"At the heat of a thousand hot dog cookers, the seventeenth release of
Fedora shall be forged by contributors the world over, and it will be
known as: Beefy Miracle. The mustard shall indicate progress.

For six months, participants in the Fedora Project shall freely
contribute to the release of the distribution, in the spirit of the Four
Foundations -- Freedom, Friends, Features, and First -- and moreover,
they shall relish in Fun, as a community without Fun would be like a day
without sunshine.

Upon release, a free and open source operating system shall be available
to all, catering to a variety of tastes -- those of end-users, systems
administrators, and developers, with a common thread that binds them
all: No, not their love for hot dogs, silly, as we certainly know that
Fedora shall be created and used by those whose dietary preference could
be either Beefy or Leafy. Freedom, my friends, Freedom is the Great
Condiment, which shall enable all users of the Beefy Miracle to Create,
Share, and Do."

-- The Book of Sauerkraut, Chapter 12, Verse 529

The Beefy Miracle hath arrived. Behold, for it is available to download now:
http://fedoraproject.org/get-fedora

And lo, detailed information about this release can be seen in the
release notes:
http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/17/html/Release_Notes/

== Condiments ==

Frankly, we believe this is the beefiest release ever -- chock full of
condiments, more commonly known as Features, to customize your
experience to your tastes. We take pride in our toppings, and in our
fine ingredients; Fedora 17 includes both over- and under-the-bun
improvements that show off the power and flexibility of the advancing
state of free (range) software.

On the desktop: GNOME 3.4 introduces many user experience improvements,
including new search capabilities in the activities overview, improved
themes, and enhancements to the Documents and Contacts applications. A
new application, GNOME-boxes, provides easy access to virtual machines.
Additionally, GIMP 2.8, the newest version of the GNU Image
Manipulation Program, brings new improvements, such as single-window
mode, layer groups, and on-canvas editing.

For developers: You never sausage a great array of development tools!
Fedora 17 includes a pre-release of Juno, the release of the Eclipse
SDK expected in June 2012. Java 7 (and OpenJDK 7) is the default Java
runtime and Java build toolset, and GCC 4.7.x is now the primary
compiler in Fedora. Other language refreshes include shipping Ruby
1.9.3, the latest stable version of the Ruby language; PHP 5.4, the
latest PHP stack; an update of Erlang to the R15 release; and the D
language has been updated to the 2.058 release.

Under the hood, and in the cloud: Serving up hot dogs all day long?
Increase your reliability and versatility with the new enhancements to
the clustering stack in Fedora 17. Load balancing and high availability
improvements have been made, allowing systems administrators to deploy
Fedora in environments requiring greater availability and clustered file
systems. JBoss Application Server (AS) 7 has also been added to Fedora
17; this fast, lightweight, and modular application server allows you to
run full Java EE applications. oVirt, a server virtualization management
system with advanced capabilities for hosts and guests, is also
included. The automatic multi-seat feature enables multiple, concurrent
end-users to utilize a desktop from a single machine, which any systems
administrator can relish. And we couldn't possibly write this without
talking about our foray into Hot Dogs as a Service (HDaaS)... oh, just
kidding, we just had to make a cloudy joke. In all seriousness, though,
OpenStack, a collection of services that can be used to set up and run
cloud compute and storage infrastructure, has been updated to the latest
release, 2012.1 (Essex), in Fedora 17.

Ketchup with the full list of features for Fedora 17 here:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/17/FeatureList

=== Download and Upgrade ===

Fedora 17: It's bun-believable. Get it now: http://get.fedoraproject.org

If you are upgrading from a previous release of Fedora, refer to:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Upgrading

Fedora 17 full release notes and guides for several languages are
available at:

http://docs.fedoraproject.org/

Fedora 17 common bugs are documented at:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F17_bugs

=== Fedora Spins ===

Fedora spins are alternate version of Fedora, tailored for various types
of users via hand-picked application set or customizations. They can be
found at:

http://spins.fedoraproject.org

== Contributing ==

There are many ways to contribute beyond bug reporting. You can help
translate software and content, test and give feedback on software
updates, write and edit documentation, design and do artwork, help with
all sorts of promotional activities, and package free software for use
by millions of Fedora users worldwide. To get started, visit
http://join.fedoraproject.org today!

== Behold, the history of His Meatiness ==

Who is this Beefy Miracle character? Ketchup on his history:

http://beefymiracle.org/history.html

== Contact information ==

Journalists and reporters can find additional information at:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Press



Cheers, and enjoy.

-Robyn