In a post to one of the project's mailing lists, project leader Robyn Bergeron said the release was dedicated to Seth Vidal, a contributor to the project, who died in a car accident in July this year.

"The Fedora Project dedicates the Fedora 20 release to Seth and asks that you join us in remembering his generous spirit and incredible work that helped make Fedora what it is today," she said.

In one of the major changes, the release will no longer include Sendmail as part of the default install; the release notes say this is because most users do not need a mail transfer agent.

Fedora 20 includes GNOME 3.10 as its default desktop. This version of GNOME includes a new music player and a new maps application.

The other major desktop environment, KDE, is also represented. KDE Plasma Workplaces 4.11 is provided.

There are 20 spins - different images based on usage. For example, there is one for education, and one aimed at those who use Fedora for scientific research.

Fedora has also released images that will run as guests in private or public clouds like Amazon Web Services o OpenStack.