Fedora 28 Beta now available

We’re pleased to announce that Fedora 28, the latest version of the Fedora operating system, is now available in beta. The Fedora Project is a global community that works together to help the advancement of free and open source software, culminating in the innovative Fedora operating system designed  to answer end user needs across the computing spectrum. As part of the community’s mission, the project delivers separate editions (Fedora Server, Fedora Atomic Host, and Fedora Workstation), each one a free, Linux-based system tailored to meet specific use cases.

A common set of base packages forms the core foundation of each Fedora edition, and as with new versions of the Fedora operating system, Fedora 28 Beta includes a host of minor bug fixes and tweaks to these packages. The changes to Fedora 28 Beta’s base packages are highlighted by the addition of glibc 2.27, the latest version of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) 8, and updates to many open source languages, including Golang 1.10 and Ruby 2.5.

All Fedora 28 Beta editions have also seen improvements to Virtualbox guest support, designed to simplify the user experience in running Fedora 28 Beta as a Virtualbox guest on other operating systems. This required an extensive amount of community work to implement these changes, but with these updates it is now a smoother experience to use Fedora as a guest operating system via Virtualbox.

Fedora 28 Server Beta
Many of the biggest changes in Fedora 28 Beta impact the Fedora Server edition, especially with the formal addition of the Modularity initiative. Available as an add-on to Fedora 28 Server Beta, Modularity helps make it easier to include alternative versions of software and updates than those shipped with the default release. This is an important component for programming stacks and database instances, giving administrators more choices in what software versions they are able to deploy and support.

Additionally, Fedora 28 Server Beta now includes support for AArch64 as a primary architecture, providing an additional operating system option for systems administrators looking to use emerging hardware technologies.

Fedora 28 Atomic Host Beta
Fedora Atomic Host continues to be designed to provide a minimal footprint operating platform, making it a well-suited option for running containerized workloads across various footprints, including the public cloud. Available on a two-week refresh schedule, Fedora Atomic Host includes a base image for creating virtual machines, an Atomic Host image for creating container deployment hosts, and base container images to leverage as a starting point for Fedora-based containerized applications. New for Fedora 28 Atomic Host Beta is the inclusion of Kubernetes 1.9, which brings along a host of new innovative features for orchestrating container-native workloads.

Fedora 28 Workstation Beta
The latest beta edition of Fedora Workstation continues to be designed to provide a smooth experience for general-purpose users as well as developers. Fedora 28 Workstation Beta further refines the desktop experience with the inclusion of GNOME 3.28, which adds the capability to favorite files, folders, and contacts for easier organization and access. Additional enhancements include Thunderbolt 3 connection support, active-by-default power saving features to improve laptop battery life, and more.

You can take Fedora 28 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 28. Common issues can be found on the Fedora 28 common bugs page (please read this on how to effectively report bugs).

If you are interested in becoming more 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.