The Fedora 32 distribution has entered the beta testing phase.

Started Beta testing of the Fedora 32 distribution. The beta release marked the transition to the final testing phase, during which only critical bug fixes are allowed. Release is scheduled at the end of April. The release covers Fedora Workstation, Fedora Server, Fedora Silverblue, and Live images provided in the form of spins with desktop environments KDE Plasma 5, Xfce, MATE, Cinnamon, LXDE, and LXQt. The builds are prepared for x86_64, ARM (Raspberry Pi 2 and 3), ARM64 (AArch64), and Power architectures.

The most notable changes in Fedora 32:

• In the default workstation builds activated background process earlyoom, which allows for quicker responses to memory shortages, avoiding the triggering of the OOM (Out Of Memory) handler in the kernel, which activates when the situation becomes critical and the system usually no longer responds to user actions. If the available memory drops below a specified threshold, earlyoom will forcibly terminate the process that is consuming the most memory (having the highest value in /proc/*/oom_score), without letting the system reach a point of buffer cleanup.
• Enabled the default systemd timer fstrim.timer, which runs once a week to invoke the fstrim.service, executing the command "\/usr\/sbin\/fstrim --fstab --verbose --quiet" to inform storage devices about unused blocks in mounted file systems and in dynamically resizable LVM storage. This mechanism helps mitigate wear on SSD and NVMe drives and improves block cleaning efficiency, as well as enhancing free logical extent usage in LVM during dynamic space allocation ("thin provisioning") by returning them to the pool;
• The desktop has been updated to the release GNOME 3.36, which introduced a separate application for managing GNOME Shell extensions, modernized the design of login and unlock screens, redesigned most system dialogs, added the ability to launch applications using a discrete GPU on systems with hybrid graphics, allowed renaming of application directories in overview mode, included a 'do not disturb' button in the notification system, and added an option for parental control in the initial setup wizard, among other features.
• In connection with the end of life of Python 2 from Fedora will be from the FreeBSD source tree. The GCC build along with the base system for all architectures was disabled by default at the end of December, and now the GCC code has been removed from the SVN repository. It is noted that at the time of removal, all platforms that do not support Clang have switched to using external build tools installed from ports. The base system included an outdated release of GCC 4.2.1 (integration of newer versions was not possible due to the transition of 4.2.2 to the GPLv3 license, which was deemed unacceptable for FreeBSD core components). the python2 package and all packages that require Python 2 for their operation or building. For developers and users requiring Python 2, a separate python27 package will be provided, which will be formatted as an "all-in-one" style (without splitting into sub-packages) and is not intended for use as a dependency;
• By default instead of iptables-legacy engaged the iptables-nft package, offering a set of utilities for compatibility with iptables, which have the same command-line syntax but translate the received rules into nf_tables bytecode;
• The dynamic firewall firewalld translated to operate on top of nftables. For direct invocation of rules, iptables and ebtables will continue to be used;
• GCC 10 has been used for building. Many package versions have been updated, including Glibc 2.31, Binutils 2.33, LLVM 10-rc, Python 3.8, Ruby 2.7,
  Go 1.14, MariaDB 10.4, Mono 6.6, PostgreSQL 12, PHP 7.4.
• In packages that define their own users and groups, the transition to Glibc 2.30 and GCC 9.2.0 has been made. 33 packages have been updated, including the Linux kernel 5.2, transition to user definitions in a format identical to sysusers.d (the systemd-sysusers utility for generating content for \/etc\/passwd and \/etc\/group is not yet applied, only the data format with user information is being discussed; to create users, useradd is still called);
• In the DNF package manager implemented code to send information necessary for a more accurate estimation of the user base of the distribution. Instead of originally planned transmission of a unique UUID identifier, a simpler scheme has been implemented based on an installation time counter and a variable with data about the architecture and OS version. The 'countme' counter will be reset to '0' after the first successful contact with the server and will start increasing every week after 7 days, allowing assessment of how long the current release has been in use. Users can disable the sending of this information if desired. based on the installation time counter and a variable with architecture and OS version data. The "countme" counter will be reset to "0" after the first successful server call and will start increasing weekly after 7 days, allowing an estimate of how long the used release has been installed. Users can opt to disable the transmission of this information if desired;
• with the '-fno-semantic-interposition' flag, the application of which in tests showed a performance gain of between 5% and 27%. additional bitmap fonts in OpenType format for use in programs such as gnome-terminal (after switching to HarfBuzz, issues arose with the use of old bitmap fonts in gnome-terminal). with the flag "-fno-semantic-interposition", which in tests showed performance gains of 5 to 27%;
• finalrd includes additional bitmap fonts in OpenType format for use in programs like gnome-terminal (after switching to HarfBuzz, issues arose with using older bitmap fonts in gnome-terminal);
• At the same time for Fedora 32 has been put into operation. has been introduced.

Source: opennet.ru