fidzu : Fedora

On Saturday, August 22, 2026, the Fedora Project joined forces with openSUSE at Data Con LA 2026, hosted on the campus of California State University, Long Beach (CSULB).

Now in its 14th year, Data Con LA is Southern California's largest gathering of data professionals, students, and practitioners covering data science, AI/ML, and data engineering. While Data Con LA is not a traditional Linux-centric conference, our presence offered a unique, hands-on opportunity to engage a fresh audience of prospective contributors, test our event planning workflows, and showcase Fedora Workstation in action.

As part of our ongoing work to standardize the Fedora Ambassador event pipeline, this report reflects on our operational outcomes, what worked well, and key lessons learned for future event organizers.

1. A Standout Win: "A House with Many Rooms" (Co-Hosting with openSUSE)

Our standout operational victory at Data Con LA was co-locating and sharing table space side-by-side with openSUSE advocates (coordinated with Patrick Finie / mir and Drew Adams).

Rather than maintaining isolated tables, we embraced the philosophy of "A House with Many Rooms." This cross-community collaboration was an immediate force multiplier:

• Shared Energy & Presence: Combining our presence effectively doubled our footprint and visual appeal, turning our shared booth area into a high-energy focal point in the expo area.
• Seamless Staffing & Rotations: Having four volunteers across both distributions allowed for seamless shift rotations during peak traffic and lunch breaks, completely preventing booth fatigue.
• Cross-Promotion: When attendees visited our table, we engaged them collaboratively by directing people to open source solutions across distros based on their specific technical needs and interests.

For future community organizers planning small-to-medium booths, establishing a shared booth with allied open source projects is an operational model we strongly recommend.

2. Demographics & Lead Engagement

Over the course of the day, our booth engaged approximately 100 visitors (110% of our initial goal), with peak traffic occurring during the post-keynote morning rush (9:30 AM - 11:00 AM) and lunch transitions (12:30 PM - 2:00 PM).

The attendee demographic offered valuable insights into the broader tech ecosystem:

• Student & Alumni Presence: The majority of visitors were CSU Long Beach undergraduate and graduate students, alumni, and local data practitioners.
• First Encounters with Linux: Roughly 10% of attendees were active Linux users; for the remaining 90%, Data Con LA was their first direct introduction to Linux and Fedora.
• Lead Qualification Breakdown:
  • Hot Leads (30): Inquired specifically about Fedora, visited the website, and expressed interest in installing Fedora Workstation or exploring the Join SIG.
  • Warm Leads (20): Asked for links to documentation, Fedora Discussion forums, Matrix channels, or local user groups (such as SGV LUG in Pasadena and SFV LUG in Northridge).
  • General Engagements (10+): Discussed general data industry trends, tech careers, or university studies.

3. The Technical Showcase: Local AI on Fedora Asahi Remix

To connect directly with the conference's AI/ML focus, we showcased a fully offline, containerized local AI demonstration running on an Apple Silicon laptop.

The Setup

• Hardware: 2020 Apple M1 MacBook Air (8 GB RAM) dual-booting macOS.
• Operating System: Fedora Asahi Remix (Fedora 44 release) running GNOME on Wayland.
• Software Stack: Fedora-native Podman containers running Ollama alongside Open WebUI, exposing a private, ChatGPT-style web interface at localhost.
• Model: llama3.2:1b (sized appropriately for the laptop's 8 GB memory ceiling).

Why It Resonated

This demonstration served as a major crowd-pleaser across two distinct attendee groups:

1. Data Professionals & Privacy: Attendees expressed fatigue with commercial operating systems that enforce invasive telemetry and proprietary cloud AI features. Highlighting how Fedora enables private, offline LLM inference with zero data leakage resonated powerfully.
2. Students on a Budget: CSULB students loved seeing how Linux can revive older, restricted hardware to deliver a capable, subscription-free AI workspace without requiring expensive cloud API tokens.

4. Advice & Lessons for Future Event Owners

If you are planning to organize a small event (under $150) or booth presence in the next six months, here are four practical takeaways from our experience:

1. Design 100% Offline Demos: Campus and conference Wi-Fi networks are notoriously unreliable, firewalled, or slow. Designing our demo to run entirely inside local Podman containers without requiring an internet connection kept our booth fully functional all day without friction.
2. Account for Outdoor Environmental Factors: Our booth was located in an outdoor expo space. During the afternoon peak heat, direct sunlight caused our demo laptop to heat up, requiring us to tuck it under banners in the shade. Recommendation: Always confirm booth coverage in advance, and pack brimmed hats, pop-up shade, or cooling accessories if outdoor placement is unavoidable.
3. The Power of the Daily User Perspective: You do not need to be a kernel developer or upstream maintainer to staff a Fedora booth. Sharing how you use Fedora day-to-day for work, study, or home projects alleviates "imposter syndrome" and provides relatable, authentic guidance that newcomers appreciate.
4. Keep Swag Requests Lean on Short Timelines: Because our event planning window was short, we kept our Forgejo Mindshare swag request focused strictly on high-impact essentials: stickers, case badges, and pens. Podman and Fedora logo stickers drew in decision-makers and students alike.

5. Next Steps & Wrap-Up

We would like to thank Patrick Finie, Drew Adams, and the openSUSE community for partnering with us, as well as the CSULB organizers for putting together a fantastic event.

Following Data Con LA, our team of Ambassadors Perry Rivera and Rob McBryde are incorporating these lessons directly into the new Small Events Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) and preparing for upcoming community participation at SCaLE. Our intention is to share and publish this information in the Fedora Docs website so that other event owners in the Fedora community may benefit from common wisdom from others who have done this work before.

• Want to get involved? Connect with us on Fedora Discussion or drop by the #ambassadors:fedoraproject.org Matrix channel!

The post Fedora at Data Con LA 2026: Open Source & Local AI appeared first on Fedora Community Blog.

17 Sep 2026 12:00pm GMT

This isn't an "actions speak louder than words" sort of post, although I suppose they're related thoughts. It's more about the idea that whatever you support trumps what you intended to support. It's more of an XKCD #1172 post.

