Announcing the release of Fedora 29

[This message comes directly from the desk of the Fedora Project Leader.  — Ed.] 

In just one week, it will be fifteen years since we announced the release of Fedora Core 1. Now, we’re announcing the release of Fedora 29 — now not just “core”, but Workstation, Server, Atomic Host, a whole collection of desktop Spins and special-purpose Labs, images for Cloud and ARM devices, versions for Power and S390, and more.

We were tempted to wait a week to make the dates line up perfectly. But why make everyone wait? This is, yet again, the best Fedora operating system release ever. So go to https://getfedora.org/ and download it now. Or if you’re already running a Fedora release, follow the easy upgrade instructions.

This release is particularly exciting because it’s the first to include the Fedora Modularity feature across all our different variants. Modularity lets us ship different versions of packages on the same Fedora base. This means you no longer need to make your whole OS upgrade decisions based on individual package versions. For example, you can choose Node.js version 8 or version 10, on either Fedora 28 or Fedora 29. Or you can choose between a version of Kubernetes which matches OpenShift Origin, and a module stream which follows the upstream.

Other big changes include GNOME 3.30 on the desktop, ZRAM for our ARM images, and a Vagrant image for Fedora Scientific. As always, we’ve integrated a huge number of updated packages as software in the wider open source and free software world continues to grow. Thanks to everyone in the amazing Fedora community for all of your hard work on this release!

Of course, we’re not sitting still, either. Although “Fedora Core” is gone, over the next six months Fedora CoreOS will replace Atomic Host as our container-focused Edition, and we expect to officially add our Internet of Things Edition for Fedora 30. And, keep an eye on Fedora Silverblue. It uses the same technologies we’re using for CoreOS and IoT to make a consistent, container focused desktop environment.

If you’re already a Fedora user, update your systems and get moving forward. And if you’re not, this is the perfect time to get on board. Download an installer, device image, or launch Fedora Atomic Host in the cloud from https://getfedora.org/ now!

Fedora Project community

81 Comments

  1. Andrea Favero

    Great! Thanks for all the work you do guys!

  2. Thank you for great news and sharing it sooner! 😀

  3. Gerardo

    Great release so far, I’ve been testing it since the beta went out.
    Just one issue when used

    distro-sync

    the following error came up:

    Running transaction
    Preparing : 1/1
    Running scriptlet: rtkit-0.11-19.fc29.x86_64 1/1
    Erase: rtkit-0.11-19.fc29.x86_64
    /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.9JbSFj: line 1: fg: no job control
    error: %preun(rtkit-0.11-19.fc29.x86_64) scriptlet failed, exit status 1

    Error in PREUN scriptlet in rpm package rtkit
    Verifying : rtkit-0.11-19.fc29.x86_64 1/1

    Failed:
    rtkit-0.11-19.fc29.x86_64

    It was fixed following this guide

    https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F29_bugs#rtkit-update

    Just in case someone face the same issue.

    • Thomas

      Do you also had a downgrade of dbus? Was a little weired. 🙂

      • Gerardo

        @Thomas,

        indeed was weird, this is a fresh install so I wasn’t expecting this. Thankfully it wasn’t that hard to solve (thanks to the documentation) and it wasn’t disruptive at all.

    • Phantom X

      You’ll have to do rpm -e –noscripts rtkit-0.11-19.fc29.x86_64 and yum reinstall rtkit to fix it.

  4. Farhad Mohammadi Majd

    I have tested Fedora several times and found DNF lacked important features that is provided by APT/DEB and zypper/YAST in SUSE, like install packages as minimal and providing ”recommended packages” for enhancement, and delta updates for metadata, fortunately there is an on going effort to fix this big problem:

    https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Zchunk_Metadata

    I hope it become ready for Fedora 30.

    I am currently using Debian 9 + GNOME Flashback, but I will install & test Fedora 29 soonly, I hope it can satisfy me to can switch to Fedora/CentOS for a long time.

    I also love YAST, if Fedora can provide such tool, it can attract many users from Ubuntu, Debian and other distros.

  5. Aaaand Fedora stays the best distro out there. Awesome release!

  6. Magic

    The upgrade instructions lead to a page about upgrading from 27 to 28.

  7. anon

    which linux kernel version it works on?

  8. drakkai

    What will be the differences between Fedora CoreOS and Fedora Silverblue?

  9. Magic

    The upgrade instructions linked are for upgrading from Fedora 27 to 28.

  10. Viral Gohel

    I have been waiting for this release, specially for Gnome 3.30. Thank you guys for this wonderful release, and all the work you do!

