Fedora Workstation 34 is the latest version of our leading-edge operating system and this time there are major improvements heading your way. Best of all, you can download it from the official website. What’s new, I hear you ask!? Well let’s get to it.
GNOME 40
GNOME 40 is a major update to the GNOME desktop, which Fedora community members played a key role in designing and implementing, so you can be sure that the needs of Fedora users were taken into account.
The first thing you notice as you log into the GNOME 40 desktop is that you are now taken directly to a redesigned overview screen. You will notice that the dash bar has moved to the bottom of the screen. Another major change to GNOME 40 is the virtual work spaces are now horizontal which brings GNOME more in line with most other desktops out there and should thus make getting used to GNOME and Fedora easier for new users.
Work has also been done to improve gesture support in the desktop with 3-finger horizontal swipes for switching workspaces, and 3-finger vertical swipes for bringing up the overview.
The updated overview design brings a collection of other improvements, including:
- The dash now separates favorite and non-favorite running apps. This makes it clear which apps have been favorited and which haven’t.
- Window thumbnails have been improved, and now have an app icon over each one, to help identification.
- When workspaces are set to be on all displays, the workspace switcher is now shown on all displays rather than just the primary one.
- App launcher drag and drop has been improved, to make it easier to customize the arrangement of the app grid.
The changes in GNOME 40 underwent a good deal of user testing, and have had a very positive reaction so far, so we’re excited to be introducing them to the Fedora community. For more information, see forty.gnome.org or the GNOME 40 release notes.
App Improvements
GNOME Weather has been redesigned for this release with two views, one for the hourly forecast for the next 48 hours, and one for the daily forecast for the next 10 days.
The new version now shows more information, and is more mobile-friendly, as it supports narrower sizes.
Other apps which have been improved include Files, Maps, Software and Settings. See the GNOME 40 release notes for more details.
PipeWire
PipeWire is the new audio and video server, created by Wim Taymans, who also co-created the GStreamer multimedia framework. Until now, it has only been used for video capture, but in Fedora Workstation 34 we are making the jump to also use it for audio, replacing PulseAudio.
PipeWire is designed to be compatible with both PulseAudio and Jack, so applications should generally work as before. We have also worked with Firefox and Chrome to ensure that they work well with PipeWire. PipeWire support is also coming soon in OBS Studio, so if you are a podcaster, we’ve got you covered.
PipeWire has had a very positive reception from the pro-audio community. It is prudent to say that there may be pro-audio applications that will not work 100% from day one, but we are receiving a constant stream of test reports and patches, which we will be using to continue the pro-audio PipeWire experience during the Fedora Workstation 34 lifecycle.
Improved Wayland support
Support for running Wayland on top of the proprietary NVIDIA driver is expected to be resolved within the Fedora Workstation 34 lifetime. Support for running a pure Wayland client on the NVIDIA driver already exists. However, this currently lacks support for the Xwayland compatibility layer, which is used by many applications. This is why Fedora still defaults to X.Org when you install the NVIDIA driver.
We are working upstream with NVIDIA to ensure Xwayland works in Fedora with NVIDIA hardware acceleration.
QtGNOME platform and Adwaita-Qt
Jan Grulich has continued his great work on the QtGNOME platform and Adawaita-qt themes, ensuring that Qt applications integrate well with Fedora Workstation. The Adwaita theme that we use in Fedora has evolved over the years, but with the updates to QtGNOME platform and Adwaita-Qt in Fedora 34, Qt applications will more closely match the current GTK style in Fedora Workstation 34.
As part of this work, the appearance and styling of Fedora Media Writer has also been improved.
Toolbox
Toolbox is our great tool for creating development environments that are isolated from your host system, and it has seen lots of improvements for Fedora 34. For instance we have put a lot of work into improving the CI system integration for toolbox to avoid breakages in our stack causing Toolbox to stop working.
