Fedora 15 ‘Lovelock’ Released; Brings GNOME 3.0 to the Masses

Fedora, the Linux distribution that prides itself on being 100% free (as in freedom), has just seen the release of its 15th major version, codenamed “Lovelock”. For regular users of the distro, there’s a lot of change to take in, and for those tempted to take Fedora for a test drive, there’s a lot of good reason to. The best one could be GNOME 3, and with it, Fedora 15 becomes the first distro to have a stable release featuring it.

We tackled GNOME 3 to some degree when it was first released, so there’s no need to rehash what’s been said before. But it is important to stress that if you wish to take GNOME 3 for a serious test drive, Fedora 15 is the best option, as it has been designed around it, rather than have it just slapped in.

Fedora’s developers are hoping to make the Btrfs file system the default choice in version 16 (due in October), but for those unwilling to wait, or simply like living on the bleeding-edge, a “preview” has been included in the installer here. It is stressed, however, that Btrfs in its current form shouldn’t be used on a production machine, although given that the developers aim to make it default six months from now, it’d be safe to say that it must be quite stable. Still, “backup, backup, backup!”.

To help Indo-Aryan language typers improve the speed in which words can be typed, Fedora 15 introduces the Indic Typing Booster. Acting as a predictor, words can be completed with less keystrokes, and because it supports both phonetic and InScript layouts, many users should be able to benefit from this feature.

For improved crash-reporting, “ABRT” is brought in. This tool has the ability to remotely analyze crash debugging code, which will both improve the report and lessen the requirement on behalf of the user. This is a great thing as installing different debugging tools in order to submit what should be a simple report is sometimes so tedious it may not even feel worth it.

Other features packed into Fedora 15 include a redesigned SELinux trouble-shooter, higher compression of CD images (thanks to the xz compressor), improved power management, the switch to LibreOffice from OpenOffice, an upgrade to Mozilla’s Firefox 4.0 Web browser, and for those not interested in GNOME 3.0, KDE 4.6 and Xfce 4.8.

For developers and sysadmins, there is a lot more to talk about, but for the sake of time and space, I’ll provide a couple of links. For the official press release, you can look here, and for the release notes, look here.

The last time I took a serious look at Fedora (as in, for more than just a quick glance), was with Fedora [Core] 5, so I’m a bit overdue for another look. If time permits, I might take the plunge and install 15 and use it for a week or so to see how things have changed since the last time I used it. If I do, you can expect an in-depth look to be posted at some point, such as I did with Ubuntu 11.04 and openSUSE 11.3.