The Fedora 23 Alpha is here, right on schedule for our planned October final release. Download the prerelease from our Get Fedora site:

What is the Alpha release?

The Alpha release contains all the exciting features of Fedora 23’s editions 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 23 is expected in October.

We need your help to make Fedora 23 the best release yet, so please take some 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 rock-solid. We have a culture of coordinating new features and pushing fixes upstream as much as feasible, and your feedback will help improve not only Fedora but Linux and free software on the whole.

Fedora-Wide Changes

Fedora 23 includes a number of changes that will improve all of the editions. For example, Fedora 23 is making use of compiler flags to help improve security by “hardening” the binaries against memory corruption vulnerabilities, buffer overflows, and so on. This is a “behind the scenes” change that most users won’t notice through normal use of a Fedora edition, but should help provide additional system security.

Likewise, Fedora 23 has disabled SSL3 and RC4 by default due to known vulnerabilities in the protocols. This means all applications that use GNUTLS and OpenSSL libraries have had the SSL3 protocol and RC4 cipher disabled.

Fedora 23 Alpha also includes support for Unicode 8.0, which includes new emojis, and improvements in sorting Unicode text and processing non-ASCII URLs.

Other Notable Changes in the Alpha

While there’s a lot going on under the hood, desktop users are also going to find Fedora 23 Alpha pretty exciting for all the obvious goodness coming to the desktop. The easiest way to experience the preview of these technologies is to download and try the Fedora 23 Alpha Workstation edition.

Naturally, GNOME is getting an upgrade, with Fedora 23 containing a preview of the upcoming GNOME 3.18 release, which is easier to use than ever. There are also many enhancements on the way, such as improvements to Wayland toward making it the default graphical server in a future release; support for ambient backlight drivers for a more responsive display on laptops; and changes to the Software application so it can update system firmware, and be smarter about metered Internet connections.

Users that are trying to get a little work done on Fedora will be happy to see LibreOffice 5 in Fedora 23, which includes a lot of new features and improvements: style previews in the sidebar, Word-compatible text highlighting, built-in image crop, UI for data bars in Calc, support for Time-Stamp Protocol in PDF export, support for Adobe Swatch Exchange color palettes, import of Apple Pages files, improved support for HiDPI screens, and significantly improved support for MS Office formats.

Spins

Fedora “spins” are desktops or package sets for Fedora that provide a different experience than the standard Fedora Workstation edition. For instance, the Fedora KDE and Fedora Xfce spins provide popular alternatives to GNOME for Fedora users who enjoy the KDE or Xfce experience.

There’s a new spin in town for Fedora 23. Want a classic take on a modern desktop? If so, the Cinnamon spin may just be what you’re hoping to find. Fedora 23 includes a spin that tries to emulate the GNOME 2 experience using GNOME 3 shell. Learn more here.

Issues and Details

This is an Alpha release. As such, we expect that you may encounter bugs or missing features. To report issues encountered during testing, contact the Fedora QA team via the mailing list or in #fedora-qa on freenode.

As testing progresses, common issues are tracked on the Common F23 Bugs page.

For tips on reporting a bug effectively, read “how to file a bug report.”

Release Schedule

The full release schedule is available on the Fedora wiki. The current schedule calls for a beta release towards the end of September, and the final release scheduled towards the end of October.

These dates are subject to change, pending any major bugs or issues found during the development process.