Testing of the beta version of the Fedora Linux 35 distribution has begun. The beta release marked the transition to the final stage of testing, during which only critical bugs are corrected. The release is scheduled for October 26. The release covers Fedora Workstation, Fedora Server, Fedora Silverblue, Fedora IoT and Live builds, delivered in the form of spins with the KDE Plasma 5, Xfce, MATE, Cinnamon, LXDE and LXQt desktop environments. Assemblies are generated for x86_64, Power64, ARM64 (AArch64) architectures and various devices with 32-bit ARM processors.
The most significant changes in Fedora Linux 35 are:
- The Fedora Workstation desktop has been updated to GNOME 41, which includes a redesigned application installation management interface. New sections have been added to the configurator for setting up window/desktop management and connecting through cellular operators. Added a new client for remote desktop connection using VNC and RDP protocols. The design of the music player has been changed. GTK 4 features a new OpenGL-based rendering engine that reduces power consumption and speeds up rendering.
- The ability to use a session based on the Wayland protocol on systems with proprietary NVIDIA drivers has been implemented.
- Kiosk mode has been implemented, allowing you to run a stripped-down GNOME session limited to running only one pre-selected application. The mode is suitable for organizing the operation of various information stands and self-service terminals.
- The first release of a new edition of the distribution kit has been proposed - Fedora Kinoite, based on Fedora Silverblue technologies, but using KDE instead of GNOME. The monolithic Fedora Kinoite image is not split into individual packages, is updated atomically, and is built from official Fedora RPM packages using the rpm-ostree toolkit. The base environment (/ and /usr) is mounted in read-only mode. Changeable data is located in the /var directory. To install and update additional applications, a system of self-contained flatpak packages is used, with which applications are separated from the main system and run in a separate container.
- The PipeWire media server, which has been the default since the last release, has been switched to use the WirePlumber audio session manager. WirePlumber allows you to manage the media node graph in PipeWire, configure audio devices, and control the routing of audio streams. Added support for forwarding the S/PDIF protocol for transmitting digital audio through the optical S/PDIF and HDMI connectors. Bluetooth support has been expanded, FastStream and AptX codecs have been added.
- Updated package versions, including GCC 11, LLVM 13, Python 3.10-rc, Perl 5.34, PHP 8.0, Binutils 2.36, Boost 1.76, glibc 2.34, binutils 2.37, gdb 10.2, Node.js 16, RPM 4.17, Erlang 24
- We have switched to using the yescrypt password hashing scheme for new users. Support for older hashes based on the previously used sha512crypt algorithm has been retained and is available as an option. Yescrypt extends the capabilities of classic scrypt by supporting the use of memory-intensive schemes and reduces the effectiveness of attacks using GPUs, FPGAs and specialized chips. Yescrypt security is ensured by using already proven cryptographic primitives SHA-256, HMAC and PBKDF2.
- In the /etc/os-release file, the 'NAME=Fedora' parameter has been replaced with 'NAME=Β»Fedora Linux'' (the name Fedora is now used for the entire project and its associated community, and the distribution is called Fedora Linux). The βID=fedoraβ parameter remained unchanged, i.e. there is no need to change scripts and conditional blocks in spec files. Specialized editions will also continue to be shipped under the old names, such as Fedora Workstation, Fedora CoreOS and Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop.
- Fedora Cloud images come by default with the Btrfs file system and a hybrid bootloader that supports booting on BIOS and UEFI systems.
- Added power-profiles-daemon handler to provide on-the-fly switching between power saving mode, power balance mode, and maximum performance mode.
- Enabled systemd user services to be restarted after running βrpm upgradeβ (previously only system services were restarted).
- The mechanism for activating third-party repositories has been changed. Previously, enabling the βThird-party Software Repositoriesβ setting would install the fedora-workstation-repositories package, but the repositories would remain disabled, now the fedora-workstation-repositories package is installed by default, and the setting will enable the repositories.
- The inclusion of third-party repositories now covers peer-reviewed selected apps from the Flathub catalog, i.e. similar applications will be available in GNOME Software without installing FlatHab. Currently approved applications are Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Skype, Bitwarden, Postman and Minecraft, pending review, Discord, Anydesk, WPS Office, OnlyOffice, MasterPDFEditor, Slack, UngoogledChromium, Flatseal, WhatsAppQT and GreenWithEnvy.
- Implemented the default use of the DNS over TLS (DoT) protocol when supported by the selected DNS server.
- Added support for mice with high-precision scroll wheel positioning (up to 120 events per rotation).
- The rules for choosing a compiler when building packages have been changed. Until now, the rules dictated that the package be built using GCC, unless the package could only be built using Clang. The new rules allow package maintainers to choose Clang even if the upstream project supports GCC, and vice versa, to choose GCC if the upstream project does not support GCC.
- When setting up disk encryption using LUKS, automatic selection of the optimal sector size is ensured, i.e. for disks with 4k physical sectors, the sector size of 4096 in LUKS will be selected.
It is worth paying attention to known unresolved issues in the beta version.
Source: opennet.ru