Across the project, the most common focus was the finalization and approval of the Fedora 44 release. Numerous teams, including Quality, Release Engineering, Infrastructure, and the various desktop and server working groups, were heavily involved in testing the final release candidate, reviewing blocker bugs, and participating in the conclusive Go/No-Go meeting which greenlit the release. In parallel, groups have already shifted focus to the next cycle, with FESCo discussing significant system-wide change proposals for Fedora 45, such as updating Perl and relocating RPM repository configurations. Other common themes included proposing major new initiatives like the "Fedora AI Developer Desktop" and a "Fedora Verified" contributor status, as well as ongoing packaging and tooling improvements, such as the Python SIG's work on new RPM macros and the Docs team's migration to Forgejo.
Announcements
This week's announcements cover the final stages of the Fedora 44 release, proposals for Fedora 45, and a significant new community governance initiative. A second Go/No-Go meeting for the Fedora 44 Final release was scheduled for April 23rd to determine its readiness for the April 28th target date. Looking ahead to Fedora 45, two system-wide change proposals were announced: one to update the system Perl to version 5.44, and another to relocate RPM repository configurations from /etc to /usr, which will create a cleaner separation between system-provided and user-modified files.
A major topic of discussion this week is the proposal for a new "Fedora Verified" contributor status, which aims to better recognize sustained contributions and grant privileges like voting in elections. The proposal is seeking community feedback via a survey, but has generated significant debate, with some contributors concerned it could create barriers for newcomers. The Community Update for Week 17 detailed progress across several teams, including the Fedora 44 RISC-V rebuild reaching its halfway point, promising benchmark results from new SpacemiT K3 server hardware, continued development on the private issues feature for Forgejo, and preparations for the EPEL 10.1 end-of-life. Additionally, a contributor posted appreciative feedback on the previous week's update, highlighting the progress on Fedora 44 and Forgejo.
Council
The Council's main focus this week was the review of a new Community Initiative proposal for a Fedora AI Developer Desktop. The proposal aims to create an operating system image optimized for AI software development, including producing an Atomic spin and a Fedora Remix containing proprietary NVIDIA components like the CUDA runtime. During the meeting, Jef Spaleta volunteered to be the Executive Sponsor for the initiative, which will involve handing over his sponsorship of the existing Bootc Initiative to Aleksandra Fedorova. The Council also discussed the importance of integrating the build process for the new Atomic desktop with the work of the ongoing Image Mode initiative to avoid duplication of effort. While the proposal was met with general support, a formal vote was postponed.
Decisions
- The vote on the Fedora AI Developer Desktop Initiative proposal was deferred to the Council meeting on May 6, 2026. This allows time for the sponsorship handover to be organized and for the proposal to be formalized on the project wiki.
Learn more about the Council team.
FESCo
This week, FESCo held one meeting, focusing on clearing out a backlog of tickets. A one-time update exception was granted for gedit 50 on Fedora 44, but a permanent exception was denied due to uncertain future release alignment. The committee approved a change to the package un-retirement policy to reduce potential conflicts when a package is retired in Rawhide but active in other branches. Following a long period of inactivity and unresponsiveness from the Deepin SIG, FESCo decided to attempt contact one last time, with a plan to retire all Deepin Desktop Environment packages if no response is received within four weeks. Several older tickets concerning the Change Wrangler process and ignored CVEs were closed, acknowledging that the underlying issues are being worked on elsewhere or will be revisited after major infrastructure changes.
On the forums, several Change Proposals for Fedora 45 were discussed. A new proposal was announced for the annual update to Perl 5.44. A significant new proposal to relocate RPM repository configurations from /etc to /usr was also introduced, sparking discussion about its impact on dnf4, user habits, and the need for clear documentation. Additionally, official announcements were posted confirming FESCo's approval for the changes to use PAM in chpasswd and newusers and to update Setuptools to version 82+.
Decisions
- A one-time Updates Policy exception to ship
gedit50 for Fedora 44 was approved. A permanent exception was not granted. (#3593) - The proposal to update the Un-retirement policy was approved. The policy will be updated to require that a new maintainer be granted co-maintainer access before un-retiring a package that is still active on other branches. (#2979)
- FESCo will attempt to contact the
deepin-sigmaintainers regarding the state of the Deepin Desktop Environment packages. If there is no response within four weeks, the packages will be retired in Rawhide. (#3409)
Learn more about the FESCo team.
