Today, the Fedora Project, a global community that works to help advance free and open source software, is pleased to announce the beta availability of Fedora 32, the latest version of the Fedora operating system. Fedora 32 Beta is delivered in editions, each designed to address specific use cases for modern developers and IT teams. Fedora Workstation and Fedora Server provide open operating systems built to meet the needs of forward-looking developers and server projects. Fedora 32 Beta also sees the continued evolution of emerging Fedora editions, including Fedora CoreOS, Fedora IoT and Fedora Silverblue.

Enhancements to Fedora 32 Beta’s base packages include Python 3.8, GCC 10, Ruby 2.7, Golang 1.14, Mono 6.6. Additionally, as with all Fedora beta releases, the common foundation of all Fedora editions has been updated with minor bug fixes and package tweaks. 

Fedora 32 Workstation Beta
Fedora 32 Beta includes key updates to Fedora’s desktop-focused edition, Fedora 32 Workstation Beta. Fedora 32 Workstation Beta provides new tools and features for general users as well as developers with the inclusion of GNOME 3.36. GNOME 3.36 brings significant performance and user experience enhancements.

Fedora 32 Workstation Beta also introduces EarlyOOM. EarlyOOM enables users to more quickly recover and regain control over their system rather than needing to force power off in low-memory situations with heavy swap usage. Another key update within the Fedora 32 Workstation Beta is enabling fstrim.timer by default. This helps to optimize the storage stack, and can improve performance and wear leveling for some devices. The fstrim command executes weekly and informs both physical and virtual storage devices of unused blocks. 

Computational Neuroscience Lab Image
Fedora 32 Beta will add a new Fedora lab image designed for users working in computational neuroscience. Leveraging resources developed by the Fedora community, the lab image provides computational neuroscientists - many of whom use complex tools but hail from non-computing backgrounds - with a ready-to-use Fedora based image. By providing the software in a pre-packaged, ready to install lab image, the Fedora community hopes to encourage more use of free and open source software in scientific work.

Additionally, Fedora CoreOS, Fedora IoT and Fedora Silverblue continue to evolve and be updated to better meet the requirements of modern IT, much of which is powered by Linux containers, Kubernetes and cloud computing. 

As always, the Fedora Project team wants to hear from you – let us know about any bugs or problems that you encounter, as your feedback can help us improve Fedora 32. Common issues can be found on the Fedora 32 common bugs page (please read this on how to effectively report bugs).

If you are interested in becoming more involved with Fedora, we want you on our team! The Fedora Project is always looking for translators, testers, content creators, marketers, designers and so much more. Whatever your skill set, we would love to have you involved – find out more at http://whatcanidoforfedora.org/.

The Fedora Project is a Red Hat-sponsored community project. For more information about Fedora, please visit the Fedora Project homepage.

Matthew Miller is Fedora Project Leader.


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