Other Features Coming Up For Fedora 16

Yesterday we shared that Fedora 16 may use the Btrfs file-system by default on new installations. Beyond switching from EXT4 to Btrfs, there are also many other changes planned for this next release of the Red Hat sponsored Linux distribution.

Development on Fedora 16 has only just begun with Fedora 15 having not been released for even a month yet. So far the officially accepted Fedora 16 features include:

- Finish removing HAL (the Hardware Abstraction Layer) since it's been deprecated for a while and completely replaced by UDisks, UPower, libudev, etc.
- Integrating Cloudstack for Fedora cloud computing.
- Using Aeolus Conductor as a web user-interface for creating and managing cloud instances.
- Integrating Blender 2.5, the latest major release of this open-source 3D creation tool.
- Update Glasgow Haskell Compiler / Haskell Platform.
- Integrate Sheepdog into Fedora. Sheepdog is a simple, distributed object-based storage system for KVM/QEMU. "This will provide relatively simple, object based storage, that is distributed and replicated, hopefully with a consummate increase in performance based on node count."
- Finish porting sysVinit scripts to SystemD UInit files.

Obviously more features will come, but this is just the start. The list of official F16 features can be found on the Fedora Project Wiki. Not yet appearing on the list but approved for F16 at this week's FESCo meeting (the meeting minutes) in addition to the Btrfs default were:

- A pvops-based kernel to serve as Dom0 for a Xen-based virtualization system. Fedora 8 and newer already supports the Xen hypervisor and tools, but not a Dom0-capable kernel. With the Linux 3.0 kernel, there is now full support for Xen.
- Including ADA language development tools in Fedora.
- CloudFS: A cloud-ready version of GlusterFS.
- Removing ConsoleKit and providing automatic multi-seat support, plus other related changes. [This feature was deferred to the next FESCo meeting.]

With Fedora 16 there will also be many package updates, including the Linux 3.0/3.1 kernel, X.Org Server 1.11, Mesa 7.12-devel, GNOME 3.2, and KDE SC 4.7.

Fedora 16 is codenamed Verne and right now has a final release date set for the 25th of October. The alpha development release is planned for mid-August and the beta coming in late September.