Fedora 41: Package manager picks up the pace

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Fedora 41 has been released without the almost traditional delay, but without sacrificing any innovations: DNF 5, which has been rewritten in C++, now serves as the front end for the RPM package system used in the shell, while the predecessor DNF 4 still made extensive use of Python. This re-implementation brings a significantly higher working speed with lower memory requirements, which are reduced by around half.

The output of the progress of package installations and updates is now not dissimilar to that of the package manager Pacman from Arch Linux. However, this change had been in the pipeline for some time and was originally planned for Fedora 39, but not all DNF 4 methods were available in the new version.

Refreshed and new desktops

As usual, the main release presents a current Gnome 47 without extensive modifications through shell extensions, relies entirely on Wayland and does without an Xorg session. However, this does not mean that Xorg is already compiled out here, which Gnome 47 would already allow. For X11, the required files are available in the "gnome-session-xsession" package in the standard package sources for retrofitting so that the Xorg option is displayed again on the login screen. On the Gnome desktop, Fedora 41 also gives the simple, new terminal application Ptyxis a chance because it offers a more robust clipboard under GTK4 with Wayland and shows lower input and output latencies. When working with containers as provided by Podman and Distrobox, Ptyxis displays the container environment in the prompt.

The Fedora edition with KDE now presents a Plasma 6.2 on the desktop, which also dispenses with a pre-installed X11 session. The lean Fedora version with LXQT brings the resource-saving interface to version 2.0, which is now based on the Qt6 toolkit. A new addition to the Fedora spins is an edition with the tiling window manager Miracle, which runs under Wayland and is derived from Canonical's Mir.

Hardware: Nvidia driver with Secure Boot

Fedora 41 has upgraded the Linux kernel used to version 6.11, with kernel 6.12 expected to be delivered later. The IPU6 webcam interface, which was already available with kernel 6.10 and is primarily found on notebooks with Intel's Tiger Lake microarchitecture or higher, has been given the pipewire configuration required for connection in Fedora 41.

Although Fedora only delivers properly licensed open source software in the installable live systems and installation media, it has offered the option of activating third-party package sources in the installer since Fedora 28. This switch includes Flathub and RPMFusion, which hosts the proprietary Nvidia drivers. With Fedora 41, the process of installing these Nvidia drivers with Secure Boot enabled is now easier. After installation, the "mokutil" tool called up by Gnome software offers to provide these drivers with a self-issued signature and to set up a newly generated secure boot key in the firmware on the next boot.

Spins: Fedora in further variants

The official release notes for Fedora 41 are somewhat shorter than usual. However, all changes and important updates are listed in detail in the developers' task list.

As always, the "spins" with other desktops are presented on a separate page alongside the main edition of Fedora with Gnome. Fedora 41 is also available for download there with Cinnamon, Mate, XFCE, LXQT, LXDE and with the simplified desktop "Sugar-on-a-Stick" for school computers. These versions are also available not only for the x86-64 architecture, but in many cases also for ARM64.

Fedora 41 comes half a year after Fedora 40, which was released at the end of April, brought upgradeable unified kernel images (UKIs) and heralded the end of X in the KDE spin.

(emw)