Fedora Linux 45 Arrives With GNOME 51, Plasma 6.8, and Stratis Storage

The Fedora Project released Fedora Linux 45 today, the newest version of its free and open-source Linux distribution. It is available now from getfedora.org in the flagship Workstation and KDE Plasma Desktop editions, plus Server, Cloud, CoreOS and IoT variants, Atomic Desktops such as Silverblue and Kinoite, and community Spins including Cinnamon, Xfce, MATE, and COSMIC. Existing installs can upgrade in place.

Stratis storage moves into the installer

The headline change is integrated Stratis storage support inside the Anaconda installer. Stratis wraps device-mapper, XFS, and LUKS in an easier interface and brings enterprise-style storage features to local disks: thin provisioning, storage pooling, dynamic filesystem sizing, snapshots, and encryption. During a graphical install you can launch the Cockpit storage module straight from Anaconda's custom partitioning screen to build Stratis pools across one or more drives; for automated deployments, Kickstart gains a stratis autopart type alongside dedicated stratispool and stratisfs commands.

Fresh desktops, updated toolchains

On the desktop side, Fedora 45 ships the latest environment releases - GNOME 51 on Workstation and KDE Plasma 6.8 on the KDE edition, according to 9to5Linux's coverage - with improved performance, refined Wayland support, and better fractional scaling. Under the hood: a recent Linux kernel with broad hardware support, better laptop power management, improved container performance, and updated development toolchains and runtime libraries.

One heads-up before you upgrade

Two legacy NetworkManager VPN plugins, NetworkManager-vpnc and NetworkManager-fortisslvpn, are retired and become obsolete starting with this release. If your connections rely on them, the project has published migration guidance, and the Ask Fedora forum tracks common issues and workarounds for this cycle.