[This message comes from the desk of the Fedora Project Leader directly. Happy release day! — Ed.]

Hi everyone! I’m incredibly proud to announce the immediate availability of Fedora 26. Read more below, or just jump to download from:

If you’re already using Fedora, you can upgrade from the command line or using GNOME Software — upgrade instructions here. We’ve put a lot of work into making upgrades easy and fast. In most cases, this will take half an hour or so, bringing you right back to a working system with no hassle.

What’s new in Fedora 26?

First, of course, we have thousands of improvements from the various upstream software we integrate, including new development tools like GCC 7, Golang 1.8, and Python 3.6. We’ve added a new partitioning tool to Anaconda (the Fedora installer) — the existing workflow is great for non-experts, but this option will be appreciated by enthusiasts and sysadmins who like to build up their storage scheme from basic building blocks. F26 also has many under-the-hood improvements, like better caching of user and group info and better handling of debug information. And the DNF package manager is at a new major version (2.5), bringing many new features. Really, there’s new stuff everywhere — read more in the release notes.

So many Fedora options…

Fedora Workstation is built on GNOME (now version 3.24). If you’re interested in other popular desktop environments like KDE, Xfce, Cinnamon, and more, check out Fedora Spins. Or, for versions of Fedora tailored to special use cases like Astronomy, Design, Security, or Robotics, see Fedora Labs. STEM teachers, take advantage of the new Python Classroom, which makes it a breeze to set up an instructional environment with Vagrant, Docker containers, a Live USB image, or traditional installation.

If you want a Fedora environment to build on in EC2, OpenStack, and other cloud environments, there’s the Fedora Cloud Base. Plus, we’ve got network installers, other architectures (like Power and aarch64), BitTorrent links, and more at Fedora Alternative Downloads. And, not to be forgotten: if you’re looking to put Fedora on a Raspberry Pi or other ARM device, get images from the Fedora ARM page.

Whew! Fedora makes a lot of stuff! I hope there’s something for everyone in all of that, but if you don’t find what you want, you can Join the Fedora Project and work with us to create it. Our mission is to build a platform which enables contributors and other developers to solve all kinds of user problems, on our foundations of Freedom, Friendship, Features, and First. If the problem you want to solve isn’t addressed, Fedora can help you fix that.

Coming soon

Meanwhile, we have many interesting things going on in Fedora behind the scenes. Stay tuned later this week for Fedora Boltron, a preview of a new way to put together Fedora Server from building blocks which move at different speeds. (What if my dev stack was a rolling release on a stable base? Or, could I get the benefits from base platform updates while keeping my web server and database at known versions?) We’re also working on a big continuous integration project focused on Fedora Atomic, automating testing so developers can work rapidly without breaking things for others.

Thanks to the whole Fedora community!

Altogether, I’m confident that this is the best Fedora release ever — yet again. That’s because of the dedication, hard work, and love from thousands of Fedora contributors every year. This is truly an amazing community project from an amazing group of people. This time around, thanks are particularly due to everyone from quality assurance and release engineering who worked over the weekend and holidays to get Fedora 26 to you today.

Oh, and one more thing… in the human world, even the best release ever can’t be perfect. There are always corner cases and late-breaking issues. Check out Common F26 Bugs if you run into something strange. If you find a problem, help us make things better. But mostly, enjoy this awesome new release.

— Matthew Miller, Fedora Project Leader