Fedora 31 Beta now available

Today, the Fedora Project, a global community that works to help advance free and open source software, is pleased to announce the beta availability of Fedora 31, the latest version of the Fedora operating system. Fedora 31 Beta offers a look at the advancements expected in the next version of Fedora, helping to address a host of modern computing challenges, from building and running cloud native applications to driving innovation in the connected world.

Fedora 31 Beta is delivered in editions, each designed to address specific use cases for modern developers and IT teams. Fedora Workstation and Fedora Server provide open operating systems built to meet the needs of forward-looking developers and server projects. Fedora 31 Beta also sees the continued evolution of emerging Fedora editions, including Fedora CoreOS, Fedora IoT and Fedora Silverblue.

As with every new version of Fedora, each edition of Fedora 31 Beta builds on the same set of common base packages, which feature a host of bug fixes, performance tweaks and updates to drive a smoother user experience. New in Fedora 31 Beta:

• Support for cgroups v2, bringing kernel level support for the latest features and functionality around cgroups in the base packages of Fedora 31 Beta. This helps lay the foundation for improved performance and new capabilities in building and running containerized applications.

• Switching RPM compression to ztsd, which decreases the amount of compression time needed and improves the overall performance of processes using binary RPMs.

• Support for RPM 4.15, the latest version of the RPM Package Manager for enhanced performance and stability across all versions of Fedora.

Fedora 31 Beta adds a new desktop spin, Xfce, to the aarch64 architecture for single-board computers (SBCs). Xfce is a lighter-weight desktop experience that, while lacking many of the “shinies” of accelerated desktops, is well-suited for the resource constraints of SBCs like Raspberry Pis.

Another key change is within Fedora 31 Workstation Beta, which provides a flexible general purpose desktop operating system along with a host of leading open source development tools for application developers. It’s ideal for traditional Linux users wanting the latest desktop experience as well as developers working on the next-generation of applications. Fedora 31 WorkStation Beta expands the default uses of Wayland, including allowing Firefox to run natively on Wayland under GNOME instead of the XWayland backend as with prior releases. This release also allows Qt applications to run natively on GNOME Wayland.

As always, the Fedora Project team wants to hear from you – let us know about any bugs or problems that you encounter, as your feedback can help us improve Fedora 31. Common issues can be found on the Fedora 31 common bugs page (please read this on how to effectively report bugs).

If you are interested in becoming more involved with Fedora, we want you on our team! You can contribute to the Fedora Project in many ways other than bug reporting – the Fedora Project is always looking for translators, testers, content creators, marketers, designers and so much more. Whatever your skill set, we would love to have you involved – find out more at http://whatcanidoforfedora.org/.

The Fedora Project is a Red Hat-sponsored community project. For more information about Fedora, please visit the Fedora Project homepage.

Matthew Miller is Fedora Project Leader.