The first Fedora 12 beta is now available and at first glance it sure looks to me like it’s jammed pack full of interesting and innovative new features.
Speed is a key issue for all Linux distros, and Fedora is taking an interesting approach by compiling all of its software for i686 with ‘special’ optimization for Intel Atom. What that means is instead of the typical generic x86 compilation, all apps could potentially run faster. Fedora now does have a specific netbook Moblin graphical interface and a Fedora 12 Moblin Fedora Remix too — who said Fedora (or Red Hat) wasn’t interested in netbooks or the Linux desktop?
There is also an enhanced NetworkManager for network configuration, Bluetooth improvements as well as improved IPv6 support.
On the video side, Fedora 12 includes Theora 1.1 for improved video quality, as well as some preliminary support for the latest Radeon HD and NVIDIA graphics cards.
Virtualization which is a key focus for Red Hat overall gets a boost in Fedora 12 with the libguesfs library and the guestfish interactive tool for modifying guest images for virtual machines.
That’s just the short list from my perspective, but if you look at the full feature list, there a lot of features in this release.
