Fedora 9 Beta Images, Preview of New Distribution

Michael Larabel published on Phoronix a preview of Fedora 9 Beta with real system images. It’s one of those texts that make you want to install to see up close. I’ve always been more on the Debian and derivatives team, but Fedora has been surprising me with each release.

The material shows a more polished interface and a set of changes that give it the face of a new version, not just a package update. The foundations are up to date with kernel, GCC, glibc and X.Org updated. On desktop you can choose between the latest GNOME and KDE 4.x, which at that time was still finding its own way. There are also new features that change daily use, like PulseAudio for system audio, smarter NetworkManager for networks and PackageKit simplifying life when installing and updating software. In the security part, features like PolicyKit enter, adding to what Fedora already brings by default.

I like to look at Fedora as Red Hat’s living laboratory. A lot of things are born there and, if they make sense, continue maturing until they become standard in other distributions. For those who like to test what’s coming, it’s a full plate. For those who prefer instruction manual before everything, it makes sense to face it as a learning environment, not necessarily the main work distro.

Even without wanting to migrate now, it’s hard to ignore the pace of evolution. With each version the experience becomes more rounded and the feeling is that the project pushes the ecosystem forward.

If you want to see the images and read the complete analysis, worth visiting Phoronix: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=fedora9_beta&num=1