The Fedora Project is pleased to announce the release of the fourth and final test release of Fedora 7! Test 4 is for beta users. This is the time when we MUST have full community participation. Without this participation both hardware and software functionality suffers. We need your help. Join us! Road Map And Release Schedule ============================= This is the final test release before the final Fedora 7 release, which is scheduled for May 24, 2007. For further information see http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/7/ How to get it: ============= DVD and network installation are available. We also offer three different varieties of installable Live media - see "Live CD", below. http://torrent.fedoraproject.org/ The recommended method of download is via BitTorrent from this site. http://fedora.redhat.com/Download/mirrors.html HTTP, FTP, and RSYNC downloads are available from Fedora Project mirrors listed above. Note that not all mirrors may be synced at this time. For those of you already running a pre-release version of Fedora 7, all you need to do to upgrade to Test 4 is update your packages. Release Notes: ============= Testing focus * Users of e1000 (Intel gigabit ethernet) devices should be on the lookout for device lockups, although we believe this is fixed. * The new wireless stack is working well but still needs testing. In particular, iwlwifi (Intel 3945) has been troublesome in the past but should be much better in this release. * Upgrades from Fedora Core 6 (or older) should be tested, but please be careful - this is still a test release and we can't guarantee everything will work as expected. Important Warnings about the Test Release * The 2.6.21 kernel uses new IDE drivers which use the same 'libata' subsystem as the SATA drivers. As a side-effect, IDE devices previously named /dev/hdX will now be named /dev/sdX. This may cause problems with anything that mentions devices by name instead of by filesystem label. Anaconda should be able to detect most of these problems and help you fix them. General * In previous test releases the default product was called "Prime", but after feedback from Marketing and the community it has been renamed simply "Fedora". * Fedora 7 Test 4's primary product is a Desktop/Development Workstation/Server distribution which closely matches the contents of previous Fedora Core releases. Live CD * This test release includes three Live images: an i386 Desktop Live CD, an x86_64 Desktop Live DVD, and an i386 KDE Live CD. These Live CDs can be installed to disk using the graphical Anaconda installer. Desktop * This test release features GNOME 2.18. * The new Echo icon theme is no longer the default, although it is still available from the repositories. * KDE and Xfce, among several other packages, are included in the development repositories, but not on the media. They can be installed using the appropriate software management tools. * Fast User Switching is now available via the fast-user-switch-applet. See http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/FeatureFastUserSwitching for more details. * The internet messaging program called "Gaim" is now known as "Pidgin". See http://pidgin.im/ for more info. Performance * System performance is generally slower in the test releases as compared to the general release since we enable several options that help with debugging. * Yum / rpm performance should be better in this release than previous Fedora 7 test releases. System Level Changes * Amanda Users who upgrade from older releases need to read the amanda.conf and amanda-client.conf man pages to learn about the the new syntax for calling amandad, as well as edit the /etc/xinetd.d/amanda configuration file to follow the new syntax. * This release includes a kernel based on 2.6.21-rc7. Current release information is tracked on the kernel release notes page: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Beats/Kernel Bug reporting and tracking: ========================== The Release Engineering and QA teams keep track of bugs that are considered release blockers. You can see that list here: http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/showdependencytree.cgi?id=FC7Blocker In addition, a list of non-blocker bugs that should be fixed for Fedora 7 if possible can be found here: http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/showdependencytree.cgi?id=FC7Target Please check these lists before reporting new bugs! Bugs for this release should be reported against the Fedora Core product, version 'devel'. You can use this convenient link to report bugs: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/enter_bug.cgi?product=Fedora% 20Core&version=devel About Fedora ============ Fedora is a set of projects sponsored by Red Hat and guided by the contributors. These projects are developed by a large community of people who strive to provide and maintain the very best in free, open source software and standards. The central Fedora project is an operating system and platform based on Linux that is always free for anyone to use, modify, and distribute, now and forever. You can help the Fedora Project community continue to improve Fedora if you file bug reports and enhancement requests. Refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugsAndFeatureRequests for more information. Thank you for your participation! To find out more general information about Fedora, refer to the following Web pages: * Fedora Overview (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Overview) * Fedora FAQ (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FAQ) * Help and Support (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate) * Participate in the Fedora Project (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/HelpWanted)