The Fedora Project is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Fedora 26 Beta, the next big step on our journey to the exciting Fedora 26 release in July.
Download the prerelease from our Get Fedora site:
Or, check out one of our popular variants, including KDE Plasma, Xfce, and other desktop environments, as well as images for ARM devices like the Raspberry Pi 2 and 3:
Looking for Fedora Cloud Base? This is replaced by Atomic as a Fedora Edition for the container use case, but we still produce it for those of you who want to build up your own cloud-computing environment in a more traditional way — see Alternative Downloads below.
Fedora’s journey is not simply about updating one operating system with the latest and greatest packages. It’s also about innovation for the many different platforms represented in the Fedora Project: Workstation, Server, Atomic, and the various Spins. Coordinating the efforts across the many working groups is no small task, and serves as a testament to the talent and professionalism found within the Fedora community.
As we move into this Beta phase of the Fedora 26 release cycle, what can users expect?
Fedora-Wide Changes
Fedora, always in the path of innovation, will ship with the latest version of the GNU Compiler Collection, also known as GCC, bringing the latest language features and optimizations to users and to the software we build. Also the Go Language is updated to the latest version, 1.8, which includes 32-bits MIPS support and speed
improvements.
One of the most important changes is the addition of “blivet-gui” to the installer. This provides a “building-blocks” style partitioning GUI for sysadmins and enthusiast users who are familiar with the details of storage systems.
More traditional partitioning interface able to handle complex configurations
Also, we’ve made and included many improvements in security, improving user experience and reducing the risks of the digital life.
Fedora Editions
The Workstation edition of Fedora 26 Beta features GNOME 3.24, which includes important changes like Night Light, which changes the color temperature of the display based on time of day. It also includes the latest update of LibreOffice.
Updated Fedora Media Writer able to search and downloads Spins directly
Our Atomic Host Edition also has many improvements, including more options to run containers, the latest version of the docker container platform, the cockpit manager and the atomic CLI, improving the way containers are managed, making being a sysadmin easier.
Spins and Labs
The Fedora Project is proud to announce two new versions: The LXQt Spin, a lightweight desktop supporting the latest version of the Qt libraries; and the Python Classroom Lab, a new version focused in the teaching and learning of the Python programming language. And, in the Cinnamon Spin, the desktop is updated to the latest version.
Alternative Architectures and Other Downloads
We are also simultaneously releasing 64-bit F26 Beta for ARM (AArch64), Power (both little and big endian) and s390x architectures. You’ll also find minimal network installers and the Fedora 26 Beta Cloud Base image here:
What is the Beta Release?
A Beta release is code-complete and bears a very strong resemblance to the third and final release. The final release of Fedora 26 is expected in July. If you take the time to download and try out the Beta, you can check and make sure the things that are important to you are working. Every bug you find and report doesn’t just help you, it improves the experience of millions of Fedora users worldwide! Together, we can make Fedora rock-solid. We have a culture of coordinating new features and pushing fixes upstream as much as we can, and your feedback improves not only Fedora, but Linux and Free software as a whole.
Issues and Details
Since this is a Beta release, we expect that you may encounter bugs or missing features. To report issues encountered during testing, contact the Fedora QA team via the mailing list or in #fedora-qa on Freenode. As testing progresses, common issues are tracked on the Common F26 Bugs page.
For tips on reporting a bug effectively, read how to file a bug report.
More information
For more detailed information about what’s new on Fedora 26 Beta Release, you can consult our Talking Points and the F26 Change Set. They contain more technical information about the new packages and improvements shipped with this release.
Richard
Is gnome-abrt available in this version? on the alpha version wasn’t available and we had to install it manually but it didn’t work either, it didn’t detect any bugs.
Eduard Lucena
I can see it installed by default un version 1.2.5
Richard
Yes, I noticed it’s now shipped but it looks like retrace server is not working while trying to upload a bug report 🙁 …
Eduard Lucena
I can see it installed by default in version 1.2.5
Dylan
Hi, I’m testing out the beta and VMWare Workstation Pro doesn’t seem to work. This is a piece of software I rely on every day. Is this a known issue? What sort of workarounds are available?
Vivek Gite
Awesome. Trying out in VM before updating main machine.
monkey
please dont ubuntify you. we dont need so many desktop variant. LxQT, Cinnamon… there is no point in it and the light aspect is FUD against Gnome 3.
