Fedora 23 Beta Now Available

We're pleased to announce that Fedora 23, the latest version of the Fedora operating system, is now available in beta. A free, Linux-based operating system developed and maintained by the Fedora Project's global community, Fedora 23 Beta continues Fedora's mission to serve as a leading-edge open source operating system across all use cases through the delivery of three distinct editions: Fedora 23 Cloud Beta, Fedora 23 Server Beta and Fedora 23 Workstation Beta.

As with other Fedora releases under the Fedora.next initiative, all of the Fedora 23 Beta editions are built from a base set of packages that include the Linux kernel, RPM, systemd and Anaconda, as well as the updated package manager “DNF.” While many updates and enhancements have been made to these base packages, one of the most significant updates is the use of compiler flags to help improve security by “hardening” Fedora 23 Beta binaries against memory corruption vulnerabilities, buffer overflows and other similar issues. While not overt changes, these, and many other under the hood tweaks, will help to provide additional system security.

Fedora 23 Server Beta
The changes to Fedora 23 Server Beta start with a new role through the rolekit service in the form of a cache server for web applications with the underlying functionality delivered by memcached. This adds to the two previously supported roles, domain controller (powered by FreeIPA) and database server (via PostgreSQL), which were introduced in previous Fedora Server relases. Additionally, rolekit can now be used from the anaconda kickstart to determine what function the server will utilize with the next system boot.

Numerous updates are also provided in the realm of system management and administration, particularly with Cockpit. Some of the key changes to Cockpit include:

• A basic cluster dashboard for Kubernetes
• Support for SSH key authentication and support for configuring user accounts with their authorized keys
• Compatibility with multipath disks

Fedora 23 Workstation Beta
Desktop users of Fedora 23 Workstation Beta will be pleased to see many new enhancements coming their way, with the biggest of these being a preview of GNOME 3.18. Changes are also included to the Software application, allowing it to update system firmware, and desktop users will also now have access to LibreOffice 5, the latest edition of the powerful, open source office suite. Additionally, improvements are included for Wayland with an aim towards making it the default graphical server in future releases.

Fedora 23 Cloud Beta
Fedora 23 Cloud Beta has undergone substantial package updates and enhancements to the underlying base Fedora infrastructure, but no substantial new or tweak features are delivered in this release. Stay tuned, however, for news about Fedora 23 Atomic Host in the not too distant future!

You can take Fedora 23 Beta for a spin yourself at https://getfedora.org.

As always, the Fedora Project team wants to hear from you – let us know about any bugs or problems that you encounter, as your feedback will only help us improve Fedora 23. Common issues can be found on the Fedora 23 common bugs page (please read this on how to effectively report bugs).

If you are interested in being more deeply involved with Fedora, we want you on our team! You can contribute to the Fedora Project in many ways other than bug reporting – the Fedora Project is always looking for translators, testers, content creators, marketers, designers and so much more. Whatever your skill set, we would love to have you involved – find out more at http://whatcanidoforfedora.org/.

The Fedora Project is a Red Hat-sponsored community project. For more information about Fedora, please visit the Fedora Project homepage.