Fedora Workstation 38 is the latest version of the leading-edge Linux desktop OS, made by a worldwide community, including you! This article describes some of the user-facing changes in this new version of Fedora Workstation. Upgrade today from GNOME Software, or use dnf system-upgrade in a terminal emulator!

GNOME 44

Fedora Workstation 38 features the newest version the GNOME desktop environment. GNOME 44 features subtle tweaks and revamps throughout, most notably in the Quick Settings menu and the Settings app. More details about can be found in the GNOME 44 release notes.

File chooser

GTK 4.10, the latest version of the toolkit most of the included GNOME applications are built on, introduces a revamped file chooser with an icon view and image previews.

Quick Settings tweaks

For GNOME 44 there have been a number of improvements to the Quick Settings menu. The new version includes a new Bluetooth menu, which introduces the ability to quickly connect and disconnect known Bluetooth devices. Additional information is also included in each quick settings button, thanks to new subtitles.

GNOME 44's Quick Settings menu, showing the new labels and Bluetooth sub-menu. — The Bluetooth menu can now be used to connect to known devices

Also in the quick settings menu, a new background apps feature lists Flatpak apps which are running without a visible window.

The Background Apps sub-menu of GNOME 44's Quick Settings menu, showing the music player app Amberol running in the background. The mouse pointer is highlighting the Close button. — Background Apps lets you see sandboxed apps running without a visible window and close them

Core applications

GNOME's core applications have received significant improvements in the new version.

Settings has seen a round of updates, focused on improving the experience in each of the settings panels. Here are some notable changes:

Mouse & Touchpad and Accessibilty in particular saw major redesigns, significantly improving their usability.
Device Security has been updated with clearer language.
Sound has been redesigned with new windows for the volume mixer and alert sound.
You can now share your Wi-Fi credentials to another device through a QR code.

The Mouse & Touchpad panel in the GNOME Settings app, showing the Touchpad settings. — The revamped Mouse & Touchpad panel in Settings

In Files, there is now an option to expand folders in the list view.

The tree view can be turned on in Files' settings

GNOME Software now automatically checks for unused Flatpak runtimes and removes them, saving disk space. You can also now choose to only allow open source apps in search results.

In Contacts, you can now share a contact through a QR code, making it super easy to share a contact from your desktop to your phone!

Third-party repositories

Fedora's third-party repositories feature makes it easy to enable a selection of additional software repos. Previous versions included a filtered version of Flathub, which included a small number of apps. For Fedora 38, this filtered version of Flathub has been replaced with a full, unfiltered version. This means that the third party repos now provide full access to all of Flathub.

The third party repos still need to be manually enabled, and individual repositories can be disabled from the GNOME Software settings. If you want to hide proprietary apps from showing up in your search results, you can also do that in GNOME Software’s preferences menu.

Under the hood changes throughout Fedora Linux 38

Fedora Linux 38 features many under the hood changes. Here are some notable ones:

The latest Linux kernel, version 6.2, brings extended hardware support, bug fixes and performance improvements.
The length of time that system services can block shutdown has been reduced. This means that, if a service delays your machine from powering off, it will be much less disruptive than in the past.
RPM now uses the Rust-written Sequoia OpenGPG parser for better security.
The Noto fonts are now used by default for Khmer and Thai. The variable versions of the Noto CJK fonts are now used for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, significantly reducing disk usage.
Profiling will be easier from Fedora 38, thanks to changes in its default build configuration. It is hoped that this will result in performance improvements in future versions.

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