Fedora 19 Alpha Version Arrives

The much awaited Fedora 19 "Schrödinger's Cat" alpha release has arrived, as announced here. In case you haven't been following the evolution of this version of Fedora, it's been through a number of delays due to issues pertaining to the UEFI Secure Boot scheme that has gained notoriety for helping lock many Linux users out of Windows 8 machines. Fedora has been one of only a handful of Linux distros that have been easy for users to put on some Windows 8 machines, due to UEFI workarounds.

The alpha version includes all features of Fedora 19 including the updated desktop options – GNOME 3.8, KDE Plasma 4.10 and MATE 1.6.

As noted on Parity News: 

"Some of the new features included in Alpha release are Developer's Assistant – a tool that would allow developers to code easily with ready templates, samples and more; OpenShift Origin – using which users will be able to deploy their own Platform-as-a-Service infrastructure; Ruby 2.0.0; Scratch; Syslinux – provides for simplified booting of Fedora; systemd Resource Control – which allows for modification of service settings without requiring a reboot; and Checkpoint & Restore."

The mailing list announcement also points to a very complete feature list that you can get here, and downloads and release notes are available at the Fedora Project site.

Fedora 19 is slated for release on July 2, and the developers stress that the alpha version is primarily for testing, QA and bug reporting.