Fedora Linux is one of the most popular desktop Linux distributions, and Fedora 42 is now available for beta testing. Fedora Workstation now has GNOME 48 and an updated installer, and there’s now an official version of Fedora with the COSMIC desktop environment.

New Features and Improvements

The main GNOME-based edition of Fedora 42 has been updated to GNOME 48, which itself includes many improvements for Wayland and HDR support, along with other many other minor fixes. GNOME 48 is also expected to be included in next month’s Ubuntu 24.04 update, though Ubuntu makes more substantial changes to the Shell and other core components than Fedora. The blog post explained, “In Fedora Workstation, we have also introduced the SDL3 transition and Wayland-by-default for SDL apps, and included the new GNOME well-being feature.”

The update also includes more updates to Anaconda, the main installer for Fedora that the developers started overhauling last year. The new web UI is now the default for installing Fedora Workstation, complete with an installation progress indicator, built-in help, configuration review, a ‘Reinstall Fedora’ option for fixing broken installs, and skipping optional steps. There’s also a new interface for disk partitioning, intended to make automatic partitioning more seamless.

There are also many smaller changes that you might not notice, including an update to Ruby 3.4 and improvements to software repository management. The team said, “There is also a DNF5 improvement that includes new logic that will remove expired and obsolete repository keys from the system. This means users can enjoy the automatic management of repository keys during software installation or upgrades.”

Fedora COSMIC spin

Fedora is available in several different ‘spins’ that swap out the desktop environment and other components, such as the Cinnamon Spin and KDE Plasma Desktop. Fedora 42 is introducing another option: the Fedora COSMIC spin.

This Fedora variant uses the Rust-based COSMIC desktop environment developed by System76, which had its first public alpha release in August of last year. COSMIC is being developed primarily for the company’s own Pop!_OS distribution, which is available for any 64-bit x86 PC or the Raspberry Pi 4.

The Fedora team said in a blog post, “COSMIC has many unique features, such as hybrid per-workspace window/tiling management, window stacks with tabs to switch between windows, and robust customization features that integrate with GTK and (later on) Qt!”

Other Changes

Speaking of the KDE Plasma Desktop spin, the Fedora project is also upgrading that version to “edition status.” That means it should be a more stable and tested experience, and it now supports the Power architecture (ppc64le) in addition to x86, like most other editions of Fedora and Red Hat Linux.

There’s an update for the Fedora Asahi Remix as well, which is still the best distribution for running Linux on Apple Silicon Macs, despite some recent shakeups and delays supporting new hardware. It now includes FEX, providing “an easier way to run x86 and x86-64 binaries out of the box via emulation.”

You can download the new betas for Fedora Workstation 42 Beta, Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop 42 Beta, Fedora Server 42 Beta, Fedora IoT 42 Beta, Fedora Cloud 42 Beta, Fedora CoreOS “next” stream from the official website and mirrors. You can also update an existing system with DNF’s system-upgrade.

Source: Fedora Magazine (1, 2), Phoronix