What’s new in Fedora 27 Workstation

Fedora 27 Workstation is the latest release of our free, leading-edge operating system. You can download it from the official website here right now. There are several new and noteworthy changes in Fedora Workstation.

GNOME 3.26

This Fedora Workstation release, as always, brings with it the latest, greatest GNOME desktop environment. Notable features in this release include:

• Revamped Settings control panel
• Enhanced Search that also returns system actions in an improved layout
• Color Emoji in the Characters app
• Better visual transitions for windows, and app thumbnails in the Overview
• …and more

The GNOME 3.26 release notes online contain a much larger list of improvements. There are even improvements beyond those in the release notes. These include more secure image thumbnails and more gaming hardware support.

Pipewire

PipeWire is a new subsystem that vastly improves audio/video handling under Linux. Eventually it will support the full range of ways users currently use PulseAudio and JACK, and provide similar handling for video. It’s designed to be a new core foundation for audiovisual I/O in Linux apps. In Fedora 27 Workstation, PipeWire provides screen capture and screencast recording in GNOME Shell. In future releases its capabilities will expand.

Builder

The new release of GNOME Builder comes with numerous improvements as well. Examples includes the debugger, the overall design, symbol search and word completion. This release also has enhancements to inline documentation for a better developer experience.

LibreOffice 5.4

Fedora 27 Workstation also includes the latest stable release of the LibreOffice productivity suite. This full-featured suite makes it easy for you to create and collaborate on documents, presentations, spreadsheets, and more. The full set of features is in the upstream release notes, but here is a partial list:

• Writer now has better support for .dotx, .dotm, and .rtf files
• Calc remembers your CSV export settings for later sessions
• Writer has a better style toolbar to make document formatting a snap
• Calc adds new options for more granular cell protection
• Writer handles export of bullets and numbering much better
• Calc has new cell comment commands

RHEL Developer Subscription access in Boxes

For a while now, Red Hat has offered a no-cost developer subscription to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. (Full disclosure for those living under rocks: Red Hat sponsors the Fedora Project.) In Fedora 27 Workstation, the GNOME Boxes application will let you access your subscription to easily download and install RHEL for a guest box. This is a nice streamlining feature for developers who want to test their work for enterprise deployment.

Fedora Media Writer

The Fedora Media Writer is the easiest way to get a new release of the Workstation Live onto a convenient USB key. The latest release allows you to create bootable SD cards with Fedora for ARM devices such as Raspberry Pi. It also brings improved support for Windows 7 and screenshot handling. The utility also notifies you when a new release of Fedora is available. You can install it, as with many other apps and add-ons, in the Software app.

Other notes

This is but a small fraction of the new features of Fedora 27. Fedora also lets you install thousands of software apps provided by our community. Many of these apps and utilities have also received updates since Fedora 26. When you upgrade, you’ll receive them automatically.

Fedora 27 is available now for download.