Fedora 37 is the latest stable version of the distribution.
After several weeks of delay due to security issues, Finally the new version of the popular Linux distribution "Fedora 37", version that comes with a lot of important changes, as well as improvements and much more
Initially we can find that the heart of the system is the Linux kernel 6.0, Besides that the desktop environment has been updated to GNOME version 43, along with which el configurator has a new panel with device security settings and firmware (For example, information about UEFI Secure Boot activation, TPM status, Intel BootGuard and IOMMU protection mechanisms are displayed.)
In addition, the transition of applications to the use of GTK 4 and the libadwaita library has continued, which offers ready-to-use widgets and objects for building applications that comply with the new GNOME HIG (Human Interface Guidelines) recommendations.
In Mesa, the use of VA-API has been disabled (Video Acceleration API) for hardware acceleration of video encoding and decoding in H.264, H.265 and VC-1 formats, this is because the distribution does not allow components that provide APIs to access algorithms proprietary technologies, as distribution of proprietary technologies requires a license and can lead to legal issues.
Another novelty that stands out in this new version of Fedora 37 is the compatibility with the Raspberry Pi 4, including support for GPU GPU V3D hardware acceleration.
On the other hand, we can find that the files included in RPM packages are digitally signed, which can be used to verify integrity and protect against file spoofing using the IMA (Integrity Measurement Architecture) kernel subsystem.
It is also highlighted that the additional localization and language support components have been separated from the main Firefox package in a separate firefox-langpacks package, which saves about 50 MB of disk space on systems that don't need to support languages other than English.
Furthermore, as mentioned before, thehe ARMv7 architecture, also known as ARM32 or armhfp, has been deprecated. Reasons for ending support for ARMv7 are cited as a general move away from development for 32-bit systems, as some of Fedora's new security and performance enhancements are only available for 64-bit architectures.
In relation to the above, also from this new version of Fedora 37 maintainers are advised to stop building packages for the i686 architecture if the need for such packages is questionable or results in a noticeable waste of time or resources. The recommendation does not apply to packages used as dependencies on other packages or used in the "multilib" context to make 32-bit programs run in 64-bit environments.
Finally, we can also find that two new official editions are proposed: Fedora Core OS (an atomically upgradable environment for running isolated containers) and Fedora Cloud Base (images to create virtual machines running in public and private cloud environments).
Of the other changes that stand out:
- Added policy TEST-FEDORA39 to test for the upcoming deprecation of SHA-1 digital signatures. Optionally, the user can disable SHA-1 support using the command “update-crypto-policies –set TEST-FEDORA39”.
- The packages and edition of the LXQt desktop distribution have been updated to LXQt 1.1.
- The openssl1.1 package has been deprecated and replaced by the package with the current OpenSSL 3.0 branch.
- A rough build is proposed to test control of the Anaconda installer via a web interface, even from a remote system.
- On x86 systems with BIOS, partitioning is enabled by default using GPT instead of MBR.
- The Silverblue and Kinoite editions of Fedora provide the ability to remount the /sysroot partition read-only to protect against accidental changes.
- A version of Fedora Server has been prepared for download, designed as a virtual machine image optimized for the KVM hypervisor.
Download and get Fedora 37
For those interested in being able to try or install the new version of Fedora 37, you can get the system image on its official website. The images are prepared alongside the classic Spins with KDE Plasma 5, Xfce, MATE, Cinnamon, LXDE and LXQt desktop environments.