A lot of work has been put into the RHEL integration in Toolbox, which means that you can easily set up a containerized RHEL environment on a Fedora system, and thus conveniently do development for RHEL servers and cloud instances. Creating a RHEL environment on Fedora is now as easy as running: toolbox create –distro rhel –release 8.4.
This gives you the advantage of an up to date desktop which supports the latest hardware, while being able to do RHEL-targeted development in a way that feels completely native.
Btrfs
Fedora Workstation has been using Btrfs as its default file system since Fedora 33. Btrfs is a modern filesystem that is developed by many companies and projects. Workstation’s adoption of Btrfs came about through fantastic collaboration between Facebook and the Fedora community. Based on user feedback so far, people feel that Btrfs provides a snappier and more responsive experience, compared with the old ext4 filesystem.
With Fedora 34, new workstation installs now use Btrfs transparent compression by default. This saves significant disk space compared with uncompressed Btrfs, often in the range of 20-40%. It also increases the lifespan of SSDs and other flash media.
Leslie Satenstein
Gnome 40 is very promising. I am dual booting Fedora33 and Fedora34. Gradually, I am moving my applications to the new setup. I have a few gnome extensions and I find value in them. They are not in Gnome40, and thus, I am hopeful that one or more will become gnome40 compatible.
When I do C programming, I am doing it using my Fedora34 installation. I do like the new layout and am learning the secrets that are not in the official documentation.
Eric Mesa
Recently started using toolbox on my workstation install so that I could install Ruby gems and Perl CPAN modules without mucking up my main system. Expect to also get great use once I start using Rust crates and whatever Go’s stuff is called.
A. User
Hi,
I freshly updated to Fedora 34 and all of my Display Settings are gone. How can I change my App Grid from the bottom to the left side again? It’s a little bit annoying to work on all of these settings again. Can you help me?
Thanks in advance.
Renich Bon Ćirić
I do pro audio recording with pipewire. It’s just awesome. Super low latency and very flexible.
It’s easy to achieve good audio quality while streaming or recording. Flatpak apps work awesome with it.
aab bsba
Have you tried snapd apps babe?
hammerhead corvette
why use snapd when we have flatpak?!
Hossam Elbadissi
Snap is really hell slow. I have elementaryOS which is built on Ubuntu (hence it comes with snapd) but the first thing I did was remove it and depend on flatpak (thankfully elementaryOS team already uses flatpak primarily).
Ralf Oltmanns
Well, pipewire integration in Gnome 40 still seems to have some toothing problems.
Topbar volume control broke with my Fedora 34 and I find it hard to control volume for different applications.
Additionally, pipewire tends to forget how it was configured for applications and audio devices (i. e. unplugging and reconnecting a USB device is always a pain, as pipewire appears to fall back to some other device when the device is unplugged, but fails to return to the previous setting when the device is plugged in again).
But well, I found workarounds for the time being. I guess it just needs some additional time and tweaking.
david
is there any changes on other than workstation like server?
Miguel Jasso
PipeWire, ¿Que resampler usa? SoX VHQ,HQ o SRC, Speex?
Wim Taymans
Usa su propio resampler: https://src.infinitewave.ca/
Sean Sollars
I won’t use Fedora because I am disabled and play games, watch movies and such. Incompatible.
Andrea R
Not really. If you enable rpmfusion repos you will be able to play almost any video file. For games there’s steam.
hammerhead corvette
I have been playing games on Fedora since Fedora 27… Steam Proton, and Lutris solve your gaming problems. Third Party repos like rpm-fusion that enable these are 1 click away on the software center.
romie
Indeed, Windows, thankfully, has a large range of accessibility options that allow a great number more of people to use their computers and it’s (again, thankfully) much better than what linux has.
But if you are looking for something other than windows and you think the accessibility is ok for you, then Fedora can easily allow you to watch movies and play (most) games 🙂
If I could, I would have my linux be friendlier too, buddy
Pawel
There are many accessibility options in Fedora. Probably more than in windows.
Sean Sollars
I won’t use Fedora because I am disabled and play games, watch movies and such. Incompatible. I enjoyed Fedora when it was for everyone.