Workstation / GNOME
This week, the community's focus was split between the upcoming Fedora 44 release and future developments. A new release candidate, Fedora 44 RC-1.7, was announced, with a call for validation testing to help ensure a stable final release. In a significant development for GNOME users, a community member has proposed a new implementation to restore Google Drive integration and is actively seeking testers on Fedora 43 and 44 to help get the feature upstreamed.
The Workstation Working Group meeting addressed long-term strategic topics. Key discussions included the plan to remove the abandoned ABRT crash reporting components for Fedora 45 and the exploration of alternatives like Canonical's Apport. The group also discussed the prerequisite of creating a source prioritization dialog in GNOME Software before enabling a filtered Flathub repository by default. Skepticism was expressed regarding the feasibility of completing the bootc transition for Fedora Workstation by the 2028 target date. An urgent call was also made for a volunteer to write the Fedora 44 feature article for Fedora Magazine.
The Workstation Working Group approved the implementation of a monthly rotating chair position to distribute leadership responsibilities.
Learn more about the Workstation / GNOME team.
KDE
This week's activity centered on Fedora packaging and testing. A call was made for community members to help test the Fedora 44 Candidate RC-1.7, which includes important security fixes for Firefox and PackageKit. This presents an opportunity for contributors to engage in release validation. There was also a follow-up discussion regarding the challenge of bringing KDE Gear 26.04 to Fedora 43. The update is currently blocked due to a gpgme dependency that requires a "soname bump," which is against Fedora's policy for stable releases. It was clarified that bundling a newer version is also problematic, as it would conflict with other packages like Flatpak that depend on the older, non-co-installable version. A solution is still being sought.
Learn more about the KDE team.
Server
The Server group's main focus this week was a detailed discussion about Ansible integration and finalizing testing for the upcoming Fedora 44 release. With the Fedora 44 RC-1.7 candidate available, the team discussed the need for last-minute "smoke testing" on aarch images before the final go/no-go meeting. The primary topic was a long-range discussion on how to best utilize Ansible for Fedora Server administrators. There were differing opinions on the approach: some advocated for creating introductory documentation with examples and best practices that link to official Ansible docs, while others preferred providing complete, pre-configured Ansible roles for common server tasks. The goal is to lower the barrier to entry for server management, but the exact implementation and scope are still being debated.
The conversation on Ansible highlighted a key area where new contributors can get involved by sharing their expertise and opinions on the future direction. The group agreed to continue this important discussion in their chat channel and at the next meeting. Additionally, community members are encouraged to help with the final Fedora 44 Server validation testing to ensure a stable release.
Learn more about the Server team.
Infrastructure
This week, the Infrastructure team focused on daily operations and preparing for the upcoming Fedora 44 release. A persistent signing problem with Rawhide kernels and intermittent FAS login failures were key topics in the daily standups. The main weekly meeting featured a discussion on gaining access to an old, unmaintained fedora account on Docker Hub to prevent user confusion with the official images. An action was taken to contact former contributors who might have access. Other discussions included improving Zabbix monitoring to reduce alert noise and triaging new tickets for issues like ELNBuildSync connectivity and enabling monitoring for Fedora-CI.
The most significant event was the successful Fedora 44 Go/No-Go vote, officially greenlighting the release. Following the decision, the final release was staged and made available to mirrors ahead of the official launch on April 28th. On the mailing list, a mirror administrator reported a temporary login issue with MirrorManager, which was resolved.
Decisions
- The Fedora 44 release was declared a "Go" during the Go/No-Go meeting on April 23rd.
Learn more about the Infrastructure team.
Release Engineering
This week, the primary focus was the Fedora 44 Blocker Review Meeting held on April 20. The team evaluated three proposed blockers and one proposed freeze exception for the final release. Discussions centered on issues such as slow Wi-Fi on specific hardware, a black screen during LUKS password entry on certain laptops, and a corrupted GRUB environment block. After review, all newly proposed blockers and the freeze exception were rejected, as they were determined not to meet the release-blocking criteria. The team also reviewed the status of existing accepted blockers, noting that most are either fixed or have a clear path forward for the upcoming release.
