Beta testing of the Fedora Linux 37 distribution has begun. This beta release marks the transition to the final testing stage, where only critical bug fixes are allowed. The release is scheduled for October 18. It includes Fedora Workstation, Fedora Server, Fedora Silverblue, Fedora IoT, Fedora CoreOS, Fedora Cloud Base, and Live images provided in the form of spins with desktop environments KDE Plasma 5, Xfce, MATE, Cinnamon, LXDE, and LXQt. Builds are available for x86_64, Power64, and ARM64 (AArch64) architectures.
The most significant changes in Fedora Linux 37 include:
- The Fedora Workstation desktop has been updated to GNOME 43, which is expected to be released on September 21. The GNOME 43 release introduces a new panel in the configuration tool for device and firmware security options (e.g., showing information about UEFI Secure Boot activation, TPM status, Intel BootGuard, and IOMMU protection mechanisms). The translation of applications to use GTK 4 and the libadwaita library continues, which provides ready-made widgets and objects for building applications that comply with the new GNOME HIG (Human Interface Guidelines).
- The ARMv7 architecture, also known as ARM32 or armhfp, has been deprecated. The reasons for discontinuing support for ARMv7 include the overall reduction in development for 32-bit systems, as some new features of Fedora related to enhanced security and performance improvements are only available for 64-bit architectures. ARMv7 remained the last fully supported 32-bit architecture in Fedora (repository creation for the i686 architecture was ceased in 2019, with only multi-lib repositories left for x86_64 environments).
- Files included in RPM packages are equipped with digital signatures that can be used to verify integrity and protect against file tampering using the kernel's IMA (Integrity Measurement Architecture) subsystem. The addition of signatures has resulted in a 1.1% increase in the size of RPM packages and a 0.3% increase in the size of the installed system.
- Official support for the Raspberry Pi 4 board has been ensured, including support for hardware-accelerated graphics for the V3D GPU.
- Two new official editions have been proposed: Fedora CoreOS (an atomically updated environment for running isolated containers) and Fedora Cloud Base (images for creating cloud environments). of virtual machines, deployed in public and private cloud environments).
- The policy TEST-FEDORA39 has been added to test the upcoming discontinuation of support for digital signatures based on the SHA-1 algorithm. Users can disable SHA-1 support using the command 'update-crypto-policies --set TEST-FEDORA39'.
- Package versions have been updated, including Python 3.11, Perl 5.36, LLVM 15, Go 1.19, Erlang 25, Haskell GHC 8.10.7, Boost 1.78, glibc 2.36, binutils 2.38, Node.js 18, RPM 4.18, BIND 9.18, Emacs 28, Stratis 3.2.0.
- The packages and the LXQt desktop edition have been updated to version LXQt 1.1.
- The package openssl1.1 has been moved to the deprecated category, replaced by the current branch OpenSSL 3.0.
- Language support components and localization have been separated from the main Firefox package into a separate package, firefox-langpacks, saving about 50 MB of disk space on systems that do not require support for languages other than English. Similarly, auxiliary utilities (envsubst, gettext, gettext.sh, and ngettext) have been separated from the gettext package into the gettext-runtime package, reducing the size of the base installation by 4.7 MB.
- It is recommended to cease the building of packages for the i686 architecture if the need for such packages is questionable or results in significant time or resource costs. This recommendation does not apply to packages used as dependencies in other packages or applied in the context of 'multilib' to ensure the execution of 32-bit programs in 64-bit environments. The building of the packages java-1.8.0-openjdk, java-11-openjdk, java-17-openjdk, and java-latest-openjdk for i686 architecture has been halted.
- A preliminary build has been proposed for testing the management of the Anaconda installer via a web interface, including from a remote system.
- On x86 systems with BIOS, partitioning using GPT is enabled by default instead of MBR.
- In Fedora Silverblue and Kinoite editions, the option to remount the /sysroot partition in read-only mode is provided to protect against accidental changes.
- A version of Fedora Server has been prepared for download, formatted as a virtual machine image optimized for hypervisors. KVM.
Source: opennet.ru