Jeroen
Great install and user experience. Thanks.
Michael
If i updated from Fedora 33 to 34, is it normal to see pulseaudio running alongside pipewire? Is there a way to test whether pipewire is used?
oldkid
I still think dash on the left is better. I’ve been using 34 for a few hours and I already use hot corner + dash much less than before as I mainly use touchpad. I usually just launch apps with super + search. The rest of changes are great but is there a way to move dock to dash?
Cornel Panceac
i’ve created a ticket for this. for laptop users this is a real impact.
Zardian
Well that’s why there is 3 finger gesture to access dock. You don’t need to access hot corner with touchpad now.
Cornel Panceac
Not every laptop has a touchpad. For example Thinkpads Xseries do not have.
Jeffrey Goh
Most Xseries do have a touchpad – with the exception of X200/X200s (and possibly others) – I’m told the X200 has a touchscreen, but I have no personal experience with three finger anything there.
Cornel Panceac
Ok, looking at the Lenovo site it seems that indeed, all NEW thinkpad X series have a tocuhpad, so i stand corrected: not ALL X-series TPS miss a touchpad. However, i am using X200 or older Thinkads. What now? Do i/we have to buy a new laptop just to use Gnome 40? What about other laptops ? Do all other laptops have a touchpad? I hope you understand my point.
FeRDNYC
“Do all other laptops have a touchpad?”
Not that it’s an argument against making the interface usable with other forms of input, but… yes, honestly. Even Lenovo caved on that a while back, and they were the last holdout. You’d be hard-pressed to find any current portable without either a touchpad, or a touchscreen that accepts the same gestures.
Philip P
Dash on the bottom is the only reason I won’t update.
Linus Sphinx
Try using the, ‘windows’, menu key, between Alt and Ctrl on the Thinkpad to bring up activities. Really working for me.
Andrea R
I will wait for the dash-to-dock extension. I hope it gets updated for Gnome 3.40 soon.
Gilbert
I like the new Gnome 40 layout much better than the previous version. It is a major improvement, and I ‘d like to thank the Gnome and Fedora team for getting this out now. I find the dash at the bottom is easier to use (shorter mouse travel). I love the fantastic “trees” wallpaper. F34 even runs fine on my older netbook (HP stream), although it runs of course much faster on regular desktops and laptops (generally, I find Gnome much smoother than Windows 10, which feels sluggish).
Three things are still missing or not working correctly, and I haven’t figured out how to solve (any suggestions?):
1) I upgraded from F33 to F34, and I do not get the nice rounded windows for the file manager. When I install F34 as a new install, it works all fine.
2) There seems still no way to do good screencasting in Wayland. Several Fedora’s ago, I used the EasyScreencast extension which was great under wayland and super easy to use; now I need to use Vokoscreen under X. I wished this would be easier under wayland. There must be many people using screencasts for tutorials and teaching.
3) The weather extension I used to have does not longer work. Not a bit issue, but I look forward to this extension working again.
Maksym
Related to Wayland – there is a bug “Add an API for taking screenshots and recording screencasts” which was created in 2016. It is still open.
So, the solution might be not to use Wayland until this is fixed, and support for this API is implemented in applications.
Robert
The APIs are already there for a while, but adoption is somewhat slow. Fortunately, OBS studio just got pretty good support for it in the new version (27). Firefox and Chromium also support it.
Maksym
If I understood correctly, Firefox and OBS Studio adopted a PipeWire API. It seems PipeWire will be used as a universal screen capture method which works on Wayland too.
Alfred Johnson
Will not reboot after update/upgrade
pedrito_el
Is it me or there’s no gnome-document app anymore?
luigi votta
same here: I felt horphanized! 🙂
thiago
It’s possible to make an upgrade above Fedora 33 or more indicated made a clean installation?
lemc
I installed Fedora Workstation 34 using the server-netinst ISO image and selecting “Fedora Workstation” under “Base environment”. Everything runs smoothly, but the installed file system is XFS. Shouldn’t it be BTRFS, the new default for the Workstation edition ?
