Fedora 42 Beta Has Arrived
The Fedora Project has announced the availability of the first beta release for version 42 of the open-source distribution.
Don your best Raymond Reddington black fedora, because the team behind Fedora Project has announced that the first beta of version 42 is now available for testing.
The biggest news for this release is the first appearance of the official Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop spin since being elevated to its new status. The reason this is important is that the KDE Plasma spin will now receive equal status as the Workstation edition, will have a dedicated flagship site, and will get equal marketing support.
There's also a new spin to try, the Fedora COSMIC Spin, which is the from-scratch desktop created by System76 that includes plenty of unique features, such as a hybrid of traditional and tiling window managers, window stacks, and more customizations than you'll find with a traditional Gnome desktop.
Anaconda received a face lift as well, with a new WebUI for a much smoother installation experience. The new installer also includes a progress indicator, built-in help, a configuration overview, and a wizard that allows users to skip what they don't need during the installation process.
You'll also find the latest versions of toolchain apps and programming languages, the new Simple DirectMedia Layer 3.0 (SDL3) transition and Wayland by default for SDL apps, and the new Gnome well-being features.
For more information and to download ISOs for the first beta of Fedora 42 see the official release notes.
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