Fedora Magazine announced the release of Fedora Linux 42. The distribution offers a variety of prepared products such as Fedora Workstation, Fedora Server, Fedora IoT, Fedora CoreOS, Fedora Cloud Base, Fedora IoT Edition, Fedora Silverblue, Fedora Kinoite, and live assemblies with user environments including XFCE, MATE, CINMON, LXDE, PHOSH, MIRACLE, LXQT, BUDGIE, SWAY, and COSMIC. These products are available for architectures X86_64, Power64, and ARM64 (AARCH64).
The key changes in Fedora Linux 42 are as follows:
- The Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop assembly is now considered the primary edition of the distribution, alongside the Fedora Workstation with GNOME. Both Gnome and KDE versions now have equal status and support. The Power architecture (PPC64le) has been added to Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop. Also, KDEs are available for OpenPower systems like Talos Workstation.
- An official Spin-assembly has been added for the Cosmic desktop environment, developed by System76 in Rust. Cosmic offers unique window management features like hybrid mosaic layout and window grouping, which can be tied to virtual desktops.
- The GNOME 48 branch is now the default desktop in Fedora Workstation. XFCE 4.20 and LXQT 2.1 have also been updated.
- Fedora Workstation now features a new version of the Anaconda installer with a Web-interface built using React, Patternfly design elements, and components from the Cockpit project. This interface offers a more straightforward experience for beginners and allows remote installation control through a web browser. It includes a guided disk partitioning mode for easy setup and the option to reinstall the distribution if needed, along with dual-boot installation.
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