Fedora 17's alpha release arrives less /bin/ and /lib/

The Fedora Project has released an alpha version of Fedora 17; which is planned to be released at the beginning of May. It already contains the essential improvements that the developers wanted to implement. These include "Usrmove", the widely reported plan to adapt the file system structure and move all applications and libraries under the /usr/ directory. This allows for the elimination of obsolete directories such as /lib/, /lib64/, /bin/ and /sbin/, which can be replaced by symbolic links that point to the appropriate directories under /usr/.

The Fedora 17 Alpha uses version 4.8 of KDE Plasma workspaces and a beta version of GNOME 3.4, planned for release by the end of March. Meanwhile, GNOME Shell in the alpha is able to work with systems whose graphic drivers do not offer 3D acceleration, such as those virtualised in KVM guests. Other software featured in the alpha include a pre-release version of the Linux Kernel 3.3 and Gimp 2.8.

Ext4 is used as the standard and default filesystem, because, as before with the development of Fedora 16, the developers have decided to defer the switch to Btrfs to a later version of Fedora. In early April, there should be a beta version of Fedora 17, which, like the alpha, will be distributed across the numerous mirrors of the project. All the major innovations of this release, named "Beefy Miracle", should be fully implement by then. On 24 April, a release candidate will be created, though this will have a more limited availability compared to the alpha and beta releases. If no problems show up at that point – something that is anything but rare with the Fedora project – then Fedora 17 should appear on 8 May.

(djwm)