There are a number of places you can get assistance should you run into problems.

Fedora has recently introduced a new site, "Ask Fedora". If you run into a problem and would like some assistance, go to http://ask.fedoraproject.org. Many answers are already there, but if you don't find yours, you can simply post a new question. This has the advantage that anyone else with the same problem can find the answer, too.

You may also find assistance on the #fedora channel on the IRC net irc.freenode.net. Keep in mind that the channel is populated by volunteers wanting to help, but folks knowledgable about a specific topic might not always be available.

Fedora 16 may be installed on most "modern" x86 processors. (There are some "secondary architectures" supported by special interest groups for processors like Power PC, System/390 and ARM).

The minimum processor speed depends on the end use, the method of installation, and the specific hardware. Although some configurations might work on a Pentium 3, most users should consider a Pentium 4 or more modern processor, or the equivalent processor from other manufacturers. Fedora 16 is able to take full advantage of modern, multi-core architectures.

The complete packages can occupy over 9 GB of disk space. Final size is entirely determined by the installing spin and the packages selected during installation. Additional disk space is required during installation to support the installation environment. This additional disk space corresponds to the size of /Fedora/base/stage2.img (on Installation Disc 1) plus the size of the files in /var/lib/rpm on the installed system.

In practical terms, additional space requirements may range from as little as 90 MiB for a minimal installation to as much as an additional 175 MiB for a larger installation.

Additional space is also required for any user data, and at least 5% free space should be maintained for proper system operation.

To provide feedback on Fedora software or other system elements, please refer to Bugs And Feature Requests. A list of commonly reported bugs and known issues for this release is available from Common F16 bugs, on the wiki.

If you feel these release notes could be improved in any way, you can provide your feedback directly to the beat writers. There are several ways to provide feedback, in order of preference:

Starting in Fedora 16, on non-EFI x86 (32 and 64 bit) systems, anaconda will default to creating GPT disklabels (partition tables) instead of MSDOS disklabels. On these systems, when booting from a GPT-labelled disk, it is strongly recommended (not necessarily required in all cases, depending on the system's BIOS/firmware) to create a small (1MiB) BIOS boot partition. This partition will be used by the bootloader (GRUB2) for storage.

Automatic partitioning will create the partition when appropriate, but users who choose custom partitioning will have to create this partition for themselves.

This BIOS boot partition is only necessary on non-EFI x86 systems whose boot device is a GPT-labelled disk.

The GNU Grand Unified Bootloader (GRUB) receives a major update in Fedora 16. GRUB 2 allows better configuration options, better support for non x86 architectures, scripting and localization support. GRUB 2 has new configuration formats and files — please consult the GRUB manual for more information.

Fedora 15 saw the introduction of systemd, a new system and service manager for Linux. The integration of systemd continues in Verne, with many more SysV init scripts converted to native systemd service files. The result is a faster, more efficient boot process and simpler service management.

The /etc/rc.d/rc.local local customization script is no longer included by default. Administrators who need this functionality merely have to create this file, make it executable, and it will run on boot.

Upgrades are not affected by this change.

The qemu-kvm package has been compiled with full RELRO and PIE support which can help mitigate certain types of attacks. Exploiting the host system or other VMs running on the same host is more difficult with these compilation options.

The Aeolus Conductor is a web UI and tools to create and manage cloud instances across a wide variety of cloud types, all from the same UI. More information about the UI and what is supported is available at the Aeolus home page.

Condor Cloud is an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud implementation. It allows you to create as many VMs from an image or images as you wish, distributing them across a pool of configured hosts. The user interface is the Deltacloud API (http://deltacloud.org). The backend is implemented using Condor (http://www.cs.wisc.edu/condor/) which in turn starts VMs using libvirt and KVM.

HekaFS 0.7 enhances the feature set of GlusterFS with multi-tenancy, security, and management features.

HekaFS deployment requires knowledge of how to set up OpenSSL keys and certificates to facilitate authentication at both the management and I/O levels.

Network and storage encryption are both optional, and incur a significant performance penalty if used.

