Fedora 16 to have Grub2, GNOME 3.2 and KDE 4.7

The range of features in Fedora 16, which is scheduled to be released at the end of October, is becoming clearer now that the deadline for submitting new features has passed. Late submissions are accepted on rare occasions, but the "feature freeze" is planned for next Tuesday – by then, all major advancements on the Linux distribution's feature list are planned to be largely complete and ready for testing. The first and only alpha version is to be released three weeks later – on 16 August.

The feature list contains 40 items, including GNOME 3.2 and KDE Plasma Workspaces 4.7. The developers are planning to switch to using Grub2 for the boot loader. Having switched to systemd, as an alternative to sysvinit and upstart, in Fedora 15, the project plans to replace further sysv init scripts with systemd units in version 16. Furthermore, Fedora is to offer everything that's required for Xen virtualisation, as version 3.0 of the Linux kernel, which is now expected to be released on Friday, will include all the necessary components.

However, the Fedora project may well discard some of the features, or postpone their inclusion until Fedora 17, if they prove to be not mature enough. This could potentially happen with the planned use of Btrfs as the distribution's standard file system, which the Fedora project had decided on in early June. One of the stipulated criteria for switching from Ext4 to Btrfs was the availability of a decent program for checking and repairing Btrfs file systems – such a program was expected to become available in May, but has yet to be released.

(ehe)