Decisions
- Bug 2442617 (tss user is missing before initrd-switch-root.target): Rejected as a Final Blocker and Freeze Exception.
- Bug 2459430 (Slow Wi-Fi on RTL8852BE chipset): Rejected as a Final Blocker.
- Bug 2455924 (Black screen when typing LUKS password on ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13): Rejected as a Final Blocker.
- Bug 2457333 (Grub environment block is corrupted at first boot): Rejected as a Final Freeze Exception.
Learn more about the Release Engineering team.
Quality
The main event for the Quality team this week was the final push toward the Fedora 44 release. After a blocker review meeting to clear the queue, the team held the final Fedora 44 Go/No-Go meeting. The release was ultimately declared a GO for the target date of April 28, 2026, using the RC-1.7 compose. This decision came after accepting important, late-breaking security fixes for Firefox and PackageKit as release blockers. Several other bugs were discussed, with a complex issue causing a black screen during LUKS password entry being rejected as a blocker, while two other accepted blockers were waived.
For those looking to get involved, a Kernel 7.0 Test Week was announced, running from April 26 to May 1. Additionally, a developer issued a call for testers to help restore Google Drive integration in GNOME. Other discussions included a proposal for a new release criterion for partial kickstart installations and continued community feedback on graphical issues on modern Intel laptops.
Decisions
- Fedora 44 Final was declared GO for release on 2026-04-28, using the RC-1.7 compose.
- The following bugs were accepted as Final Release Blockers:
- The following accepted blocker bugs were waived for the Fedora 44 release:
- The following proposed bugs were rejected as blockers:
Learn more about the Quality team.
Design
This week, the Design team focused on preparations for the upcoming Flock conference, brand identity, and the Fedora 45 wallpaper. In the weekly meeting, the team reviewed and approved a calligraphy-style icon design for Flock merchandise. A significant discussion took place regarding the team's role in addressing brand misuse, particularly the use of the old Fedora logo. It was decided that the team would assist with outreach in non-commercial cases and create a more accessible, tutorial-style guide for correct logo usage to proactively address the issue. The team also brainstormed ideas for new bot avatars.
In the forums, an update was provided on the F45 Wallpaper Process. In response to a query about the schedule, it was clarified that the delivery of the "beta" wallpaper has been slightly delayed from April 20th to around April 30th due to other priorities and to accommodate a team member's upcoming leave. This ensures the beta version will be complete before work begins on the final version. Contributors interested in brand identity are encouraged to review the ticket on brand misuse and provide feedback.
Decisions
- The calligraphy icon design created with the power stroke tool was approved and will be adapted for the Flock t-shirt design.
- The Design Team will assist with outreach efforts to encourage the updating of the old Fedora logo in non-commercial contexts.
- A new, step-by-step, tutorial-style guide for correct Fedora logo usage will be created and added to the design documentation.
- A consistent color scheme will be used for bot avatars (like Zodbot and Neatbot) to visually identify them as a group.
Learn more about the Design team.
Docs
The Docs team's weekly meeting focused heavily on infrastructure migration and content improvement. A key discussion centered on moving the documentation build container from GitLab to Fedora's Forgejo instance, with a volunteer stepping up to investigate Forgejo's container registry capabilities as part of ticket #19. The team also welcomed new members Michael Winters and Eli Ridge, and noted that progress is steady on the new local authoring guide. On the forums, a community-proposed guide on persistent storage identifiers was officially published, while a new discussion began on the legal complexities of providing NVIDIA driver installation instructions. Contributors are also encouraged to participate in the "Fedora Heroes" recognition program.
Decisions
- A new organization on Fedora's Forgejo instance, named "docs-archive", will be created to house old and unmaintained documentation migrated from Pagure. All repositories within this organization will be archived and made read-only.
Learn more about the Docs team.
COPR
This week, the COPR team announced a server upgrade that took place on April 16th, with an apology for the lack of a prior outage notification due to a tight schedule. The release notes are available for review. Additionally, a discussion addressed a user's persistent build failures where the copr_base repository was not becoming available. The issue was likely related to a recently fixed problem with the PULP backend, and the user was advised to retry their builds.
Learn more about the COPR team.