On a mailing list I'm on, there was recently a thread about NOAA preparing to retire a satellite-based data transmission service called NOAAport. One person wrote:

But what I think people are missing is NOAAPort was never truly designed to serve anyone outside of NOAA. It is a service by NOAA, for NOAA, that we were lucky enough to be able to tap into because it was clear-air transmission.

Another participant responded:

Whatever its original design motivation, NOAA has knowingly operated NOAAPORT for decades as a primary public dissemination mechanism. Entire academic, commercial, emergency-management, broadcast, and value-added ecosystems were built around that availability with NOAA's knowledge and participation. After decades, its actual role matters significantly more than the original design intent.

This is an important lesson for maintaining an open source project. Whether it's a feature in the software or a service you provide, once it's there, people will expect it to remain there.

If you say a particular feature or configuration is unsupported, but then you start supporting it, it's now supported. You're allowed to change your mind, of course. You can start out not intending to support something and then later decide to do it. But if you claim you're not and you do, then you are.

This means that if you decide you're not going to support something, then you have to continue to say "no" to it whenever it comes up. Saying "no" is one of the harder things we have to do, so it's good to remind ourselves sometimes.

This post's featured photo by Maayan Nemanov on Unsplash.

The post What you do matters more than what you intended appeared first on Duck Alignment Academy.

17 Sep 2026 12:00pm GMT

17 Sep 2026 11:50am GMT

The Fedora CoreOS and QA teams are gearing up for Fedora 45, and we need your help! We are organizing a Fedora CoreOS Test Week starting on September 21, 2026.

This event is a great opportunity for the community to test Fedora CoreOS (FCOS) based on Fedora 45 content before it officially reaches the testing and stable streams. By participating, you help us ensure a smooth and reliable experience for all users.

How does a Test Week work?

A Test Week is an event where anyone can help verify that the upcoming release works as expected. If you've been looking for a way to get started with Fedora contribution, this is the perfect entry point.

To participate, you simply need to:

• Download the Fedora CoreOS test images.
• Follow the step-by-step test cases provided.
• Report whether the tests passed or failed on your hardware or VM.

The Wiki Page is your primary source of information for this event. It contains information on what to download (and from where), what and how to test, who you can contact if necessary, and where to report any bugs you may find. Once you have completed your tests, please log your results there!

Your contribution, big or small, makes a huge difference. Let's work together to make Fedora CoreOS 45 a great release. Happy testing!

16 Sep 2026 8:00am GMT

Andreas Gabriel Berbescu has reported several root privilege escalation vulnerabilities in various NetworkManager VPN plugins. If the VPN plugin is installed, then an unprivileged user can escalate to root by loading a malicious VPN configuration file:

• (CVE-2026-91837) network-manager-iodine: Option confusion reaches iodine's pre-drop root shell
• (CVE-2026-91838) network-manager-sstp profile data reaches root pppd pty shell
• (CVE-2026-91839) NetworkManager-fortisslvpn credential newline injection permits local root code execution
• (CVE-2026-91840) NetworkManager-vpnc: Top-level VPN username newline injection reaches a root password helper
• (CVE-2026-91841) NetworkManager-vpnc: Incomplete fix of CVE-2018-10900

While most obviously bad for multi-user systems, root privilege escalation is also a serious defense in depth problem for single user systems. You are vulnerable if you have the VPN plugin installed; it does not matter whether you actually use it or not.

These are not vulnerabilities in NetworkManager itself. The VPN plugins are each separate projects, with their own separate maintainers, hosted by GNOME rather than by freedesktop.org. The status of each project is a little different:

• The NetworkManager-vpnc and Network-Manager-fortisslvpn git repos have both been archived. Contributions are no longer accepted, and you should uninstall them immediately. NetworkManager-vpnc users should migrate to NetworkManager-libreswan, and NetworkManager-fortisslvpn users should migrate to NetworkManager-openconnect.
• network-manager-sstp is currently unmaintained, but it is not obsolete. If you are interested in SSTP, this project needs a new maintainer.
• network-manager-iodine is maintained, and the maintainer has created a merge request to resolve this issue.

For more information on NetworkManager VPN plugins, see Josephine's VPN plugin overview and announcement.

15 Sep 2026 4:26pm GMT

We are happy to announce the availability of Fedora Linux Asahi Remix 45 Beta. This pre-release will bring the freshly announced Fedora Linux 45 Beta to Apple Silicon Macs. We expect to announce general availability of Fedora Linux Asahi Remix 45 in about a month. This will coincide with the overall Fedora Linux 45 release.

Fedora Linux Asahi Remix is developed in close collaboration with the Fedora Asahi SIG and the Asahi Linux project. Fedora Asahi Remix 45 Beta includes all of the Changes from Fedora Linux 45. Notably, this is the first Fedora Asahi Remix release to include out of the box initial support for Apple M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max systems, which are now officially supported by Asahi Linux upstream. The GPU drivers to enable performant 3D acceleration on these M3 systems are not included at this point and will be available via a Mesa update in the future. This release also includes support for hardware accelerated H.264 and VP9 video decoding for all Apple Silicon systems; additionally, Apple M3 systems include support for AV1 decoding.

You can try out Fedora Asahi Remix 45 Beta today by following our installation guide. Existing systems, running Fedora Asahi Remix 43 or 44, can be updated following the usual Fedora upgrade process. Upgrades via Fedora Workstation's Software application are unfortunately not supported and DNF's System Upgrade plugin has to be used.

Since this is a beta release, we expect that you may encounter bugs or missing features. Please report any Remix-specific issues in our tracker. You may also reach out in our Discourse forum or our Matrix room for user support.

15 Sep 2026 2:05pm GMT

Fedora Linux 45 Beta is here! On Tuesday, 15 September 2026 you can download or upgrade your systems from your usual spots to start enjoying what F45 has to offer early.

How to get the beta release

You can download F45 Beta, or our pre-release edition versions, from any of the following places:

• Fedora Workstation 45 Beta
• Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop 45 Beta
• Fedora Server 45 Beta
• Fedora Cloud 45 Beta
• Fedora IoT 45 Beta

You can also update an existing system to the beta using DNF system-upgrade.