Quota/billing support is under active development within GlusterFS, and will not be available for this release of HekaFS.

Enhanced local file distribution/replication and wide-area replication are planned as eventual features of HekaFS, but are not in this release.

Fedora 16 features Matahari, a collection of APIs accessible over remote and local interfaces for system monitoring and management. Matahari APIs are served via a collection of Agents. Matahari also includes a framework for adding new Agents and APIs.

The available agents are:

Pacemaker-Cloud provides high availability for application services inside virtual machines on a single node. This feature provides a shell for creating virtual machine images, associating resources with the virtual machines, and combining these images into a deployable. A deployable can then be launched and monitored for high availability. If virtual machines or applications fail, these components will be restarted reducing MTTR (mean time to repair) improving availability over manual operator restart.

Fedora guest virtual machines using systemd are currently non-functional until the following bugzilla is merged into rawhide: See systemd defect 702621 discussion.

MySQL and PostgreSQL have been updated to use native systemd unit files for startup, in place of the SysV-style init scripts. This should eliminate various unfortunate problems that occurred in Fedora 15 due to systemd's rather poor handling of SysV scripts. Also, handling of cases where the database server is slow to start up is significantly better than it ever was in the SysV scripts, since systemd can just wait until the server is really ready without slowing the boot down.

The service postgresql initdb and service postgresql upgrade actions that were supported by the SysV init script cannot be provided by the systemd unit file. There is a new standalone script, postgresql-setup that provides these functions. For example, to initialize a new postgresql database, do something like

sudo postgresql-setup initdb

If you need to run more than one postgresql server on the same machine, you can duplicate and modify the postgresql.service file, as is customary with systemd services. (Remember that custom service files should go into /etc/systemd/system/ not /lib/systemd/system/.) Notice that PGDATA and PGPORT settings for alternate servers must now be specified in the custom service files.

Copy /lib/systemd/postgresl.service to /etc/systemd/myservice.service, adjust PGDATA and PGPORT in the new file. To set it up, run

sudo postgresql-setup initdb myservice

postgresql-setup will then extract the PGDATA setting from that service file instead of postgresql.service.

The files in /etc/sysconfig/pgsql/ are no longer used.

In Fedora 16, most services are controlled by systemd. Refer to the Fedora System Administrators Guide, "Services and Daemons" for information on how to manage system services under systemd.

Fedora 16 uses Chrony as the default Network Time Protocol (NTP) client. Chrony is designed to work well even on systems with no permanent network connection (such as laptops), and is capable of much faster time synchronisation than standard ntp. Chrony has several advantages when used in systems running on virtual machines, such as a larger range for frequency correction to help correct quickly drifting clocks, and better response to rapid changes in the clock frequency. It also has a smaller memory footprint and no unnecessary process wakeups, improving power efficiency.

Fedora 16 does not ship with the HAL daemon and libhal, which have been replaced with udisks, upower and libudev. If a specific application requires libhal to function, please file a bug against it to be ported to the new technology.

autojump is a command line tool for moving around between different parts of the filesystem more easily than cd. Fedora 16 now includes version 15 of autojump. The project's wiki may be found at https://github.com/joelthelion/autojump/wiki.

autokey is a desktop automation utility for Linux, that allows the automation of virtually any task by responding to typed abbreviations and hot keys. It offers a full-featured GUI that makes it highly accessible for novices, as well as a scripting interface offering the full flexibility and power of the Python language.

One use case is for auto "text expansion" or assigning "hot strings", that help reduce typing the same phrase again and again.

The tool has been also featured on lifehacker (a productivity blog):

The projects homepage is at : http://code.google.com/p/autokey/

calcurse is a text based calendaring and scheduling application. Version 2.9.0 includes new features:

For more details, refer to http://calcurse.org/.

cuneiform is an open source OCR system and is new to Fedora 16. Complete details may be found at https://launchpad.net/cuneiform-linux.