EPEL
This week, a contributor announced they are orphaning their EPEL packages (impressive, mupdf, notmuch, python-pytzdata, and sfsexp) due to ethical concerns over Red Hat's military contracts. This presents an opportunity for new contributors to take over maintenance of these packages before they are retired from the repository.
The weekly EPEL meeting was brief, but confirmed that an issue preventing regular users from filing bugs against RHEL has been resolved. On the mailing lists, a user reported a problem with reposync failing on a specific EPEL 8 package, and an update for the uv package was pushed to the stable EPEL 10 repository.
Learn more about the EPEL team.
CentOS Hyperscale
The CentOS Hyperscale SIG held its weekly meeting to discuss administrative tasks and ongoing technical work. The group is working to finalize its overdue SIG report, which will be updated to include recent activities like the migration to GitLab. A key topic was the ongoing effort to fix a high-severity PackageKit CVE (CVSS 8.1), with test builds for the patch already in progress. The SIG also noted the need to automate updating the website with meeting minutes, which are currently more than a year out of date.
A significant part of the meeting was dedicated to welcoming new member David Abdurachmanov (davidlt), who is well-known for his work on Fedora/RISC-V. His joining sparked a discussion about potential future work on the riscv64 architecture within the Hyperscale SIG, with ideas to be explored further at Flock. Contributors were also reminded that the Call for Papers for DevConf.us is closing soon, presenting an opportunity for community engagement.
Learn more about the CentOS Hyperscale team.
ELN
During the weekly ELN meeting, the group discussed simplifying the fedora-release package by removing ELN-specific code. A decision was made to create a new, separate fedora-eln-release package that is more RHEL-like and can serve as a direct upstream for centos-stream-release. The team also discussed the Fedora Change proposal for x86-64-v3 microarchitecture support. While there are concerns about the resource cost of rebuilding the entire archive, the proposal is strongly driven by partners like Azure and Fyra for performance reasons. The success of this initiative in Fedora would pave the way for ELN and future RHEL versions to adopt it, and could also provide an upstream path for AlmaLinux's variant architecture work. Finally, there was a brief update on the Hyperscale SIG, noting that tooling to export Meta's internal package inventory is nearly complete, which will simplify keeping the ELN extras workload up to date.
Decisions
- A new
fedora-eln-releasepackage will be created with more RHEL-like content, and ELN support will be dropped from the existingfedora-releasepackage to simplify it. (#469)
Learn more about the ELN team.
Atomic
This week's discussions in the Atomic group centered on system configuration and best practices for immutable desktops. A key topic was the effort to adapt the Fedora-downstream-hardening package for Silverblue and Kinoite, with developers discussing the challenges of modifying configuration files like firewalld zones and sysctl settings on a read-only system. While the more native approach of projects like SecureBlue was mentioned, the package author clarified their goal is to provide dynamic security adjustments for average users on standard Fedora variants, not create a separate hardened image. In a separate, long-standing discussion on changing the default shell, a strong recommendation was made to avoid changing the user's login shell directly. Instead, users should configure their terminal emulator to launch their preferred shell to prevent potential system breakages.
Learn more about the Atomic team.
CoreOS
During the weekly CoreOS meeting, the team discussed the delayed Fedora 44 release, which requires no immediate action. Two key technical decisions were made regarding package inclusion and system configuration. The team voted against adding the fcoe-utils package due to a lack of user requests and the inability to test it without specialized hardware. Additionally, it was discovered that systemd-oomd had been enabled by accident in recent builds. To avoid unexpected behavior on user systems, the team decided to revert this change, planning to revisit the topic of enabling oomd and a swap solution in a future release. In community news, a talk proposal titled "What happened in CoreOS this year" was accepted for Flock.
Decisions
- The package
fcoe-utilswill not be added to Fedora CoreOS. - The accidental enablement of
systemd-oomdwill be reverted in upcoming releases.
Learn more about the CoreOS team.
ARM
This week's activity centered on the announcement of the Fedora 44 Candidate RC-1.7. This release candidate is now available for testing, and the community is encouraged to participate in validation testing to help prepare for the final release. This build includes important security fixes for Firefox and PackageKit. The announcement provides links to test plans, results pages, and communication channels for testers, highlighting an opportunity for contributors to get involved in ensuring the quality of the upcoming Fedora 44 release.
Learn more about the ARM team.
