Fedora 42 has arrived, and this time it offers an array of significant updates and improvements.
Right out of the gate, the Anaconda Web UI installer is now a native Wayland application, with X11 support removed. The new installer UI simplifies the installation in every area, including guided partitioning, improved keyboard control, enhanced dual-boot support, and even a new “Reinstall Fedora” option for easy recovery if something goes wrong.
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Next up, Fedora benefits from all the updates to the GNOME 48 desktop environment, which includes the new Wellbeing panel, triple buffering, notification stacking, enhanced accessibility, updated default fonts, and more.
The big news on the desktop environment front is the newly minted official KDE Plasma spin and a new COSMIC spin. The official KDE Plasma spin uses the most recent stable version of the DE, whereas the COSMIC spin is still in early support, as the DE is still in alpha. Other spins have also enjoyed updates, such as the LXQt spin, which has been updated to 2.1.0 with improved Wayland session support; Xfce, which has been updated to version 4.20 of the desktop with an improved panel, better power management, and experimental Wayland support.
Fedora 42 ships with kernel 6.14.0-63, which offers improved hardware support and performance; RPM Copy-on-Write (which introduces Btrfs reflink support to reduce I/O and CPU overhead during package decompression); DNF5 (which now automatically removes expired or obsolete repo keys during software installation or upgrades); IBus Speech-to-Text; Windows Subsystem for Linux support; new default wallpapers; and an improved installer UI.
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I’ve kicked the tires of the official KDE Plasma spin and the COSMIC spin, and I found the KDE Plasma version to be one of the finest releases to come out of the Fedora project. It’s beautiful, fast, and rock-solid. The version of KDE Plasma shipped in Fedora 42 is 6.3.4 with KDE Frameworks 6.12.0.
How to try the new release
If you’re interested in trying out the new release, you can download it from the official Fedora Project site. If you want to test one of the official spins, visit this page and download the ISO associated with the desktop you’d like to try. You can also read the official release notes for Fedora 42 to get a more in-depth look at what’s new.
Open Source
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