Fedora 44 Scheduled for Release on April 28th, Featuring GNOME 50 and Plasma 6.6
After being initially deemed not ready for this week's release, the Fedora project has confirmed that Fedora 44 will officially launch next Tuesday, with a final release date of April 28th. The project team has determined that Fedora 44 meets the release criteria following a Fedora 44 Go/No-Go meeting this week. Blocking bugs that were previously outstanding have been resolved in the past week, making this six-month cycle update of Fedora Linux ready for official release.
For users eager to experience Fedora 44 early, the installation image labeled "RC-1.7" has been designated as the final ISO version used for release. This means users can already obtain the installation image through related candidate version announcements, which will be officially available on Tuesday.
In terms of desktop and core components, Fedora Workstation 44 will feature the latest GNOME 50 desktop environment. For users who prefer KDE, the new version provides a more unified out-of-the-box experience, integrating Plasma 6.6 and replacing SDDM with the new Plasma Login Manager.
In addition to desktop environment updates, Fedora 44 also brings several underlying and platform support improvements, including optimized Live image experience, enhanced AArch64 EFI system support for Windows on ARM laptops, and new versions of basic development tools such as the GCC 16 compiler. LLVM 22 has also been included in the update list, further strengthening its position as a cutting-edge Linux distribution.
In terms of the software stack, Fedora 44 will also offer a series of new components, including Budgie 10.10, PHP 8.5, Ruby 4.0, Boost 1.90, Golang 1.26, and CMake 4.0, continuing Fedora's aggressive pace in integrating upstream new features.