Ben Cotton
The server-netinst ISO uses Fedora Server configuration. Since Server defaults to XFS that’s what you get when you install from that ISO, even if you select different packages.
lemc
Thank you for the information. The Workstation edition as installed by the server-netinst ISO also allows the creation of separate root and user accounts before actual installation (which I prefer). So are there other differences between the Workstation editions that are installed by the live ISO image and the server-netinst ISO ?
Matheus Guedes
Late reply, but the Fedora Everything ISO does exactly that, same interface as the Server-netinstall but uses Workstation’s defaults like BTRFS.
udh123@san10-38-58.ubonedih.net
as of 29 april 2021 00:17 at tokyo time 34-workstation downloading seemingly starting but in fail wrongly. as ever most cases at another computer within a comfortable short time the download opertion had been completed and had moved to the normal installation operation of 34-workstaion at another computers safely. but with this my computer…something wrong ????
san10-38-58.ubonedih.net
2021年 4月 29日 木曜日 00:23:54 JST
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[udh123@san10-38-58 ~]$
Noel
I just upgraded from F33 to F34, and my keyboard LED does not turn on – even trying the command “xset led 3” that the web tell me to do.
I know that my keyboard works, because on Windows it does, theferore indeed is something related to F34.
For reference, the keyboard is a Knup KP-2059.
By the way, the overall experience is faster on F34, great job.
Andrew
wish that btrfs had the ability to have a default raid level for 2+ devices but that you could also specify raid-1 for example on a per folder (ok… per subvolume otherwise) basis, so that I could duplicate my important stuff but take advantage of speed increase of raid-0 on machanical drives for everything else.
Nygu-Phee Yen
Congratulations to the team for the fantastic work! You guys rock!
I have been a user since the Red Hat Linux 6.0 days, and we both are still alive even though you have changed name several times!
sdoux
More of a Gnome related feedback than Fedora but having a gnome shell extension to configure the overview would be nice. With the multimonitor setup i have these horizontal workspaces are killing me
Morten Juhl-Johansen Zölde-Fejér
It is beautiful – I was surprised that it starts with the overview, but I can get used to it,
The 3-finger gesture navigation is not sensitive enough to work from. Even slowly dragging 3 fingers from one end of the touchpad to the other, I could barely switch from one workspace to the other.
Jyotirmay Barman
I really hate gnome 40’s UI. I know they tried to be minimal but it is extraaa minimal and the extension support is not yet there so there is very less reason to update.
Sphinx
Damn the torpedoes full speed ahead, couple bugs never bothered me, there is no progress without pain.
Christian Ortega
When you finally feel comfortable with PulseAudio…..boom…..then PipeWare appears
Mohamed Salama
Hello,
I’ve lost my sound output devices after the upgrade, however the sound is working but with no volume control. Any help!
Thanks,
Gregory Bartholomew
According to the PipeWire change set notice for Fedora Linux 34, You should be able to switch back to pulseaudio with the following command:
Mohamed Salama
Thank you for you update. Unfortunately, many issues with Sound even after a fresh installation .. Ended up re-installing F33
Federico
Thanks! With PipeWire my USB headphones did not work (LX-3000 on a Dell 7400; not my choice, it’s my employer’s), but going back to pulseaudio worked just fine.
As soon as I saw the notices that PipeWire would “just work”, I felt I should resist upgrading, as it would clearly be the exact opposite. I see there are many open bug reports, I have no idea which one might be relevant. Thank you everyone who’s testing, reporting and fixing all the bugs!
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/buglist.cgi?bug_status=__open__&bug_status=__closed__&f0=OP&f1=OP&f2=product&f3=component&f4=alias&f5=short_desc&f6=status_whiteboard&f7=CP&f8=CP&j1=OR&o2=substring&o3=substring&o4=substring&o5=substring&o6=substring&query_format=advanced&v2=pipewire&v3=pipewire&v4=pipewire&v5=pipewire&v6=pipewire&version=34
Mark
A five months ago I have try workstation 33 my first impression was : unstable, not snappy.