Also new to Fedora 16 is ease. ease is a simple, GNOME-based presentation system For more information refer to http://www.ease-project.org/.

oo2gd is an add on to LibreOffice that allows export of office documents to Google Docs. The project's website maybe found at http://code.google.com/p/ooo2gd/.

pal is a command line calendar program, similar to gcal but with a number of additional features. Additional details are at http://palcal.sourceforge.net/.

Another new to Fedora 16 package is routino. routino provides routing on OpenStreetMap data. Additional information, including an online demonstration, may be found at http://www.routino.org/.

'writetype is a program that helps younger students experience success in writing. It is designed especially for schools to transform technology from a barrier into an opportunity for success. http://writetype.bernsteinforpresident.com/.

New to Fedora 16 is ckermit, an updated implementation of the venerable Kermit file transfer program. The Kermit protocol is available on almost all architectures, so may well be the file transfer mechanism of choice when dealing with a less capable platform. The project's website is http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/ck90.html.

hotot is a lightweight microblogging client. It supports the native notification systems of both KDE and GNOME. The project's website is at http://hotot.org/.

ike is a free IPSEC VPN client can be used to communicate with Open Source IPSEC VPN servers as well as some commercial IPSEC VPN servers. Version 2.1.7 is included in Fedora 16. http://www.shrew.net/.

qodem is an open-source re-implementation of the DOS-era Qmodem serial communications package, updated for modern systems. http://qodem.sourceforge.net/.

ibus now supports X keyboard layouts and switching between them and/or input methods. X keyboard layouts can be added to the ibus context menu in addition to input method engines. This puts keyboard layouts and input methods on the same level for ibus users.

The ibus trigger shortcut, by default Control+Space, now toggles to the previously used input method instead of switching ibus on and off. The off-state is replaced by the default keyboard layout. The new behaviour is similar to how MacOS and ChromiumOS behave with respect to input method switching. There is a configuration option in ibus-setup to switch back to the previous Control+Space behaviour for those who prefer it. However this may be removed in the future: feedback on the new default behaviour is welcome.

Other trigger shortcut bindings specific to certain countries have been moved to the appropriate input method engine's configuration: only Control+Space is provided by default as a shortcut now. E.g. the Hangul key is now only defined for Korean engines, and Zenkaku_Hankaku is available only for Japanese engines only.

The ibus-gnome3 gnome-shell extension provides a gnome-shell indicator icon with menu and input method candidate window instead of usual GTK versions. The indicator uses text symbols to show the current input method or keyboard layout of image icons. Keyboard layouts are displayed as letter country codes (e.g. 'us', 'fr', 'de', etc) and native characters (like '中', 'あ') are used for input methods. ibus-gnome3 is provided in a ibus subpackage as a technology preview for Fedora 16. The plan is to integrate it into gnome-shell itself in a future release upstream hopefully in time for Fedora 17. ibus-gnome3 can be enabled using the Shell Extensions in 'gnome-tweak-tool'. See also Features/GnomeInputIntegration.

ibus has some support now for X compose keys (as provided by libX11 XIM) in a unified way for all GTK, QT and X11 applications. Currently support is available for US International mode and also cedilla mode if the desktop locale is Brazilian Portuguese.

ibus engines can now define XKB options. For example, when a user enables Indic engines provided by ibus-m17n, Alt_R will be automatically mapped to AltGr; if the user then switches back to ibus-anthy, AltGr will be unmapped again.

The eekboard on-screen keyboard can now be activated through IBus, in addition to desktop accessibility. See setup instruction for tablet PC.

ibus-gucharmap is a new input method engine providing Unicode input method, which supports in-place character-map view, character search based on Unicode names, and easy navigation with various keyboard shortcuts.

Tamil support has been added to Indic Typing Booster predictive text input method and supports Tamil-99 and Inscript layouts.

Fedora now includes font for Nastaleeq script, one of the main script styles used in writing the Perso-Arabic script, and traditionally the predominant style in Persian calligraphy.

Arabic script support for the Urdu language has been improved by adding following new font packages: nafees-naskh-fonts, nafees-nastaleeq-fonts, nafees-tehreer-naskh-fonts, nafees-riqa-fonts, and nafees-pakistani-naskh-fonts.

