Fedora Linux 45 reached general availability on November 3, 2026, the Fedora Project announced. The release updates the Workstation and KDE desktops and changes defaults for package signatures, process tracing, networking, and Atomic Desktop installation. Read the Fedora Project’s announcement.
Fedora 45 is described as a free, open-source operating system available for download. For background on the testing release, see NeoTeo’s coverage of Fedora 45 Beta.
Fedora Workstation and KDE get different desktops
Fedora Workstation 45 uses GNOME 51, while Fedora’s KDE edition uses Plasma 6.8. That’s the main desktop choice: GNOME for Workstation, or KDE Plasma for the KDE edition.
Package signatures and process tracing get stricter defaults
RPM 6.1 checks package signatures by default. Installing a package without a verified signature requires explicitly overriding that check.
Fedora 45 also restricts ptrace for unprivileged users by default. Red Hat says normal tracing workflows are restored automatically when system debugging or diagnostic packages are installed. That condition matters to developers and administrators who use those workflows: installing the relevant packages restores them without changing the default policy for everyone.
Networking and Atomic Desktop installation
NetworkManager enables IPv6-mostly support under RFC 8925 by default. Fedora 45’s Atomic Desktops also use the Anaconda WebUI installer by default. They support remote installation through a browser over HTTPS, with PIN authentication.
The release updates tools that matter to developers and system administrators, too. Red Hat lists GCC 16.2, binutils 2.47, glibc 2.44, and GDB 17.2. For ODBC, driver packages now install configuration snippets managed through RPM file triggers, replacing the previous monolithic /etc/odbcinst.ini approach. The chpasswd and newusers utilities use the system PAM stack, so they inherit local password-complexity, history, and audit policies.
