Fedora 17 Released With Its Quirky Announcement

As expected, Fedora 17 was officially released today.

The new features to Fedora 17, which is codenamed the Beefy Miracle, were outlined in this Phoronix posting from earlier today. Below is the official release announcement, which carried the subject line "Announcing Fedora 17. Relish it."

"At the heat of a thousand hot dog cookers, the seventeenth release of Fedora shall be forged by contributors the world over, and it will be known as: Beefy Miracle. The mustard shall indicate progress.

For six months, participants in the Fedora Project shall freely contribute to the release of the distribution, in the spirit of the Four Foundations -- Freedom, Friends, Features, and First -- and moreover, they shall relish in Fun, as a community without Fun would be like a day without sunshine.

Upon release, a free and open source operating system shall be available to all, catering to a variety of tastes -- those of end-users, systems administrators, and developers, with a common thread that binds them all: No, not their love for hot dogs, silly, as we certainly know that Fedora shall be created and used by those whose dietary preference could be either Beefy or Leafy. Freedom, my friends, Freedom is the Great Condiment, which shall enable all users of the Beefy Miracle to Create, Share, and Do."

-- The Book of Sauerkraut, Chapter 12, Verse 529

The Beefy Miracle hath arrived. Behold, for it is available to download now:
http://fedoraproject.org/get-fedora

And lo, detailed information about this release can be seen in the release notes:
http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/17/html/Release_Notes/

== Condiments ==

Frankly, we believe this is the beefiest release ever -- chock full of condiments, more commonly known as Features, to customize your experience to your tastes. We take pride in our toppings, and in our fine ingredients; Fedora 17 includes both over- and under-the-bun improvements that show off the power and flexibility of the advancing state of free (range) software.

On the desktop: GNOME 3.4 introduces many user experience improvements, including new search capabilities in the activities overview, improved themes, and enhancements to the Documents and Contacts applications. A new application, GNOME-boxes, provides easy access to virtual machines. Additionally, GIMP 2.8, the newest version of the GNU Image Manipulation Program, brings new improvements, such as single-window mode, layer groups, and on-canvas editing.

For developers: You never sausage a great array of development tools! Fedora 17 includes a pre-release of Juno, the release of the Eclipse SDK expected in June 2012. Java 7 (and OpenJDK 7) is the default Java runtime and Java build toolset, and GCC 4.7.x is now the primary compiler in Fedora. Other language refreshes include shipping Ruby 1.9.3, the latest stable version of the Ruby language; PHP 5.4, the latest PHP stack; an update of Erlang to the R15 release; and the D language has been updated to the 2.058 release.

Under the hood, and in the cloud: Serving up hot dogs all day long? Increase your reliability and versatility with the new enhancements to the clustering stack in Fedora 17. Load balancing and high availability improvements have been made, allowing systems administrators to deploy Fedora in environments requiring greater availability and clustered file systems. JBoss Application Server (AS) 7 has also been added to Fedora 17; this fast, lightweight, and modular application server allows you to run full Java EE applications. oVirt, a server virtualization management system with advanced capabilities for hosts and guests, is also included. The automatic multi-seat feature enables multiple, concurrent end-users to utilize a desktop from a single machine, which any systems administrator can relish. And we couldn't possibly write this without talking about our foray into Hot Dogs as a Service (HDaaS)... oh, just kidding, we just had to make a cloudy joke. In all seriousness, though, OpenStack, a collection of services that can be used to set up and run cloud compute and storage infrastructure, has been updated to the latest release, 2012.1 (Essex), in Fedora 17.

Ketchup with the full list of features for Fedora 17 here:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/17/FeatureList

=== Download and Upgrade ===

Fedora 17: It's bun-believable. Get it now: http://get.fedoraproject.org

If you are upgrading from a previous release of Fedora, refer to:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Upgrading

Fedora 17 full release notes and guides for several languages are available at:

http://docs.fedoraproject.org/

Fedora 17 common bugs are documented at: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F17_bugs

=== Fedora Spins ===

Fedora spins are alternate version of Fedora, tailored for various types of users via hand-picked application set or customizations. They can be found at:

http://spins.fedoraproject.org

== Contributing ==

There are many ways to contribute beyond bug reporting. You can help translate software and content, test and give feedback on software updates, write and edit documentation, design and do artwork, help with all sorts of promotional activities, and package free software for use by millions of Fedora users worldwide. To get started, visit http://join.fedoraproject.org today!

== Behold, the history of His Meatiness ==

Who is this Beefy Miracle character? Ketchup on his history:

http://beefymiracle.org/history.html

== Contact information ==

Journalists and reporters can find additional information at:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Press

Cheers, and enjoy.

-Robyn

Eat it up here.