What’s new in Fedora Workstation 38

Fedora Workstation 38 is the latest version of the leading-edge Linux desktop OS, made by a worldwide community, including you! This article describes some of the user-facing changes in this new version of Fedora Workstation. Upgrade today from GNOME Software, or use dnf system-upgrade in a terminal emulator!

GNOME 44

Fedora Workstation 38 features the newest version of the GNOME desktop environment. GNOME 44 features subtle tweaks and revamps all throughout, most notably in the Quick Settings menu and the Settings app. More details about can be found in the GNOME 44 release notes.

File chooser

Most of the GNOME applications are built on GTK 4.10. This introduces a revamped file chooser with an icon view and image previews.

GTK 4.10's new file chooser, showing the icon view with image previews.
Icon view with image previews, new in GTK 4.10

Quick Settings tweaks

For GNOME 44 There have been a number of improvements to the Quick Settings menu. The new version includes a new Bluetooth menu, which introduces the ability to quickly connect and disconnect known Bluetooth devices. Additional information is available in each quick settings button, thanks to new subtitles.

The Bluetooth menu can now be used to connect to known devices

Also in the quick settings menu, a new background apps feature lists Flatpak apps which are running without a visible window.

Background Apps lets you see sandboxed apps running without a visible window and close them

Core applications

GNOME’s core applications have received significant improvements in the new version.

Settings has seen a round of updates, focused on improving the experience in each of the settings panels. Here are some notable changes:

  • Major redesigns of Mouse & Touchpad and Accessibility significantly improves usability.
  • Updated Device Security now uses clearer language.
  • Redesigned sound now includes new windows for the volume mixer and alert sound.
  • You can now share your Wi-Fi credentials to another device through a QR code.
The Mouse & Touchpad panel in the GNOME Settings app, showing the Touchpad settings.
The revamped Mouse & Touchpad panel in Settings

In Files, there is now an option to expand folders in the list view.

The tree view can be turned on in Files’ settings

GNOME Software now automatically checks for unused Flatpak runtimes and removes them, saving disk space. You can also choose to only allow open source apps in search results.

In Contacts, you can now share a contact through a QR code, making it super easy to share a contact from your desktop to your phone!

Third-party repositories

Fedora’s third-party repositories feature makes it easy to enable a selection of additional software repos. Previous versions included a filtered version of Flathub, which included a small number of apps. For Fedora 38, filtering of Flathub content no longer occurs. This means that the third party repos now provide full access to all of Flathub.

The third party repos must still be manually enabled, and individual repositories may be disabled from the GNOME Software settings. If you want to keep proprietary apps from showing up in your search results, you can also do that in GNOME Software’s preferences menu.

You are in control.

Under-the-hood changes throughout Fedora Linux 38

Fedora Linux 38 features many under the hood changes. Here are some notable ones:

  • The latest Linux kernel, version 6.2, brings extended hardware support, bug fixes and performance improvements.
  • The length of time that system services may block shutdown has been reduced. This means that, if a service delays your machine from powering off, it will be much less disruptive than in the past.
  • RPM now uses the Rust-written Sequoia OpenGPG parser for better security.
  • The Noto fonts are now the default for Khmer and Thai. The variable versions of the Noto CJK fonts are now used for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. This reduces disk usage.
  • Profiling will be easier from Fedora 38, thanks to changes in its default build configuration. The expectation is that this will result in performance improvements in future versions.

Also check out…

Official spins for the Budgie desktop environment and Sway tiling Wayland compositor are now available!

Fedora Project community

77 Comments

  1. Ricardo

    I always upgrade to the previous version (I’m currently on Fedora 37), but I’m excited about this version because it didn’t need to be delayed, looking forward to update it in six months! 🥳🥳🥳🥳

    • MrMarcie

      I always upgrade a week after the release. It’s my main workstation with xfce. Never missed a beat. Why wait?

      • RaphGro

        Because lastminute fixes to expect & reported immediately just after fresh releases.

      • Jan

        Gnome extentions sometimes take a while to catch up to the latest Gnome version. If they are important for you, this can be a good reason to update a bit later.

      • P J

        right there with you. I generally don’t need any new feature that much that a week isn’t impactful.

  2. David Levner

    I realize that GNOME is important to many people, but I use KDE. It would be nice to hear a little about how the new release affects KDE.