The Fedora Linux 45 Beta release content is also available for Fedora Atomic Desktops, Spins and Labs, with the exception of the following:

• MiracleWM (x86_64 and aarch64 isos)
• Budgie-Atomic iso
• Sway-Atomic iso

Fedora Linux 45 Beta highlights

Fedora Linux 45 replaces the legacy in-kernel console with kmscon, bringing smooth rendering, better Unicode/font support, and enhanced system stability.

Fedora Linux 45 now requires valid package signatures by default before installation, preventing unsigned packages from being installed unintentionally.

Desktop secret management has also been standardized across environments with oo7, replacing legacy backend implementations like GNOME Keyring and KWallet.

Fedora Linux 45 Beta has a lot of new versions available, including Podman 6, Pandas 3, MySQL and MariaDB, to name but a few, and boasts early access to updated toolchains and runtimes, including Python 3.15, Go 1.27, GCC 16.2, and glibc 2.44.

Atomic Desktop ISO builds also now use image-builder, and Fedora Linux 45 beta adds systemd-oomd and zram swap support to Fedora CoreOS.

Anaconda now has initial WebUI installation flows for Atomic Desktops, and native support for partitioning stratis filesystems.

More information

Visit the Fedora Linux 45 Change Set page for more details on the changes in store for this release.

15 Sep 2026 2:05pm GMT

15 Sep 2026 1:28pm GMT

15 Sep 2026 8:00am GMT

Heads-up: sponsoring Damian Daniel (damiand) for scenefx

Hi

14 Sep 2026 8:44pm GMT

{
 "action": "new_branch",
 "branch": "f45",
 "namespace": "rpms",
 "repo": "scenefx",
 "create_git_branch": true
}

14 Sep 2026 6:29pm GMT

{
 "action": "new_branch",
 "branch": "f44",
 "namespace": "rpms",
 "repo": "scenefx",
 "create_git_branch": true
}

14 Sep 2026 6:28pm GMT

{
 "action": "new_repo",
 "branch": "rawhide",
 "bug_id": 2529330,
 "description": "",
 "exception": false,
 "monitor": "monitoring",
 "namespace": "rpms",
 "onboard_packit": "no",
 "repo": "scenefx",
 "summary": "A drop-in replacement for the wlroots scene API with eye-candy effects",
 "upstreamurl": "",
 "backend": "custom",
 "project_name": "scenefx",
 "distribution": "Fedora"
}

14 Sep 2026 5:32pm GMT

A primary focus across the Fedora project this week was the successful testing, blocker review, and official "GO" approval for the Fedora 45 Beta release, alongside preparations for associated test weeks. Another dominant, cross-group administrative discussion centered on this LLM-powered "This Week in Fedora" summary bot. Numerous teams debated whether to consent to automated data collection from their public Matrix channels, actively weighing the benefits of newcomer visibility against privacy concerns and the need to preserve informal, safe conversational spaces. Additionally, several desktop and server groups evaluated a Quality Assurance proposal to drop legacy hardware requirements from the list of release-blocking storage interfaces during installation. On the technical and operational front, infrastructure teams focused on RHEL 10 database migrations and Forgejo repository transitions, while various other working groups collaborated on package rebuilds, CVE triage processes, and managing a wave of orphaned packages to prevent maintainer burnout.

Announcements

In broader Linux community news, the newly announced Framework Laptop 12 will optionally come with the KDE Edition of Fedora Linux pre-installed, offering a hardware-validated experience straight out of the box. A recent Fedora Magazine article also highlights BTRFS boot failures and easy GUI methods for system recovery using a live USB to roll back to previous snapshots. Additionally, after navigating various processing challenges, the session recordings from the 2025 and 2026 Flock To Fedora events have officially been published to the project's YouTube and PeerTube libraries.

For existing contributors, please be aware that the Fedora Linux 45 Beta is GO and will ship on September 15, 2026; mark your calendars as the Final Freeze will begin shortly after on October 6, 2026. On the community leadership front, Fedora Podcast 060 highlighted a changing of the guard: Shaun McCance is taking over as the new Fedora Community Architect, while Justin Wheeler transitions into a new AI Alignment Community Architect role. If you are looking for a way to get more involved, the Fedora Podcast is currently seeking a behind-the-scenes producer to help manage episode scheduling and guest lists.

Council

The Fedora Council met this week to push forward several ongoing governance and policy items. The newly drafted Fedora Forge Usage Policy reached its fifth iteration and is scheduled for a final vote at the next Council meeting, following extensive community discussion and a compromise regarding repository archiving rules. Additionally, the Council reviewed a temporary workaround for handling private issues on the Fedora Forge and deemed it sufficient for their needs, moving to close the related tracker.

The Council also addressed Fedora's expiring recognition as a Digital Public Good (DPG). While the current and incoming Fedora Community Architects will handle the immediate 2026 renewal, the Council voted to formally ask the Mindshare Committee to take on the broader representation responsibilities going forward. In other business, brainstorming has begun for the Flock to Fedora 2027 Call for Proposals (CfP) themes, and a proposed Conflict of Interest policy addition was put on hold as discussions on Fedora Discussion suggest a formal policy change may be unnecessary.

Decisions

• The Council agreed to schedule the final vote for the Fedora Forge Usage Policy for September 23, 2026.
• The Council voted to have the current and incoming FCAs handle the immediate 2026 renewal for the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA), and to open a ticket requesting the Mindshare Committee to absorb this representation role long-term.
• The Council agreed that the temporary ForgeFiler solution for private issues and issue locking in Forgejo satisfies their requirements and moved to close the item.

Contribution opportunities

• Community members are invited to provide feedback and suggestions for the Flock to Fedora 2027 CfP Themes. Following the Council's initial drafting phase, the themes will be opened for wider community input from September 21 to October 16, 2026.

Learn more about the Council team.

