[HN Gopher] Fedora 42 Beta
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       Fedora 42 Beta
        
       Author : meysamazad
       Score  : 143 points
       Date   : 2025-03-18 16:48 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.redhat.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.redhat.com)
        
       | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
       | Good work! Looks like one heck of a release!
       | 
       | FYI they now build WSL tarballs!
       | 
       | https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/stage/42_Beta-1.4/Conta...
        
       | ndiddy wrote:
       | Fedora KDE is probably the best KDE experience I've had, so I'm
       | glad that it's going to get equal billing with the GNOME version
       | going forward. Shoutout to the Fedora KDE maintainers for doing
       | such a good job.
        
         | sho_hn wrote:
         | KDE developer myself, and happy Fedora user since 2009. Agreed,
         | the Fedora team does a great job, also with keeping us
         | developers happy by e.g. providing dependencies needed by the
         | unreleased development versions.
        
           | bravetraveler wrote:
           | I really like working with 'mock' and 'fedpkg'; Fedora is a
           | modern binary distribution, of course, but source rebuilds
           | are like the same four commands away for any package
        
       | wirybeige wrote:
       | I've been using Fedora 42 since it branched, it has been quite
       | nice; I haven't encountered any breaking bugs with it. Has gnome
       | 48 which comes with HDR support. Hope that chromium can get
       | support for it soon, MPV can already do it apparently, but
       | haven't tried it; games have been hit & miss for it, but I
       | presume those will get ironed out over time.
        
       | nwah1 wrote:
       | Excited about the new COSMIC spin, and remain excited about the
       | progression of the existing Atomic desktop spins.
        
         | bsimpson wrote:
         | Nice that people have options. Setting up a desktop on your own
         | isn't always easy.
         | 
         | I tried COSMIC and was disappointed that it didn't work well on
         | a touchscreen (a common refrain for Linux environments, and a
         | motivator for me trying it out). Then again, it's still an
         | alpha. Would be nice to see improvements there, but since it's
         | from a laptop vendor, I don't have high expectations.
        
           | nwah1 wrote:
           | I think it looks good, and seems fairly modern. The settings
           | app would probably work well on touchscreen, but I'm sure
           | many apps wouldn't.
           | 
           | Definitely still in alpha.
           | 
           | I like the idea that it will be a bit more secure,
           | automatically. Security needs to be taken much more
           | seriously. Fedora Atomic means most userspace apps will be
           | sandboxed via Flatpak, and the base system itself will be
           | immutable.
           | 
           | Flatpak needs a lot more love, though. Portals aren't as good
           | as Android or iOS or Windows capability-based permissions
           | yet. Many important apps just request full permissions,
           | needlessly.
        
       | staplung wrote:
       | Gah! Why did they name their installer Anaconda? That name is
       | already totally overloaded by the python Anaconda, which I notice
       | now bills itself as "The Operating System for AI".
       | 
       | That's like naming your programming language "JIT", or "Compiler"
       | or..."Hack".
       | 
       | UPDATE: as others have pointed out, I've got it backwards. RedHat
       | had the name first. So, criticism retracted and redirected at the
       | other Anaconda.
        
         | jjice wrote:
         | Leave it to Meta:
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hack_(programming_language)
        
         | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
         | Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaconda_(installer) and
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaconda_(Python_distribution) ,
         | the installer dates to 1999 and the python distro dates to
         | 2012. So yes, the name is overloaded, but the installer came
         | first, and came first by a lot.
        
           | staplung wrote:
           | Ah, okay. Criticism retracted from RedHat and redirected at
           | (python) Anaconda.
        
           | m4rtink wrote:
           | And 1999 is just how far the Git history (imported from CVS,
           | the project kinda skipped subversion directly to Git) goes. -
           | The first commit is from April 24 1999 and says: "the very
           | start of a gui frontend for anaconda":
           | 
           | https://github.com/rhinstaller/anaconda/commit/785d44bf73ccc.
           | ..
           | 
           | This kinda implies that Anaconda was in existence for some
           | time back then & what was tracked in the newflangled change
           | tracking software was the fancy new _graphical_ UI. :)
           | 
           | I have not really looked further if perhaps the backend was
           | imported later on or just grew from the GUI - but the same
           | codebase, with continous 27 years of history is what installs
           | the Fedora 42 Beta today. :-)
        
           | m4rtink wrote:
           | OK, managed to dig up even more Anaconda history, including
           | origins of the name: https://anaconda-
           | installer.readthedocs.io/en/latest/intro.ht...
        
             | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
             | Interesting that that says
             | 
             | > So the Anaconda code base that we all started with began
             | in 1999 or so
             | 
             | which implies that the pre-vcs history is pretty short.
        
         | messe wrote:
         | Their installer predates the python Anaconda before then a
         | decade, before Python was even remotely as popular as today.
         | 
         | But you're totally right, they obviously should have been more
         | prescient and named it something else.
        
           | twnrt wrote:
           | Yes. Also Python itself was first released in 1991. The name
           | "Python" had been in use in the CMUCL compiler for 6 years:
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMU_Common_Lisp#History
           | 
           | Certainly the Python trademark is sketchy.
        
         | skyyler wrote:
         | You should be asking why the python Anaconda overloaded a term
         | already being used by the Red Hat installer.
        
       | jjice wrote:
       | I've been feeling a pull towards Fedora lately away from Ubuntu,
       | especially because there's apparently better hardware support for
       | Framework laptops. Does anyone have experience for migrating from
       | Ubuntu to Fedora? Package reinstallation isn't an issue for me,
       | but wondering if anyone has some general tips for migrating
       | everything between distributions, especially with different
       | parent distros.
        
         | wirybeige wrote:
         | Moving between distros I usually just have files I care about
         | like documents and music on their own drive so I don't need to
         | worry about moving them. As for moving from Ubuntu to Fedora,
         | there are more steps to getting non-free
         | software/codecs/drivers working on Fedora, you will need RPM
         | Fusion for that. There are relevant How-Tos provided by RPM
         | Fusion and other sources for installing NVIDIA drivers, ffmpeg
         | (non-free), and more.
        
           | jjice wrote:
           | Having all my actual files separately stored from my system
           | files just makes so much sense. Good call. Right now they're
           | mostly relegated to a few directories, but I'm not positive,
           | which is part of the headache I'm worried about with a
           | switch. Having them completely separate and symlinked is a
           | great call.
        
           | fanatic2pope wrote:
           | I believe these days the "extra steps" amount to just
           | clicking an option box to allow third party repositories
           | during install.
           | 
           | https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/workstation-working-
           | gro...
        
             | wirybeige wrote:
             | It enables only a small selection of RPM Fusion as your
             | link shows, ofc flathub gets around some of the need for
             | RPM Fusion, like video codecs, as long as everything else
             | your using is a flatpak (and uses the applicable runtimes).
        
         | oaththrowaway wrote:
         | I floated between Mint and Pop_OS for years, and now I'll
         | probably never leave Fedora Silverblue. It's awesome. I just
         | use different toolbox/distrobox for different things I need.
         | 
         | Most of my dev work is in a Ubuntu distrobox and I use mostly
         | Flatpaks for everything else.
        
           | bsimpson wrote:
           | For those who have heard of Bazzite, the frontrunner in
           | gaming/home theater Linux distros, it's based on Silverblue.
        
             | oaththrowaway wrote:
             | I'm actually using a customized version of Universal Blue
             | that Bazzite is also based on. Very slick setup
        
         | nurettin wrote:
         | I was pleasantly surprised to find official cuda repositories
         | for fedora 41 for compiling llama.cpp. If you need such
         | specific repos, make sure fedora supports them before
         | switching.
        
         | treve wrote:
         | I switched about 2 years ago using my Dell XPS 13. No hardware
         | issues and everything is just a bit less buggy. I wrote about
         | it back then: https://evertpot.com/switching-to-fedora/
        
         | toprerules wrote:
         | Fedora uses more stock and Red Hat is a far, far bigger
         | contributor to Linux and OS as a whole (especially the kernel
         | and systemd). Fedora stays more true to the only OSS ethos. IMO
         | Fedora is the better pick.
         | 
         | If I had to use Ubuntu I would fight to use Debian instead.
        