    • John

      There shouldn’t really be any affect at all since KDE was upgraded to the latest version during F37 release cycle. So you arent getting anything new in KDE really.

      Fedora team doesn’t do much with KDE since Fedora/Gnome/RH are all kinda inter-related. So your main things are latest kernel and build tools

      • Larry

        I installed 38 today, it was so bad as I type this I reverting back to 37

        • Michael

          Meanwhile I upgraded to Fedora 38 last week and barely noticed the changes. A few UI elements are bigger or relabeled. To me it’s just more Fedora goodness.

  3. Yahor

    Can not download. After downloading in the app store, the “download” button just reappears

  4. bent

    Team Fedora You are doing an amazing job Really You are the best, in the field of Linux

    Always exciting to see the release of a new fedora

  5. Craig

    I can’t install this. The first time I tried from the software center it got up to about 57% downloaded and just stopped. Clicking the ‘download’ button after that did nothing. So, I tried following the dnf route. Everything seemed to go ok until it was time to upgrade and reboot and I got this message:
    Error: Transaction test error:
    file /usr/lib64/libheif/libheif-libde265.so from install of libheif-freeworld-1.15.1-4.fc38.x86_64 conflicts with file from package libheif-hevc-1.15.1-2.fc37.1.x86_64
    file /usr/lib64/libheif/libheif-x265.so from install of libheif-freeworld-1.15.1-4.fc38.x86_64 conflicts with file from package libheif-hevc-1.15.1-2.fc37.1.x86_64

    [craigmouldey@fedora-desktop ~]$ sudo dnf system-upgrade reboot
    Error: system is not ready for upgrade
    Now what do I do?

    • P

      similar issue here

    • This conflict is between a package from Rpmfusion (libheif-freeworld) and a package from Fedora. Please wait a few days, it should get fixed by an update soon.

    • BigC

      Quickinfo / Quickfix for Upgrading from F36 to F37 or from F37 to F38
      Same problem occurs when upgrading from Fedora 36 to Fedora 37 these days. I found out that (in my installs) only digikam* digikam-libs and gthumb were using these packages. I removed them with
      dnf remove digikam* gthumb
      (because I did not need them) and after that added the –skip-broken option to the dnf system-upgrade command afterwards.
      So if you are able to live without gthumb and digikam for a while, this might be the solution for you. It worked for me.

  6. Fredrik

    Works like a charm, but missing some of the addons like Folders on desktop- and scuh but i guess they will work after a while again once the devs update
    Otherwise a smooth upgrade 🙂

  7. Verolomstvo

    HP Pavilion Laptop 15-eh1083ur

    Settings – Privacy – Device security

    Fedora 37 – 9/10
    Fedora 38 – Equipment not tested

  8. Tingler

    I was disappointed to find out that this update broke Gnome software in my system and now gnome software crashes every time it tries to open. I hope it will be fixed with some update that I will install via terminal.

    • Obviously it shouldn’t do that. It might be due to a bad sector on your HD or something like that. The first thing I would try is “dnf reinstall gnome-software”. Beyond that, please report this at https://ask.fedoraproject.org/. Thanks.

      • Tingler

        Got

        Last metadata expiration check: 0:14:48 ago on Tue 18 Apr 2023 10:31:02 PM CEST.
        Installed package gnome-software-44.0-3.fc38.x86_64 (from fedora) not available.
        Error: No packages marked for reinstall.

        as a result.

        • Bad mirror? How about this (on one line)?:

          dnf reinstall --repo=direct --repofrompath='direct,http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/$releasever/Everything/$basearch/os/' gnome-software
  9. Jim

    I chose the dnf system-upgrade approach
    Total download size: 3.7 G
    DNF will only download packages, install gpg keys, and check the transaction.
    Is this ok [y/N]: y
    Downloading Packages:

    Transaction saved to /var/lib/dnf/system-upgrade/system-upgrade-transaction.json.
    Download complete! Use ‘dnf system-upgrade reboot’ to start the upgrade.
    To remove cached metadata and transaction use ‘dnf system-upgrade clean’

    Id like to copy that whole dir to another box for a 2nd upgrade,
    w/o re-downloading it. I tried that last time, it didnt just work.

    Before I try it again, is there any reason to hope it will work ?
    IOW, does the updater know enough to recheck checksums and reuse the files ?