FESCo

FESCo concluded the requirements gathering phase for the upcoming Bugzilla migration, with an extensive analysis pointing toward migrating to a modernized Bugzilla (Harmony) instance rather than Forgejo due to critical missing tracking features. The committee also completed a massive review of the F45 Incomplete Changes, deferring several high-profile changes (including mkosi-initrd, disabling Vendor Change by default, and libxml215) to Fedora 46.

Additionally, a significant policy exception was granted allowing the use of aws-lc Rust crates for cryptography. This unblocks projects relying on Rustls from using the unmaintained ring crate in favor of an AWS-supported implementation.

Decisions

• Concluded the requirements gathering for the Bugzilla migration, with analysis leaning heavily towards sticking with an upgraded upstream Bugzilla instance rather than moving to Forgejo.
• Approved an exception to allow aws-lc-sys and aws-lc-rs crates in Fedora for low-level cryptography (specifically to enable TLS via Rustls, replacing the ring crate).
• Deferred several F45 Changes to F46, including: mkosi-initrd, Enable Shadow Stack by Default on x86_64, Package builds expected to be reproducible, Disable Vendor Change by Default, and Libxml215.
• Initiated an expedited non-responsive maintainer process for libxml2 to address critical security vulnerabilities, adding zbyszek as a co-maintainer immediately.
• Handed over maintenance of thermald, libfprint, and fprintd to smallorange following a non-responsive maintainer process.

Contribution opportunities

• Dozens of packages maintained by gui1ty (Issue #3678) are slated for mass orphaning and will soon need new maintainers.
• Community members looking to join the packager group have an opportunity to take over orphaned packages. Users have already expressed interest in mcelog (Issue #3665), xaos (Issue #3678), and python-anytree (Issue #3681), but some require packager sponsorship.
• Feedback and testing are requested for the Encapsule isolated devel containers F45 Change Proposal, particularly regarding GUI support and SELinux policies.

Learn more about the FESCo team.

Packaging Committee

Tyler Fanelli reported an issue when trying to add a newly approved package (libnsm) to the SCM system using the fedpkg request-repo command. The execution failed and returned a 404 Not Found HTML error from Pagure, prompting a request to the committee for advice on how to proceed.

Learn more about the Packaging Committee team.

Mindshare

This week, the Mindshare committee was heavily focused on approving budgets and swag for upcoming international events, reflecting a strong global presence. Approved funding includes travel and swag for LinuxDays 2026 in Prague, IndiaFOSS 2026 in Bangalore, a Fedora Podcast recording trip to Texas Linux Fest, and event support for Software Freedom Day Bukidnon in the Philippines. Additionally, the committee confirmed its Fedora Council Representative for the current cycle and is considering formally adopting the representation of Fedora Linux in the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA).

The team is also working on improving post-event follow-up, keeping tickets open for Data Con LA and FrOSCon until event reports are submitted, and exploring a new standard template for event reporting to better evaluate the impact of community funding. Finally, a community request was submitted to collect Mindshare's public data, including Matrix chat logs, for this LLM-powered "This Week in Fedora" newsletter.

Decisions

• Confirmed that Akashdeep will remain the Mindshare representative to the Fedora Council for this cycle (URL).
• Approved a $150 budget for Software Freedom Day Bukidnon 2026 (URL).
• Approved a $200 travel budget and the distribution of stickers for LinuxDays 2026 in Prague (URL).
• Approved travel support for Eric Hendricks to record Fedora Podcast episodes on-site at Texas Linux Fest 2026 (URL).
• Approved $800 for travel and $200 for swag to host a Fedora sub-booth at IndiaFOSS 2026 (URL).
• Approved sending stickers to promote Fedora among IT students at a technical school in Jankowice, Poland (URL).
• Closed the Data Con LA Event Box Shipment ticket, moving remaining financial and reporting follow-ups to the main event ticket (URL).

Contribution opportunities

• A volunteer shadowing the Fedora Ambassadors process is being considered to help draft a standardized event report template for funded event owners.
• The committee is seeking feedback on a proposal to collect its public data, including Matrix chat logs, for this LLM-powered weekly report called "This Week in Fedora."

Learn more about the Mindshare team.

Diversity & Inclusion

This week, the Diversity & Inclusion team discussed whether to allow their communications to be collected for this LLM-powered weekly report called "This Week in Fedora." In issue #69, a request was made to ingest data from mailing lists, Discourse, the issue tracker, and the Matrix channel. Initial feedback is supportive of collecting data from Discourse and the tracker, but there is strong hesitation regarding the Matrix room. Keeping the Matrix room out of automated summaries is seen as critical for maintaining a safe space to discuss sensitive topics. Additionally, it was noted that the team's meetings are currently on a temporary pause.

Learn more about the Diversity & Inclusion team.

Workstation / GNOME

The Workstation / GNOME group discussed the upcoming Fedora 45 release, notably tracking a Mutter bug that is currently breaking openQA tests for the 51 Release Candidate, and began searching for a volunteer author for the Fedora Magazine's release article. The QA team also requested feedback on a proposal to reduce the list of release-blocking storage interfaces during installation by dropping outdated technologies like PATA and Hardware RAID.

Additionally, the working group deliberated on their strategy for Flathub integration, addressing pre-installation requirements and metadata fact-finding. Several package and tooling requests were debated by the community, including a proposal to add 1Password as an approved third-party repository, a suggestion to remove gamemode from Workstation, packaging the local AI assistant Newelle, and a request for consent to allow an LLM to collect Matrix channel history for community reports.

Decisions

• The working group decided to postpone the Flathub strategy discussion until fact-finding regarding available metadata is completed, at which point they will reconvene and potentially re-invite external developers. (Meeting Summary)

Contribution opportunities

• Call for Testers: Help test the proposed restoration of Google Drive integration in GNOME. Feedback is essential to help get this implementation upstreamed.
• Writing/Marketing: The Fedora Magazine is looking for a volunteer to author the Whats New in Fedora Workstation for F45 article.
• Feedback Needed: The QA team is seeking feedback on their proposal to reduce release-blocking storage interfaces.
• Community Input: The team is collecting opinions on whether to allow LLM data collection of the group's Matrix channel.

Learn more about the Workstation / GNOME team.