  11. Roberto

    Please, please tell me security lab also will be released, right now don’t find in (October 30 10:30 AM):

    https://labs.fedoraproject.org/

    Kali is ugly and parrot also.

    • Yes, the security lab and other variants that weren’t ready at release time will be available soon. Stay tuned.

      • Roberto

        Mathew, it’s really important the work (all) you do. I’ll give thanks in November and here: thanks.
        Fedora is the most pragmatic, complete and “pretty” distro was made ever, Congratulations.

  12. nabooengineer

    If you follow the F27 to F28 Upgrade instructions from:
    https://fedoramag.wpengine.com/upgrading-fedora-27-fedora-28/

    warning: /var/lib/dnf/system-upgrade/fedora-8c9e363c32277c01/packages/linux-firmware-20180913-87.git44d4fca9.fc29.noarch.rpm: Header V3 RSA/SHA256 Signature, key ID 429476b4: NOKEY
    Importing GPG key 0x429476B4:
    Userid : “Fedora 29 (29) fedora-29@fedoraproject.org
    Fingerprint: 5A03 B4DD 8254 ECA0 2FDA 1637 A20A A56B 4294 76B4
    From : /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora-29-x86_64

    Bug 1644379 has been filed against this issue.

    • nabooengineer

      Forgot to mention just press Y and then enter to get successfully past that gpg NOKEY warning.

  13. Richard

    Thank you for all your hard work.

    Knowing that this may be the last decent Fedora release before your new boss IBM starts mucking up the works really saddens me.

    Any chance that the Fedora group can break away from Red Hat before this catastrophe happens? Same goes for the CentOS guys.

    • @Richard: Sorry you’ve been the victim of FUD. Nothing is changing for Fedora, other than that we are continuing to change and thrive. We’ll see you at Fedora 30 and beyond. 😉

      • gfrf

        i reply after one year.
        i ‘m not belive big corporation without coders.
        red har buying and open many technologies ibm buying and dont open any.

        sorry fedora is death

    • nicu

      By “break away” you mean fork? And by “Fedora group” and “CentOS guys” do you mean Red Hat employees working on Fedora, respectively CentOS?

      • Speaking as someone who’s a long time Fedora contributor (pre-Red Hat) and not an IBM employee, this subthread is not useful for the Magazine. Folks are welcome to find another public forum in which to conduct it.

  14. Jake

    Love u guys 4 such an awesome distro.
    Been using Fedora since 4 years ago and it’s still my number one.

  15. A Spanish speaker

    Great release, I’ll download and install now

  16. zygzak

    The following error occurred while installing. This is a fatal error and installation will be aborted.

    DNF error: Error in POSTIN scriptlet in rpm package tex-fonts-hebrew

    Fatal error?

    • @zygzak: Sorry you hit this problem. I suggest reporting it as a bug against that package in F29. Also, in the meantime you should be able to remove that package, then try the upgrade again.

  17. Matteo

    Thank you very much for all your efforts Fedora guys! You are the best!

  18. Christian

    Looks great!

    I need to use Windows at the moment, though. Would be awesome if we could get Fedora from Microsoft Store to use on WSL..????

  19. ojn

    Awesome news and awesome release announcement – short and to the point! Congrats to everyone who worked so hard to bring these changes to fruition.
    I’m glad to be a part of Fedora community.

  20. Fantastic – thank you so much to the entire team! I’ve been a happy user since F13 and even an (occasional) contributor.

    Looking forward to the next 15 years of releases!

  21. Matt

    Just wow. Smoothest (desktop) upgrade ever. Fixed a few issues:

    Finally, I upgraded a fedora system running proprietary nvidia drivers, and I didn’t have to intervene after upgrade. Booted right up with proper graphics.
    In 28, GNOME Software had been broken for a long time. It would just say something like “Loading Software Library . . . ” and hang. Fixed on first boot.
    When I’d power on the PS4 controller I use for games, connected via Sony’s official dongle, my desktop would freeze more than 50% of the time. (It would always work once per boot, then freeze more often than not.) No more, have turned the controller on and off a dozen times, no freezing.
    The new boot is nice. The stream of kernel messages I’d usually see briefly during boot are gone now.

    The first boot after the upgrade did hang for a few minutes and worry me. Reset, reboot, everything came up perfectly since then.

    I don’t generally get too impressed with OS updates these days, but this is impressive.

  22. Andrei

    Great job, Guys!

  23. Lukas

    Great!

    How to upgrade form beta version?

  24. Soren

    Looking forward to testing it.

    Thanks for all your hard work.

  25. Cory Hilliard

    Christmas always comes early at Fedora!

