Fedora 39 is the fastest version of the open-source desktop to date. Jack Wallen/ZDNET
Fedora Linux 39, released today, looks to be one of the finest releases ever produced by the team. You can download Fedora’s latest release here.
I’ve been testing the Fedora 39 beta for a while now, and it has proved itself to be a phenomenal release for the open-source project. You can check out my full review of the beta but I can sum it up by saying, “Wow, this is fast!”
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And it really is. It’s faster than any version of Fedora I’ve ever used. Open the Activities Overview, search for something, and it appears immediately. That kind of responsiveness has eluded Fedora for some time. Thanks to GNOME 45 and all the work the Fedora team did under the hood, the latest release is unhinged with speed.
One of the more promising improvements can be found within the DNF package manager. The team has made dnf5 available (although not installed by default) — which is noticeably faster than previous releases. But, as I said, dnf5 isn’t added by default. Fortunately, anyone who wants to try the new take on the package manager can install it with the command sudo dnf install dnf5 -y.
After experiencing dnf5, I can say that it is well worth the wait. What was once a sluggish solution is now as fast as any package manager on the market. Even a full system update is remarkably fast.
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But that’s not all. You’ll also find Fedora 45, the LLVM 17 compiler stack, and plenty of under-the-hood changes designed to improve the overall speed of the operating system.
One thing you will find missing, however, is LibreOffice. The development team has decided to no longer ship the open-source office suite with the OS. That’s fine, as it can be easily installed from within GNOME Software.
