The Fedora Project has released the first beta of Fedora 16.

Dubbed "Verne" and sporting desktop artwork that echoes Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Fedora 16 is shaping up to be a worthwhile alternative to Ubuntu 11.10, particularly for those that aren't happy with Canonical's home-brewed Unity shell.

Among the big changes in Fedora 16 is GNOME 3.2, the latest version of the GNOME 3 shell Ubuntu ditched for Unity.

Fedora has always been a reasonably popular Linux distro, but now it is acting as a kind of flagship for the GNOME 3 desktop, since Ubuntu has gone its own way. Fedora releases are likely undergoing much closer scrutiny from the Linux community.

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