           | zifpanachr23 wrote:
           | I agree very strongly with your take. Fedora (and RHEL of
           | course) ooze professionalism in a way that no other distro
           | ecosystem does to me.
           | 
           | It's rock solid AND comes with relatively new packages, AND
           | they are close to stock. I also appreciate their willingness
           | to put themselves forward and show leadership when it comes
           | to adopting (or creating) new technologies that can make the
           | platform better. I think most professionals can agree at this
           | point that despite little qualms and some early hiccups here
           | and there, technologies like systemd and wayland (and others)
           | were probably good ideas in the long run, and Fedora was
           | consistently way out ahead in promoting and adopting them.
           | 
           | I also tend to trust Red Hat (and yes even IBM) more than I
           | do Canonical for a number of reasons.
        
             | akdor1154 wrote:
             | > Canonical gives off some weird vibes and those in the
             | know will understand what I'm talking about.
             | 
             | You're probably trying to write fairly and without throwing
             | shade, but the result is this gives off vibes of FUD. Can
             | you be a bit more specific about your issues with
             | Canonical?
        
               | zifpanachr23 wrote:
               | You're right and I apologize for that and don't want to
               | discourage anybody from doing business with or working
               | with or for Canonical.
               | 
               | All I'll say is that the recruitment process alone, if
               | it's still as bad as it used to be, is a major red flag
               | and deal breaker w.r.t what it says about the overall
               | culture.
               | 
               | Maybe things have changed and so people should really
               | take my opinions about them with a grain of salt.
        
               | scheme271 wrote:
               | If you're referring to the recruitment asking questions
               | about your high school performance and how you ranked
               | locally and regionally in high school in various
               | subjects, that's still a thing. Even for positions where
               | that shouldn't matter.
        
               | CIARobotFish wrote:
               | I'm willing to put up with a lot during an application
               | process, but not Canonical's circus. If applying for a
               | job at a company tells you anything about the company's
               | culture then I don't think I would ever want to work
               | there.
        
               | burkaman wrote:
               | There are no positions where it should matter. Even if
               | there were a genuine reason to care about high school
               | grades (there isn't), asking about relative ranking
               | doesn't make any sense unless you have detailed knowledge
               | of the specific school they went to. It's like asking a
               | candidate to rank their programming ability compared to
               | their current colleagues. What possible information could
               | you derive from this?
               | 
               | Example application:
               | https://canonical.com/careers/4676649/application
               | 
               | > How did you perform in mathematics at high school?
               | 
               | Predefined answers are "Top 0.01% in the region", "Top 5%
               | at school", "Top 10% at school", etc.
               | 
               | > Please share your rationale or evidence for the high
               | school performance selections above. Make reference to
               | provincial, state or nation-wide scoring systems,
               | rankings, or recognition awards, or to competitive or
               | selective college entrance results such as SAT or ACT
               | scores, JAMB, matriculation results, IB results etc. We
               | recognise every system is different but we will ask you
               | to justify your selections above.
               | 
               | These are required questions. Even if I were literally in
               | high school, I'm not sure how I would be able to answer
               | these. "Make reference to provincial, state or nation-
               | wide scoring systems, rankings" - do these exist in the
               | US? If they do I've never heard of them.
        
               | chuckadams wrote:
               | > "Make reference to provincial, state or nation-wide
               | scoring systems, rankings" - do these exist in the US?
               | 
               | They name a couple, SAT and ACT are still the main ones.
               | Some states like New York have the Regents Exam which
               | would be a statewide score. Demanding those scores is
               | still just about the dumbest fucking thing I've seen a
               | tech company do.
        
             | fpoling wrote:
             | Fedora often updates kernel and that already broke laptop
             | support (Thinkpad X1 Gen 13 bought a year ago) for me twice
             | requiring to revert to older kernel.
             | 
             | Also few years ago a kernel update made a laptop that was 7
             | years old non-functional. Eventually I had to install
             | Debian as lack of security updates for the kernel was very
             | problematic.
        
           | jjtheblunt wrote:
           | exactly same sentiment here
        
         | lreeves wrote:
         | I moved my AMD Framework laptop from Ubuntu to Fedora, no real
         | complaints. Having the newest kernel and Mesa stuff is pretty
         | useful if you're doing any gaming on it.
        