KDE

This week, the KDE group announced the availability of the KDE Plasma 6.8 Beta for testing on Fedora 44 and 45. Alongside this, work is being tracked for the Plasma 6.8 release, including package updates, retirements, and required rebuilds due to library changes.

In other discussions, the Fedora QA team requested feedback from desktop teams on a proposal to reduce the list of release-blocking storage interfaces during installation. Users also discussed how to disable startup and shutdown sounds in Plasma, and a Fedora 45 Blocker Review Meeting was scheduled to review bugs and freeze exceptions.

Decisions

• kcm_wacomtablet and kgamma will no longer receive updates as part of the Plasma 6.8 transition (Link).

Contribution opportunities

• Test the KDE Plasma 6.8 Beta via COPR or Rawhide on Fedora 44 and 45 and report any instabilities.
• Provide feedback on the proposal to reduce release-blocking storage interfaces, particularly regarding whether Firmware RAID is still a relevant desktop use case.
• Vote on proposed blockers and freeze exceptions ahead of the Fedora 45 Blocker Review Meeting using the blockerbugs app.

Learn more about the KDE team.

Server

This week, the Server Working Group heavily focused on Fedora 45 Beta testing, major restructuring of the Server documentation, and planning for upcoming feature announcements. Beta testing across local, remote, and SBC ARM installations has largely passed, though a regression in the KVM x86_64 image was identified in Beta 1.3. The documentation is being reorganized to feature a new "Postinstallation Customizations" section, and updates are being pushed to reflect DNF5 syntax changes. Additionally, the group reviewed a QA proposal to drop legacy storage interfaces from the release-blocking criteria and debated the adoption of an LLM-powered weekly summary bot for their Matrix channel.

Decisions

• The group agreed to create a new documentation section titled "Postinstallation Customizations" and position it immediately after the "Installation" guide. (Issue #228, Meeting)
• Documentation referring to dnf group install will be updated to use group IDs (e.g., cinnamon-desktop-environment) instead of group names, as DNF5 no longer supports group names. (Issue #264)
• The decision regarding the collection of Matrix channel data for LLM-powered weekly reports was deferred to an informal meeting, due to concerns regarding privacy and the need for an opt-out mechanism. (Issue #263, Meeting)

Contribution opportunities

• Feedback is requested on the QA proposal to reduce the list of release-blocking storage interfaces during installation.
• An author is needed to write the "Whats New in Fedora Server for F45" article for Fedora Magazine before the October 6 deadline.
• Contributors are welcome to vote on subsection naming conventions for the Server documentation revision.
• Assistance is needed to update the rubygem-rbs package in the F45 repositories to ensure Ruby on Rails 8.1 default apps can deploy without pulling in heavy development tools.

Learn more about the Server team.

Infrastructure

The Infrastructure team made significant progress on the RHEL 10 database server migrations this week, successfully moving several staging databases (including koji and fas). Plans are forming for the next mass update window, which is targeted for the week before the final freeze. Several maintenance emergencies were efficiently handled, including planning reinstalls across the buildhw-x86 fleet to resolve a BTRFS inode exhaustion issue breaking 32-bit builds, and compressing firewall logs to prevent disk space exhaustion on ns* nameservers.

In addition, the team welcomed new contributors from the community, granted heavybuilder access in Koji for the vtk and nodejs-electron packages, and set up new Copr tracking groups. They also resolved an intermittent Kerberos pre-authentication issue impacting Packit and RISC-V Koji by restarting the ipa01 service, and approved the collection of public Matrix chat data for LLM-powered community weekly reports.

Decisions

• Approved the collection of public Matrix channels (#admin and #forge) data for this LLM-powered "This Week in Fedora" report (Ticket #13552).
• Approved a freeze break to increase storage on os-control01 to serve as a temporary backup scratch space for Forgejo (Ticket #13555).
• Granted Koji heavybuilder channel access for the vtk and nodejs-electron packages (Ticket #13544, Ticket #13545).
• Discontinued investigating Apache LoadBalancer monitoring in favor of opening a spike to migrate components to HAProxy (Ticket #13553, Ticket #13525).

Contribution opportunities

• Contributors interested in Python and Matrix development are invited to help rewrite the Standupbot using the Maubot framework.
• Assistance is needed building required Mailman 3 packages in the epel-infra or epel10 tags for the Mailman RHEL 10 migration.
• The team is looking for someone to review Zabbix data and help define what "abnormal" triggers should look like for the new Varnish monitoring template.
• Newcomers are encouraged to introduce themselves in the Fedora Infrastructure Matrix Room and read through the Infrastructure Join Guide.

Learn more about the Infrastructure team.

Release Engineering

Fedora 45 Beta is officially a "GO" and is scheduled for release on September 15th, 2026. Prior to the final decision, multiple Beta release candidates were composed and tested, incorporating various blocker and freeze exception fixes. Additionally, a recurring issue causing Rawhide OSTree composes to fail due to missing commits was diagnosed as a race condition involving a weekly pruning job; manual repairs were applied to unblock composes while a permanent fix is developed.

In other news, the upcoming Fedora 45 Blocker Review Meeting will take place on September 14th to review final blockers and freeze exceptions. The Release Engineering team has also agreed to include its Matrix channel discussions in automated LLM-generated weekly reports to improve team visibility and lower the barrier for new contributors catching up on active topics.

Decisions

• Fedora 45 Beta has been approved (GO) and will be released on September 15th, 2026.
• The Release Engineering team consented to have their public Matrix channel history collected for the "This Week in Fedora" weekly report to improve visibility.

Contribution opportunities

• Community members are encouraged to review and vote on F45 blocker and freeze exception bugs via the QA blockerbugs app prior to the Fedora 45 Blocker Review Meeting. Voting early helps shorten the meeting.

Learn more about the Release Engineering team.

Quality

The Quality group successfully held the Fedora 45 Beta Go/No-Go meeting, resulting in a unanimous 'GO' decision for Release Candidate 1.3, which is scheduled to ship on September 15. The team also conducted blocker review meetings to handle freeze exceptions and blockers ahead of the beta release.

