The third of four test releases of Fedora 7 has been announced on fedora announce mailing list by Jeremy Katz, one of Fedora's developers. This release includes significant new versions of many key components and technologies, as well as some new graphical improvements and small modifications. The new test version is available for download through bittorrent or from the official mirrors. There are two live CD images (iso) available: one using the Gnome desktop manager, while the second is using KDE.
Major changes overview since the last test release
• The Fedora Core and Extras software repositories are currently being merged, as announced.
• This third test version is packaged initially as a Desktop/Development Workstation/Server implementation called ''Prime'' and it's delivered in DVD iso format only as a trial.
• A lot more packages are available in the development repositories.
• This test release also includes an i386 Live Desktop ISO image which features the ability to install to a hard disk, while running the desktop environment, using the Anaconda installer.
• As of this version, there is also a new i386 ISO for a KDE Live CD, separate from the Live CD Image using the Gnome desktop.
• Fedora 7 Test 3 features the latest 2.18 version of the Gnome desktop. With it, various small modifications have been made to desktop aspect, such as implementing a new icon theme called Echo. The icon theme isn't complete, but work is currently in progress and with a little luck, we shall see the new icons in the stable release of Fedora7 as well. The Live KDE Image doesn't, however, include the Echo icon theme.
• Fast User Switching is now available and working through the fast-user-switch-applet.
• If you give this test release a try, you might notice it's a bit slow. This is because several debugging options are enabled. This won't be the case with the final release.
• System administration tools may be modified under the testing process.
• This test release includes a 2.6.21RC5 kernel, as well as a new version of Amanda.
Even though most things should work with this release, it's not yet recommended for installation unless you want to help the Fedora community by finding what is broken.
Fedora 7 Test 3 KDE LiveCD Screenshots:
*news.softpedia.com/images/reviews/small/Fedora7-t3-K_001-small.png*news.softpedia.com/images/reviews/small/Fedora7-t3-K_002-small.png*news.softpedia.com/images/reviews/small/Fedora7-t3-K_003-small.png*news.softpedia.com/images/reviews/small/Fedora7-t3-K_004-small.png
Fedora 7 Test 3 Gnome LiveCD Screenshots:
*news.softpedia.com/images/reviews/small/Fedora7-t3-G_001-small.png*news.softpedia.com/images/reviews/small/Fedora7-t3-G_002-small.png*news.softpedia.com/images/reviews/small/Fedora7-t3-G_003-small.png*news.softpedia.com/images/reviews/small/Fedora7-t3-G_004-small.png
Fedora 7 Test 3 LiveCD Installer Screenshots:
*news.softpedia.com/images/reviews/small/Fedora7-t3-A_001-small.png*news.softpedia.com/images/reviews/small/Fedora7-t3-A_002-small.png*news.softpedia.com/images/reviews/small/Fedora7-t3-A_003-small.png*news.softpedia.com/images/reviews/small/Fedora7-t3-A_004-small.png
You can download Fedora Core 6 and/or Fedora 7 Test 3 now from Softpedia.
