The upcoming Fedora 16 will introduce several significant changes and new features.

F16 introduces a number of significant changes: GRUB 2 replaces legacy GRUB, HAL is gone and replaced by udisks, upower, and libudev, migration from SysV init to native Systemd continues (scheduled for completion in F17), and a number of cloud utilities and OpenStack are included.

Beyond F16, Fedora is also considering to move all binaries to /usr/bin and thus change the way Linux distributions have traditionally handled this kind of thing.

Fedora Project developers are proposing to move all executable files and libraries used by them to the /usr/ directory from Fedora 17 onwards and essentially dispensing with /bin/, /lib/, /lib64/ and /sbin/. Fedora 17 is due for release in May 2012. The change would mean that virtually all operating system components would be stored on one volume/partition, optionally mounted as read-only, which could be used by multiple computers simultaneously. It would also simplify the creation of snapshots. Snapshots allow the restoration of a previous file system state following installation of an update which proves problematic.

On top of that, Fedora’s Rawhide branch now also includes a version of Gnome Shell that runs on graphics cards without 3D acceleration.

One of the big complaints about GNOME Shell is that it requires 3D acceleration to function. The Fedora Rawhide distribution is about to get an update, though, that removes that requirement, enabling GNOME Shell to work on all displays, including those on virtualized systems. This work should find its way into the Fedora 17 release due sometime around April.

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The upcoming Fedora 16 will introduce several significant changes and new features. F16 introduces a number of significant changes: GRUB 2 replaces legacy GRUB, HAL is gone and replaced by udisks, upower, and libudev, migration from SysV init to native Systemd continues (scheduled for completion in F17), and a number of cloud utilities and OpenStack ...