Fedora 41 Beta now available

Today, the Fedora Project is excited to announce the beta availability of Fedora Linux 41, the latest version of the free and open source operating system. While we’ll have more to share with the general availability of Fedora Linux 41 later this fall, there’s plenty in Fedora 41 Beta to get excited about.

What’s new in Fedora 41 Beta?

Updating DNF to version 5

Fedora Linux 41 features the newest generation of the DNF package manager. It’s the same basic familiar command-line interface, but significantly smaller and faster.

DNF and bootc in image mode Fedora variants

In Fedora Linux 41, DNF 5 and bootc will be available on image-based Fedora variants such as Atomic Desktops and Fedora IoT. Instead of calling “rpm-ostree” on the client side to manage RPMs on these systems, you’ll be able to use DNF, and  use bootc to manage the image-based deployments and updates.

New Fedora-repoquery tool

Fedora-repoquery is a small command line tool for doing repoqueries of Fedora, EPEL, eln and Centos Stream package repositories. It wraps “dnf repoquery”, separating the cached repo data under separate repo names for faster cached querying. Repoqueries are frequently used by Fedora developers and users, so a more powerful tool like this is generally useful.

New “Fedora Miracle” spin

The Miracle Window Manager is a tiling window manager based on the Mir compositor library. While it is a newer project, it contains many useful features such as a manual tiling algorithm, floating window manager support, support for many Wayland protocols, proprietary Nvidia driver support, and much more. Miracle will provide Fedora with a high-quality Wayland experience built with support for all kinds of platforms, including low-end ARM and x86 devices. On top of this, Fedora will be the first distribution to provide a Miracle based spin, ensuring that it will become the de facto distribution for running Miracle.

Reproducible package building feature

A post-build cleanup is integrated into the RPM build process so that common causes of build irreproducibility in packages are removed, making most Fedora packages now reproducible.

Feature updates found in Fedora 41 Beta

Replacing Redis with Valkey

This change means that Fedora will continue to support free and open source software principles by using Valkey, as Redis recently changed to the proprietary SSPL license which no longer aligns with Fedora.

Python 2.7 is retired

After Fedora Linux 41, there will be no Python 2 in Fedora other than PyPy. Packages requiring Python 2.7 on runtime will need to upgrade to a new version, or be retired. Developers who need to test their software on Python 2 can use containers with older Fedora releases.

RPM 4.20

The RPM 4.20 release comes with many improvements and features, such as hands -free packaging (including declarative build system, file trigger scriptlet arguments, support for spec local dependency generators, guaranteed per-build directory and more) a public plugin API and increased install scriptlet isolation.

Proprietary Nvidia Driver installation with Secure Boot support

Previously, Nvidia Drivers had been removed from GNOME software because it didn't support Secure Boot, which is increasingly often enabled. This change brings the option back for Fedora Workstation users with Secure Boot supported. This is good news for those who want to use Fedora for gaming and CUDA, and allows the project the option to stay relevant for AI/LLVM workloads.

LXQt 2.0

LXQt in Fedora will be upgraded to v2.0, which notably ports the whole desktop to Qt 6 and adds experimental Wayland support.

KDE Plasma Mobile spin

KDE Plasma Mobile brings the KDE Plasma Desktop to a flexible, mobile format in F41 as a spin. This promises to work on both phones, tablets and 2-in-1 laptops.

What is a Fedora Beta release?

Fedora Beta releases are code-complete and will very closely resemble the final release. While the Fedora Project community will be testing this release intensely, we also want our end users to check and make sure that the features you care about are working as intended. The bugs you find and report help make your experience better as well as for millions of Fedora Linux users worldwide! Together, we can help not only make Fedora Linux stronger, but as these fixes and tweaks get pushed upstream to the kernel community, we can contribute to the betterment of the Linux ecosystem and free software holistically.

Let’s test Fedora 41 Beta together

Since this is a Beta release, we expect that you may encounter bugs or missing features. To report issues encountered during testing, contact the Fedora QA team via the test mailing list or in the #quality:fedoraproject.org channel on Fedora Chat (Matrix). As testing progresses, common issues are tracked in the “Common Issues” category on Ask Fedora.

For tips on reporting a bug effectively, read how to file a bug.