Reg FOSS desk test drive: First beta of Fedora 38 drops
The Fedora project has released the beta version of Fedora 38. The Reg took it for a spin, and it handles well.
The beta version of Fedora 38 is here, hitting the "early target" in its schedule. As usual, there's an extensive changeset, which is worth scrutinizing for the full details of all the various subcomponents. We tried the beta in both VirtualBox and on bare metal, and so far, it has worked flawlessly – which is particularly impressive given the issues we had with Fedora 37 when it was at the same stage.
We've covered some of what's going into this release already, and we try not to repeat ourselves. Among the more visible changes, there will be two new "spins": one with Budgie and one with Sway. Also, earlier this month, it turned out that some "legacy" components aren't being dropped just yet. The default Workstation edition will come with GNOME 44, which itself just recently reached Release Candidate status and brings some welcome improvements.
Among other highlights, it comes with the latest kernel 6.2. (Incidentally, this will also be used in Ubuntu 23.04, although that's not yet reached beta stage – that milestone should be at the end of this month.)