The Fedora 21 beta release for the POWER platform, in Big and Little Endian flavours, is here, and - as usual - is packed with amazing improvements to Fedora, as well as fantastic free and open source software, gently harvested for your enjoyment. No bits were harmed in the making of this beta.

What is the Beta Release? =========================

The beta release is the last important milestone before the release of Fedora 21. A Beta release is code-complete and bears a very strong resemblance to the third and final release. Only critical bug fixes will be pushed as updates up to the general release of Fedora 21. The final release of Fedora 21 is [https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/21/Schedule] expected in early December. Meanwhile, download the beta of Fedora 21 and help us make it even better:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_file_a_bug_report

Every bug you uncover is a chance to improve the experience for millions of Fedora users worldwide. Together, we can make Fedora 21 a rock-solid distribution. We have a culture of coordinating new features and pushing fixes upstream as much as feasible and your feedback will help improve not only Fedora but Linux and free software on the whole.

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Staying_close_to_upstream_projects

(See the end of this announcement for more information on how to help.)

Fedora 21 Base --------------

Each of the products will build on the "base" set of packages for Fedora. For instance, each product will use the same packages for the kernel, RPM, Yum, systemd, Anaconda, and so forth.

The Base Working Group develops the standard platform for all Fedora products, which includes the installer, compose tools, and basic platform for the other products. The Base set of packages is not a full product intended for use on its own, but to be kept as a small, stable platform for other products to build on.

Highlights in the Beta Release ==============================

In this section, we'll look at some of the things that are new or interesting in the Beta release.

A Note on Shellshocked ----------------------

You've probably read all about the "Shellshocked" vulnerability in GNU Bash, which affected Fedora 19, 20, and 21 Alpha. Rest assured that Fedora 21 beta has been patched to close this vulnerability.

Fedora 21 Server ================

The Fedora Server product is a common base platform that is meant to run featured application stacks, which are produced, tested, and distributed by the Server Working Group. Want to use Fedora as a Web server, file server, database server, or platform for an Infrastructure-as-a-Service? Fedora 21 Server is for you.

Fedora Server Management Features =================================

The Fedora Server product introduces new Server management features aimed at making it easier to install discrete infrastructure services. The Fedora Server will introduce three new technologies in Fedora to handle this task, rolekit, Cockpit and OpenLMI.

Rolekit (https://fedorahosted.org/rolekit) is a Role deployment and management toolkit that provides a consistent interface to administrators to install and configure all the packages needed to implement a specific server role. Rolekit is at an early stage of development in Fedora 21 Beta.

Cockpit (http://cockpit-project.org/) is a user interface for configuring and monitoring your server or servers. It is accessible remotely via a web browser.

OpenLMI (http://www.openlmi.org/) is a remote management system built atop DMTF-CIM. It can be used for scripting management functions across many machines as well as querying for capabilities and monitoring for system events.

*** Release Schedule ***

The full release schedule is available on the Fedora wiki. The current schedule currently calls for the final release to come out on December 9th:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/21/Schedule

Dates are subject to change, pending any major bugs or issues found during the development process.

Issues and Details -------------------

This is an Beta release. As such, we expect that you may encounter bugs or missing features. To report issues encountered during testing, contact the Fedora QA team via the QA mailing list (test at lists.fedoraproject.org) or in #fedora-qa on freenode.

For tips on reporting a bug effectively, read "How to file a bug report:"

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_file_a_bug_report

Thanks much to all the contributors who've helped bring Fedora 21 this far! We're very excited about this release, and we hope that you'll enjoy it too.