Fedora Had A Stellar 2021 & Continued Running At The Forefront Of Linux Innovations

Fedora had another successful year and anecdotally enthusiasm around the Red Hat sponsored Linux distribution grew a lot this year among Linux power users. As has been the case for years, Fedora releases have been among the first to feature new Linux innovations from the desktop down the stack -- many of which have been spearheaded by Red Hat engineers. Helping its cause for the past several years is that they have managed to deliver releases on-time (or close to it) and haven't been like some of the past distant releases that were rather buggy and other headaches stemming from the constant flow of changes. Fedora 34 and Fedora 35 this year were great releases and continued pushing the distribution on an upward trajectory.

Fedora 34 and Fedora 35 this year were fantastic releases that continued with the latest GNOME changes, Wayland support that is in great shape and now even for NVIDIA with GBM, the PipeWire transition has proved to be a success and unlike the early PulseAudio horrors, and many other improvements pushed along this year by Fedora and Red Hat. No Fedora release in recent time has felt stale yet they keep arriving with robust quality. In addition to Fedora Linux itself, the Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) continues to be a fabulous supplemental repository for CentOS/RHEL users and the Fedora community as a whole has also been growing positively.

From all of the Fedora articles written on Phoronix this calendar year, here is a look back at the most popular Fedora news articles for recapping some of the great moments in 2021.

Fedora 36 Planning To Run Wayland By Default With NVIDIA's Proprietary Driver
While all of the software components are out there now for being able to run NVIDIA's proprietary driver stack with modern (GBM-based) Wayland compositors by default, including XWayland support, Fedora Workstation currently defaults to using an X.Org based session with the green binary blob. However, for Fedora 36 next spring they are planning on using the Wayland-based desktop here too.

Fedora 34 Released As A Hugely Exciting Update For This Linux Distribution
It's Fedora 34 day! Fedora 34 is now officially available and it's quite exciting on the feature front especially with the changes to be enjoyed in Fedora Workstation 34.

Fedora 34 To Release Next Week As A Very Exciting Update
After it was pushed back last week due to blocker bugs, on Friday it was determined that Fedora 34 is now in proper shape to officially ship next week.

Fedora Workstation 35 Looks To Use Power Profiles Daemon By Default
Fedora Workstation 35 is looking to ship with power-profiles-daemon by default and to have it enabled for benefiting newer laptops.

Amazon Linux 2022 Released - Based On Fedora With Changes
Amazon Web Services has made Amazon Linux 2022 now publicly available in preview form as the newest version of their Linux distribution.

Fedora 35 Cleared For Release Next Week
After dealing with blocker bugs the past two weeks, Fedora 35 is now confirmed for releasing next week.

Facebook's Linux Desktop Choice Is Fedora But Ramping Up CentOS Stream
Among Facebook employees while they are mostly using Windows and macOS on their laptops/desktops, for those using Linux the primary choice has shifted from Ubuntu to Fedora but they have begun ramping up CentOS Stream too.

"Fedora Linux" Is The Latest Change Proposed For F35
While Fedora 34 will be out around the end of next month, there are already change proposals being filed for Fedora 35 that will come in the autumn. One of those early changes for that next release cycle is referring to the OS as "Fedora Linux" within its OS release information.

Fedora 34 Will See HarfBuzz-Enabled FreeType As The Latest For This Huge Feature Release
The plan for Fedora 34 to improve font rendering by enabling HarfBuzz in FreeType was approved this week by the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee.

Red Hat / Fedora To Focus On Driving New Linux Video Improvements Around PipeWire
PipeWire from the start was designed around handling the needs of both audio and video streams on Linux. While PipeWire is already in use for screencasting/recording under Wayland and working with Flatpak'ed applications, recently much of PipeWire's focus has been on addressing the use-cases of JACK and PulseAudio on the sound side. Now that the audio support is in quite good shape, Red Hat engineers are back to focusing on improvements to the video support.

Fedora 34 Planning For Better Font Rendering By Enabling HarfBuzz In FreeType
One of the latest planned changes to the long list of improvements for Fedora 34 is enabling the HarfBuzz support within the FreeType library.

Fedora Preparing To Switch To Intel's Modern "Sound Open Firmware" Audio Driver
Fedora 34 is planning to switch to using Intel's modern Sound Open Firmware audio driver as it should be in good shape now and superior to the existing sound driver. This is ahead of Intel likely switching to the Intel SOF driver code path by default in the upstream kernel once this change has first been vetted by Fedora users.

Fedora 35 Might Drop Installer Option To "Allow SSH Root Login With Password"
A Fedora 35 change proposal submitted this week that is ruffling some feathers is over removing the "allow SSH root login with password" option from Fedora's Anaconda installer.

Fedora 35 Approved For Third-Party Repo Changes, More Optimal Encryption Default
The Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) has unanimously approved a large number of new Fedora 35 features this week.

Fedora 35 Beta Released With Many New Features, Countless Package Updates
After seeing some initial release challenges, Fedora 35 Beta was released today across the Fedora Workstation, Fedora Server, and Fedora IoT flavors as well as their other versions.

Fedora 35 Looking To Employ WirePlumber For Managing PipeWire
While Fedora 34 successfully shipped with PipeWire for managing audio/video streams and replacing PulseAudio use-cases, with Fedora 35 this autumn the integration around PipeWire should be even better.

Fedora's Java Packages Have Fallen Into Rough Shape
While many years ago Fedora's Java support was in great shape with quickly integrating OpenJDK going back to IcedTea, these days Fedora's Java packages are barely maintained and largely fallen into disrepair.

Fedora Linux 35 Released As Another Exciting, Feature-Packed Update
Fedora 35 is now officially available today as the latest major release of this Linux distribution developed by Red Hat and the open-source community. Fedora 35 is another very rich feature update at the forefront of Linux innovations from servers to the desktop.

Fedora Workstation 34 Should Be Very Exciting With GNOME 40, PipeWire Default
Fedora 34 due out in April is shaping up to be a very exciting feature release as usual with this Red Hat sponsored Linux distribution continuing to live on the bleeding-edge of the open-source software ecosystem. Fedora Workstation 34 in particular is heavy on updates and new features, led by the GNOME 40 desktop.

Fedora's "Enterprise Linux Next" Taking Flight To Experiment With Next-Gen RHEL Changes
Over the past year there has been much chatter about Enterprise Linux Next within the Fedora camp and now this special interest group (SIG) is finally getting underway.