  10. Fedora o melhor sistema Linux da atualidade ,e melhor ainda sua atualizações ,onde ao desligar o sistema ,o mesmo continua e faz as atualizações ,onde o sistema não tem falhas e a navegação e rapida e segura ,olha que amo o sistema Linux ,pós faz o internauta aprender muito e entender ate sobre invasãos ,obrigado chegou o Fedora 38

  11. Philip

    Been running 38 beta for months and it hasn’t missed a beat. Fedora provides me the perfect balance between the enterprise stability of RH and the cutting edge software of a rolling release like Manjaro. Cheers Devs Awesome work.

  12. Jesse

    The upgrade to 38 went without a hitch for me. I will be happy when some more of my oft-used extensions are updated.

  13. david

    thansk for all the dev and test community!

  14. abhilash

    My system was 35, tried to moved to 37, then stable version. After long hours of upgrade bugger crashed on me. Fortunately data was intact. So I thought of changing it to then beta version of 38.

  15. Antonio Retali

    Great Work Fedora Team!.

    Excuse me, but, what’s the difference between Fedora 38 IoT DVD and OSTree ISO versions?

  16. All good, updated three machines, no issues 👍

  17. Ali

    If I upgrade, will my settings, installed packages, and other services get lost?

    • Brian

      That depends on which OTHER installed packages you are using. If they come from outside repositories or something like an outside debugger, like EDB that may not be in the repositories, or a compiler like Modula 3 — not in the repos — you may get a warning to remove them before proceeding or you may need to reinstall them. The upgrade may abort, in which case you still have Fedora 37 intact. Settings on apps like Firefox may need to be reset. In the last 20 years, I have had few problems of that sort, It’s definitely less work than a new install. If your installed packages come from Fedora or approved outside repositories, you probably won’t have a problem. If you’re concerned that you may lose an app that hasn’t been updated to F38 yet, you may want to wait a month or two, or backup your system. Nothing is guaranteed. If you’re concerned, take the time and read the Fedora 38 Project Documentation.

  18. TeX

    Wasn’t Gnome 44 supposed to introduce support for Wayland’s fractional_scale_v1 protocol? Or did they miss the merge window somehow? When I go into Displays I still only see 100% or 200% scale factors.

  19. Uros

    Anyone knows how to solve this:
    nothing provides module(platform:f37) needed by module nodejs:18:3720220818062143:9e842022.x86_64

    My sound stopped working as well.

    • Pau

      First disable it:
      $ sudo dnf module disable nodejs
      Then update:
      $ sudo dnf update
      Then reinstall it:
      $ sudo dnf module enable nodejs

      This worked for me.

  20. Zeljko

    Been running Fedora 38 beta for a couple of months without any problems. Excellent job Fedora devs 🙂.

  21. Mr. Phillip Midgley

    The biggest mistake is going all out with Flatpack! In the last release I have decided to ban all Flatpack ! After reading this I am out ! Fedora is going in the garbage can! In my lowly opinion, the meaning of the word Flatpack is “TOTAL INCOMPETENCE”! Good bye Fedora .

    • Terry Stasio

      You don’t have to use Flatpaks if you don’t like them. Disable it.

    • pugscuff

      Nothing has changed in terms of “going all out with Flatpak” in this release. You could already enable Flathub with a switch, they just made the switch enable all of Flathub instead of a limited portion. So 38 is basically the same as 37 in regards to Flatpak. You can still install RPMs and whatnot.

      Of course if it is a deal-breaker for you anyways, you should use whichever other distro you prefer.

  22. jab

    Hello,
    when upgrade I get the following errors (I using yubikey):
    Problem: package yubioath-desktop-5.1.0-10.fc37.x86_64 requires yubikey-manager < 5.0.0, but none of the providers can be installed
    – yubikey-manager-4.0.9-3.20220617git21d3513.fc37.noarch does not belong to a distupgrade repository
    – problem with installed package yubioath-desktop-5.1.0-10.fc37.x86_64

