The Fedora Project, a Red Hat, Inc. sponsored and community-driven open source collaboration, today announced the general availability of Fedora Linux 34, the latest version of the fully open source Fedora operating system. Fedora Linux 34 further improves the overall user experience with key updates like GNOME 40, while still providing a foundation for new use cases, like edge computing, with improved support for hardware watchdogs for automated system recovery.
The Fedora Linux community has always been a passionate group of individuals who come together to better the open source world. Since the last release, we’ve seen this sentiment grow even more.
Fedora Linux 34 continues the Fedora Project’s emphasis on delivering the latest open source updates with all levels of users in mind, from beginners to experts. New capabilities and enhancements include:
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A more integrated, unified desktop experience with GNOME 40, which makes key features of the GNOME shell, like search, windows and workspaces more spatially coherent. GNOME shell now starts in the overview after login, with the GNOME welcome tour adapted to the new design. It also improves multi-monitor handling and allows users to choose between workspaces on primary displays only or workspaces on all displays.
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Btrfs transparent compression for more disk space on desktop variants of Fedora Linux, helping to increase the lifespan of flash-based media by reducing write amplification for solid-state disks (SSDs). This compression will be essential for increasing read and write performance of larger files, with the potential to speed up related workflows.
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Transitioning to PipeWire for desktop audio to mix and manage audio streams, with low-latency for pro audio users. Designed to better meet the needs of containers and applications shipped in Flatpaks, this change supports the growing shift towards a containerized world.
Fedora CoreOS is an automatically updating, minimal operating system for running containerized workloads more securely and at scale. It is available in three different streams. The stable stream is offered with changes only reaching that stream after spending a period of time in the testing stream. The next stream represents the future. The project plans this to be used to experiment with new features and also test out rebases of its platform on top of the next major version of Fedora. A rebase to Fedora Linux 34 has been in the testing stream during the beta period and is rolling out to the stable stream now, and the next stream will advance to future development based on Fedora’s “Rawhide” development branch.
With the global, dynamic challenges of 2020, the Fedora Linux community has remained active with its continued outreach to new contributors so the project can benefit from the new energy and contributions they bring.
Additionally, Fedora Linux 34 features a new project logo developed openly with community input that incorporates a more readable design, open source typeface and brighter coloring.
