Fedora Linux 43 is out (download here), and the project is not exactly tiptoeing into this one, folks. GNOME 49 is on board, Wayland is now the only session for Workstation users, and the distribution folds in major toolchain bumps that developers will notice the second they open a terminal.
Let’s start with the desktop. GNOME 49 brings better multi-display behavior, a cleaner screenshot and screen recording flow, and a new Focus Mode to cut down on distractions. Under the hood, background throttling should make laptops feel a little cooler and last a little longer. The Settings app also gets a tidy refresh that fits the rest of GNOME’s modern look.
The headline change for Workstation is the end of GNOME on X11. Fedora has shipped Wayland by default for years, but Fedora 43 removes the GNOME X11 session packages entirely. The goal is less duct tape and more consistency. Expect smoother animations thanks to triple buffering, fewer tearing issues, and better behavior on Intel Xe graphics and systems that juggle integrated and NVIDIA GPUs. If you have been hanging onto X11 for one oddball workflow, now is the time to recheck it on Wayland.
Fedora swaps its default video player too. Totem rides off into the sunset, replaced by Showtime, a GTK 4 and Libadwaita app that feels at home on modern GNOME. Fonts get a quality bump as well. Noto Color Emoji now uses COLRv1, which scales crisply instead of smearing like old bitmap sheets at larger sizes. If you use messaging apps on a hi-DPI display, the difference is obvious.
Developers and packagers get the bulk of the deep changes. LLVM moves to 21. GCC sits at 15.2 with binutils 2.45, glibc 2.42, and gdb 17.1. Go is updated to 1.25. Perl hits 5.42. Python jumps to 3.14. RPM itself reaches 6.0. Those are not vanity bumps. They enable newer language features and security hardening work, and they reduce the “why can’t I use this yet” friction that shows up when upstreams move on.
There is more policy and plumbing work. Fedora is deprecating the Gold linker to clear the path for cleaner toolchains. Static libraries keep useful debuginfo instead of getting stripped to the bone, which helps when you actually need to debug a real problem. Packagers gain new package-specific RPM macros for build flags, making it easier to add sane optimizations without copy-pasting boilerplate.
On the installer side, the WebUI for Anaconda becomes the default for Fedora Spins. That started with Workstation in Fedora 42 and now spreads wider. The Anaconda team also flips DNF 5 on for package installation, which is where the project is headed anyway. Another practical tweak raises the default /boot partition to 2G. That saves headaches when kernels and initramfs files pile up over time.
Fedora tightens a few other screws. The distribution removes DNF modularity support in Anaconda. It retires python-nose and marks the async-std Rust crate as deprecated. GnuPG packaging is split into modular packages instead of one big blob. Fedora also moves certain CoreOS publishing flows away from the canonical OSTree repo and toward OCI images on Quay, which reflects how people actually consume these images today.
For servers and data folks, PostgreSQL jumps from 16 to 18. MySQL defaults to 8.4. Tomcat moves to 10.1.x. Dovecot bumps to 2.4. Debuginfod gets IMA verification turned on by default so the bits you pull are checked in a more rigorous way. SELinux rules get attention to reduce “dontaudit” noise around unlabeled_t without creating new denials. It is the kind of housekeeping that keeps a fast-moving distro from turning into a junk drawer.
Hardware and platform notes are here too. Fedora disallows UEFI on MBR for x86 installs. Use GPT or expect errors. The default initrd is now compressed with zstd, which balances size and speed nicely. Systems that need lastlog move to lastlog2. There is even a nod to font sanity with a defined monospace fallback so terminals do not silently fall back to weird sans-serif choices.
If you build or run containers, you will notice CoreOS is now defined with a Containerfile and built with podman build from Fedora’s bootc image. That aligns with how Fedora is pushing immutable and image-based systems elsewhere. Greenboot also shows up in a Rust rewrite for rpm-ostree and bootc setups, matching that direction.
Smaller but welcome changes round it out. Node.js packaging gets cleaner with swappable -bin packages to manage /usr/bin/node and friends. Golang packages are vendored by default with SPDX license aggregation to keep audits sane. The project also keeps nudging people away from old habits, like the cert.pem path in OpenSSL. That change is about performance, but it will trip scripts that assume the old layout, so check your automation.
Thankfully, Fedora is still Fedora. It moves fast, tidies sharp edges, and expects you to come along for the ride. If you are upgrading, GNOME Software and dnf system-upgrade make it straightforward. If you are installing fresh, pick your Edition or Atomic Desktop and go. Just remember that Wayland is the way forward here. If something in your setup depends on X11, test early and file bugs. That is how this community improves the stack for everyone.
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