Fedora 28 Workstation is the latest release of our free, leading-edge operating system. You can download it from the official website here right now. There are several new and noteworthy changes in Fedora Workstation. Read more details below.

Third-Party Repositories

An exciting feature of Fedora 28 is the inclusion of some popular third-party software repositories. When you launch GNOME Software 3.28 the first time, an alert bar asks about enabling third-party repositories. Selecting Enable enables the following repositories:

Google Chrome, the web browser from Google (google-chrome.repo)

PyCharm, Python IDE for Professional Developers by JetBrains (_copr_phracek-PyCharm.repo)

NVIDIA’s proprietary graphics drivers (rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver.repo)

Steam client, digital distribution platform developed by Valve Corporation (rpmfusion-nonfree-steam.repo)

Once enabled, the third-party packages can be installed either with GNOME Software or dnf. To find out more about third-party repositories in Fedora, visit this Fedora wiki page.

Improved battery life

Battery life on laptops running Fedora Workstation is improved with various hardware power-saving features now enabled by default. These improvements include a new default SATA Link Power Management policy on all Intel mobile chipsets. This policy sets the SATA link to a disk to into low-power mode when idle, saving approximately 1.0-1.5 watts of power on an idle laptop. Additionally, the Intel HDA codec power saving is enabled by default (with a 1 second timeout), saving approximately 0.4 watts of power on an idle laptop. Finally, USB autosuspend for USB Bluetooth receivers is enabled by default, saving approximately 0.4 watts of power on an idle laptop.

GNOME 3.28

Fedora 28 Workstation features GNOME 3.28 as the default desktop environment. GNOME 3.28 includes a wide range of enhancements, including: updates to Files (nautilus), Contacts, Calendar, Clocks and the on-screen keyboard. Additionally, the new application Usage is added as a Technology Preview to “make it easy to diagnose and resolve performance and capacity issues”

GNOME 3.28 provides updated versions of many of the GNOME default applications. The ability to “star” items is added to both the Files and the Contacts applications. This allows the user to star an item — be it a file, folder, or a contact — for quick access later. Calendar now provides a neater month view, and weather updates displayed alongside your appointments.

For more information about all the new features and enhancements see GNOME 3.28’s release announcement and release notes.

Thunderbolt support

The use of Thunderbolt™ 3 peripherals is now supported in Fedora 28. Thunderbolt is the brand name of a hardware interface developed by Intel that allows the connection of external peripherals to a computer.

Fedora 28 ships with both boltd — the system daemon for securely connecting Thunderbolt devices — and changes to GNOME shell to connect these devices. Newly connected Thunderbolt devices are automatically enrolled by GNOME shell via the daemon if the current user is a system administrator and the session is unlocked. Subsequent connections of the same device will automatically authorize the device.

Improved emoji support

The Noto Color Emoji font is now the default for displaying Emoji on Fedora Workstation. This provides support for Unicode 10.0 emoji, including T-Rex (????), Hedgehog (????), Broccoli (????), and Curling Stone (????).

GNOME Photos

Fedora Workstation 28 introduces GNOME Photos as the default photo management application, replacing Shotwell. Photos is a simple application for viewing, browsing and organizing your photo library. In addition to photo organization, Photos also provides basic image editing capabilities, including the ability to add quick photographic filters over your images.

More information about the GNOME Photos application is available on the project’s page on gnome.org

VirtualBox Guest Additions now default

VirtualBox Guest Additions and Guest Drivers are now shipped in the default Fedora Workstation installation. Consequently, any installation of Fedora Workstation as a guest on VirtualBox will have the Guest Additions features working out-of-the-box. Guest Additions add extra useful functionality to VirtualBox guests, including: automatic desktop resizing based on the window-size of the virtual machine, seamless mode (showing only windows from the guest), folder sharing, and copy/paste between host and guest.

Streamlined Installation

Anaconda, the Fedora installation utility, now has fewer steps. Instead, the GNOME Initial Setup Assistant handles creation of a user account and other post-installation steps. Notably, new installations of Fedora 28 Workstation no longer set a root password. Of course, you can still set the root password after installation.

Other notes

These are only some of the improvements in Fedora 28. Fedora also gives you access to thousands of software apps our community provides. Many of these apps and utilities have also received updates since Fedora 27. When you upgrade, you’ll receive them automatically.

Fedora 28 is available now for download.