Fedora 45 is finally finished and fit

Fedora 45 is here , after not one but two week-long delays as the team found last-minute issues. Although both the original and second announcements were irksomely non-specific, in general we prefer this "when it’s ready" approach to the rigid calendar-based schedule that Canonical favors for Ubuntu. It includes six main editions, five immutable desktop variants, and 12 "spins" with different GUIs. The combined version 45 release notes detail some of the bigger individual component changes and note the hardware requirements. The recommended spec is now a 2 GHz quad-core CPU with 8 GB of RAM and 20 GB of disk space, and at least 1024×768 graphics. Fedora 45 supports most display adapters, but 3D acceleration may not work on older GPUs, including Intel models prior to GMA9xx, Nvidia models prior to NV30 (GeForce FX5xxx series), and AMD Radeon models prior to R300 (Radeon 9500). We took a quick look at the beta back in September, focusing on its new next-generation text console, which is a welcome change. We especially liked the ability to zoom in and out on the text console on the fly, which is something we’ve missed since the superb "Laptop Ultravision" for DOS , about a third of a century ago. (The company is long gone, but we found a downloadable version for all you DOS users .) The desktop flagship editions are Workstation 45 , which comes with GNOME 51 "A Coruña" , and Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop , with KDE Plasma 6. 8 . We covered some of the new features in GNOME 51 when we looked at the Ubuntu 26. 10 beta , and those changes apply here too – notably, improvements in the Settings app, but removal of some older Nvidia GPU support. Both the big names are Wayland-only environments now, but by our reckoning, X11 fans have seven of the 12 official spins to choose from: Xfce, Cinnamon, MATE, i3, LXQt, LXDE, and Sugar (SOAS) all still use X. org if you prefer. There is also a combined What’s New page for all the Atomic Desktops, Fedora’s immutable variants – the main shared feature here being the new web-based installer. The new version of main Fedora is accompanied by Fedora Asahi Remix 45 for Apple Silicon Macs. This is a more notable release than the cross-platform editions, as Asahi 45 brings initial support for M3-based Macs as well as M1 and M2 kit. As The Reg described in September , though, the M3 support is preliminary and limited – for instance, it excludes the M3 Ultra. If you have an M3 Mac, for now, you’re better off sticking to macOS…