The Fedora Project is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Fedora 29 Beta, the next big step on our journey to the exciting Fedora 29 release.

Download the prerelease from our Get Fedora site:

Or, check out one of our popular variants, including KDE Plasma, Xfce, and other desktop environments, as well as images for ARM devices like the Raspberry Pi 2 and 3:

Beta Release Highlights

Modularity for all

Fedora 28 introduced modular repositories for Fedora Server Edition. For Fedora 29 Beta, modularity is available in all Editions, Spins, and Labs. Modularity makes multiple versions of important packages available in parallel and it will work with the same DNF you already know. Learn more about Modularity by reading the documentation, or listening to Episode 003 of the Fedora Podcast.

GNOME 3.30

Fedora 29 Workstation Beta provides GNOME 3.30. GNOME 3.30 streamlines performance, adds a new Podcasts app, and automatically updates Flatpaks in Software Center.

Other updates

Fedora 29 Beta also includes many other updates: The Fedora Atomic Workstation was rebranded as Fedora Silverblue, the GRUB menu will be hidden on single OS installation. Fedora 29 also includes updated versions of many popular packages like MySQL, the GNU C Library, Python and Perl. For a full list, see the Changes page on the Fedora Wiki.

Testing needed

Since this is a Beta release, we expect that you may encounter bugs or missing features. In particular, dnf added many new features to support modularity and other use cases. To report issues encountered during testing, contact the Fedora QA team via the mailing list or in #fedora-qa on Freenode. As testing progresses, common issues are tracked on the Common F29 Bugs page.

For tips on reporting a bug effectively, read how to file a bug report.

What is the Beta Release?

A Beta release is code-complete and bears a very strong resemblance to the final release. If you take the time to download and try out the Beta, you can check and make sure the things that are important to you are working. Every bug you find and report doesn’t just help you, it improves the experience of millions of Fedora users worldwide! Together, we can make Fedora rock-solid. We have a culture of coordinating new features and pushing fixes upstream as much as we can, and your feedback improves not only Fedora, but Linux and Free software as a whole.

More information

For more detailed information about what’s new on Fedora 29 Beta Release, you can consult our Talking Points and the F29 Change Set. They contain more technical information about the new packages and improvements shipped with this release.