First things first, I need to clear up some massive confusion that is floating around out there in the tech community. I have seen some people calling this upcoming update Fedora 45, and confusing the desktop environment as GNOME 51, while mentioning Linux kernel 7.2. Let us set the record straight right now. Those version numbers are way off in the future. We are actually talking about the reality of Fedora 39, which features the beautifully refined GNOME 45 desktop environment, all running on top of the solid Linux Kernel 6.5. As someone who breathes Linux daily, it is important to get these technical details right so we know exactly what we are dealing with. Yesterday I download the ISO file directly from their main server and flashed it to my spare USB thumb drive.
Let us start with the elephant in the room. A lot of people in the community have been complaining recently that Fedora is getting boring. The list of new features are quite short when you compare it to the massive overhauls we used to see a few years ago. But I want to argue that boring is actually a fantastic thing when it comes to your primary computer. When you are writing a document, compiling code, or rendering a massive video project, you absolutely do not want your operating system to be exciting. Exciting usually means unpredictable, and unpredictable means system crashes. Fedora has reached a level of maturity where it just gets out of your way and lets the software speak for itself. They respect the upstream developers and ship a pure, vanilla experience without slapping unnecessary themes or heavy modifications on top.
Moving on to the graphical interface, GNOME 45 is the absolute star of the show here. This version is more faster than before, and you can truly feel the optimization work the developers have put in under the hood. The entire desktop feels incredibly snappy and responsive. If you are upgrading from an older machine, the difference in latency is night and day. I installed it in my laptop just to see how it handles mobile hardware, and the animations are buttery smooth even when swiping between multiple virtual workspaces. The old static activities button in the top left corner has been replaced with a dynamic workspace indicator pill that actually moves and responds as you navigate. It is a tiny visual tweak, but it adds a lot of modern flair to the environment.
The file manager, traditionally known as Nautilus, has received some of the best quality of life updates I have seen in a long time. The most notable addition is the completely redesigned file previewer. If you want to check an image or a document, you just click the file once and press the spacebar. A quick preview window pops up instantly. This is heavily inspired by the Quick Look feature on macOS, and I am so glad it is finally implemented cleanly in GNOME. Another neat little feature is the new drag and drop badge. When you highlight and drag multiple files across your screen, a small number counter appears attached to your cursor, showing you exactly how many items you are about to move.
On top of that, the file manager finally fixed a major annoyance regarding massive folders. In the past, if you opened a directory containing thousands of images, the entire window would lock up and freeze while it tried to load all the thumbnails. That issue is completely gone now. The search function is decoupled from the main thread, meaning you can scroll and click around freely even while the system is indexing a huge folder in the background. Many softwares are updated in this release, bringing similar performance boosts across the board.
We also have some nice updates to the default applications. GNOME Maps now includes a feature to download specific map areas for offline usage. This is super practical if you are traveling with a laptop and know you will not have Wi-Fi access on the road. GNOME Web, which is technically named Epiphany, has also seen some love. The development team redesigned the address bar to look much cleaner, and they integrated a built-in secure password generator for when you create new accounts on websites. It is a very lightweight browser, and while it might not replace Firefox or Chrome for heavy users, it provides an very smooth experience for casual reading and research.
For the system administrators and programmers out there, Fedora continues to be an absolute powerhouse. The system uses it’s own built-in virtualization tool called GNOME Boxes, which remains the easiest way to test out other operating systems. You literally just pick an OS from a list, click create, and you have a fully working virtual machine in minutes without needing to understand complex networking or storage configurations. It is the perfect playground for developers who need to test their code across different environments.
However, I need to be completely honest and offer some constructive criticism. Fedora don’t make it easy to install proprietary drivers out of the box. Because the project holds a very strict philosophy about only providing free and open source software in their main repositories, users with Nvidia graphics cards or certain Broadcom Wi-Fi chips are going to hit a brick wall. To get full 3D acceleration or wireless internet, you have to manually enable third party repositories, open the terminal, and type in specific commands.
When you compare this process to Ubuntu, the difference is staggering. Ubuntu features an additional drivers utility where you simply click a checkbox, type your password, and your Nvidia drivers are installed perfectly. I think their going to fix this friction eventually, maybe through the graphical software center, but right now it is a very frustrating experience for beginners. New users do not care about software licensing politics; they just want their external monitors and internet to work right away. But if you have compatible hardware, or you are willing to learn a few terminal commands, there isn’t no reason to skip this amazing operating system.
To wrap up my thoughts, I wanted to step outside my own bubble and get a second opinion on this topic. After I finished drafting this article, I printed it out and handed it to my good friend Luthfi Emka, who is a fellow tech geek and software developer. I sat down with him to get his raw, unfiltered reaction to my review.
“So Luthfi,” I asked him, “after reading my breakdown of this latest Fedora release, what is your ultimate takeaway?”
Luthfi put the paper down and nodded thoughtfully. “You know, your article perfectly captures exactly why I have such a love and hate relationship with the Linux desktop right now. I completely agree with your point about boring being a positive thing. When I am working on a complex coding project with tight deadlines, I do not want my computer to surprise me with flashy updates or weird system changes. The performance improvements in GNOME 45 sound totally fantastic, especially that spacebar quick look feature in the file manager. I have missed that so much since I left the Mac ecosystem.”