We're pleased to announce that Fedora 24, the latest version of the Fedora operating system, is now available in beta. The Fedora Project is a global community that works together to lead the advancement of free and open source software. As part of the community’s mission the project delivers three editions, each one a free, Linux-based operating system tailored to meet specific use cases: Fedora 24 Cloud Beta, Fedora 24 Server Beta, and Fedora 24 Workstation Beta.

Each edition is built from a common set of base packages, which form the core foundation of Fedora 24 Beta. In addition to minor bug fixes and package tweaks, Fedora 24 Beta’s foundational packages include glibc 2.23 for better performance and improvements to POSIX compliance (and backwards compatibility to Fedora 23) and GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) 6. All base packages have been rebuilt with GCC 6, providing better code optimization across all Fedora 24 Beta editions.

Fedora 24 Cloud Beta
The beta of Fedora 24 Cloud shows Fedora’s continued work in creating a powerful, community-driven platform for container development. To help meet this goal, we are now packaging OpenShift Origin for Fedora - a Kubernetes distribution optimized for application development and deployment - which provides additional container development capabilities and a smoother operator experience.

Today also marks the first availability of Fedora 24 as the foundation for Fedora Atomic Host, which we continue to release on a two week schedule based on the latest Fedora operating system build. Fedora Atomic Host includes package enhancements and bug fixes, but also includes a new “developer mode” - when run, the host is downloaded and automatically starts Cockpit along with a tmux session, making it easier to work via the developer console and obtain key information for the session, including the IP address and root password.

Fedora 24 Server Beta
Fedora 24 Server Beta continues to refine and enhance the flexibility it provides via task-specific roles, provided by rolekit. To this end, FreeIPA 4.3 is included in Fedora 24 Server Beta, enhancing the Domain Controller role by helping to streamline replica installation, segment creation and replica topology visualization. Additionally, we’ve made the overall footprint of Fedora Server smaller by removing unneeded packages.

Fedora 24 Workstation Beta
In addition to package and component tweaks for quality-of-life enhancements, Fedora 24 Workstation Beta features a preview of GNOME 3.20, the latest iteration of the GNOME 3 desktop environment. Additionally, Wayland, a next-generation display server protocol, remains available as a preview with significant enhancements and changes, with the intention to fully implement it as the default graphics server (replacing X) for future versions of Fedora.

You can take Fedora 24 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 can help us improve Fedora 24. Common issues can be found on the Fedora 24 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.


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