Fedora is well known for it's commitment to innovation and Fedora 11 is no exception. With Fedora 11 we see the first distribution to replace ext3 with ext4 as the default file system. Is this a huge risk? Not really ... at this point the ext4 file system has matured to the point where users can be confident it will have no adverse effects on their system. It has good e2fsprogs support, is stable, and users should notice better performance. This does not change the fact that Fedora is once again taking a step forward before any other distribution. The ext3 file system is really starting to show it's age and I applaud Fedora for taking the initiative to, hopefully, start a trend which will result in more distributions making ext4 their default file system. Ubuntu has already included ext4 as their default file system for installs with the alpha of Ubuntu 9.10 and i expect most other distributions to follow suit. One thing to note is that before Fedora 11 several distributions did offer ext4 as an option (including Ubuntu), however, we are only now seeing it being adopted as the default file system.
Other improvements "Under the Hood" include:
The above improvements are geared mostly towards graphics performance but many other improvements have been made to Fedora 11. Please visit the Fedora 11 Feature List page for full details.
As stated earlier, in the past I had recommended that users have 3 - 6 months of Linux experience before making the jump to Fedora. With the release of Fedora 11 I would now have every confidence in recommending it to a new linux user. Fedora 11 is stable, fast, and has made major strides towards making it one of the most user-friendly distributions on the market today. If the Fedora developers can maintain their philosophy of including cutting edge software and components while still maintaining the level of ease-of-use we see in Fedora 11 I see a very bright future for Fedora. Kudos to the Fedora developers. Keep up the great work!