The WQY Microhei font is now used by default for Chinese. Chinese users requiring more fonts support can install them by yum groupinstall of 'simplified-chinese-support' or 'traditional-chinese-support'.

gnome-paint is a simple, easy-to-use paint program for GNOME. Fedora 16 includes version 0.4.0. The project's web page may be found at https://launchpad.net/gnome-paint.

blender has been updated to 2.5. The new release provides a number of new features, but in particular, an enhanced GUI. There is also now support of openCOLLADA for exchange 3D modelling data to other applications

Fedora 16 introduces a number of new games to the repository:

Ada is a modern programming language designed for large, long-lived applications – and embedded systems in particular – where reliability and efficiency are essential. It was originally developed in the early 1980s (this version is generally known as Ada 83) by a team led by Dr. Jean Ichbiah at CII-Honeywell-Bull in France. The language was revised and enhanced in an upward compatible fashion in the early 1990s, under the leadership of Mr. Tucker Taft from Intermetrics in the U.S. The resulting language, Ada 95, was the first internationally standardized (ISO) Object-Oriented Language. Under the auspices of ISO, a further (minor) revision was completed as an amendment to the standard; this version of the language is known as Ada 2005. Work is currently in progress on some additional features (including support for program annotations) and is expected to be completed in 2012.

Fedora 16 includes the latest open-source Ada development tools.

The GNU Autoconf Archive is a collection of more than 450 macros for GNU Autoconf that have been contributed as free software by friendly supporters of the cause from all over the Internet. Version 2011.04.12 is now included in Fedora 16. Refer to http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf-archive/index.html for the project details.

Bugs Everywhere is a “distributed bugtracker”, designed to complement distributed revision control systems. By using distributed revision control as a backend for bug state, we gain several convenient features:

Fedora 16 includes version 1.0.1.

btparser is a backtrace parser and analyzer, which works with backtraces produced by the GNU Project Debugger. It can parse a text file with a backtrace to a tree of C structures, allowing the developer to analyze the threads and frames of the backtrace and work with them. The project's trac page may be found at https://fedorahosted.org/btparser/.

Caribou is a text entry and UI navigation application being developed as an alternative to the Gnome On-screen Keyboard. The overarching goal for Caribou is to create a usable solution for people whose primary way of accessing a computer is a switch device.

The initial goal is to make an in-place on-screen keyboard suitable for people who can use a mouse but not a hardware keyboard. This on-screen keyboard may also be useful for touch screen or tablet users. http://live.gnome.org/Caribou.

cddlib is a C library implementing of the Double Description Method of Motzkin et al. for generating all vertices (i.e. extreme points) and extreme rays of a general convex polyhedron. http://www.ifor.math.ethz.ch/~fukuda/cdd_home/.

The D2 programming language is available in Fedora 16. D is a modern language with high performance near C/C++ with an easy syntax. C/C++ and Java developers can easily migrate to D.

Additonal details are available on the Feature Page. Information on the D language may be found at http://www.digitalmars.com/d/2.0/index.html.

emacs-ecb is an Emacs-based code browser. It displays a number of informational windows that allow for easy source code navigation and overview:

More information may be found at http://ecb.sourceforge.net/.

frama-c is a C source code analysis tool, which may be used standalone, or integrated with Emacs. frama-c includes a source browser, and can calculate simple metrics such as sloc, call depth and cyclomatic complexity for a project. It can also generate simple call graphs. Various assertions about the code may be tested, and the code may be validated against a number of theorems. frama-c accepts user written plugins for additional custom analyses. More information on frama-c may be found at http://frama-c.com/.

