Fedora 38 Released with GNOME 44 & Linux 6.2

The Fedora Project has announced the release of the latest offering in a blog post, noting the update arrives a week early than initially planned (which is rather unusual for Fedora, it has to be said).

For desktop users, Fedora 38 Workstation is the flagship edition. This ships GNOME 44 which boasts a wealth of improvements including Bluetooth management in Quick Settings, redesigned (and more featured) settings panels, and a new backgrounds apps UX.

In addition, Fedora 38 now gives users full, unfiltered access to Flathub when enabling third-party repositories through the Software app.

Fedora ships GNOME “as-is” with no major embellishments or tweaks to the user experience, plus Mozilla Firefox as default web-browser, GNOME Terminal for command-line usage, and the LibreOffice productivity suite – all at the latest stable versions available.

File manager buffs include the return of expandable folders in list view (enable via Nautilus’ Preferences panel), and the long-overdue addition of icon/thumbnail mode in the GTK file picker app.

Fedora 38 also ships with Linux Kernel 6.2, Mesa 23.0 drivers, and more meaning the distro (irrespective of edition) should play nice with both old and new hardware alike. Packages are now built using stricter compiler flags to enhance security.

Plus, plenty of updated programming languages and library updates are provided, including Ruby 3.2, gcc 13, LLVM 16, Golang 1.20, PHP 8.2, and more.

Download Fedora 38

Head to the (revamped) official Fedora website to download Fedora Linux 38 as a 64-bit ISO image you flash to a USB and then boot from. Want to upgrade from 37 to 38 directly? You can – just install all pending updates before attempting it.

If GNOME isn’t your thing be sure to dive in and explore the various Fedora Spins released as part of this update, including brand new Fedora Budgie and Fedora Sway flavors.