In other activities, a formal proposal was submitted to reduce the list of release-blocking storage interfaces during installation, aiming to remove obsolete or untestable hardware requirements. Test days are actively being organized, including the ongoing Internationalization (i18n) test days, and upcoming events for KDE Plasma 6.7 and Fedora CoreOS. Additionally, the community discussed concerns regarding LLM summarization of informal Matrix channels, leaning towards excluding chat history to preserve conversational freedom.

Decisions

• Fedora 45 Beta is officially GO with Release Candidate 1.3 and will be released on September 15, 2026.
• Accepted the Freeze Exception for "Restrict ptrace by default" (BZ 2448388) for F45 Beta.
• Conditionally Accepted the Freeze Exception for "GNOME 51.rc" (BZ 2528432), provided the related Anaconda freeze issue is resolved first.
• Punted Freeze Exceptions for "Ship sticky vendor feature configuration" (BZ 2528348) and "selinux blocking podman remote ssh connections" (BZ 2529069) pending a FESCo opinion and further details, respectively.
• General agreement was reached to archive the obsolete qa-devel mailing list due to lack of use.

Contribution opportunities

• Provide feedback on the Criteria change proposal to reduce the list of release-blocking storage interfaces during installation.
• Participate in the KDE Plasma 6.7 Test Week from September 14 to September 20.
• Participate in the upcoming F45 Fedora CoreOS Test Day tentatively scheduled for September 21.
• Provide testing feedback for the proposed Google Drive integration in GNOME via COPR or manual build.
• Help automate the Testcase_base_update_cli in Cloud tests as requested in Ticket #938.

Learn more about the Quality team.

Websites and Apps

During the week of September 7 to September 13, 2026, the Websites and Apps group discussed a feature request for visualizing package dependencies. A user proposed adding an interactive web-based package dependency tree to packages.fedoraproject.org. The goal is to help users visually trace and understand why specific, seemingly unrelated packages are pulled in during dnf installations without having to remember complex terminal commands.

In response, a community member noted that omitting the -y flag in dnf provides a preview of what will be installed, but agreed that requesting a built-in dependency tree view directly from dnf would also be a reasonable feature request.

Contribution opportunities

• Community members who know of existing interactive package dependency visualization tools are encouraged to share their links in the Interactive package dependency tree thread.
• Web contributors and developers have an opportunity to explore adding an interactive dependency tree feature to packages.fedoraproject.org.

Learn more about the Websites and Apps team.

Design

The Design team heavily focused on standardizing and redesigning the Jekyll-based website for "Project Resistor," a Fedora Remix. This effort was organized into an Epic, kicking off with research into existing remix sites and planning for initial wireframes. Alongside this new project, the team advanced the design of an EPEL Steering Committee badge, managed the archiving of older repositories migrated from Pagure, and began discussing consent for data collection in LLM-powered weekly community reports.

Decisions

• Decided to use existing Jekyll themes and components to redesign the Project Resistor website rather than building it from scratch.
• Decided to keep older migrated repositories (like designassets) archived to maintain a clean workspace, and added custom Fedora-colored icons to active repositories to differentiate them.

Contribution opportunities

• Participate in the discussion regarding consent for LLM data collection of the team's Matrix channel and issue tracker.
• Contribute to the initial research of existing Fedora remix sites and Jekyll themes to inspire the Project Resistor design.

Learn more about the Design team.

Docs

The Docs team is evaluating new initiatives to streamline documentation and improve accessibility. A proposal is under discussion to generate llms.txt indexes for the English Fedora Docs site, aiming to help AI agents navigate the documentation more efficiently (Ticket #64). Concurrently, the team is polling members on whether to retain the "This Week in Fedora" summary bot in their Matrix channel (Ticket #63) and preparing to propose targeted questions for the Fedora Release Notes Change templates to better guide system change owners (Meeting).

Internally, efforts to modernize documentation are progressing. A comprehensive review of outdated wiki pages is underway, requiring manual vetting of older content to prevent data loss, and a push is being made to deprecate legacy Commops SIG wiki pages in favor of the modern Docs site (Ticket #59). Work is also kicking off to update the Beginner's Guide for Fedora 45, presenting an excellent onboarding opportunity for new contributors.

Decisions

• The Docs team decided to manually vet outdated wiki pages for deletion rather than using automated batch scripts, minimizing the risk of accidentally deleting content that remains relevant to the broader community (Meeting).
• The team resolved to draft specific, targeted questions for the official Fedora Change proposal templates to compel Change owners to clarify their target audience and user impact. This will be formally proposed to FESCo for approval (Meeting).
• Meeting agenda threads on the Fedora Discussion forums will now be opened immediately following the conclusion of the previous meeting, rather than right before the next one, to allow more time for asynchronous participation (Meeting).

Contribution opportunities

• Fedora 45 Beginner's Guide: Contributors are needed to help update the Beginner's Guide for F45. This is noted as a straightforward task and an excellent starting point for newcomers. Feedback is also requested on whether to switch the guide's recommended backup solution from kbackup to Vorta (Meeting).
• Matrix Bot Polling: Team members are asked to vote (+1 or -1) on whether to keep the "This Week in Fedora" bot active in the public Docs Matrix channel (Ticket #63).
• Feedback on llms.txt: The team is seeking input on a proposal to generate llms.txt discovery indexes for the Docs site to better support AI agents and LLMs (Ticket #64).

Learn more about the Docs team.

Internationalization

The Internationalization group kicked off the Fedora 45 i18n test week on September 7th, which notably includes a new section for testing installation-related issues.

Additionally, an article proposal was submitted for the Fedora blog to highlight the recent migration of the MATE Desktop project translations to the Fedora Weblate instance. This migration transitions the MATE project from Transifex to an open-source collaboration platform, aiming to resolve previous upstream integration issues and improve the overall experience for translators and developers.

Contribution opportunities

• Participate in the Fedora 45 i18n test week and submit test results, particularly focusing on the newly added installation section.
• Review and provide feedback on the MATE Desktop migration article proposal to ensure no important information is missing before it is published on the Fedora blog.

Learn more about the Internationalization team.

