Article Summary:
A quick description of the recent events in the Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop Edition, followed by highlights of several important upgrades and additions in Fedora 42 - both across Fedora, and uniquely in Fedora KDE
Article Description:
Below are some summary thoughts from Neal and the KDE SIG that I would be working to turn into an article:
Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop-specific updates:
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Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop is now an Edition provided by the KDE SIG through the Personal Systems WG! We’ll describe the changes occurring as a result of Changes/Promote KDE Plasma Desktop variant to Edition - Fedora Project Wiki
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Fedora KDE is now supported on Power Systems (ppc64le), with the full KDE stack (including KDE PIM) available on Power, and installable live images for OpenPOWER based systems like the Talos Workstation from Raptor Systems. *to include note that it’s note release-blocking, community help welcome
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Support for x86 emulation powered by FEX is integrated into Fedora KDE, expanding the usability of Fedora KDE on AArch64 by enabling x86_64 applications to work on ARM using a Fedora FEX rootfs image. This is particularly optimized for running Windows or Steam applications. (change document about this: Changes/FEX - Fedora Project Wiki )
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Fedora KDE 42 ships with KDE Plasma 6.3.4, including new features that I’ll summarize from documents like Plasma 6.3 - KDE Community
Relevant updates for all Fedora 42 editions:
- Anaconda is now a Wayland-native application: Changes/Anaconda As Native Wayland Application - Fedora Project Wiki
simplifies the installer stack and enables the installer to influence the environment when the user chooses the language to install in. - Fedora default wallpapers now use JXL: Changes/SwitchToJXLforDefaultWallpaper - Fedora Project Wiki
The switch to this modern image format significantly reduces the used storage for wallpapers. - More MIPI cameras supported: Changes/X86 MIPI CameraHwEnablement - Fedora Project Wiki
This follows up on the work in Fedora Linux 41 and expands support for MIPI cameras. - Plymouth now uses SimpleDRM by default: Changes/PlymouthUseSimpledrm - Fedora Project Wiki
This speeds up system boot by avoiding the need to load the full graphics driver for the splash screen. - /usr/sbin has been merged into /usr/bin (sbinmerge): Changes/Unify bin and sbin - Fedora Project Wiki
Largely transparent to users, but simplifies where executables go for Fedora packagers and where users can find them (they are now all in /usr/bin).
Wrap-up to include reference to the new edition website, kde.fedoraproject.org
Thanks for your consideration!