Fedora is a community-built operating system that runs on desktop computers, laptops, servers, cloud computing, edge devices, and pretty much everything else you can imagine. The most recent version of Fedora is Fedora Linux 42, equipped with multiple novel functionalities and enhancements.
Fedora Linux 42 is available in several flavors, including:
- Fedora Workstation 42: Fedora Workstation is a well-designed, user-friendly desktop and laptop operating system that comes with a full suite of tools for developers and manufacturers of all stripes. The leading Linux Desktop.
- Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop: Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop is an advanced customizable desktop based on the latest open source tech to provide an easy and versatile environment to personalize your PC like never before.
- Fedora Server 42:Â Â This is a community server OS, a powerful and very flexible operating system that comes equipped with the most advanced and effective data center technologies. It is perfectly capable of running server applications.
- Fedora Cloud: Fedora Cloud Edition is a powerful and basic operating system image that may be customized for a variety of private and public cloud applications. It is meant for lightweight VM environments.
- Fedora CoreOS: This is the container optimized OS. It is an automatically updating minimal, container-focused operating system.
New Features
- Fedora Workstation 42 features GNOME 48, which includes dynamic triple buffering to provide smoother animations, stacked notifications to collate notifications from one application, and added well-being features to measure screen time and recommend breaks.
- The KDE Plasma desktop environment is promoted from being a spin to an official Fedora Flavor Edition, to recognize its maturity and user base.
- Anaconda’s installer has an online wizard-based interface, rather than using the classic “hub and spoke” design. The online interface includes guided partitioning as well as an easier reinstallation process.
- Offline voice dictation is supported for any application that is supported by IBus, leveraging an offline voice recognition engine, which is VOSK.
- Revised and Improved Programming Languages:
- PHP 8.4: Introduces property hooks, new array functions, and enhanced PDO subclasses.
- Ruby 3.4: Features the Prism parser and improved YJIT compiler performance.
- Golang version 1.24 brings an improvement by incorporating tool directives in the go.mod file that greatly enhances the capability to record dependencies more efficiently.
- Toolchain Updates: This release includes GCC version 15, Binutils version 2.44, Glibc version 2.41, and LLVM version 20, thus providing developers with the latest and most sophisticated compilation tools in the industry.
- Performance Enhancements and Improvements in Filesystem Functionality:
- The EROFS filesystem is being used today for all sorts of live media use, and said adoption results in improved compression capacity and greatly enhanced levels of performance. Optimized Binaries: The binaries were carefully crafted and optimized for the AMD64/x86_64 platform, which provides an improved overall performance while running on appropriate hardware systems supporting this specific platform.
Installing Fedora 42 – Step-by-Step With Screenshots
Follow the steps provided in the subsequent sections to have a working installation of Fedora 42 Linux distribution in your hardware.
Step 1: Download Fedora 42 ISO image
You can pull Fedora 42 ISO from Downloads page. Choose the ISO image that fits the CPU architecture of your system.
Alternatively, you can pull the image from your terminal:
## For Intel and AMD x86_64 systems
wget https://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/42/Workstation/x86_64/iso/Fedora-Workstation-Live-42-1.1.x86_64.iso
## For ARM® aarch64 systems
wget https://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/42/Workstation/aarch64/iso/Fedora-Workstation-Live-42-1.1.aarch64.iso
## For Power ppc64le systems
https://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora-secondary/releases/42/Workstation/ppc64le/iso/Fedora-Workstation-Live-42-1.1.ppc64le.isoStep 2: Create a Installation media
Write the ISO image to a USB stick to create an installation media. For this tutorial, we’ll use balenaEtcher, as it runs on Linux, Windows and Mac OS. Choose the version that corresponds to your current operating system, download and install the tool.
After successful installing the tool, select you ISO image and click the flash button to flash the image. For installation in a Virtualization environment, create VM template and attach ISO image to begin OS install.
Step 3: Boot from the USB disk
Insert the USB flash drive into the laptop or PC you want to use to install Fedora 39 and boot or restart the device. It should recognize the installation media automatically. If not, try holding F2 or F10 during startup and selecting the USB device from the system-specific boot menu. Press the enter key to proceed to the next step:
You will be greeted with a Welcome window by Fedora immediately you boot into Fedora Workstation. Click on [Install Fedora] button on your left to begin the installation.
Select the language you’d like to use during the installation. This language will also be set as the default language for your system if you don’t change it.
In the next screen, select how you’d like to install your Fedora 42:
You can also choose to encrypt your data. If you choose to, you must provide a passphrase of which you’ll need able to boot your Workstation or server.
If not proceed to the next stage, which is the default Installation Summary section for some basic configurations.
Click on ‘Erase data and Install‘ to commence installation:
When the installation is done, you’ll need to reboot your system:
Click ‘Exit to Live Desktop‘ and then reboot Fedora 42.
Step 4: Setup Fedora Linux 42
Fedora desktop will reboot and launch the Setup Wizard:
Select your prefered language again, then click ‘Next‘. Then select your keyboard layout or an input method:
Choose your Privacy settings. Here you can decide if you would like to allow Location and Automatic problem reporting:
Now configure your Time Zone using the world map and the search bar:
Next, you are prompted whether you want to enable third party repositories. Third-party repositories provide access to additional software from selected external sources which include popular apps and drivers crucial to some devices.
It’s highly recommended that these repositories are enabled for access to additional drivers and applications, unless you have a specific reason not to. Then click Next.
Provide your name and username in the next [About You] page.
Input the password you’d like to use for your account and confirm it just below. Be careful not to lose your password, remember it, you can even write it down somewhere.
You are all done and ready to start using Fedora Linux 42. Click on [Start Using Fedora Linux] and proceed to explore your new Fedora 42 system.
You’ll be prompted whether you’d like to take a tour of the new GNOME 47, and it’s up to you, good luck.
You have successfully installed Fedora 42. Go ahead and start your journey.
Conclusion
When installing Fedora Linux on a Virtual Machine or Physical server hardware, you have the option of choosing the Fedora server edition if you are not interested in Desktop Environment and other GUI tools. Once Fedora server edition is installed, a Desktop Environment of your choice is installable at any time. For users new to Linux, we recommend you start with the desktop version for ease of use and general system administration. We hope this article was helpful.
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