COPR

The COPR group announced that they are dropping support for pyp2rpm as an on-the-fly specfile generator for PyPI builds. This change is being made because the Fedora package for pyp2rpm was recently retired. Users can continue submitting builds directly from PyPI using pyp2spec, which has been Copr's default option since 2023.

The removal of pyp2rpm will go live with the next Copr release. The overall impact is expected to be minimal, as database metrics show only 9 builds used pyp2rpm in 2026, compared to over 114,000 builds that used pyp2spec. The remaining affected users are being notified off-list.

Decisions

• Support for pyp2rpm is being dropped from Copr in the next release due to its upstream Fedora package retirement; users submitting PyPI builds must use the default pyp2spec generator instead. (Source)

Learn more about the COPR team.

EPEL

The EPEL team focused heavily on infrastructure maintenance following the recent mass-branching, specifically adjusting mock configurations and symlink scripts to accommodate the new CentOS Stream 10 structure ("10s"). Several package updates were released to the wider Linux community, including critical security fixes for gum (fixing three CVEs) and a pending fix for a djvulibre out-of-bounds write vulnerability. Additionally, new packages like keychecker were added to EPEL 10, and epel-rpm-macros was added to ELN.

Internally, the team is actively refining their release engineering automation by converting legacy branching and archiving processes into RBAC-compatible Ansible playbooks. They are also discussing community governance topics, including whether to allow automated LLM tools to summarize their public Matrix chat logs, weighing transparency and accessibility against the casual, ephemeral nature of the chat medium.

Decisions

• Postponed the decision on whether to allow LLM data collection from the EPEL Matrix chat for one week to gather more community feedback (Issue #373).
• Decided to restrict the epel-release latest symlink creation exclusively to EPEL 10.2 to prevent constant link churning across minor releases, bypassing 10.3 and 10.4 (Issue #117).

Contribution opportunities

• Community Feedback: Provide feedback on whether the public EPEL Matrix chat should be included in automated LLM weekly summaries (Issue #373).
• Packaging Help: Assist in updating the Alma Kitten mock configurations to use the new CentOS Stream 10s paths, following the recent fixes applied to mock-core-configs (Issue #126).
• QA/Testing: Investigate and resolve the dependency issue that caused negative karma for the yubikey-manager update in EPEL 10.

Learn more about the EPEL team.

ELN

The ELN SIG met this week to discuss extending the EBS timeout duration for Bodhi updates and to review progress on image-builder configurations. The group agreed to extend the Bodhi update wait time to 24 hours, though implementation is deferred until after an upcoming asyncio rewrite. In addition, composes for Rawhide and ELN had been paused for a few days due to a systemd bug, but a fix is now available and composes are expected to resume.

On the container front, the generic and minimal container images were updated to remove unwanted weak dependencies, and the fixes are currently rolling out. A new minimal install image is also planned, which will allow non-network installations without requiring the large DVD image. Finally, the group discussed and informally opted out of having a summarization bot process their main Matrix channel for the "This Week in Fedora" publication.

Decisions

• Increase the EBS Bodhi update wait time to 24 hours, contingent on adding an endpoint for administrators to terminate the wait early and sending an email notification at the 24-hour mark (discussed in Issue #586).
• Opt out of the 'This Week in Fedora' Matrix channel summarization bot for the main ELN chat room (discussed in the meeting).

Learn more about the ELN team.

Atomic

The Fedora Atomic group spent the week advancing integration efforts, most notably hosting a kick-off meeting for the proposed unification of Fedora CoreOS and Fedora bootc base images ahead of Fedora 46. This shift aims to consolidate community efforts, build pipelines, and documentation into a more unified strategy.

On the technical side, contributors are investigating an issue where systemd-oomd fails to intervene during severe RAM exhaustion on Kinoite-based systems, and addressing image bloat by dropping redundant packages. Additionally, CI infrastructure on the new forge has successfully transitioned to Testing Farm, leading to the closure of previous runner requests.

Decisions

• Remove totem-video-thumbnailer from the Silverblue image in favor of the newly added gst-thumbnailers, starting with Rawhide.
• Switch back to the full curl build in Atomic images for now, as libcurl-minimal lacks HTTP/3 support and an upstream enhancement request was closed.
• Close pending infrastructure requests for dedicated Forgejo runners since the new Testing Farm CI setup is sufficient for current needs.

Contribution opportunities

• Code contribution: Submit a Pull Request to remove totem-video-thumbnailer from the Silverblue image, starting in Rawhide: Issue 129
• Testing: Help reproduce and test the systemd-oomd failure to intervene during severe RAM/zram exhaustion on pristine Fedora Kinoite: Issue 130
• Community Feedback: Provide feedback on the inclusion of Matrix chat logs for the "This Week in Fedora" LLM-powered summary: Issue 128
• Collaboration: Join the effort to build and distribute systemd-sysexts by participating in the proposal to create a systemd-sysexts SIG

Learn more about the Atomic team.

CoreOS

The CoreOS group is preparing for the Fedora 45 Beta release scheduled for September 15, 2026. As part of this transition, the team plans to switch over next-devel and cut the first next release based on F45, while preparing for a test week starting on September 21. In other developments, releases for coreos-installer, afterburn, and zincati are planned for the current sprint, and the group is scheduling a dedicated meeting to discuss the unification of CoreOS and bootc in Fedora.

Community interest continues to grow around the proposed systemd-sysexts SIG, with members actively joining the initiative to build and distribute system-extensions based on Fedora content.

Decisions

• Switch over next-devel and cut the first next release based on F45 assuming the Fedora 45 Beta Release occurs on schedule (2026-09-15).
• Begin weekly releases of the next stream when entering "Final Freeze" as per the design guidelines.
• Hold a CoreOS test week starting on 2026-09-21, kicking off with a video session on the first day.
• Host and record a dedicated meeting to discuss CoreOS and bootc unification in Fedora.

Contribution opportunities

• Review and provide input on Tracker Issue #2185. The team mentioned they "could really use some eyes" on this if anyone has spare cycles.
• Help investigate Tracker Issue #2184 to ensure the project is ready to support the new golang version.
• Join the newly forming systemd-sysexts SIG by adding your name to the wiki page, as discussed in the forum proposal.

