Red Hat Releases Fedora 16

I am an Ubuntu desktop guy myself, but one of my friends at work uses Fedora as his standard desktop (notebook) OS… it looks pretty cool. I may have to “play” with it!

Fedora 16 released with GNOME 3.2, virtualization enhancements

“The Red Hat-sponsored Fedora Project released Fedora 16 (‘Verne’), featuring the GNOME 3.2 desktop environment and virtualization and cloud enhancements — including support for the Aeolus and OpenStack Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platforms. Version 16 upgrades the techie-focused Linux distribution to Linux 3.1, and moves up to the GRUB2 bootloader and Firefox 7.0.1, while offering enhanced contact and document management apps.

As we noted when the Fedora Project released its first beta of Fedora 16 in early October, the release is notable to desktop end users primarily for its upgrade to the GNOME 3.2 desktop. Fedora first tried out GNOME 3.0 in Fedora 15, a more significant release that also added a dynamic firewall, the SystemD configuration utility, and major new applications.

Like Fedora, which acts as the cutting-edge, Red Hat-backed upstream contributor to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), SUSE’s OpenSUSE also moved to GNOME 3.2 in its 12.1 beta. And on Nov. 4, the Linux Mint team succumbed to the wheels of ‘progress,’ announcing that the upcoming Linux Mint 12 will offer GNOME 3.
Mint, however, will also keep a full-fledged GNOME 2.32 alternative to the controversial GNOME 3. By comparison, Fedora 16 and OpenSUSE 12.1 will block users from booting into GNOME 2.x except for a simplified fallback mode for low-end systems.

GNOME 3.2 is said to have squashed many of the bugs of the original, while fixing a few of the most unpopular changes. Yet, GNOME has not backtracked much from its radical UI makeover. Fortunately, Fedora 16 also offers KDE Plasma Workspace 4.7 as an alternative.”