Fedora Project Unleashes Schrödinger’s Cat
Fedora 19 features better developer tools and more GUI options, and switches from MySQL to MariaDB
The Fedora Project has launched the 19th version of its Linux distribution, codenamed “Schrödinger’s Cat”. The latest Fedora release includes new cloud and virtualisation features, extended 3D printing support and greater focus on development.
It was released almost on schedule, unlike Fedora 18, which was delayed seven times.
Just as expected, the distribution abandons MySQL in favour of MariaDB as the default option – something Red Hat previously announced for its Enterprise Linux 7.
“In this release, the Fedora Project community has absolutely demonstrated that agility matters,” said Robyn Bergeron, leader of the Fedora Project.
Wanted dead and alive
Fedora is a free and open source Linux-based operating system developed by the Fedora Project and owned by Red Hat. It is famous for its intense development cycle – if everything goes according to plan, a new Fedora release appears every six months, and is supported for 13 months only.
Among the most interesting features introduced in Fedora 19 is the Developer’s Assistant, which provides language-specific templates, samples, and toolchains for various code projects. It can even publish projects directly to GitHub. The release also features updates to PHP, Ruby and other language stacks.
The OS adds popular Javascript-based ‘node.js’ runtime and the accompanying npm package manager, useful for development of scalable network applications or real-time applications across distributed devices.
It also includes access to OpenShift Origin, Red Hat’s PaaS infrastructure where application developers and teams can build, test, deploy and run their applications.
Schrödinger’s Cat features a number of new OS management tools. It allows virtual machine storage migration without the need for shared storage between hosts, adds checkpoint and restore capabilities for processes – useful for issues like process failure, and supports the latest release of OpenStack, codenamed “Grizzly”, including the Heat and Ceilometer projects.
“Fedora 19 includes tools for diagnosis, monitoring and logging that enable users to be proactive, not reactive, leaving them with more time to spend doing the things they love to do,” read a statement from the Fedora Project.
Additionally, Fedora users can now make calls utilising a ‘user@domain’ address with the same convenience as email.
As for GUI, Fedora 19 offers GNOME 3.8 by default, but there’s also ‘GNOME Classic’ which is similar to GMOME 2, KDE Plasma Workspaces 4.10 and the all-new MATE 1.6 desktop environment.
The software is available for free on the Fedora Project website. For a complete list of improvements, check out the release announcement.
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