Hot dog! The Fedora 17 "Beefy Miracle" Alpha Release is available! This
release offers a preview of some of the best and meatiest free and open
source technology currently under development. Relish in a glimpse of
the future:

http://fedoraproject.org/get-prerelease

== What is the Alpha release? ==

The Alpha release contains all the bunderful features of Fedora 17 in a
form that anyone can help test. This testing, guided by the Fedora QA
team, helps us target and identify bugs. When these bugs are fixed, we
make a Beta release available. A Beta release is code-complete, and
bears a very strong resemblance to the third and final release. The
final release of Fedora 17 is due in early May.
Frankly, we think Fedora 17 will be the best release ever, but we know
we can't do it without your help. Please take a moment of your time to
download and try out the Alpha and make sure the things that are
important to you are working. If you find a bug, please report it --
every bug you uncover is a chance to improve the experience for millions
of Fedora users worldwide. Together, we can make Fedora a franktastic,
rock-solid distribution. (Read down to the end of this announcement for
more information on how to help.)

== Condiments ==

When we said Beefy, we weren't kidding: an a-bun-dance of condiments,
err, features, are available to help you feed your hunger for the best
in free and open source software. We take pride in our toppings, and in
our fine ingredients; Fedora 17 includes both over- and under-the-bun
improvements that show off the power and flexibility of the advancing
state of free (range) software.

Check out our menu, certain to please a variety of appetites:
https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=F17_Alpha_release_announcement&action=edit&section=3
* End Users *

End users will see numerous improvements in Fedora 17.

* GIMP has been updated to the long awaited 2.8 release, with an
a-bun-dant list of new features, such as the single window mode, layer
groups, and on-canvas text editing.
* Improved language and font support: A number of Lohit fonts, enabling
Indian script, have been added, as well as support for Inscript 2 for
keymapping; libpinyin increases pinyin input speed by adding predictive
intelligence.
* Desktops galore! Whether you like your bun covered in GNOME, KDE,
Sugar, or otherwise, we've updated it to the sauciest, tastiest version
available.
https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=F17_Alpha_release_announcement&action=edit&section=4

* Systems Administrators *

Serving up hot dogs all day long? Increase your reliability and
versatility with the new enhancements to the clustering stack in Fedora
17. Load balancing and high availability improvements have been made,
allowing systems administrators to deploy Fedora in environments
requiring greater availability and clustered file systems; both Corosync
2.0 and the Pacemaker Cluster Resource Manager 1.1.7 are included. JBoss
Application Server (AS) 7 has also been added to Fedora 17; this fast,
lightweight, and modular application server allows you to run full Java
EE applications.
https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=F17_Alpha_release_announcement&action=edit&section=5
* Developers *

Developers can cook up fresh code with the updates and additions of
numerous languages in Fedora 17. Java 7, Ruby 1.9.3, and PHP 5.4 are
just some of the latest-and-greatest; we've also got updates and
additions in the Haskell platform, Erlang, and D, as well as the
addition of the Opa programming language. GCC has been updated to 4.7,
and Fedora 17 has additionally been rebuilt with this new version,
resulting in compiled code improvements.
https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=F17_Alpha_release_announcement&action=edit&section=6
* Virtualization *

A a-bun-dance of virtualization features are ready for consumption in
Fedora 17:

* Open vSwitch is a flexible, multi-layer software switch typically used
in virtualization environments as the network switching component in the
hypervisor, providing virtual machines their network connectivity.
* KVM improvements, including the addition of a virtualized PMU
(performance monitoring unit)for guests, and a live block copy features,
allowing an image backing a guest disk to be copied while the guest is
online.
* Virtualization sandboxing provides a new application development
library (libvirt-sandbox) to facilitate the embedding of virtualization.
https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=F17_Alpha_release_announcement&action=edit&section=7

* Hot Dogs as a Service (HDaaS) *

Kidding! We couldn't resist jumping into the game with our own acronym.
Seriously, though, we have a frank-tastic variety of cloud technologies
coming in Fedora 17, including the fresh additions of some of the best
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platforms in free and open source
software -- Cloudstack, Eucalyptus, and OpenNebula. OpenStack gets
bumped in Fedora 17 to the Essex release, and other OpenStack features
have been added or updated as well, including Horizon and Quantum, and
the ability to use OpenStack with libguestfs and qpid.

These and many other improvements provide a wide and solid base for
future Fedora releases. This release increases the range of
possibilities for developers and helps Fedora to maintain its position
at the leading edge of free and open source technology.

Ketchup with the full list of features for Fedora 17 here:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/17/FeatureList

We also have nightly composes of alternate spins available here:
http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/nightly-composes/

== Issues and Details ==

For more information including common and known bugs, tips on how to
report bugs, and the official release schedule, please refer to the
release notes:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_17_Alpha_release_notes

A shorter list of common bugs can be found here:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F17_bugs

== Contributing ==

Ever wonder how sausage is made? Yeah, we didn't want to know either.
Hot dogs, on the other hand, are glorious creations, and the Alpha
release of Beefy Miracle is yet another fine example of a long line of
solid Alpha releases. We can't do it without you, though. Bug reports
are especially helpful as we move from the hot dog factory to the
finished Beefy Miracle. If you encounter any issues, please report them!

Mustard up the confidence to contribute? Don't worry -- we don't bite!
(Except... tasty, delicious hot dogs. Mmmmmm. Hot dogs.) Fedora is a
fantastic, friendly community, and we have many ways in which you can
contribute, including Documentation, Marketing, Design, QA, Development,
and more.

To learn how to help us cook a better hot dog, visit:
http://join.fedoraproject.org

Thank you, and we hope to see you in the Fedora project!