Fedora 42 has been released, bringing with it a major policy change: the Fedora KDE version now has the same status as the GNOME version. This means that Fedora KDE will be getting the same promotion, website space, and potential blocker status as the GNOME version. For now, the naming is a bit weird – Fedora Workstation for GNOME, Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop for KDE – but they intend to fix this down the line.
Feodra 42 also brings with it a brand new installation interface, which replaces the old one with a newer, step-by-step wizard-style interface. Anaconda is now also a native Wayland application, instead of running in Xorg. This release also marks the official availability of the Fedora COSMIC spin, bringing System76’s Rust-based COSMIC desktop on the same footing as Xfce, LXQt, and others.
Another cool addition is FEX for those of us running Fedora on ARM.
Fedora now provides FEX, a fast emulator that allows one to run x86 and x86-64 binaries on an AArch64 Linux host. FEX requires a number of supporting components, including a RootFS image, and integration with muvm to support 16k page-size hosts. The purpose of this Change is to integrate FEX itself and its supporting components into Fedora Linux, to provide a delightful out-of-box experience for users that want to run x86 and x86-64 binaries on their aarch64 systems. This also includes integration into the AArch64 Fedora KDE spin as a non-blocking component of the spin.
↫ Fedora 42 release notes
You can download and install Fedora 42, or if you’re already a Fedora user, you can upgrade through your graphical update utility or the command line using DNF.
Could anyone share the experiences of running KDE on Fedora? How does it compare to e.g. Kubuntu or KDE Neon?
I’m running KDE on Fedora Kinoite, it’s much better IMO than Kubuntu or Neon. Far fewer paper cut bugs (e.g. Aurorae window decorations aren’t broken), much more stable system, more up to date kernel and userland. Also feels faster once booted, though that’s hard to put measurements to. Boot is a bit slower, but I can live with that.
The main issue is lack of patent encumbered codecs in the default userland, and you can fix that easy by using RPM Fusion (on traditional Fedora) or Flathub (on immutable).
I kind of wish there was a convenient, up to date KDE distro without Fedora’s US corporate ties, but like… right now it’s the only one that feels to me like a professional grade desktop OS, and not a server OS hacked into a desktop OS (OpenSUSE), a desktop OS from ten years ago (Debian), a hobby project (Arch/Manjaro), or simply a hackjob (Ubuntu).
> I kind of wish there was a convenient, up to date KDE distro without Fedora’s US corporate ties
Nobara is pretty close to that. They even remove some of the cruft that Red Hat likes to “value add” to Fedora.
Arch feels like a hobby project? Because otherwise I would hghly recommend EndeavourOS.
KDE is also awesome on Chimera Linux but Chimera is not for everyone.
Fedora KDE SIG Member here:
@thom-holwerda small correction: we’ve been a blocker desktop (at the same level as Gnome) for a few years already. That does not change with the promotion to Edition status
@dsmogor (I am biased, of course, as I maintain Fedora KDE) our plasma experience is arguably closer to what upstream wants as the KDE devs like bringing changes constantly and quickly and they also like using up to date/bleeding edge technologies which Fedora provides ( whereas KDE Neon or Kubuntu do not. Neon in particular tries to bring latest Plasma but… the underlying OS is still Ubuntu LTS which gets outdated quickly)
In my view, Fedora has two big “problems” though:
– the codecs (as another users points out). Easily solvable by using rpmfusion (mostly maintain by Fedora devs). You can also enable third party repositories easily. Check my blog post here: https://blog.marcdeop.com/2024/11/09/fedora-kde-enabling-third-party-repositories/
– the installer: compared to other distros is indeed a pain in the a** ( Fedora Workstation new installer is MUCH BETTER though 🙂 )
Hey there!
Thank you and the whole of Fedora team but especially the KDE SIG for a great release!
I upgraded two systems from F41 KDE and it was a breeze!
I was a bit worried that I’d have issues with rpmfusion not being ready but fortunately that was not the case 🙂
Cheers from Argentina!
hey damnshock.
Just to say thanks for your work. Absolutely love KDE Fedora experience. Specially Kinoite is just a pleasure to use.
The rpmfusion guide is cool but not enough? For codec hardware acceleration, MESA and FFMPEG have to be swapped using the terminal: https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/OSTree?highlight=%28%5CbCategoryHowto%5Cb%29#Multimedia
and sometimes they fail to update because rpmfusion and fedora repos are not 100% in sync, specially when there are MESA updates.
but is good enough