The latest and greatest of the Red Hat (sponsored) distro was released yesterday, to my pleasure. This version, dubbed Werewolf, is the 8th release in the series, and like everything bearing the RH stamp, guarantees to kick ass. Although this release isnt jam packed with new features and functionality, but is still worth the download.

Apart from the usual updating of software packages, noteworthy additions include a new login and gnome style, which in my opinion are way cleaner and professional than the earlier ones. Remember the balloons from Fedora 7, anyone? Also, on the aesthetic side, F8 includes better support for Compiz and Compiz Fusion (Beryl + Compiz) right out of the box, which makes for a nice alternative to the visually attractive OSs that are Vista and OSX Leopard, specially for the common of mortals which dont necessarily have lots of time to put on configuring things that just look pretty.

Concerning performance, several features were added or tweaked, most notably the disabling of some services, resulting in lesser boot times, and better support of laptop hardware, which is a good news for somebody like me that has been dying to get linux a laptop. If it weren`t for the stupid wireless drivers… Otherwise, there are improvements on security, virtualization, and dev tools, but non of which are really of interest (for me.).

Ive been using RH products all my life, from the start, and this new release has but reignited the passion between me and Red Hat. Itll be interesting to see what Fr0stbyte can do running linux.

Grab it here.

Full release overview here.