GCC plugins that embed Python 2 and Python 3 are now available, enabling developers to more easily hook into GCC's inner workings (e.g. to add new compiler warnings). See the Feature Page for more details.

jruby is a Java implementation of the Ruby language, offering Ruby programmers the platform independence of Java. Version 1.6.2 of jruby is new to Fedora 16. The project page may be found at http://jruby.org.

libpipeline provides a set of functions for manipulating pipelines of subprocesses in a flexible and convenient way. http://libpipeline.nongnu.org/.

osm-gps-map-devel, a GTK+ widget (and Python bindings) that when given GPS co-ordinates, draws a GPS track, and points of interest on a moving map display. Downloads map data from a number of websites, including openstreetmap.org. http://nzjrs.github.com/osm-gps-map/.

Fedora 16 ships with Perl 5.14, which boasts Unicode version 6 compatibility, more reliable and consistent exception handling, improved IPV6 support, and performance and memory handling improvements. For the full list of changes (including syntax changes), please see the official Perl documentation: http://perldoc.perl.org/perl5140delta.html.

qwtpolar-devel is a library for plotting polar graphs. http://qwtpolar.sourceforge.net/.

shunit2 is a unit test framework for shell scripts similar to PyUnit or JUnit. http://code.google.com/p/shunit2/.

Fedora now ships with a gcc-with-cpychecker variant of GCC, which adds additional compile-time checks to Python extension modules written in C, detecting various common problems (e.g. reference counting mistakes).

why-emacs is an Emacs add on for the Why software verification tool. http://why.lri.fr/. Why supports a number of theorem provers including Ergo, haRVey and Zenon, as well as a number of others.

New to Fedora 16, the WSO2 Web Services Framework for C++ is an enterprise grade C++ library for providing and consuming Web Services in C++. Fedora includes version 2.1.0 of the framework. Documentation may be found at http://wso2.org/project/wsf/cpp/2.0.0/docs/.

ghc has been updated to 7.0.4 with lots of bugfixes.

haskell-platform has been updated to the latest stable 2011.2.0.1 release.

New packages include cabal-dev, leksah, and various new libraries.

ATpy is a Python library for manipulating astronomical tables. Details are available at http://atpy.github.com/.

bowtie is an ultrafast, memory-efficient short read aligner. It aligns short DNA sequences (reads) to the human genome at a rate of over 25 million 35-bp reads per hour. Bowtie indexes the genome with a Burrows-Wheeler index to keep its memory footprint small: typically about 2.2 GB for the human genome (2.9 GB for paired-end). http://bowtie-bio.sourceforge.net/index.shtml.

The DSDP software is a free open source implementation of an interior-point method for semidefinite programming. It provides primal and dual solutions, exploits low-rank structure and sparsity in the data, and has relatively low memory requirements for an interior-point method. It allows feasible and infeasible starting points and provides approximate certificates of infeasibility when no feasible solution exists. The dual-scaling algorithm implemented in this package has a convergence proof and worst-case polynomial complexity under mild assumptions on the data. For full documentation refer to http://www.mcs.anl.gov/hs/software/DSDP/.

fastx_toolkit is a collection of command line tools for Short-Reads FASTA/FASTQ files preprocessing. http://hannonlab.cshl.edu/fastx_toolkit/index.html.

Ion Beam Simulator or IBSimu is an ion optical computer simulation package for ion optics, plasma extraction and space charge dominated ion beam transport using Vlasov iteration. More information at http://ibsimu.sourceforge.net/.

gappa is a tool intended to help verifying and formally proving properties on numerical programs dealing with floating-point or fixed-point arithmetic. Fedora 16 upgrades to version 0.15.0. The project's web site may be found at http://gappa.gforge.inria.fr/.

ax25-tools-x provides a GUI interface to various soundmodem configuration and diagnostics applications.

cutecw has been updated to 1.0. Improvements include better training sequences, a greatly improved "read-to-me" mode, and a number of cosmetic enhancements. For more information refer to http://www.hamtools.org/cutecw/

hamlib has been updated to version 1.2.13.1. Some of the significant features are:

The complete upstream changelog is available at http://hamlib.sourceforge.net/NEWS and there is more general information on the project's wiki at http://www.hamlib.org.

xnec2c version 1.5 incorporates a number of improvements over 1.2:

More details may be found at http://www.qsl.net/5b4az/pkg/nec2/xnec2c/doc/xnec2c.html.