The Fedora Project is reporting version 13 (code name "Goddard") of the Fedora Linux distribution is scheduled for release on May 18th of this year. Featuring Gnome 2.30, KDE 4.4, and RPM 4.8, Release 13 will also use NFS v4 by default, and include support for mounting NFS servers over IPv6. A feature list is available at fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/13/FeatureList, and Beta media is available for download at fedoraproject.org/get-prerelease. As always, Fedora is a great way to preview technologies that may make it into a future release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I have personally installed and used Fedora on my laptop and have found it suitable for work related activities. However, I've done this knowing I am capable of supporting this setup myself, since there are many sources of information and support online from the Fedora Community. If I were installing a production system at work, I would most probably use a distribution that my customer could get commercial support for, either from a vendor like Red Hat, or some other consulting firm specializing in long term support.

If you have already tried Fedora 13 Beta, please consider leaving a comment and telling us what you think of the new release!