A few days ago the lNew version of “Fedora 41” released which brings with it a large amount of changes, improvements and various new features, Several of which we mentioned here on the blog during the development process of this new release.
Among all the new features and improvements that this new release of Fedora 41 presents, we will mention those that include the most significant and outstanding changes of the release.
Fedora 41 Key New Features
Fedora 41 arrives with the GNOME version 47, incorporating improvements such as a cleaner design for dialog boxes, better performance on low resolution displays and support for hardware acceleration when recording screencasts. Additionally, the ability to install proprietary NVIDIA drivers and the process for adding digital signatures for loading drivers in Secure Boot mode has been simplified. X11 support has also been removed from the base distribution, due to its deprecation in future RHEL releases.
In the main edition (with the GNOME desktop) GNOME Terminal has been replaced by Ptyxis as the default terminal emulator. This change is due to Ptyxis offering advanced features for working with containers such as Toolbox, Distrobox and Podman, as well as improvements in rendering speed and customization.
Another new feature that Fedora 41 presents is the new official Spin edition with a graphical environment based on the composite manager Miracle which uses the Wayland protocol and components to create an i3-like visual experience, with a tiled layout and more dynamic visual effects.
As for the other editions, in the edition KDE from Fedora has been updated to KDE Plasma 6.2, while the LXQt-based version has been updated to version 2.0. Additionally, a new Spin featuring KDE Plasma Mobile, optimized for mobile devices, has been added.
As for system changes, in Fedora 41 has implemented DNF5 as the default package manager. DNF 5 is an improved version that unifies low-level libraries and replaces components written in Python with C++, which has allowed us to eliminate dependencies, reduce the size of the toolset, and improve the overall efficiency of the system.
In addition to that, As of Fedora 41, support for classic network configuration scripts has been discontinued. ifup and ifdown, deprecated since 2018 and dependent on ISC DHCP, which ended its development in 2022. It is recommended to use NetworkManager's nmcli or the networkctl command, and NetworkManager no longer supports connection profiles in ifcfg format.
The Support for Intel IPU6 and MIPI cameras, popular in current laptops. Video Capture from these cameras now It is possible using the Pipewire media server, which also enables its use in Firefox.
In the Atomic versions, Polkit's rules Now allow standard users to upgrade the system without requiring an administrator passwordHowever, restrictions have been added for certain administrative tasks, such as modifying the kernel or installing local packages.
Of the other changes that stand out:
- New bootc utility for transactional upgrades for Fedora Atomic, CoreOS and Fedora IoT
- In GNOME, KDE Plasma and Budgie environments, the power-profiles-daemon has been replaced by a more efficient background process for managing power profiles.
- Due to the transition of Redis DBMS to a proprietary license, Fedora has included a fork of Redis called Valkey.
- Most packages now offer repeatable compilation, ensuring that distributed binaries are generated directly from source code without hidden modifications.
- The Fedora installer now supports self-encrypting drives (SEDs) that support the OPAL2 TCG interface.
- The PyTorch library, updated to version 2.4, includes support for the ROCm stack on AMD GPUs, while the GIMP package now delivers preview builds on the way to the upcoming GIMP 3.
- Added fedora-repoquery, to search for packages in the Fedora, EPEL, eln and Centos Stream repositories.
- OpenSSL now distrusts SHA-1 signatures, and GnuTLS can use kTLS to improve TLS performance.
Finally, if you are interested in learning more about it, you can check the details in the following link
Get the Fedora 41 beta
For those interested in trying out Fedora 41, the system image can be obtained from the official website. The link is this.