Fedora 15, the latest stable release of the Red Hat-sponsored Linux distribution, is the first Fedora release to have btrfs as a file system option during the installation process. On earlier versions, you would have had to pass the btrfs option to Anaconda at boot time to install Fedora on a btrfs file system.

One of the benefits of Btrfs besides offering competitive performance against other Linux file-systems and SSD optimizations is its support for sub-volumes and writable snapshots. While Btrfs is still in development and is not yet used as a default file-system by any Linux distribution, Red Hat has been introducing support for system rollbacks into Fedora.

The Fedora project released a beta version of Fedora 13 (codenamed "Goddard"). The updated community Linux distribution is touted for features including automatic print-driver installation, the Btrfs filesystem, enhanced 3D driver support, revamped Python bindings, and the Zarafa groupware package, says the project.

Fedora 16 is more than two months away from final, stable release, but pre-Alpha installation ISO images have been floating around. News from the Fedora camp have already indicated that btrfs will be the default file system on Fedora 16, joining the ranks of MeeGo, the first (Linux) distribution to use btrfs as the default file system.

Automatic driver installations, better mobile broadband and the end of PowerPC support can be expected from Fedora 13. Fedora Linux, the community release of Red Hat, is putting the final touches to its latest release, Fedora 13. Codenamed "Goddard", Fedora 13 has a number of features that will please end users as well as systems administrators.

While it originally appeared that Fedora 16 would be the first major distribution (besides possibly counting MeeGo) to switch to Btrfs as the default Linux file-system, that's not going to happen. Fedora 16 will continue defaulting to EXT4 and it will not be until Fedora 17 now that Btrfs will be the Fedora file-system default.

One of the features though that has just been proposed for Fedora 13 is rather interesting and that is system rollback support via Btrfs file-system snapshots.

Btrfs was supposed to have been the default file system for Fedora 16, but for technical reasons, that did not happen. Word on the street says it will be, in Fedora 17. But you do not have to wait for Fedora 17 to get your system humming on btrfs because you can do it right now.

By now you would know that the next Fedora release, Fedora 13, will be named "Goddard", after the famous Rocket scientist Robert H Goddard. After deciding on the name, fedora contributors have started working on the designs, themes and other artwork for the next release.