    Any suggestion?
    Thanks

  23. Brian Davis

    Heads up folks — I just installed Fedora 38 after 9 months without Fedora due to systemctl problems on Fedora 36. I had been using Fedora almost exclusively since Fedora Core 1.
    This time I decided to try Fedora Budgie.
    I was unable to adjust display scale from 200% to 100%. It kept reverting to 200% scaling. I almost gave up, and installed Gnome desktop, which also initially presented 200% display scaling. after adjusting scaling in Gnome (go to — settings – display ) , I discovered that the missing component in Budgie was now also resolved. It auto-rescaled to 100% after the Gnome install.
    Budgie is a beautiful – functional desktop. You may need to install a few addons like – ffmpeg-free-6.0-2.fc38 – to play certain video codecs. Sound works fine. Video plays with no problems as long as you have the codecs installed .
    For my own convenience I also installed dnfdragora, which works fine with root permissions, and I prefer over “Software”.
    One thing I DON’T care for in Gnome or Budgie is the bland icon representation in NEMO. It is possible to install custom icons, but the default versions are hard to differentiate. Aside from that Nemo works well.
    So far no problems with systemctl malfunctioning.
    One thing I did have trouble with is the installer. Please NOTE — do not bypass the options to install an initial user, or allow root login if you need it. Doing a custom install with Debian on the same drive – I needed to use the ADVANCED custom install. Otherwise the CUSTOM installer wouldn’t recognize available empty space that I intended to use for the boot sector. All in all though. VERY nice work. Thank You all.

    • Brian Davis

      I need to make a correction regarding my post about the Budgie Dwsktop. Budgie allows both the Gnome-Files application and Nemo, by default.. My complaint about the Bland — hard to differentiate Icons should have been directed to the Gnome-Files application.
      NEMO has a very nice Icon set — along with an excellent search capability., similar to the search tool on Gnome-Files. My apologies for the mistake.

  24. iisdissappoint

    I’m extremely disappointed with Gnome 44and Fedora(and KDE for that matter too).

    The desktop environments keep crashing if you have a two monitor setup with one monitor being 4k. Upon upgrading to Fedora 38, Gnome Software doesn’t work at all. Trying to add a reminder in the calendar app causes gnome to crash. My windows keep resizing automatically to some small value when I select a different window to bring to the foreground.

    The gnome extensions aren’t compatible. The ones kind of work but many features don’t, like sms sync and quick actions with GSconnect.

    The bug reporter takes up huge amounts of space on my hard drive and Gnome doesn’t include an easy way of just deleting all cache and temporary files.

    In order to get videos to work in firefox, I had to add rpmfusion repos and install ffmpeg. Many programs also don’t provide rpm versions and only provide debs. the only way to use some apps is using Flatpaks, but Flatpaks take up huge amounts of space.

    I tried to switch over to Fedora because I wanted to get away from Ubuntu and snaps, but it seems like Fedora has its own set of problems (mainly the gnome shell crashes).

    Furthermore, it doesn’t seem like there’s an easy way to switch between X11 and wayland from the login screen, either.

    People keep saying that linux is stable, but the gui crashing all the time is tarnishing that viewpoint

  25. Regnard

    In the summer of 2013 I took a bull by the horns and installed Fedora on my laptop for the 1st time as a single operating system – w/o MS. Step by step, it became the main OS on all my computers since then. It is great to see the progress done through twenty releases. Good job & big THX!

  26. Em Ess

    Well done Fedora Team!

    Another fantastic release…! Upgraded from F37 to F38 using GUI Software Center.

    Really setting the bar high in comparison to other popular OS’s. Remarkable, given the community driven efforts by all.

    Well done all!

  27. Edwin

    Cannot upgrade
    The download start and after 14% stop!
    I tried a few times and it is always so.

    Any idea.

  28. HB

    Could we see Yubico Yubikey support in the future? Out of the box support?

  29. chiddkel

    On Fedora 39 good options for developing commercial apps good will add support to the software center’s ability to pay for apps. On open source, apps add an option to donate button and use popular payments like PayPal.

  30. Deka

    I have issue when i use search file or folders feature in gnome’s file explorer it often crashes

  31. Colin

    Will Fedora be introducing the ability to logon with Microsoft Azure Active Directory accounts just like Ubuntu recently announced?

    https://ubuntu.com/blog/azure-ad-authentication-comes-to-ubuntu-desktop-23-04

  32. Ednan Penteado

    Não foi possivel atualizar para Fedora Linux 38:
    Erro ao executar a transação: o pacote pgdg-fedora-repo-42.0-26.noarch já esta instalado

    Meu Fedora é o Fedora Lixux 37 (workstatio Edition)
    versão do Gnome 43.4

    • Isto funciona?: dnf update ‐‐releasever=38 ‐‐skip-broken

      Veja também: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/pt_BR/quick-docs/postgresql/#upgrade

      Desculpe, digite “‐‐” manualmente. Eles não copiam corretamente desta página.

