الْحَمْدُ لِلَّه, Fedora 16 has been released!  You can read the full release notes or just go straight to the torrents for downloading.  See the release announcement after the fold…

The Fedora Project is pleased to announce the release of Fedora 16 (“Verne”). For detailed information, see the release notes:

http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/16/html/Release_Notes/

Fedora is a leading-edge, free and open source operating system that continues to deliver innovative features to many users, with a new release about every six months. Fedora 16 brings exciting new features for desktop users, for system administrators, and for developers. Highlights of these features can be found below. If the mere mention of Fedora 16 is all you need, download options can be found at:

http://fedoraproject.org/get-fedora

Dedication

During the preparation of Fedora 16, the computing world lost one of its great contributors: Dennis Ritchie. Ritchie co-invented Unix and the C language. He also co-authored The C Programming Language, a book that taught many programmers just at the time personal computing was exploding. Without Ritchie computing would be nothing like it is today.

A humble man, not well-known outside his field, Dennis will always be remembered by those of us who practice the craft. Thank you, Dennis.

What’s New in Fedora 16?

For desktop users

A journey to the center of the desktop:

• GNOME 3.2, the latest update to the most popular desktop environment, brings new features, including:
  • System Settings gains an “Online Accounts” panel, which provides a central point for managing online accounts like Google, Facebook, etc.
  • A new contact management application is integrated with Empathy, Evolution and the new “Online Accounts” settings panel
  • A new document management application provides a simpler alternative to traditional file management for both local and “in-cloud” documents.
• KDE 4.7, the most recent version of this feature-rich desktop environment, brings substantial updates, including:
  • DigiKam 2.0 adds face detection and recognition, geotagging and more.
  • An updated Plasma Workspaces window manager (KWin) makes KDE better suited for mobile devices, and also adds improvements for desktop users.
  • A new shutdown dialog allows users with multiple operating systems to select the OS to boot next.

For developers

Twenty thousand lines in C:

• Perl 5.14, a new version of Perl, brings many enhancements, including Unicode 6.0 support.
• GCC Python Plugins extend GCC with Python 2 and 3, without dealing with the C internals of GCC.
• D2: Fedora 16 is the first Linux distribution to include the newest version of D, a systems programming language combining the power and high performance of C and C++ with the programmer productivity of modern languages such as Ruby and Python.

For system administrators

Around the world in eighty columns:

• GRUB2: This leap forward allows better configuration options and better support for non-x86 architectures.
• New system account ID numbering: Fedora 16 starts user IDs at 1000, providing more room for system accounts and making it easier for administrators not have services run as root. This improves interoperability with other Linux distributions that start user IDs at 1000.
• Chrony: Chrony provides network time protocol (NTP) client and server pieces which are more tolerant of unstable clocks and Internet connections which are not always on.
• ext4 driver mounts ext2 and ext3: Fedora 16 uses the ext4 driver to mount ext2 and ext3 file systems, reducing the size of the kernel code.
• Improved virtualization tools:
  • Fedora 16 provides improvements to virtual networking, making large deployments easier.
  • Virt-manager guest inspection is a unique-to-Fedora tool allowing read-only access to guest file systems, applications, and Windows registry.
  • Fedora 16 provides locking of virtual disks to prevent a disk being used by multiple virtual machines simultaneously.

This is only a taste of what is included in Fedora 16. A more detailed list can be found at:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/16/FeatureList

Alhamdulillaah, WordPress 2.8 has been released!  Grab it from the downloads page or upgrade, like I do, via SVN.

Alhamdulillaah, the Fedora Project has released Fedora 11!  You can get the torrents and/or check out the new features!

(Sorry for the rather uninspired & lazy post…I usually like to share more details, but I’ve got work to do…;) )