Summary: Red Hat's Fedora 21 will come out in the middle of October, according to a newly-published schedule

AFTER much anticipation and speculation [1] it turns out that the next release of Fedora will be in late autumn, some time in the middle of October [2]. Phoronix, which recently wrote some in-depth analysis (with a lot of links) about Fedora, also explained how Mesa 10 packages were made available for Fedora 20 [3].

The nice thing about the Fedora project, as we pointed out before, is not only its insistence on free/libre graphics drivers but also extensive work on such drivers. Without Fedora we would all be losing a lot.

Fedora does not need to look 'ugly' or 'not polished' (it got this reputation some years ago when poor releases were made). Fedora has no consistent 'face' because it's highly customisable and unlike Ubuntu (which demotes "alternative" desktops/themes) it comes in several very different 'flavours' [4] which are all managed and distributed (as equal) by Red Hat. Fedora 20 looks like a solid option and half a year from now we will see another fine release of Fedora, which is always getting better. I have used many release of Fedora over the years and I was always mostly satisfied. ⬆

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Fedora 21's Schedule Is Closer To Being Figured Out

   Fedora.Next is bringing lots of changes as the longstanding distribution seeks to effectively remake itself and move forward with greater vigor. When it comes to this next major distribution update, Fedora 21 already has lined up support for non-KMS drivers to be abandoned, other old GPU support removal, out of the box OpenCL support, Wayland support improvements, Hawkey usage, and many other changes, besides simply having updated upstream open-source Linux packages.





2. Fedora 21 Being Planned For Mid-October Release

   The next Fedora Linux release is being postponed until October since if shipping in August they are left midway between GNOME 3.12 and 3.14. GNOME 3.14 will be released by late September and thus if shipping in mid-to-late October would allow time for a fresh GNOME 3.14 desktop to be incorporated into the release. October/November release targets have also been what's long been sought after by Fedora (among other distributions) for nailing close to the GNOME release time-frame and other software projects.





3. Mesa 10 Packages For Fedora 20

   While Fedora 20 is looking to land GNOME 3.12 as a stable release upgrade, the developers normally shipping a bleeding-edge Linux graphics stack haven't sent down any stable release updates for the much-improved Mesa 10 drivers. Fortunately, there's some unofficial choices.





4. The Flat Owl Linux Desktop

   Lifehacker reader Royale with Cheese has a sharp-looking flat desktop that looks like OS X at first glance. It’s actually Fedora 20, and it’s smooth as butter. Here’s how he set it up.