Red Hat’s Fedora community Linux distribution is out today with its first beta for the Fedora 11 –codenamed Leonidas – release. At the top of the feature list for this new distro is something that all users will notice, namely faster boot times — specifically a claim for a 20 second startup. Faster startup is a key goal for Linux distros this release season, Ubuntu Jaunty which should be out at the end of April, also features a faster startup.
Fedora is also aiming to have the new ext4 Linux filesystem as the default for new Fedora 11 installations, which will not only aid boot times but performance of the distro overall. Fedora 11 could well be the first mainstream Linux distro to include ext4 as its default filesystem with this release — Ubuntu Jaunty does include ext4 but it is not the default at this point (ext3 is).
Typically Fedora is a distro that isn’t too concerned about Microsoft Windows, but Fedora 11 does include at least one key Windows development feature called the Windows Cross-compiler. According to Fedora’s project description Windows Cross-compiler will enable users to, “build and test full-featured Windows programs, from the comfort of the Fedora system, without needing to use Windows.”
The final Fedora 11 release is currently scheduled to be released by Red Hat at the end of May.