Kernel
This week, the group discussed the installation of numerous firmware packages during a system update. A user running Fedora 43 on an Intel NUC noticed that a dnf update pulled in a large number of firmware packages for hardware not present on the system, such as for AMD and NVIDIA GPUs. It was clarified in the thread that these packages are generally not all required for a specific machine. They are pulled in as weak dependencies ("Recommends") to ensure broad hardware support works out-of-the-box for most users. It was confirmed that users can safely remove firmware packages for hardware they do not have, and whether they are installed depends on the system's configuration for handling weak dependencies.
Learn more about the Kernel team.
AI & ML
During the weekly AI & ML meeting, the main topic was a proposal to create a framework for supporting AI/ML application development within the Fedora community. The goal is to establish a process for developers to get feedback, collaborate, and potentially onboard their applications into Fedora's official infrastructure. The discussion touched upon the SIG's potential role in vetting projects to ensure responsible use of community resources, especially with new GPU hardware being added to the infrastructure. Key questions were raised about whether the SIG or Fedora Infra would host models and how to manage hardware resources. The group decided a more concrete proposal is needed before further discussion.
The team also received an update on the ROCm stack. Version 7.2.2, a minor bugfix release, is now in Rawhide and may be targeted for EPEL 10.3. Looking ahead, significant work is planned for ROCm 8.x to introduce "generic" GPU support. This change will enable ROCm packages to support a wider range of AMD hardware with a single build target, leading to smaller packages, faster builds, and broader hardware compatibility. There was also a brief mention of ongoing efforts to add AMD NPU support to Fedora.
Decisions
- The discussion on creating a framework for AI/ML application development will be postponed until a formal proposal is drafted. Justin Wheeler will create a ticket or draft for review by May 7, 2026.
Learn more about the AI & ML team.
Security
The Security SIG held a quiet weekly meeting, with the main development being the creation of a new ticket outlining a plan for container signing. This presents a new opportunity for contributors to get involved in improving Fedora's supply chain security. The meeting was brief as there were no major updates on other open tickets.
On the forums, discussion continued regarding the Fedora-downstream-hardening package and its adaptation for immutable variants like Kinoite and Silverblue. The conversation explored whether an RPM-based tool is the best approach, with a suggestion to look at projects like SecureBlue for a more native implementation. The package's author clarified the goal is to change the system's approach to security compromises for average users, rather than radical hardening, which informs the design and delivery mechanism.
Learn more about the Security team.
Go
The Go SIG held one brief meeting this week. The discussion was a quick status update. The group noted that Go versions 1.25.9 and 1.26.2 should be released soon. It was also mentioned that Go 1.26.2 is a dependency for some builds in RHEL-10.2 and RHEL-9.8.
Learn more about the Go team.
Perl
This week's activity in the Perl group consisted of routine package maintenance. All discussions on the perl-devel mailing list were notifications for pull requests to update various Perl modules to their latest upstream versions. These updates ensure that Fedora's Perl ecosystem remains current with the latest bug fixes and improvements.
Learn more about the Perl team.
Python
This week's activity centered on enhancing the pyproject-rpm-macros to improve the Python packaging experience. A significant new tool, the %pyproject_patch_dependency macro, was announced. This provisional feature, now available in Rawhide, F44, and F43, offers a standardized method for overriding dependency constraints in spec files. Python package maintainers are encouraged to test it and provide feedback.
In another discussion, a proposal was made to add long option support (e.g., --assert-license) to the pyproject RPM macros to improve the readability of spec files. The suggestion received positive initial feedback, and the discussion is ongoing, presenting an opportunity for contributors to share their opinions on the proposed change.
Learn more about the Python team.
Other Discussions
- In a discussion about why meeting room times overlap, participants debated the practice of using a limited number of shared Matrix rooms for team meetings. The current system, a holdover from IRC, is intended to foster cross-team transparency and allow for easy lurking. However, critics argued it causes scheduling conflicts, confusion, and makes it difficult to review a specific team's meeting history. A consensus emerged that the system's effectiveness is severely hampered by the outdated and poorly maintained Fedocal, which fails to provide a reliable meeting schedule.