         | ndiddy wrote:
         | One thing to note is that you have to set up codecs/video
         | acceleration stuff manually on Fedora because of legal reasons.
         | Here's a pretty good guide for that, it also has some suggested
         | configuration tweaks for GNOME that make it a bit nicer to use.
         | https://ounapuu.ee/posts/2024/10/14/fedora-starter-pack/
        
           | tapoxi wrote:
           | For those interested in the atomic versions, the Universal
           | Blue team has variants that do all of this for you:
           | https://universal-blue.org/
           | 
           | It's not really a separate distro, more like a different
           | configuration. The regular atomic release is the "base image"
           | with the universal blue stuff overlayed on top. You can
           | rebase to or from a universal blue image and a stock atomic
           | one.
        
         | runjake wrote:
         | I prefer apt, but on my particular PC, Fedora is noticeably
         | faster and more stable than Ubuntu. Not that I have system
         | crashes, but I have smoother performance and gaming, and random
         | GNOME apps crash much less on Fedora, so I use it. And there's
         | no Snap -- unless you want it. YMMV.
        
         | ustad wrote:
         | I switched from Ubuntu to Debian about two months ago after my
         | system crashed while trying to update. Since then, Debian has
         | been rock-solid, running much smoother and more efficiently. No
         | more dealing with Snap packages and similar annoyances. If
         | you're disciplined about not messing with the OS, keeping your
         | files organized and backed up, and using containers, switching
         | between distros and operating systems becomes pretty seamless.
        
         | danieldk wrote:
         | FWIW, slightly less relevant to coming from Ubuntu
         | specifically, I would use Fedora if I wasn't using NixOS. It
         | has so many things going for it:
         | 
         | - A strong focus on security, one of the few distributions to
         | use SELinux. They were very active in pushing verified boot.
         | Early adoption of Flatpak, which has seen better and better
         | sandboxing over time.
         | 
         | - Very fresh. So you get the latest & greatest GNOME, etc. and
         | even after a release a lot of packages are actively maintained
         | and updated. I have generally found that this leads to a more
         | stable system, since bugs get fixed more quickly.
         | 
         | - Since Fedora is very up-to-date, hardware support is also
         | very good.
         | 
         | - Their immutable/atomic distributions (e.g. Silverblue) are
         | awesome. Immutable boot, atomic upgrades/rollbacks, etc.
        
         | seabrookmx wrote:
         | I run Ubuntu everywhere except my Framework, because at the
         | time Fedora was shipping a newer kernel that had better 12th
         | Gen Intel support.
         | 
         | I formatted ext4 with LUKS because it's what I'm used to, but
         | honestly Fedora has been great. Add flathub, a few gnome
         | extensions (same ones I'd use in Ubuntu) and it's basically the
         | same experience.
         | 
         | Without knowing what you're migrating I can't really speak to
         | that. I use a pretty light toolset and heavily lean on remote
         | dev (VS Code SSH extension).
        
       | skyyler wrote:
       | Excited that the partitioning portion of the installer is
       | reworked - that has been a pain point for recommending Fedora to
       | newbies.
       | 
       | Really excited that the KDE version is ascended from spin to
       | Edition! That's what I use for my desktop at home.
        
         | phkahler wrote:
         | >> that has been a pain point for recommending Fedora to
         | newbies.
         | 
         | I've been running Fedora for 20 years and I still can't
         | navigate that part of the install process. The combination of
         | partitions and LLVM - which I don't need - and that part of the
         | install setup... ooof. And try to reuse anything already on
         | disk? I never can get it.
         | 
         | Thank God upgrades are seamless now so I don't have to use the
         | installer.
         | 
         | BTW it's just the disk layout part I have a problem with.
         | Everything else is great.
        
       | johnisgood wrote:
       | Wayland has not been working for me properly though. I may give
       | it another go so I'll be able to provide you an exhaustive list
       | of what is not working properly, for now though, perhaps other
       | people could chime in.
        
         | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
         | What doesn't work properly?
        
           | oaththrowaway wrote:
           | My biggest gripe with Wayland is screen sharing/remote
           | desktop. For my desktop PC I could just install RealVNC and
           | have access to it on any of my devices anywhere in the world.
           | I still haven't found a good solution for Wayland. I'm using
           | RDP right now but it really sucks in comparison so far.
           | 
           | Slack screen share is kind of hit and miss as well. Not to
           | mention screen capture being less than ideal.
        