      • Ednan Penteado

        Não funcionou, acusou erro que nenhum pacote marcado para atualização

        ash-5.2$ sudo dnf update –RELEASEVER=38 –skip-broken
        [sudo] senha para ednan:
        usage: dnf upgrade [-c [config file]] [-q] [-v] [–version]
        [–installroot [path]] [–nodocs] [–noplugins]
        [–enableplugin [plugin]] [–disableplugin [plugin]]
        [–releasever RELEASEVER] [–setopt SETOPTS]
        [–skip-broken] [-h] [–allowerasing] [-b | –nobest] [-C]
        [-R [minutes]] [-d [debug level]] [–debugsolver]
        [–showduplicates] [-e ERRORLEVEL] [–obsoletes]
        [–rpmverbosity [debug level name]] [-y] [–assumeno]
        [–enablerepo [repo]] [–disablerepo [repo] | –repo
        [repo]] [–enable | –disable] [-x [package]]
        [–disableexcludes [repo]] [–repofrompath [repo,path]]
        [–noautoremove] [–nogpgcheck] [–color COLOR] [–refresh]
        [-4] [-6] [–destdir DESTDIR] [–downloadonly]
        [–comment COMMENT] [–bugfix] [–enhancement]
        [–newpackage] [–security] [–advisory ADVISORY]
        [–bz BUGZILLA] [–cve CVES]
        [–sec-severity {Critical,Important,Moderate,Low}]
        [–forcearch ARCH]
        [PACOTE …]
        dnf upgrade: error: unrecognized arguments: –RELEASEVER=38

        • Precisa ser

          sudo dnf update --releasever=38 --skip-broken
          • Ednan Penteado

            Com o comando indicado, acusa o erro:

            bash-5.2$ sudo dnf update -–releasever=38 –-skip-broken
            usage: dnf upgrade [-c [config file]] [-q] [-v] [–version]
            [–installroot [path]] [–nodocs] [–noplugins]
            [–enableplugin [plugin]] [–disableplugin [plugin]]
            [–releasever RELEASEVER] [–setopt SETOPTS]
            [–skip-broken] [-h] [–allowerasing] [-b | –nobest] [-C]
            [-R [minutes]] [-d [debug level]] [–debugsolver]
            [–showduplicates] [-e ERRORLEVEL] [–obsoletes]
            [–rpmverbosity [debug level name]] [-y] [–assumeno]
            [–enablerepo [repo]] [–disablerepo [repo] | –repo
            [repo]] [–enable | –disable] [-x [package]]
            [–disableexcludes [repo]] [–repofrompath [repo,path]]
            [–noautoremove] [–nogpgcheck] [–color COLOR] [–refresh]
            [-4] [-6] [–destdir DESTDIR] [–downloadonly]
            [–comment COMMENT] [–bugfix] [–enhancement]
            [–newpackage] [–security] [–advisory ADVISORY]
            [–bz BUGZILLA] [–cve CVES]
            [–sec-severity {Critical,Important,Moderate,Low}]
            [–forcearch ARCH]
            [PACOTE …[PACOTE …]
            dnf upgrade: error: unrecognized arguments: -–releasever=38

            • É porque este site corrompe o texto. Tente inserir o ‐‐ texto manualmente em seu teclado.

              • Ednan Penteado

                Fiz isto, digitei o comando inteiro, e sempre acusa o mesmo erro.

  33. Alessio

    Everything looks and feels so good, but i miss the Fedora 37 Backgrounds, especially the Red wave one, which adjusts automatically, if you have light mode or dark mode selected.

  34. hu

    Environment: Fedora 38 (64 bit), Firefox 112.0.1 (64 bit), Nemo 5.6.4 (64 bit)

    The nemo filemanager does not consider subdirectories when searching for files.

    When I have nemo perform a search, I would have expected subdirectories to be included in the search. However, since the switch from Fedora 37 to Fedora 38, this is not the case.

  35. Francisco André

    I’m using Fedora 36, there are any problem upgrade to 38 directally?

  36. JB

    I swear I just upgraded to 37 not too long ago. I use the xfce spin. I wasn’t a huge fan of gnome when it did a major change long time ago it seems. Is there any real benefit to upgrading to version 38?

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