Fedora Linux 44 has been released [LWN.net]

The Fedora Project has announced the release of Fedora Linux 44. There are "what's new" articles for Fedora Workstation, Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop, and Fedora Atomic Desktops. The Fedora Asahi Remix for Apple Silicon Macs, based on Fedora 44, is also available. See the Fedora Spins page for a full list of alternative desktop options.

Fedora Linux 44 Workstation ships with the latest GNOME release, GNOME 50. This comes with a long list of refinements to your desktop, including everything from accessibility to color management and remote desktop. Many of the applications that are installed by default on Fedora Workstation have also seen improvements, from Document Viewer to File Manager and Calendar. To learn more about these and other changes, you can read the GNOME 50 release notes.

KDE Plasma Desktop: If you are a KDE user, you should also notice a couple of very obvious changes. Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop 44 is based on the latest Plasma 6.6, which includes the new Plasma Login Manager and Plasma Setup to provide a more cohesive and integrated experience from the moment the computer is powered on for the first time. The installation process has been simplified, enabling you to easily set up Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop for a computer for a friend or a loved one.

The release notes include important changes between Fedora 43 and Fedora 44 for desktop users, developers, and system administrators.

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GCC 16.1

Posted Apr 28, 2026 17:19 UTC (Tue) by jmalcolm (subscriber, #8876) [Link] (8 responses)

GCC 16.1 already. They are really pushing the envelope on that one.

GCC 16.1

Posted Apr 28, 2026 21:27 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (4 responses)

I was surprised too, and flipped over to check the list and see if it had suddenly been released while I wasn't looking. (No, it hasn't.)

I guess this gets it much wider testing!

GCC 16.1

Posted Apr 29, 2026 1:29 UTC (Wed) by draco (subscriber, #1792) [Link] (1 responses)

And yet it is listed as a supported release on the GCC main page (https://gcc.gnu.org/)

New development has moved on to version 17.

GCC 16.1

Posted Apr 29, 2026 3:33 UTC (Wed) by jmalcolm (subscriber, #8876) [Link]

> yet it is listed as a supported release

Yes, but the first sentence on the GCC 16 page says "As of this time no releases of GCC 16 have yet been made" (on April 28, 2026). The only "release" of GCC 16 appears to be what is shipping in Fedora 44.

https://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-16/

Fedora is now the premiere Algol 68 on LoongArch32 dev platform. What a victory over the recent Ubuntu LTS.

GCC 16.1

Posted Apr 29, 2026 10:16 UTC (Wed) by gherkin (guest, #177675) [Link] (1 responses)

Looks like it's not far off though, they are currently on a second release candidate, which was released on 24/04/2026, and according to the mailing list:

"If all goes well, we'd still like to release 16.1 on Thursday, April 30th."

[Ref: https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2026-April/248012.html ]

GCC 16.1

Posted Apr 30, 2026 16:58 UTC (Thu) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link]

It looks like all went well, since LWN just posted a release announcement. Jumping the gun by a few days seems like a better choice than the alternatives of sticking with 16.0.x for the next 6 months or trying to switch from 16.0.1 to 16.1.0 a few days after release.

GCC 16.1

Posted Apr 29, 2026 13:51 UTC (Wed) by mcatanzaro (subscriber, #93033) [Link] (1 responses)

Fedora spring releases (the even-numbered ones) almost always include prerelease GCC. That helps the toolchain developers uncover bugs and ensure the upcoming GCC release is good. Lots of people test prerelease Fedora and use GCC. Only a tiny fraction of them would be specifically interested in testing prerelease GCC.

Fedora will often ship with a prerelease version of Python for the same reason: to force developers to test the new Python.

Experience indicates quality is higher this way.

GCC 16.1

Posted Apr 29, 2026 16:16 UTC (Wed) by jmalcolm (subscriber, #8876) [Link]

This is very interesting. Thank you. I will watch for that.

GCC 16.1

Posted Apr 29, 2026 16:22 UTC (Wed) by jmalcolm (subscriber, #8876) [Link]

Small update to my own comment.

It says GCC 16.1 in the release notes but I just installed a Fedora 44 distrobox and it is shipping with GCC 16.0.1 at the moment. I imagine they will upgrade after GCC 16.1 is released.

Middle-click paste

Posted Apr 29, 2026 7:45 UTC (Wed) by GhePeU (subscriber, #56133) [Link] (6 responses)

If you upgraded to Fedora Workstation 44 (like me) and you've been wondering why pasting the selected text with middle click suddenly stopped working (like me), I'm going to save you some time and searches: it's a deliberate decision and you can restore it with

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-enable-primary-paste true

or with Gnome Tweaks. I've been truly trying to give GNOME a chance but sometimes it can feel as user-hostile as Windows 11 on my work laptop (sigh).

And 'less' won't let you search

Posted Apr 29, 2026 12:47 UTC (Wed) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

Might just be a terminal-related issue (I ran into this with 'kitty') but after typing / no further input was recognized, only enter.

The solution was to update to the current less package in -testing.

Middle-click paste

Posted Apr 29, 2026 13:12 UTC (Wed) by daenzer (subscriber, #7050) [Link] (3 responses)

I had a similar knee-jerk reaction when I first heard about this (during the 50 development cycle).

On second thought though, this is the safer default for users who don't know about middle-click paste, and it's not a big obstacle for users who know about it and want it.

Middle-click paste

Posted Apr 29, 2026 14:53 UTC (Wed) by GhePeU (subscriber, #56133) [Link] (2 responses)

It would have been nice to have it as a first-class option instead of being available only in GNOME Tweaks, and to mention the new default either in the GNOME release notes or in the Fedora release notes because it is a pretty significant change that will affect most of the current users, and each of them will have to discover what happened on their own.

As a side note, if we're worrying so much about confusing new users I'm fairly certain that several order of magnitudes more users have been left baffled by the absence of the minimize and maximize buttons than were ever surprised by middle-click paste, but it is what it is...

Middle-click paste

Posted Apr 29, 2026 15:35 UTC (Wed) by zdzichu (subscriber, #17118) [Link]

Great idea, actually. Putting it in settings would increase discoverability of the feature. And will help raise another generation addicted to middle-click-paste productivity gain!

Middle-click paste

Posted Apr 29, 2026 23:22 UTC (Wed) by cesarb (subscriber, #6266) [Link]

> It would have been nice [...] to mention the new default either in the GNOME release notes or in the Fedora release notes [...]

Or at least on the "Common Issues" (https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/tags/c/ask/common-is...), which is linked to from the release notes.

Middle-click paste

Posted Apr 30, 2026 18:59 UTC (Thu) by FloatingBoater (subscriber, #67237) [Link]

That change hit me, although only on a single machine. Another continued to accept middle-click paste as my muscle memory learned on an X-Terminal (hardware) 35 years ago!

I used the Gnome Tweak tool to fix the setting, but THANKS for the `gsettings` version - now added to my build scripts!