  26. Wow! This is the first Linux desktop to fully support my video hardware. For the first time I can now play 4k video right in my firefox web browser whereas before the highest I could get in the browser was 1440p @ 30fps without flickering or slowdowns. On previous versions of Linux I could play 4k at 30fps outside the browser using MPV player (for mp4 files only – not webm).

    No other Linux distro has taken advantage of my hardware like fedora 29! Windows10 did not even take advantage of my hardware like fedora 29.

    Using Dell Inspiron 3558 on core i3 (2016)

  27. Great new release folks and I was quite pleased to see it come out before fedbot on #fedora was telling us it would be (21:00 UTC 30 Oct 2018). I am also quite interested by Silverblue; using OSTree for updates is something it shares with Endless OS. I have an affinity for bleeding-edge rolling release model distros, but in the case of Fedora I’m willing to make an exception, although at times I do feel tempted to upgrade to Rawhide (I don’t take this leap as it may be a little too bleeding-edge for me, as it uses developmental releases of the kernel and GNOME).

  28. Blake

    Well done and congratulations Fedora team, I’m super excited and just bumped my workstation up to 29 and it’s great!

    I wasn’t sure if these should go into Bugzilla, let me know if you want them there and I’ll put them in.

    I spotted a couple hyperlink issues on the getfedora.org page:
    On the https://getfedora.org/en/workstation/download/ page in the right hand frame, the links to release notes and installation instructions are both broken:
    https://docs.fedoraproject.org/f29/release-notes/

    Also the hyperlink to the ‘Installation Guide’ in the footer under ‘Support’
    https://docs.fedoraproject.org/f29/install-guide/

    They should be pointing to:
    https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora/f29/release-notes/
    https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora/f29/install-guide/

  29. tux4me

    Cant download Fedora 29 workstation iso , link is broken and i get 403 error.
    Been trying for 2 days now.

    • @tux4me: This sounds like a problem with your local mirror. Try a different one by visiting download.fedoraproject.org.

      • tux4me

        The link you provide shows fedora 28 as newest release, but fedora 29 as update.
        the fedora 29 iso is not available anywhere.

        I wanted a fresh install but now i will do an upgrade witch seems to be available.
        “Software” graphical install download F 29 but dont boot into install, now i will try the DNF command.

        Maybe its the result of IBM bought Red Hat.

        • @tux4me: You didn’t give any information about which link, so no one can address the issue you think you saw. Care to provide details? And no, this has nothing to do with IBM. 😉

          • Jim T

            He’s right. The actual acquisition isn’t supposed to take place for at least a year, if it even clears all the U.S. regulators, I’d imagine the E.U. will have something to say about it, too. It’s not over ’til it’s over! 🙂

            I’m personally hoping it all goes through. IBM would gain nothing from trying to put all those Red Hat guys in suits 🙂 And I’ve worked with Red Hat technicians many times; they’re unbelievably talented. IBM would be full-bore nuts to even think of messing with Fedora/Rawhide.

            I don’t speak for IBM, I only work for them, and I don’t even speak for myself — ask my wife!

          • tux4me

            “… you think you saw …” :/

            “download.fedoraproject.org” let me to a mirror with only fedora 28 in the releases directory, but in the update directory there where a fedora 29.
            “getfedora.org” download ended up with a 403 error.
            At the same time fedora forum have been down for days too, and only news to find is that IBM is going to buy Red Hat.

            Now, tonight, fedora forum is up again, and download links work again.
            But for 2 days none of it worked, other than DNF upgrade, as i just did, right before everything was back up :/

            And by the way, that worked like a charm.

            I have now seen other forum posts about this issue, but no explanation to find anywhere.
            Ive been here since FC5 and have never experienced this before, so it was easy to think it could be related to IBM buying Red Hat.
            (like changing servers, release notes … whatever)

            This where the place i had expected to find some information, not a statement about “what i think i saw” 😀
            But thanks anyway m8.

            (you asked for details) 😉

            • These sound like problems with a local mirror near you, not something that Fedora can fix unfortunately. ???? But what you said was there were no ISOs anywhere, but I saw something different at my mirror, which was a normal tree. Glad you were able to get what you needed.

  30. this weekend going to use on my old laptop acer emachine 732z

  31. Richard

    Been running 29 Beta on a dual boot lap top and dual boot desk top for several months and has been working great. Things have really since the “core” days.

  32. Aleksandr

    This release is something incredible. My memory usage got down significantly, from 12-15 GB to 8-9 GB. I don’t know actually why that happened, I run same docker containers, same IDE windows, same amount of Firefox tabs. Maybe I had some memory leaks before, but now I’m very happy to have more extra space) + Gnome experience feels better now

  33. liming

    greate!