- A discussion titled "Last call to save ABRT" was initiated to announce a proposal to completely remove the ABRT crash reporting tool in Fedora 45. The tool is effectively abandoned, with the retrace server having been broken for over a release cycle, leaving Fedora without crash telemetry. The conversation highlighted that ABRT requires significant modernization, not just basic maintenance, and its survival depends on a new maintainer stepping up to undertake this serious work.
- A discussion to suggest changing the default confirmation for
dnf installto 'yes' continued, the current recommendation is to file this as a Request for Enhancement with the upstream dnf5 project. - A maintainer is seeking help with a checksum mismatch error that is blocking a new release of the
diffusepackage in Koji. - There is continued community interest in upgrading the Pinta package from an old, unmaintained version to a more recent release.
- Antonio Trande is attempting to get in touch with user
corsepiu, the maintainer of thefreefem++package. Due to a long period of inactivity, a non-responsive maintainer ticket has been filed. - An Open Q&A Session for the s390x community was announced for April 28th. The session is designed to answer follow-up questions from previous training content and to address any hands-on issues related to Linux on Z systems.
- A report was made that the F44 testing compose was stuck and repeatedly failing. The issue was identified as a problem with signing, and it was expected to be resolved by the following Monday.
- Jerry James reported that the recent Qt 6.10.3 update broke musescore, preventing the application from launching. The problem is suspected to be related to a change in how QML handles alias properties, and help from Qt experts was requested to debug the issue.
- A packager noticed that src.fp.o failed to send a notification for a tag on a pull request for a project they were not watching. Other contributors confirmed that email notifications from Pagure can be unreliable, with one suggestion being that mentions in the initial PR description might not trigger alerts.
- Aleksandra Fedorova proposed that the "Mine-with-Fedora" group officially join the Games SIG. The move would involve migrating the Minetest server's configuration repository to the Games SIG's organization on the Fedora Forge. The proposal was met with unanimous support from the SIG members present in the discussion.
- Other discussions this week included gauging interest in bringing Project Hummingbird work into Fedora, a continued discussion about a non-responsive maintainer check for
rstrode, and a lengthy debate about the volume of automated email on the devel list which evolved into a broader conversation about the fragmentation of community communication between mailing lists and Discourse.
Package Updates
- Jerry James announced an upcoming soname bump for
cryptominisatwith the release of version 5.14.4. He also confirmed he would handle the necessary rebuilds of its reverse dependencies,cvc5andyices, which he also maintains. - An update to Mesa v26.0.5 with an Asahi fix was planned for after the Fedora 44 release to address a severe regression. The thread involved coordinating the timing with RPM Fusion maintainers to prevent breakage for users with third-party drivers, underscoring the complexities of managing tightly coupled graphics packages.
Orphaning Packages
- In a notable thread, Michael J Gruber explained why he is orphaning his EPEL branches. He cited personal ethical reasons, stating he no longer wishes to contribute, even indirectly, to military applications of RHEL, referencing a Red Hat marketing phrase about "compressing the kill cycle." He emphasized this was a personal decision and made his technical announcement of the orphaned packages separately.
- Following the orphaning of
gtk2, Miro Hrončok orphanedgcolor2, as he no longer uses it since Xfce has moved away from GTK 2 and he now usesgcolor3. - Lumír Balhar orphaned
rust-atomic_refcell, as it was no longer required by the Jupyter stack. The package was quickly adopted by Fabio Valentini, who needs it for GStreamer-related packages he maintains. - The weekly report on orphaned packages looking for new maintainers prompted several actions. Nicolas Chauvet adopted
cryptopp, while others fixed incorrectgtk2dependencies or updated their packages to remove dependencies on other orphaned packages. The orphaning ofgtk2itself generated discussion about its future, given its many reverse dependencies.
New Contributor Introductions
- Aaron Chan (aaroncyew) introduced himself as the new maintainer for Intel NPU drivers and related software stacks, including OpenVINO plugins. He is seeking sponsorship to continue this work and bring Intel NPU technologies to the Fedora community.
- Artyom Anokhov (aanokhov), a Release Engineer on the Intel OpenVINO team, introduced himself and requested sponsorship to become a maintainer for the OpenVINO package, aiming to improve its alignment with the official distribution.
- Sathush Rajamanthri (sathush504), a Data Science undergraduate, introduced himself to the community. He is interested in contributing to areas like Python tools, machine learning, and documentation, and is seeking guidance on where to begin.