Gnome Shell rocks, solved all the modern desktop need. Lets just focus on making it more and more robust and by providing more and complete apps.
One distro, one desktop.
John E Tacos
You do realize that Fedora does not develop the apps that run on Gnome or even Gnome itself for that matter? They package it for use in their distribution. If you want to run apps that are not in Fedora’s repositories I suggest learning how to compile from source. Applications in Open Source environments are typically developed by contributors, not the distributors. Thus, most applications that are packaged in Fedora can run on any Linux distribution. The robustness of an application has far more to do with a developer than a distributor.
Gnome is a descent Desktop Environment, but lacks a lot of customization. I used it for years and I know that Gnome Extensions and gnome-tweak-tool that can spruce it up a little. But, about a year and a half ago I switched to Cinnamon and found it quite impressive. However, I did not like the how some applet’s loading would take take quite a bit of time during initial start up of it. So around six months ago I switched to Xfce and really do quite like it. It is fast, uses less resources than Gnome, and provides a high degree of customization. All the applications I used in Gnome work perfectly fine in both Cinnamon and Xfce. If I know I’m going to be gaming I will load in to Blackbox to save even more resources.
So I know you may like Gnome, but not everyone else prefers it. If you want ‘One distro, one desktop’ I suggest using OS X or Windows, because those seem to offer that. However, I enjoy the freedom of being able to pick and choose, and being able to customize my Desktop Environment, and to be able to change Desktop Environments depending on what I am doing.
vin
im using lxde… and its lightweight you can compare it from the ram usage when browsing to the other DE
Monkey
Tell me about the so missing desktop customization?
Did you ever have a look at http://extensions.gnome.org ??? this has more than what can pretend XFCE, LXQT etc… AND is easily installable from the web browser.
About the RAM, in 2010, pc with 4Gb was already standard. I don’t mean you need that to run GNOME but just that you can afford 500Mb used by a modern desktop.
No i don’t need OSX or Windows, I want GNU/Linux to grow up and get one flagship distribution with the best desktop around. You can still install xfce/lxqt from dnf if you want or compile it.
Eduard Lucena
Hi monkey,
First of all, Freedom of choice. Just because Workstation comes with Gnome, this means it will fit everyone.
Second, It’s not FUD the existence of other choices, is just freedom.
Third, “one distro, one desktop” is, actually, ubuntify (your words, and it was called unity). All other desktops, same as in Fedora, are contributors that build things in a professional sense and getting recognition for that.
Fourth, it’s too bad that you can’t recognize the great work that contributors do by packaging and shipping new desktop versions.
Freedom, Friends, Features, First
ashtonford
you are so very wrong cinnamon is the desktop of the future. If you want to use the plain vanilla gnome go right ahead but dont try to stop others from having a choice
Claude
Why Fedora is not installing Thermald by default ?
Michael Chemane
Thanks for releasing the Fedora 26 Beta. I was really facing troubles with my modem.
Ivan Augusto
Four years using Fedora and it’s the same anxiety on each new version launching ????
But to be honest, I’m already looking for F27 with the amazing Gnome 3.26 new features ????
James A. Jaworski
I’ve been running Fedora since June 2005. That’s 12 years now.
But maybe now I don’t want to upgrade every 12 mos.
Next time I do a re-install, I’m going with something that’ll be supported longer term, such as CentOS 7.
Costa A.
I currently have enabled to virtual OS with the ‘Boxes’ software. Are there going to be any problems if i decide to upgrade directly from F25 to F26 ?
Eduardo Silva
I’m reinstalling F26 with this beta iso, but in my previous installation with the alpha version, boxes was failling to run : https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1448891
Ilya
works incorrectly in my notebook. Developers, please, fix https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1444597
Andrés Holguín
Just updated from 25. It is amazing how seamlessly has been the experience. Almost everything I use is working very well.
Congratulations to the team, with each version update becomes easier.
antikythera
“Also, I looked for the F26 xfce spin beta, but no luck. Only the Workstation (gnome) is in beta as far as I can tell. I don’t think the spins come out until the distro goes live.”
We get comments similar to this all the time on fedora forum.