  34. Michael Howell

    Can you jump over an release? If you are running fc27, can you go directly go to 29 without upgrading to 28?

  35. Klaudio

    Muy buen laburo el 28, pero el 29 no puedo descargarlo.

  36. Farhad Mohammadi Majd

    I had the same problem as the person ”tux4me’.

    I wanted to download 32-bit but it ended to 403 error, I had to search in mirrors to find a mirror that had ISOs for 32-bit and F29 which was very bad experience!!

    “These sound like problems with a local mirror near you, not something that Fedora can fix unfortunately.”

    Well goddamn it if the mirrors have problem why don’t provide direct link to Fedora servers?! Debian provides direct links to all of its ISOs but just suggest and recommend to download ISOs from a close mirror, is Red Hat so poor that can’t provide enough resource for this?!

  37. ap

    laptop : lenovo ideapad320,
    ram: 8gp;
    hdd: 2tp;
    cpu: intel i5 8250;
    gpu: amd redeon 530;
    current os : windows10;

    when I had download Fedora 29 on yesterday and boot it to my flash drive. then I try to install it my laptop to click INSTALL TO HRAD DISK window it has not moved to next step just load and it just quit. after I had to move to live window on the left side task bar click INSTALL FEDORA again it has load and installation screen cames and automatically disappears in second. please help me to fix it

  38. Athenkosi Hlubiq

    Loving this release sooooo much. I last used Fedora when it was in version 24, i was still new to linux back then. I did some distro hopping and now i’m back where i started, Fedora. No bugs so far, Keep up the good work guys.

  39. Honicker

    Unfortunately I cant find Gnome’s new Podcasts app, even though 3.30 is installed. Do I have to activate it first?

  40. damian01w

    Awesome release. And, I don’t know if it’s announced new feature, but my laptop boots up in UEFI mode with flickerfree vendor logo (asus). And then the screen keeps showing the vendor logo until smooth fade into the gnome desktop. Amazing !!

  41. Wayne McDermott

    Couldn’t upgrade from 28, got a bunch of errors to do with jdk-1.8, so I’ve started all over again with a brand new installation. It’s actually quite fun to rebuild all my tools and configs from base again .. though emacs is going to take some time. Good work and thanks Fedora team!

  42. Shane Watts

    ????

  43. Ahmad Raza

    I used Fedora 27, 28 for short periods of time and really loved Fedora. I planned to have a proper installation of Fedora with 29 as my default Operating System. Now the time came and I’m very thankful to you Fedora Team for such a nice product delivered to us free of cost. Since installation 10 hours ago, I am experiencing a nice Operating System with polished Gnome 3.30. I hope this would be my best experience of Linux with Fedora Distribution.

  44. Vladimir

    Good job!!

  45. Wogster

    Gee, last week I finally got around to the F27-F28 upgrade, and now I need to do it again….. I’ve heard Gnome-shell has lost a lot of memory weight, and since this machine is limited to about 3.2GB (4GB installed, it’s a BIOS issue), I’ll be installing 29 a lot sooner then I did 28….

  46. Tony Rawlings

    Still can’t install printers. Says “null” when trying to install a printer.

  47. 42

    Thank you! I’m waiting for the official Fedora Xfce spin for my VirtualBox.

  48. Rudolf Mouthaan

    Thanks Fedora, for delivering a stable, office ready Linux distribution.
    One thing with 29 is that updates is stuck at 97%. Then I need to reboot and all seems OK . Then a day later updates are ready again and again stuck at 97%.

  49. yonmoon

    Since fedora29 is beta I was using it,all seem good except Vmware-12.5.9 cannot start(In fc28 ot’s good,I upgraded from it) .Even in a fresh installation,No GUI appears,and logs error always shows:
    UnicodeDecodeError: ‘ascii’ codec can’t decode byte 0xe6 in position 0: ordinal not in range(128)

  50. seat ibiza

    Fedora Corporation is the best operating systems manufacturer. Please continue to produce only good things

  51. switcher

    I have been using Fedora since Core 1, and used free RedHat (release 9 & earlier) before that. I am currently running Fedora 25, and about to do a clean install to Fedora 29. I have found Fedora to be a super platform, and never had any desire to use any other distribution. (I actually use the server version, not the desktop). I run a great many services on the server platform and it performs perfectly, with only a few minor hickups.
    Looking forward to ver 29.

  52. steven

    Unless I am missing something only the fedora 29 live version can be downloaded from getfedora.com. Is there a non-live version? I just want to install fedora 29 to VirtualBox.

  53. Aldo

    Tengo un error al actualizar fedora 29 no sincroniza con update-modular.

    Saben como puedo solucionar este problema???

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