Home Deep Dive Fedora 26 Now Generally Available

Fedora 26 Now Generally Available

by CIO AXIS

Newest edition of the open source operating system brings containerized Kubernetes, DNF 2.0 and expanded support for application build systems.

The Fedora Project, a Red Hat, Inc., sponsored and community-driven open source collaboration, today announced the general availability of Fedora 26, the latest version of the fully-open source Fedora operating system. Fedora 26 provides a set of base packages that form the foundation for three distinct editions – Fedora 26 Atomic Host, Fedora 26 Server and Fedora 26 Workstation.

From Linux container advancements to paving the way for modular operating systems, the latest version of the Fedora operating system helps to advance the Fedora Project’s mission of bringing leading-edge innovation to our users.

Matthew Miller, Fedora Project Leader

The underlying packages powering these editions have seen numerous improvements, bug fixes and performance tweaks in Fedora 26 to provide an enhanced user experience across Fedora’s use cases. These package improvements include:

  • Updated compilers and languages, including GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) 7, Go 1.8, Python 3.6 and Ruby 2.4
  • DNF 2.0, the latest version of Fedora’s next-generation package management system with improved backwards compatibility with Yum
  • A new storage configuration screen for the Anaconda installation program, enabling “bottom-up” configuration from devices and partitions
  • Updates to Fedora Media Writer that enable users to create bootable SD cards with Fedora for ARM-based devices, like Raspberry Pi

Fedora 26 Atomic Host

As Linux containers and container orchestration engines expand in popularity, Fedora 26 Atomic Host offers a minimal footprint operating system tailored for running container-based workloads across environments, from bare metal to the cloud. Fedora 26 Atomic Host updates are planned to be delivered approximately every two weeks, to keep pace with upstream innovation.

Fedora 26 Atomic Host is available for Amazon EC2, and images for OpenStack, Vagrant, as well as standard installer ISO images are on GetFedora.org. A minimal Fedora Atomic container image is also debuting with Fedora 26. New capabilities and features in Fedora 26 Atomic Host include:

  • Containerized Kubernetes as an alternative to built-in Kubernetes binaries, enabling users to more easily run different versions of the container orchestration engine.
  • The latest version of rpm-ostree which includes support for direct RPM install, a reload command and a clean-up command.
  • System Containers, a way of installing system infrastructure software, like networking or Kubernetes, on Fedora Atomic Host in a container.
  • Updated versions of docker, atomic, and Cockpit for enhanced container building, system support and workload monitoring.

Fedora 26 Server

As with previous releases of Fedora, Fedora 26 Server provides a flexible, multi-role platform for datacenter operations, allowing users to customize this edition of the Fedora operating system to best fit their unique needs. New features for Fedora 26 Server include FreeIPA 4.5, which improves running the security information management solution in containers, and SSSD file caching to speed up the resolution of user and group queries.

Planned for availability later this month, Fedora 26 Server also sees a preview of Fedora’s Modularity technology delivered as “Boltron.” As a modular operating system, Boltron enables different versions of different applications to run on the same system, essentially allowing for leading-edge runtimes to be paired with stable databases.

Fedora 26 Workstation

The latest version of Fedora’s desktop-focused edition provides new tools and features for general users as well as developers. GNOME 3.24 is offered with Fedora 26 Workstation, which includes a host of updated functionality including Night Light, an application that subtly changes screen color based on time of day to reduce effect on sleep patterns, and LibreOffice 5.3, the latest update to the popular open source office productivity suite. For developers, GNOME 3.24 provides matured versions of Builder and Flatpak to make application development for a variety of systems, including Rust and Meson, easier across the board.

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