Fedora 45 Beta: KMSCON Instead of the Kernel Console, GNOME 51, and New Security Rules

The Fedora Project has unveiled the beta of Fedora 45 — and, as Phoronix notes, right on schedule. The release turned out to be packed with changes affecting both everyday work with the system and its baseline security.

What's new

One of the more notable changes is the move away from the kernel's built-in console in favor of KMSCON. The Anaconda installer has learned to work with Stratis storage. On top of that, the developers have cleaned up how the system responds to failures: Fedora 45 introduces a DRM Panic frontend that makes encounters with kernel problems more informative and less alarming.

A separate batch of new features concerns security. The ptrace mechanism is now restricted by default, mandatory signature verification is enabled, and package builds must be reproducible — that is, rebuilding from the same sources is guaranteed to produce an identical result.

Package updates

As befits a major release, Fedora 45 pulls in fresh versions of key software. Fedora Workstation 45 moves to the GNOME 51 environment. Developer tools have been updated too: Go 1.27, Python 3.15, the GCC 16.2 compiler, the Glibc 2.44 library, LLVM 23, and RPM 6.1 — along with many other packages.

Timeline

The stable release of Fedora 45 is scheduled for October 20. A fallback date of October 27 is set aside in case of delays. You can download the beta build and read the details in the official release announcement.

Source: Phoronix