Please give spins and labs more prominence on the get fedora website. visitors end up thinking there are only 3 ‘flavours’ available to them because of the way the page is laid out presently, workstation, server or atomic.
Yes there is information about 3/4 the way down the page after the massive colour frames that occupy well over half the page but people are clearly clicking those big graphics with download buttons that appear when you move the cursor over them rather than scrolling any further down.
Matthew Miller
I don’t think making the spins of higher weight on the getfedora.org page is the answer here. Clearly, this person knew of and was looking for the Xfce spin, so did not in fact end up thinking that there are only three flavors.
Actually, I think it’s a different problem — ironically, one that involves Xfce being visible on that page. If you click on the word “Spins” under “Want more Fedora options?”, you get https://spins.fedoraproject.org/, which has a prominant
“Fedora 26 Beta released! Test it now” which goes to https://spins.fedoraproject.org/prerelease.html.
But, if you click on the Xfce or KDE logo icons directly from the front page, you go to https://spins.fedoraproject.org/xfce/ or https://spins.fedoraproject.org/kde/ — which don’t have the prerelease banner. We should ask the Websites team to make sure to add that for future betas.
Additionally, I’d really love to see the alternate desktop SIGs — KDE, Xfce, etc., take to social media. They’re an official part of Fedora and I think the Council will be happy to give Fedora trademark permission for this kind of use. And then, these groups can help promote the stuff they work on to their users. (This is one of the things we want to emphasize with the updated Fedora missions statement.)
antikythera
actually, this was one of “your” GNOME users who was experiencing issues and wanted to try XFCE instead but couldn’t locate the ISO and had problems installing and booting to XFCE alongside GNOME. I merely suggested they try the XFCE ISO since they were running Fedora in VM.
The sub-pages on spins site for each desktop do have pre-release download links on the right-hand side under other downloads.
“their users” – this stance is what is wrong here. ALL Fedora Users should be considered the same.
how official the spins are seems to be a grey area which needs to be addressed. greater communication channels across the board are clearly necessary. sharing of information increased awareness and a uniform style sheet for all domains would vastly improve the flow of the project’s websites and public appearance. right now it is disjointed and fedora is GNOME development OS as far as a very high number of people I speak to are concerned. They often aren’t aware of the alternatives offered. this is a bad situation for the Fedora Project as it puts a lot of potential users off who could end up contributing either via bug feedback or actual code and packaging, translations etc. etc.
so getting proper communication channels open would be a start. sort out the fragmentation problems and new users will be tempted to try out more flavours than just chocolate, strawberry and vanilla.
Matthew Miller
The users of Xfce are particularly the users the Xfce SIG works for. That doesn’t mean that they’re any less Fedora users as well.
I hear the argument about multiple desktops providing more options, but the fact is the three-editions strategy has been very successful, with strong user growth and growing community health. The basic thing is that it’s easier to get success with focus and grow out from there than it is to target everything at once — and that’s working.
Matthew Miller
The users of Xfce are particularly the users the Xfce SIG works for. That doesn’t mean that they’re any less Fedora users as well. I’ll say exactly the same thing about Fedora Workstation, Fedora Server, or Fedora Atomic users. Each has a particular target audience.
I hear the argument about multiple desktops providing more options, but the fact is the three-editions strategy has been very successful, with strong user growth and growing community health. The basic thing is that it’s easier to get success with focus and grow out from there than it is to target everything at once — and that’s working.
antikythera
you misunderstand my point. I’m talking specifically about marketing the product here, not altering the way it is developed and losing development focus. Obviously you will concentrate efforts on the main flavours regards development. All I ask is you collectively consider what is going on in the wider picture regarding marketing and awareness raising of Fedora Project as a whole (between the various sub-projects, SIGS etc.) rather than everyone duplicating efforts and doing the same thing in a disjointed fashion.
Also, the maintainers of ‘official spins’ should have usage of the Fedora branding (with pre-defined guidelines) for publicity purposes without having to ask shouldn’t they as part of the agreement when their spin is accepted officially?
Matthew Miller
I am also talking specifically about marketing rather than development; that’s where this comes from rather than the other way around.
And yes, maintainers of spins can use the Fedora brand within guidelines. One of those guidelines is that for example a “Fedora KDE” twitter account would need permission – but like I said, I’d be strongly inclined to encourage it.
akya
gnome-weather is still broken !