subject: Fedora 7

Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2007 14:50:32 -0500

It's time to bite the bullet. There will be no more releases of Fedora Core or Fedora Extras. Wait! Where are you going? Come back! I'm serious. We've talked all along about how there should be no differences in how packages are treated whether they are in Core, or they are in Extras; no differences depending on who maintains the package. The best solution to this? Eliminate the distinction between Core and Extras entirely. Starting with Fedora 7, there is no more Core, and no more Extras; there is only Fedora. One single repository, built in the community on open source tools, assembled into whatever spins the Fedora community desires. Are we there yet right now? No. There's a lot of work to be done, and we're looking for help. What's left of the Core Steering Committee is going to work with the Fedora Board and FESCO to figure out just how this new combined repository is going to be governed and managed. In the meantime, just because we're not going to have a release of Core or Extras doesn't mean we're not going to have a release. Hence, Fedora 7. Name TBD, but probably not 'Bride of Zod'. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/7 The current schedule is: 23 January 2007 | F7 Test1 development freeze 30 January 2007 | F7 Test1 Release 20 February 2007 | F7 FEATURE Freeze | F7 string freeze | F7 Test2 development freeze 27 February 2007 | F7 Test2 release 19 March 2007 | F7 translation freeze | F7 Test3 development freeze 26 March 2007 | F7 Test3 release ... Continual freeze. Only critical bugs fixed ... 5 April 2007 | Final devel freeze. 26 April 2007 | F7 General Availability And, what would a release be without features. We've identified 28 features that we'd like to include in the release, available at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/7/Features: - Modify the build system to support this new paradigm - Merge Core and Extras in source control - Use the new pungi tool to spin all releases - A Fedora Desktop spin - A Fedora Server spin - A Fedora KDE spin - Make LiveCDs as a part of the distribution release process - Ability to customize non-packaging distrubution parameters - Switch to libata drivers for PATA support - Speedup of bootup and shutdown - Make wireless rock-solid - Add wireless firmware for all the chipsets we can - CodecBuddy - Fixing the proliferation of dictionary packages - Support encrypted filesystems - Fast user switching in the desktop - Fix the firewire stack - Switch to a tickless kernel by default - Fix unnecessary wakeups across the distribution - Add KVM virtualization support to our tools - Investigate (but probably don't switch to) new init technologies - Add the nouveau drivers for nVidia cards - Speed up Yum and RPM - Add support for RandR 1.2 - Switch to syslog-ng - Make the update system useable by all More information on each of these features is available on the wiki, including responsible people and plans. If you'd like to chip in on these features, please, do! If you've got new features you'd like to add, and you are willing to do the work, or have the ability to get others to do the work for you, we can add them too. Note that Test2 is the feature freeze. Here's to making Fedora 7 the best release yet! Bill