Fedora Linux 42 is the answer to life, the universe and everything! It’s also the latest release of one of the leading providers of free, open source software, The Fedora Project. We’ve selected a few notable changes in the newest version of Fedora Workstation 42 that we think you will love. Upgrade today from the official website, or upgrade your existing install using GNOME Software or through the terminal with dnf system-upgrade.
GNOME 48
In Fedora Workstation 42, you can enjoy the latest features the GNOME software release has to offer, plus benefit from an array of system enhancements! These are only a few of the many great features in GNOME 48, so do check out their release notes to read about all of the goodness in this release.
Well-Being Feature
A great new addition in this latest release is GNOME’s well being feature. This includes a screen time tracking function, break reminders, and the ability to set your movement break schedule times. Thank you to the good folks at Endless for supporting the GNOME foundation with a grant that has helped them work on this new feature.
Wayland Accessibility Improvements
Orca screen reader capabilities are now available on Wayland. The Orca shortcuts now function correctly. This is another great step towards having assistive technologies as part of the default for the GNOME display manager.
Triple Buffering for Enhanced Performance
GNOME 48 introduces a dynamic triple buffering feature in this latest release, and Fedora Workstation users can enjoy this too! This change is the culmination of over five years of reviews and testing, giving users more fluid animations and fewer skipped screens. Well done everyone! This was a testament to patience and commitment to a great user experience.
Notifications Stacking
In Fedora Workstation 42, there is a neat new feature that allows notifications to be stacked in a list. Notifications from the same app are grouped together. These improvements will stop your notification list from growing too large and gives a much better user experience overall.
Additional Fedora Linux 42 Features to Enjoy!
IBus Speech-to-Text
In Fedora Linux 42, ibus-speech-to-text provides a new input method that enables voice dictation in any application supporting IBus. It offers offline voice recognition, preserving user privacy, supports multiple languages through downloadable models, and integrates seamlessly with existing IBus infrastructure.
Fedora WSL
Recent versions of Windows support running Linux guests via Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). These can be distributed via tarballs, Appx packages, or via the Windows Store. Starting with this Fedora Linux 42 release, we now produce Fedora Linux images for WSL users. A dedicated image with documentation allows people to easily try out a Fedora Linux environment on their Windows installations, so when it comes time to install a Linux distribution on their computer, they can be more confident when choosing Fedora Linux.
DNF5
There has also been some work done with DNF5 which now includes new logic that will remove expired and obsolete repository keys from the system. This means users can enjoy the automatic management of repository keys during software installation or upgrades.
Anaconda Web UI Installer
By no means lastly, we have a brand new installer option for Fedora Workstation 42 — Anaconda’s Web UI installer. With this new feature, the biggest benefit to Fedora Linux users is the new guided partitioning function. This provides more powerful automatic partitioning, where the user will select a goal and have additional customization possible. This change also comes with a new “Reinstall Fedora” which allows users to easily reinstall their system if something goes wrong. Another new feature is improved support for dual-boot configurations. This new web-based UI is the default for the OS installer only on the Fedora Workstation edition right now.
While this is the end of this short snapshot of some of the newness in Fedora Linux 42, don’t panic! You can check out our Fedora Linux 42 Change Set page for even more details about all the features and changes that went into Fedora Linux 42. We hope you enjoy this latest release of Fedora Linux. So long, and thanks for all the fish!