The beta version of the Fedora Linux 44 distribution has been released, marking the transition to the final testing stage, during which only critical bugs can be fixed. The release is scheduled for April 14. This version includes Fedora Workstation, Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop, Fedora Server, Fedora IoT, Fedora CoreOS, Fedora Cloud Base, Fedora IoT Edition, Fedora Silverblue, Fedora Kinoite, and live builds provided in the form of spins with custom environments like Xfce, MATE, Cinnamon, LXDE, Phosh, Miracle, LXQt, Budgie, Sway, and Cosmic. Builds are created for x86_64, Power64, and ARM64 (AArch64) architectures.
The most significant changes in Fedora Linux 44:
- Efforts have been made to enhance the infrastructure for reproducible builds to cover at least 99% of the packages in the Fedora repository. In previous releases, the coverage of reproducible builds was estimated at 90%, thanks to changes made to the build system that synchronize metadata regarding file modification times with the reference source code, as well as ensure a consistent order of metadata and structures in binary files. To achieve reproducible builds in the remaining 10%, maintainers of problematic packages were involved. Reproducible builds allow users to verify that the binaries distributed in the packages were built from the provided source code and do not contain hidden changes made as a result of compiler or build tool compromise.
- In all versions of the distribution with the KDE desktop environment (Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop Edition, Fedora KDE Plasma Mobile Spin, and Fedora Kinoite), the Plasma Setup initial setup wizard developed by KDE is used for system configuration after installation, while overlapping stages in the Anaconda installer have been disabled.
- In all KDE editions, the login manager SDDM has been replaced with the Plasma Login Manager, which is a project developed by KDE.
- The Fedora Games Lab edition has been revamped, providing a curated selection of packages and settings for gaming enthusiasts. The new version updated the software stack for running games and incorporated current technologies such as Wayland and PipeWire.
- The GNOME desktop environment has been updated to branch 50, which has dropped support for X11 and introduced a new session saving system.
- The Budgie desktop environment has been updated to version 10.10, now migrated to Wayland.
- The logic for creating network profiles (files with settings for NetworkManager) in the Anaconda installer has been changed. Such profiles are now created only for devices configured during installation through the GUI, boot options, or kickstart file, rather than for all available wired network devices. Creating profiles for all devices instead of just those selected by the user required deleting unnecessary profiles post-installation and caused issues when needing to change settings later.
- On Aarch64 architecture systems, automatic selection of the Device Tree Blobs (DTB) configuration file for the UEFI bootloader has been implemented, resolving boot issues with Live Fedora builds on ARM laptops shipped with Windows.
- Live builds utilize the livesys-scripts set for configuring the working environment and new Dracut tool capabilities for automatically creating a persistent overlay storage when writing the image to USB drives.
- Updated package versions: GCC 16.1, LLVM 22, Ruby 4.0, Go 1.26, binutils 2.46, glibc 2.43, gdb 16.3, CMake 4.0, MariaDB 11.8, IBus 1.5.34, uutils-coreutils 0.5, nushell 0.109.2, Django 6.x, TagLib 2, Helm 4, Ansible 13, TeXLive 2025, GHC 9.10, PHP 8.5.
- Work continues on converting the continuous integration (dist-git CI) infrastructure, which rebuilds RPM packages after changes or version updates, to use the Packit tool by default instead of Fedora CI and Zuul.
- A toolkit with the NIX package manager has been added to the repository, allowing for the installation of NIX format packages from the nixpkgs collection. Packages can be installed in single-user (in the user's home directory) and multi-user (in the /nix directory) modes.
- Hard links for linking identical files installed from different packages in the /usr hierarchy are now enabled by default. A hard link is automatically created when the package is installed by the handler during the 'post install' stage.
- The supply of QEMU builds for 32-bit host systems (i686) has been discontinued. This change reflects the QEMU project's efforts to remove support for 32-bit host systems.
- Executable files and libraries for FUSE 2 have been removed from the atomic editions of Fedora for desktop systems (this version was previously declared deprecated and all packages have been switched to use FUSE 3). Support for deprecated polkit rules, delivered in files with the pkla extension, has also been discontinued.
- PackageKit has switched to using the new DNF5 backend, built with the libdnf5 library.
- In the distribution edition with the composite manager MiracleWM, the desktop shell nwg-shell has been replaced with Dank Material Shell.
- The NTSYNC kernel module is enabled by default, significantly improving the performance of Windows games run through Wine. This module implements the symbolic device /dev/ntsync and a set of synchronization primitives used in the Windows NT kernel. A substantial performance boost is achieved by eliminating the overhead associated with using RPC in user space.
- In Fedora Cloud, instead of a separate /boot partition, a corresponding Btrfs subvolume is now offered.
- The package libreoffice-KF5 with components for integrating LibreOffice with Qt5 has been discontinued, and the libreoffice-kf6 package has replaced it, providing integration with Qt6.
Additionally, an initiative to reform the Fedora development process has been proposed for discussion by Jef Spaleta, the leader of the Fedora project. Jef suggests creating a 'sandbox' to simplify the testing of new ideas and experimentation with new technologies in the distribution, without the risk of compromising the stability of the main project.
It is expected that innovative ideas for the development of the distribution will evolve alongside the main distribution and may eventually be integrated into the main branch if certain conditions are met, the value for the project is confirmed, and other developers show interest. The lifecycle of experimental technologies includes several stages of development with review points tied to time, progressing to the next stage once criteria specific to each stage are met.
Source: opennet.ru
