Fedora 39 is the fastest version of the open source desktop to date. Jack Wallen/ZDNet
Fedora Linux 39, released today, looks to be one of the best releases produced by the team. You can download The latest release of Fedora is here.
I’ve been beta testing Fedora 39 for a while now, and it’s proven itself to be a phenomenal release for open-source projects. You can check out my full review of the beta but may I add, “Wow, it’s fast!”
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And it really is. It’s faster than any version of Fedora I’ve used. Open the activity overview, search for something and it will appear immediately. This kind of responsiveness has eluded Fedora for some time. Thanks to GNOME 45 and all the work the Fedora team has done, the latest release is speedy.
One of the more promising improvements can be found in the DNF package manager. The team has made dnf5 available (though not installed by default) — which is noticeably faster than previous releases. But, as I said, dnf5 is not added by default. Fortunately, anyone who wants to try a new take on the package manager can install it with the command sudo dnf dnf5 -y install.
After the dnf5 experience, I can say that it is worth the wait. What was once a sluggish solution is now as fast as any package manager on the market. Even a full system update is significantly faster.
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But it does not end here. You’ll also find Fedora 45, the LLVM 17 compiler stack, and plenty of under-the-hood changes designed to improve the overall speed of the operating system.
You will find one thing missing, however, LibreOffice. The development team decided to ship with the open-source office suite R OS. That’s okay, because it can be easily installed from GNOME Software.