             | rcarmo wrote:
             | Install xorgxrdp-glamor and openh264. That will give you
             | GPU-accelerated UI rendering and a much faster video
             | stream.
             | 
             | https://taoofmac.com/space/notes/2025/01/05/1730#h-264-stre
             | a... (these packages have already been mainlined, I think)
        
           | modzu wrote:
           | literally the only thing that works better (and not worse) on
           | wayland is fractional scaling, and it is still not great :D.
           | but thats partly how fedora drives the whole ecosystem
           | forward
        
         | modzu wrote:
         | not sure why youre being downvoted, wayland as default is
         | probably the biggest thing to flag for new users coming from
         | any other distro
        
       | nasir wrote:
       | Using Fedora 3 as my first linux distro makes seeing this
       | nostalgic.
        
         | xd1936 wrote:
         | Fedora Core 6 here!
        
       | mythz wrote:
       | Been a happy Fedora Desktop user since switching from 20+ years
       | of Windows last year. Had a few hiccups at the start of last year
       | with NVIDIA drivers in Wayland but that's since been resolved
       | with Explicit sync support.
       | 
       | Happy there's been no signs enshittification of Fedora from
       | Redhat, it's a just a clean polished well maintain modern distro,
       | great option if you're a dev switching from Windows.
        
       | benatkin wrote:
       | I've been using Podman on Fedora on Lima (Mac OS) with rootless
       | containers based on Fedora rather than from Docker Hub for
       | fullstack web dev. I'm ready to use Rocky Linux or RHEL for some
       | production stuff if I find it more suitable for something and
       | have used Rocky Linux a fair bit. I've really grown to like
       | Fedora and have switched to it from Ubuntu. They have systems for
       | building OCI images that are interesting and useful, and related
       | to buildpacks. https://src.fedoraproject.org/container/s2i-base
        
       | captn3m0 wrote:
       | Asahi also has the 42 Beta available today:
       | https://fedoramagazine.org/announcing-fedora-asahi-remix-42-...
       | 
       | Notably with FEX support for running x86 binaries.
       | https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/FEX
        
         | virtualwhys wrote:
         | Was just in an Apple Store yesterday mulling over whether or
         | not to switch back to macOS after 15 years on Linux PCs.
         | 
         | Both MacBook Pros and Airs are nice machines, but macOS, for
         | me, it's a huge step back.
         | 
         | Unfortunately the Asahi project is underfunded (likely one of
         | the reasons the project founder/lead jumped ship recently), and
         | as a result M4 support is likely a year+ away.
         | 
         | Oh wells, let's see what Dell and Lenovo have on offer this
         | spring/summer. Should be able to get a pretty decent PC laptop
         | for less than the $4k+ an MBP 16" with 2TB/64GB will cost.
        
           | dpool wrote:
           | Might be worth taking a look at https://frame.work/.
        
             | tapoxi wrote:
             | I love my Framework 14. I'm absolutely sticking with this
             | company for all future PCs.
        
               | mwinatschek wrote:
               | I'd love to try out their products, but as an European it
               | could become a problem in the near future that they're an
               | US-based company.
        
               | extraduder_ire wrote:
               | Why? They operate via multiple subsidiaries (the EU one
               | is registered in Eindhoven), most notably Singapore and
               | Taiwan, and do their main manufacturing in Taiwan.
        
             | virtualwhys wrote:
             | Until now I'd only heard of Framework laptops, but am blown
             | away by the build-your-own process -- incredible, spec the
             | machine just as you want it.
             | 
             | Going to dive into the details now, thanks...
        
           | zdragnar wrote:
           | If you don't need a discrete graphics card and want maximum
           | battery life, LG gram laptops are totally worth a look. I
           | could easily write code and develop all day without plugging
           | in at all.
        
       | threePointFive wrote:
       | I've been super happy with Fedora since switching to it on
       | desktop. Unfortunately I'm still biased to Debian for the server
       | usecase. Fedora moves too quickly but RHEL (and derivatives) not
       | supporting major version upgrades is pretty much a deal breaker.
       | Would love a RedHat-themed distro with a ~5year support cycle
       | with the option to do major version upgrades.
        
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       (page generated 2025-03-18 23:00 UTC)