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The release of the new version of Fedora 39 was announced , which comes with a large number of new features, updates, as well as interesting improvements and bug fixes.
Initially, Fedora 39 features the Linux 6.5 kernel, which introduces MIDI 2.0 support in ALSA, ACPI support for the RISC-V architecture, and Landlock support for UML (User-Mode Linux). Additionally, the minimum size of the ESP (EFI system partition) used when installing Fedora has been increased from 200 to 500 MB due to limited space for firmware updates. The 500 MB limit aligns with the configuration Microsoft has used since Windows 10.
On the installation side, the `createrepo_c` utility now uses the Zstd algorithm by default to compress repository metadata and no longer generates metadata in the SQLite database. The `fedora-repos-modular` package was removed from the base installation , and the modular repository was disabled. This change sped up the DNF package manager by reducing the number of metadata checks and downloads.
As for the system packages, Fedora 39 comes with the GNOME 45 desktop environment, which features a dynamic virtual desktop indicator in the panel, improved search performance, an added camera indicator, hardware-accelerated video playback, a replaced image viewer and camera application, a changed sidebar display style, and updated GTK 4.12 and libadbwaita 1.4 libraries.
The QGnomePlatform and Adwaita-qt themes , which were used to give Qt applications GNOME-like configurations and styles, have been discontinued to better integrate these applications into the GNOME environment. The stated reason is the stagnation of these themes and compatibility issues with some applications.
Another change introduced in Fedora 39 is the way additional applications are installed and updated, as it now uses a Flatpak package system, which separates applications from the main system and runs them in a separate container.
Additionally, users managed through Active Directory, FreeIPA or LDAP have the option to use Passkeys technology, which allows passwordless authentication using biometric identifiers such as fingerprints or facial recognition, using a FIDO2 compatible device compatible with the libfido2 library.
The assembly and delivery of separately updated modules, whose lifecycle is not tied to the main distribution content, has been discontinued. Support was provided independently of distribution releases, ensuring the coexistence of packages with different versions of the same application. The reason for ceasing support for modules is a loss of interest in developing them and problems maintaining existing modules (the last activity on pagure.io/modularity was observed more than 3 years ago).
Last but not least, it is also mentioned that preparatory work related to the second stage of the transition to the modernized loading process has been carried out. The differences from classic boot come down to the use, instead of the initrd image generated on the local system when installing the kernel package, of a unified kernel image UKI (Unified Kernel Image), generated on the distribution infrastructure and signed digitally for distribution. UKI combines the driver for loading the kernel from UEFI (UEFI boot stub), the Linux kernel image, and the initrd system environment loaded into memory into one file.
Other notable changes include:
- NetworkManager provides automatic translation of existing connection profiles stored in the ifcfg format (/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-*) to a key file-based format.
- Provided the ability to remove the tzdata package from the timezone database to reduce the size of isolated containers.
- The default value of sysctl vm.max_map_count has been increased from 65530 to 1048576 to improve compatibility with Windows games launched through Wine or Steam.
- The package with man-pages-ru has been discontinued, since translations of man manuals into Russian are also included in the man-pages-l10n package.
- The way Flatpak packages are built in the distribution has been changed. Instead of using modules when rebuilding packages with the "prefix=/app" parameter, a separate build target is used.
- Imaging has begun with the LXQt user environment for the Aarch64 architecture.
- Fedora Cloud includes the ability to automatically reboot after installing package updates that require a system reboot.
Finally, if you are interested in learning more and/or downloading the new version, you can do so from the following link.