Fedora 10 Alpha Preview

Fedora 9 had shipped earlier this year with kernel-based mode-setting support, an early release of NetworkManager 0.7, PackageKit integration, install-time encryption support, initial EXT4 support, the Upstart daemon, and many other improvements. Now, however, it's time start getting excited over Fedora 10. The first Alpha release of Fedora 10 (codenamed Cambridge) was released this morning. In this article we have screenshots of Fedora 10 along with some of the features you can expect when this Linux operating system ships in October.

Fedora 10 has yet to receive its artwork overhaul, so for now it looks much like Fedora 9. Fedora 10 is tracking GNOME 2.24 and the KDE spin will ship with KDE 4.1. For those of you that have a work requirement to use Microsoft Exchange, Fedora 10 may make the process easier. Integrated in Fedora 10 will be a library from OpenChange that makes it possible for open-source utilities such as the KDE PIM (Personal Information Management) and Evolution to function as clients of a Microsoft Exchange Server. OpenChange is an open-source implementation of the Microsoft Exchange protocols. As a prerequisite to integrating OpenChange, Samba 4 will also ship with Fedora 10.

In Fedora 9 there were numerous network improvements when it came to using NetworkManager. A number of 3G/CDMA/mobile-broadband cards are now supported in Fedora "out of the box" using an early version of NetworkManager 0.7. When it comes to network connectivity with Fedora 10, connection-sharing improvements are planned. Red Hat hopes to make it easier to setup an ad-hoc wireless network in Fedora 10 with having a primary Internet connection and a WiFi card to serve the ad-hoc network. These ad-hoc networking improvements will come through NetworkManager and its applet. For more information on other NetworkManager improvements, check out NetworkManager 0.7 Nears Release.

PulseAudio, the sound server designed to compete with Apple's CoreAudio and a replacement for the Enlightened Sound Daemon, first shipped with Fedora 8. In Fedora 10 though they will be integrating a rewrite of the PulseAudio sound server that switches to using timer-based audio scheduling. This timer-based scheduling leads to less wake-ups and therefore reduced power consumption, dynamic latency adoption, and less hardware dependencies compared to an interrupt-driven scheduler. The switch to this new version of PulseAudio is mostly in place but they are still working out some ALSA issues.