Fedora 10 Cambridge Beta

It is coming out a bit late, but the beta release for the upcoming Fedora 10 release (codenamed Cambridge) is now available. It has been almost two months since the last test release and a lot of work has been accomplished when it comes to the new and exciting innovations found within this Red Hat distribution.

Some of the features include improved web-camera support, Internet connection sharing through NetworkManager, rebasing the Eclipse IDE to version 3.4, adding new UEFI functionality to Fedora, switching to evdev as the default input driver for X.Org, improved printer handling, a first aid kit for providing some automatic recovery tools if certain system problems occur, timer-based audio scheduling with PulseAudio, and automated GStreamer codec installation through third-party repositories.

Tools for building virtual appliances have also been a focus for Fedora 10. This consists of an ACT (Appliance Creation Tool) and an AOS (Appliance operating System). The creation tool uses the LiveCD creator API and a Red Hat Kickstart file for creating the virtual appliance OS and then Xen, KVM, or VMware for running the OS. The Appliance Operating System is a stripped down version of Fedora with a smaller footprint designed to run virtually through KVM or VMware. This operating system is similar to Ubuntu's JeOS, or Just Enough Operating System.

When it comes to artwork, the Echo Icon Theme is being the default icon set for Fedora 10. Some of the other packages for Fedora 10 include GNOME 2.24, RPM has been updated to version 4.6, and the latest Linux 2.6.27 kernel. Extensive work has also gone on with Plymouth, which is the Red Hat Graphical Boot (RHGB) replacement. Fedora 10 Beta has been upgraded to X.Org 7.4 / X Server 1.5 along with greater focus on Kernel-based Mode-Setting. Tomorrow a separate article will be published on this kernel graphics feature in Fedora 10.

The release announcement for Fedora 10 Beta can be read on the Red Hat mailing list.