Fedora Linux 44 ships with GNOME 50 and KDE Plasma 6.6

Anamarija Pogorelec, Managing Editor, Help Net Security April 29, 2026 Share Fedora Linux 44 ships with GNOME 50 and KDE Plasma 6.6 The Fedora Project released Fedora Linux 44, delivering updated desktop environments, revised installer behavior, and several lower-level system changes across its editions and spins. The release covers the project’s flagship editions, including Workstation, KDE Plasma Desktop, Cloud, Server, CoreOS, and IoT, alongside the Atomic Desktops lineup of Silverblue, Kinoite, Cosmic, Budgie, and Sway. Alternate spins such as Cinnamon and Xfce are also available. Desktop updates Fedora Workstation 44 ships with GNOME 50, which brings refinements across accessibility, color management, and remote desktop. Default applications including Document Viewer, File Manager, and Calendar receive updates in this version. The KDE edition is built on Plasma 6.6 and introduces the new Plasma Login Manager and Plasma Setup. The combination is intended to provide a more integrated first-boot experience, with a simplified installation flow aimed at users setting up systems for others. Installer and networking changes The Anaconda installer now creates network profiles only for devices configured during installation, whether through boot options, kickstart, or the interactive interface. Earlier behavior generated default profiles for every detected network device. The change applies to fresh installations of Fedora Linux 44 spins and is intended to simplify post-installation network configuration. Plumbing changes OpenSSL loading times have been reduced through directory-hash support for ca-certificates. The change required moving some certificate bundles to different locations on the filesystem, and the project has documented the affected paths in its change proposal. MariaDB packaging has switched its unversioned default to version 11.8. Fedora continues to deliver versioned packages for both mariadb-10.11 and mariadb-11.8, so existing installations carried forward through an upgrade keep their current version. New installations performed without specifying a version receive 11.8. The Wine NTSYNC kernel module is now enabled automatically for select packages through package recommendations, with Wine and Steam cited as primary examples. When a package that recommends wine-ntsync is installed, NTSYNC is configured on subsequent boots without manual intervention. The mechanism is aimed at improving compatibility and performance for Windows applications, particularly games. Fedora Cloud images that support the change have replaced the /boot partition with a Btrfs subvolume. The project credits the change with better space utilization and smaller image sizes. Availability Installation media for the editions, Atomic Desktops, and spins are available through the Fedora Project’s download pages. Existing systems can move to Fedora Linux 44 using the standard upgrade procedure documented in the project’s quick-docs guide. 25 open-source cybersecurity tools that don’t care about your budget More about Fedora Linux open source operating system Share