Then installed POP OS and it was better. After time system was getting a bit heavy.
I decided to give a try Fedora. I got 33 I was surprise how snappy it is. Just after two days it was official release 34 I did fresh installation. I wanted to try new GNOME and I knowed I need minimum two days to find out if the changes are for better.
System wasn’t so snappy as 33 and my felling about new GNOME was so, so I didn’t know if is better or no but I am open for changes and I know many peoples jurge new things from old behaviors.
I though two days and I will see.
After one day I knowed it is better !
One more day after several updates system started to be really stable.
New Gnome : Simple, clean, nice colors beautiful wallpapers. I like color’s in and dark background with icon’s area that’s make everything more visible.
Very clear ! 👍
I faced problem sometimes I can’t copy text for example from, LibrreOffice to internet browsers or from browsers to telegram but that happen sometimes.
Another think Virtual Box after I set up I got information that ther is something wrong wit kernel configuration and it didn’t work.
I would like to use Boxes but I can’t make internet work’s ? How can make it ?
Andrey
After almost every Fedora upgrade, I got an issue with HPLIP. Is current HPLIP version 3.21.2 compatible with Fedora 34 Workstation?
Felix Calderon
Good morning, some solution to my problems, please I will be grateful if you guide me the following:
In previous versions of Fedora 34, you could listen to music while configuring the sound. Now you can’t, the sound settings hang.
Or if I’m listening to music with Rythmbox and I want to use VLC, I just can’t, a VLC window opens with messages in endless red lines device busy.
No player uses my 5.1 sound system.
Only on the console using mpg123 can I listen to the flac or mp3 sound with fidelity
Gregory Bartholomew
You can try the following to switch back to the previous sound system (but still keep the rest of Fedora Linux 34):
After running the above, reboot, and then you should have your previous sound settings back.
Andy Loven
Love seeing the 01886 in the Gnome Weather screenshot!
Juhani Vuorio
Where is the networking and drivers?
giocomai
But what if I don’t want to start with the overview open, and I like my dash on the left? Is there an easy way to just keep things as they are? I see that you want to make things “easier for new users”, but pretty please, don’t make them annoying for old users who liked the way things were. Fine if there’s a new default, as long as it’s just a switch in the settings to return to previous behaviour, without having to resort to extension that break oh so often with updates…
bubka
can you do smth with wifi tribers (for lenovo yogo). it’s just terrible. connection always on low. on windows! it’s perfect!
John Williams
I did a fresh install of Fedora 34 Workstation and the thing I noticed more than anything is the incredibly good sound quality. I’m currently listening to all my music files again ! Well done Fedora.
Bilal Ahmad
What about nvidia and cuda compatibility . Will they update along side Fedora 34 installation or we have to install them separately.
Leon
The virtual desktops are now side by side, instead of on ‘top of eachother’ (sorry, no other way to express myself). If anyone knows of a way to have the f33 behavior again, please let me know.
bubka
I still have problems with wi-fi on lenovo yoga. low signal. how much time do you still need to fix it? everything is perfect with windows but not with fedora. rly sad.
Steve Nordquist
bubka, eat an entire 4 channels of misdirected gain. Seriously, can you drop debug info to the appropriate developers to mark differences in the Win10 and Linux drivers (e.g. are they both for the same subsets of chips and for the same front-end amplifiers for WiFi6E?)
If you select among all available drivers and driver options (use the source, Luke) and still haven’t gotten the same signal strength as in the same location when using Win10, that’s handy info. to know for the next Yoga user and/or driver developer and will probably avail a fix sooner (if indeed it can’t be fixed with mere driver parameters.)
It would similarly help to induce Lenovo to seek Linux Foundation or other Linux developer Certification (as Windows Certification for hardware funds Windows driver activity) for their products. You can put bounties on development milestones in some contexts!