The Fedora Project team announced on Monday the launch of the Fedora 19 "Schrödinger's Cat" beta. It includes creativity tools like Developer’s Assistant for pushing code to GitHub, OpenShift Origin which allows users to build their own Platform-as-a-Service on Fedora, and 3D Printing. It also includes the latest "Grizzly" release of OpenStack that enables the buildout of an IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) cloud platform.
"The Fedora Project team is excited to announce the beta release of its free, fully functional Linux operating system, Fedora 19," the team said. "Fedora continues to enable users to experience the latest in free and open source technology, integrated into a Linux distribution and ready for free download, use, modification and redistribution."
The new release also features the node.js runtime and npm package manager for developing new applications, and for running node.js applications on top of Fedora. It even packs updates to PHP (5.5), the recently released Ruby 2.0.0, and a tech preview of the upcoming OpenJDK8.
"Fedora 19 provides a variety of improvements to the management of the operating system, including the boot process, recovery from failures, migration of systems, and more," the team said. "Tools for diagnosis, monitoring, and logging enable you to be proactive, not reactive, leaving you with more time to spend doing the things you love to do."
Also provided in the beta is Virt Storage Migration which allows users to move a virtual machine and its associated, in-use storage without requiring shared storage between the hosts. Service settings can be modified on the fly without the need for a reboot thanks to Systemd Resource Control, and Checkpoint & Restore, which focuses on situations like recovering from process failures, or moving a process to another machine.
A full set of features in Fedora 19 beta can be found here.
"Software enthusiasts are encouraged to download the beta release of Fedora 19, take it for a test drive and help identify items that need attention before Fedora 19 is delivered for general availability," the team said. "With the beta release, the software is relatively stable, but real-world use and reports from users helps identify any lingering bugs so they can be addressed before it is more widely distributed."
To download the Fedora 19 beta, head here.