After two postponements, Fedora Linux 45 is officially out. The Fedora Project announced the release on November 3, 2026, shipping the RC-1.4 build that cleared the final Go/No-Go meeting on October 29. The GO decision locked RC-1.4 in as the shipping build, so what you download today is the exact build the QA team signed off on, not a fresh compose. Fedora 45 is supported until December 8, 2027, a 13-month runway.
What actually ships
On the desktop, Workstation gets GNOME 51 with smoother animations and better display handling, while the KDE Plasma edition ships Plasma 6.8 with per-monitor virtual desktops. Underneath, Fedora 45 runs Linux kernel 7.2 with Python 3.15, GCC 16.2, glibc 2.44, RPM 6.1, and Podman 6. The installer also gains Stratis support inside Anaconda, so you can build pooled storage with snapshots and encryption during installation instead of bolting it on afterwards.
Three changes that will trip you up
Unsigned packages now fail instead of warning. RPM signature verification is enforced by default in Fedora 45. On Fedora 44, installing a package whose key you had not imported printed a NOKEY warning and carried on. On Fedora 45, the same command stops. That is a clear win for supply-chain trust, and a real annoyance for anyone with unsigned RPMs or a third-party repository that never bothered to sign properly. Fix it the right way: import the vendor key or move to a signed repository, not by disabling verification globally.
Unprivileged ptrace is restricted. By default, an unprivileged process can no longer inspect other processes belonging to the same user, which closes a hole malware likes to exploit. If you debug software for a living, test this first: installing developer or debugging toolchains relaxes the restriction, so a workstation set up for development behaves differently from a clean install.
The virtual console moved to user space. Fedora 45 replaces the in-kernel framebuffer console (fbcon) with kmscon on virtual terminals tty1 through tty6, bringing better Unicode rendering and keyboard layout handling. The risk is narrow but real: if you scripted anything around fbcon behavior, retest it after upgrading rather than assuming it works.
Retirements to handle before you upgrade
Two legacy NetworkManager VPN plugins, NetworkManager-vpnc and NetworkManager-fortisslvpn, are retiring and become obsolete starting with Fedora 45. The Fedora Magazine announcement calls this out explicitly: if your work VPN depends on either plugin, migrate that connection to a supported alternative before you upgrade, not after, when the plugin is already gone. This is the single most common reason a Fedora upgrade turns into a bad Monday.
Two quieter retirements matter to operators. DNF 4 and yum are gone as package managers, and repository files move to /usr/share/dnf5/repos.d/. If you have automation that edits files under the old repository directory or calls the old tools, update it now. Atomic desktop users should not use the DNF upgrade path at all: Silverblue, Kinoite, and friends upgrade through rpm-ostree.
The upgrade playbook
For a standard Workstation, KDE, or Server install, the supported path is the DNF system upgrade, and the order matters:
- Back up anything you cannot rebuild. A system snapshot or a copy of your home directory is cheap; a failed upgrade without one is not.
- Fully update your current release first:
sudo dnf upgrade --refresh. - Install the upgrade plugin:
sudo dnf install dnf-plugin-system-upgrade. - Download the new release:
sudo dnf system-upgrade download --releasever=45. - Reboot into the upgrade:
sudo dnf system-upgrade reboot.
The download step is where problems surface, which is exactly where you want them: a dependency conflict or an unsigned package shows up while your old system still boots. Resolve those before rebooting, not during.
After the upgrade, check /etc/os-release. Early Fedora 45 builds briefly carried an earlier support-end date, and the final packages list December 8, 2027. If yours still says Prerelease or shows the earlier date, a plain sudo dnf upgrade --refresh brings the release packages in line.
Fedora 43 users get a small bonus with a deadline attached. The DNF system upgrade supports skipping one release, so you can jump straight from 43 to 45, then run sudo remove-retired-packages 43 afterwards. But Fedora 43 reaches end of life around December 16, 2026, so that window is about six weeks, not six months. If you are still on 43, this release is your exit.
Who should wait a week
Most people should not wait. Fedora 45 had a longer bake than most releases thanks to the two delays, and the shipping build is the tested RC-1.4. Wait only if you fall into one of the groups above: a VPN on a retiring plugin, a pipeline built on unsigned RPMs, or a debugging setup you have not retested under the ptrace restriction. Everyone else gets the same advice as in our Linux 7.3 upgrade playbook: upgrade on your own schedule, from a backup, and read the three breaking changes before you start. The Ubuntu 26.10 upgrade checklist makes the same point from the other side of the distro fence: the release itself is rarely the risk, the unexamined assumption in your setup is.
Sources
- Fedora Magazine, "Announcing Fedora Linux 45", November 3, 2026: https://fedoramagazine.org/announcing-fedora-linux-45/
- Fedora Project Wiki, "DNF system upgrade": https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=DNF_system_upgrade&oldid=542290
- Fedora 45 release notes and ChangeSet, via Fedora Docs.
