Fedora Linux 44 is officially out. The Fedora Project announced the release on April 28, 2026, and downloads are live today across all major editions, including Workstation, KDE Plasma Desktop, Server, Cloud, CoreOS, and IoT.
After a two-week delay caused by critical security issues in earlier release candidates, the final build is here. This release lands with more visible changes than a typical Fedora cycle.
Fedora Workstation 44 ships with GNOME 50 as its default desktop environment. The GNOME team describes this release as one of the most polished in the project’s history, with refinements spanning accessibility, colour management, remote desktop functionality, and core applications.
The Files app, Document Viewer, and Calendar have all received targeted improvements. Users upgrading from Fedora 43 will notice the difference immediately in how the desktop feels day to day.
KDE Plasma Desktop users get an equally significant update. Fedora KDE 44 is based on Plasma 6.6, which introduces two new components worth paying attention to. Plasma Login Manager replaces SDDM as the default display manager, and Plasma Setup replaces the old Calamares-based installer wizard for new installations.
Both changes bring the first-boot experience into native Plasma territory, giving KDE users a cohesive setup process from the very first screen.
One change that will affect every Fedora 44 user who installs fresh is the updated Anaconda network handling. The installer now creates network profiles only for devices that were actually configured during installation, whether through boot options, kickstart, or the interactive UI.
Previous releases created default profiles for every detected network device, which often left users with unnecessary entries to clean up after installation. This change will make post-install networking simpler for most people.
Under the hood, Wine and Steam users get something they have been waiting for. The NTSYNC kernel module is now enabled by recommendation for packages that use it. When Wine or Steam is installed, the wine-ntsync package is pulled in automatically and NTSYNC is configured without any manual steps.
NTSYNC handles Windows synchronization primitives natively in the kernel, reducing CPU overhead and improving compatibility and performance for Windows applications and games running through compatibility layers on Linux.
The OpenSSL certificate loading stack has been reworked to use directory-hash support in ca-certificates. The practical result is faster OpenSSL initialization times, particularly noticeable on systems that handle many connections or start services with large certificate stores.
A side effect of this change is that some certificate bundle locations on the filesystem have moved, which is relevant for any tooling or scripts that reference those paths directly.
MariaDB gets a version bump that affects new users more than existing ones. The unversioned MariaDB packages now install version 11.8 by default in Fedora 44. Users upgrading from Fedora 43 will not see any change in their installed version.
Anyone installing MariaDB fresh on Fedora 44 without specifying a version will now get 11.8 rather than 10.11. Both versions remain available in the repository.
Fedora Cloud images gain a meaningful storage improvement in this release. The /boot partition has been replaced with a Btrfs subvolume on supported cloud images. It delivers better space utilisation and produces smaller image files, which matters at scale for cloud deployments where every megabyte of image size translates to real costs and transfer time.
Fedora 44 also expands its Atomic Desktop lineup. Alongside the established Silverblue and Kinoite options, users can now choose from COSMIC Atomic, Budgie Atomic, and Sway Atomic.
These immutable desktop variants deliver the same desktop environments as the classic spins but with an atomic update model, stronger rollback guarantees, and container-focused workflows built in by default. For users who want a stable desktop that is harder to accidentally break, the Atomic path is worth serious consideration.
Existing Fedora users can upgrade through the standard DNF system upgrade process. The procedure is well-documented and, for most users, involves no more effort than a regular update session followed by a reboot. Users on Silverblue and other Atomic variants can rebase directly using rpm-ostree.
Full details on every change in this release are available in the official Fedora Linux 44 release notes.
