Fedora 18 `Spherical Cow` Released

Fedora 18 "Spherical Cow" has been released today, featuring the latest stable GNOME 3.6 by default and a brand new installer UI.

New installer UI

Fedora 18 introduces UEFI Secure Boot support so it can now be used on system shipped with Windows 8, as well as a new user interface for the installer (Anaconda), which is now easier to use for new users, while more advanced users can still access advanced settings:

However, the new installer is not 100% complete so check out the known issues. For instance, I found it a bit confusing that after setting the "Installation Destination" hard disk but not changing the partitions, the "Please complete items marked with this icon before continuing to the next step" message at the bottom was still displayed for a few seconds.

GNOME 3.6

GNOME 3.6 (with GNOME Shell as the default "shell" interface) is used by default in Fedora 18: Nautilus, GNOME Contacts, Boxes, Documents, Totem (Videos), etc. are all there.

Here are some Fedora 18 screenshots:

For more about GNOME 3.6, see: GNOME 3.6 Released - See What's New

Cinnamon, MATE Desktop available in the repositories

Also, users who don't like GNOME Shell can now use Cinnamon or MATE Desktop since both are available in the official Fedora 18 repositories, along with Xfce 4.10, KDE Plasma Workspace 4.9 or LXDE (these last 3 are also available as Fedora Spins)

Other changes

Fedora 18 introduces a new tool that's used for the upgrade process (to newer Fedora versions) called fedUP. For how to upgrade the system using fedUP, see THIS page.

Also, Fedora 18 introduces offline updates and while many updates can still be made on the fly, some packages will require a system restart. The system will boot into a special update mode "in order to avoid problems related to conflicts of libraries and services that are currently running with those on disk", says the Fedora Wiki.

Other changes include:

• Improved storage management SSM (System Storage Manager)
• /tmp is used as tmpfs by default, this bringing less I/O generated on the disk, increases SSD life, saves power and improves overall performance,
• More!

For more info, see the official Fedora 18 release notes.

Default applications in Fedora 18

Fedora 18 ships with Linux Kernel 3.6 (3.6.10), but 3.7 is already offered as an update, X Server 1.13 and features default applications such as: Nautilus 3.6.3, GNOME Control Center 3.6.3, Evolution 3.6.3, GNOME Documents 3.6.2, GNOME Boxes 3.6.2, Deja Dup backup tool 24.0, Rhythmbox 2.98, Empathy 3.6.2, Firefox 18, Cheese 3.6.2, Shotwell 0.13.1, Transmission 2.72, GDM 3.6.2 and LibreOffice 3.6.3.2, among others, all on top of GNOME 3.6 and GTK 3.6.2.

Download Fedora 18

Download Fedora 18

And don't forget to try Fedora Utils after installing Fedora, a tool to tweak Fedora and easily install packages which are not available in the main Fedora repositories.