What’s New in Fedora 35

The general availability of Fedora 35 is currently scheduled for October 19th, with a beta version scheduled for September 21st. Since Fedora often has exciting developments in store, let’s take a look in advance at what changes are already known.

With the upcoming publication, project manager Matthew Miller wants to make project and distribution easier to distinguish by name. While the project is still called »Fedora«, the distribution is to be called »Fedora Linux« in the future. The change is made in /etc/os-releaseflow in.

Further opening for flat packs

Fedora 35 continues to open up to Flatpaks by enabling third-party repositories to add selected Flathub applications via a Flathub remote managed by the Fedora Project. This means that applications on Flathub that have been explicitly approved by a new process will be available in GNOME software and via the command line.

The main focus is on applications that are difficult to package with Fedora for a variety of reasons. Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Skype, Bitwarden, Postman and Minecraft have been confirmed so far, and Discord, Anydesk, WPS Office, OnlyOffice, MasterPDFEditor, Slack, UngoogledChromium, Flatseal, WhatsAppQT and GreenWithEnvy are also being considered.

Linux Mint 20.3 is under development with a new site

standardization

With Fedora 35, Btrfs is also for Fedora Cloud as the standard file system offered . In addition, the images for Fedora Cloud Edition are updated to configure multiple partitions and a GPT label instead of a single partition and an implicit MBR. This is a continuation of the changes made with Fedora Linux 34 to unify the Grub configuration files. This strives for a uniform configuration for all architectures and enables booting of the same image with UEFI or legacy BIOS everywhere.

PipeWire receives WirePlumber as the session manager

For better handling of PipeWire , which has replaced PulseAudio since Fedora 34, WirePlumber will replace the simple session manager integrated in PipeWire. WirePlumber allows many of the setup and configuration rules to be implemented with small LUA scripts that are easier to maintain and customize. Some of the functions that are scriptable in LUA include setting up and configuring the devices and streams. WirePlumber can also be expanded with modules and is better integrated into the desktop settings.

The functions also include the decision as to whether devices and streams should be operated in 5.1 or stereo mode, depending on the devices available. Furthermore, WirePlumber takes over the routing of the streams based on the metadata of the streams and the overall condition of the system and the restoration of the volume / mute of devices and streams.

Kinoite as a new variant next to Silverblue

A new variant is introduced with Fedora Kinoite . Fedora Kinoite is an immutable desktop operating system with KDE Plasma Desktop. With rpm-ostree, Flatpak and Podman it is based on the same technologies as Fedora Silverblue. Fedora also intends DNS over TLS to use (DoT) if this is supported by the configured DNS servers.