Fedora Linux 35 has entered beta testing

begun Testing of the beta version of Fedora Linux 35 has . The beta release marked the transition to the final stage of testing, in which only critical bug fixes are allowed. The release is scheduled for October 26th. This release covers Fedora Workstation , Fedora Server, Fedora Silverblue, Fedora IoT, and Live builds delivered as spins with KDE Plasma 5, Xfce, MATE, Cinnamon, LXDE and LXQt desktop environments. Assemblies are formed for x86_64, Power64, ARM64 (AArch64) architectures and various devices with 32-bit ARM processors.

The most significant changes in Fedora Linux 35 are:

• The Fedora Workstation desktop has been updated to GNOME 41 with a redesign of the application installation management interface. New sections have been added to the configurator for configuring window / desktop management and connection via cellular operators. Added a new client for remote desktop connection using VNC and RDP protocols. The design of the music player has been changed. GTK 4 uses a new OpenGL-based rendering engine to reduce power consumption and speed up rendering.
• Implemented the ability to use a session based on the Wayland protocol on systems with proprietary NVIDIA drivers.
• Implemented Kiosk Mode , allowing run-trimmed GNOME session, the limited performance of only one pre-selected application. The mode is suitable for organizing the work of various information stands and self-service terminals.
• The first release of the new edition of the distribution kit is – offered Fedora Kinoite , based on technologies Fedora Silverblue , but using KDE instead of GNOME. The Fedora Kinoite monolithic image is not split into separate packages, it is updated atomically, and is built from official Fedora RPMs using the rpm-ostree toolkit. The base environment (/ and / usr) is mounted read-only. The data available for modification is located in the / var directory. To install and update additional applications, the flatpak self-contained package system is used, with which applications are separated from the main system and run in a separate container.
• The media server PipeWire , which has been the default since last release, has been moved to use the audio session WirePlumber manager . WirePlumber allows you to manage the graph of media nodes in PipeWire, configure audio devices, and control the routing of audio streams. Added support for S / PDIF protocol forwarding for digital audio transmission via optical S / PDIF and HDMI connectors. Expanded Bluetooth support, added FastStream and AptX codecs.
• Updated package versions, including GCC 11, LLVM 13, Python 3.10-rc, Perl 5.34, PHP 8.0, Binutils 2.36, Boost 1.76, glibc 2.34, binutils 2.37, gdb 10.2, Node.js 16, RPM 4.17, Erlang 24
• The transition to using the password hashing yescrypt scheme for new users has been made. Support for old hashes based on the previously used sha512crypt algorithm has been retained and is available as an option. Yescrypt intensive extends the capabilities of classic scrypt by supporting the use of memory- circuits and reduces the effectiveness of attacks using GPUs, FPGAs and specialized chips. Yescrypt is secured through the use of the proven SHA-256, HMAC, and PBKDF2 cryptographic primitives.
• In the / etc / os-release file, the ‘NAME = Fedora’ parameter has been changed to ‘NAME = “Fedora Linux”‘ (the Fedora name is now used for the entire project and associated community, and the distribution is named Fedora Linux). The “ID = fedora” parameter remained unchanged, i.e. no need to modify scripts and conditional blocks in spec files. Specialized editions will also continue to ship under the old names such as Fedora Workstation, Fedora CoreOS, and Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop.
• Fedora Cloud images by default use the Btrfs file system and a hybrid boot loader that supports booting on BIOS and UEFI systems.
• Added the power-profiles-daemon handler, which provides the ability to switch on the fly between power saving mode, power balanced mode and maximum performance mode.
• Allowed to restart user systemd services after performing “rpm upgrade” (previously only system services were restarted).
• The changed mechanism for activating third-party repositories has been . If earlier enabling the “Third-party Software Repositories” setting led to the installation of the fedora-workstation-repositories package, but the repositories remained disabled, now the package fedora-workstation-repositories is installed by default and the setting enables the repositories.
• The inclusion of third-party repositories now covers peer-reviewed featured apps from the Flathub directory, i.e. similar applications will be available in GNOME Software without installing FlatHab. Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Skype, Bitwarden, Postman, and Minecraft apps are currently approved, pending review for Discord, Anydesk, WPS Office, OnlyOffice, MasterPDFEditor, Slack, UngoogledChromium, Flatseal, WhatsAppQT and GreenWithEnvy.
• Implemented the default use of the DNS over TLS (DoT) protocol when supported by the selected DNS server.
• Added support for mice with high precision scroll wheel positioning (up to 120 events per rotation).
• Changed compiler selection rules when building packages. Until now, the rules have mandated building a package using GCC, unless the package can only be compiled using Clang. The new rules allow package maintainers to select Clang even if the upstream project supports GCC, and vice versa, to select GCC if the upstream project does not support GCC.
• When configuring disk encryption using LUKS , an provided automatic selection of the optimal sector size is , i.e. for disks with 4k physical sectors, the sector size will be 4096 in LUKS.

It is worth looking into the known unresolved issues in the beta.