Learn more about the CoreOS team.

ARM

This week, the ARM group investigated a potential Wi-Fi regression on the Raspberry Pi 5 following a recent brcmfmac-firmware update. The package maintainer noted that WPA3 has known upstream issues with this driver and suspected an access point misconfiguration rather than a package regression, advising the user to open a bug report if the problem persists. Additionally, the group was notified about the upcoming Fedora 45 Blocker Review Meeting, featuring a call for asynchronous voting on proposed blockers and freeze exceptions.

Contribution opportunities

• Review and vote on proposed blocker bugs and freeze exceptions for Fedora 45 using the Fedora QA blockerbugs app. Instructions for asynchronous voting can be found here.
• Users experiencing firmware-related hardware regressions (such as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth issues) are encouraged to file comprehensive bug reports against the linux-firmware package.

Learn more about the ARM team.

Alternative Images

The Alternative Images group held a meeting to announce the release of the CentOS Stream 10 RISC-V images, which include minimal Generic (qcow2) and P550 (raw) builds. These images are now available on the AltImage RISC-V page and the AltImages Download page. Currently, the images use a default centos:centos login with a forced password change, but the group plans to integrate the text-mode initial-setup package in the next quarterly release.

Additionally, the group resolved previous issues with building RAW images using Kiwi and plans to release their first aarch64 RAW image soon, starting with a minimal build. This upcoming aarch64 release will also serve as a testbed for the initial-setup integration. It was also noted that Kiwi 11.0 is coming soon but will only be available for EPEL 10 and above due to dependency limitations in EPEL 9.

Decisions

• Integrate the text-mode initial-setup package into the next quarterly release of the RISC-V images, as decided in the Alternative Images meeting.
• Begin producing aarch64 RAW images, starting with a minimal image, to test the initial-setup integration.

Learn more about the Alternative Images team.

Cloud

The Cloud group's activity this week centered around data collection policies and project visibility. In Issue 447, the creator of the "This Week in Fedora" LLM-powered report requested the group's permission to ingest data from their mailing lists, Discourse tags, issue tracker, and public Matrix channel. The author emphasized that summarizing Matrix channels helps newcomers understand the group's current topics and tone, but explicitly requested the group's consent to ensure contributors feel comfortable with their chat messages being included in public summaries.

Contribution opportunities

• Group members are requested to review and provide feedback on Issue 447 regarding which data sources (mailing lists, Discourse, tracker, Matrix channel) they are comfortable having collected for the "This Week in Fedora" weekly report.
• Individuals who wish to opt out of Matrix channel collection can request to have their specific usernames excluded from the LLM summary generation.

Learn more about the Cloud team.

AI & ML

A discussion was opened regarding which data sources from the AI & ML group should be collected for "This Week in Fedora" (TWIF), an LLM-powered weekly report. The author (Ticket #39) proposed collecting data from mailing lists, Discourse, trackers, and the Matrix channel. While a participating group member agreed that collecting data from clearly public sources like trackers and forums is acceptable, concerns were raised about summarizing Matrix channel discussions due to the platform's more informal nature.

Contribution opportunities

• Provide feedback on Ticket #39 regarding whether the AI & ML Matrix channel should be included in data collection for the automated "This Week in Fedora" weekly reports.

Learn more about the AI & ML team.

RISC-V

The RISC-V group made significant progress on system rebuilds, with the Fedora 45 rebuild mostly complete and Fedora 46 toolchains (Rust, Python, Perl) currently building. A major focus was resolving LLVM test suite failures on Fedora, specifically addressing MLIR, OpenMP, and Flang issues on RISC-V architectures through testing several pull requests from package maintainers.

In the community, members are actively working on installer images and Fedora "omni" kernel builds. The group is also currently discussing whether to opt into having their Matrix channel, Discourse posts, and issue tracker collected for automated LLM-powered weekly Fedora reports.

Decisions

• It was determined that patches for MLIR and Flang are not needed for CentOS Stream 10 (c10s), as those sub-packages are not built on that platform (Ticket #2).

Contribution opportunities

• Community members are asked to provide feedback on whether they consent to having the #riscv Matrix channel, Discourse posts, and issue tracker collected to generate weekly LLM-powered Fedora reports (Ticket #30).

Learn more about the RISC-V team.

Security

The Security SIG met this week to tackle the high volume of invalid CVE bugs being filed against Fedora packages. A tool called fedora-cve-triage is being updated to help maintainers interactively close these invalid reports. Red Hat Product Security shared that they are working on internal tools (ManifestCube and BomQ) and an SBOM database to improve vulnerability tracking, though these are not yet public. In the interim, the SIG plans to propose an opt-out mechanism for automated CVE reporting to protect package maintainers from burnout.

In other discussions, the group is evaluating a request to allow an LLM-powered tool to summarize their Matrix channel and tracker activities for the "This Week in Fedora" report, with some members expressing ethical and accuracy concerns. Additionally, the scope for the proposed Fedora Privacy SIG has been refined to focus on privacy-related packaging and analyzing or mitigating privacy issues in existing packages, explicitly excluding legal compliance evaluation.

Decisions

• To file a formal ticket proposing an opt-out mechanism for automated CVE reporting to prevent package maintainer burnout, as decided in the weekly meeting.
• To officially discuss and vote on the inclusion of the Security SIG's Matrix channel and tracker in the LLM-powered weekly report at the next meeting, following the creation of Ticket #22.

Contribution opportunities

• Provide feedback on the drafted scope and activities for the Fedora Privacy SIG.
• Share opinions in Ticket #22 regarding whether the Security SIG's Matrix channel and issue tracker data should be collected for the LLM-powered "This Week in Fedora" report.

Learn more about the Security team.

Gaming

An issue was opened regarding the collection of the group's data for an LLM-powered weekly report called "This Week in Fedora". The author is seeking the group's consent to aggregate activity from mailing lists, Discourse, the issue tracker, and particularly the Matrix channel, in order to improve visibility for newcomers and highlight engagement opportunities.

Learn more about the Gaming team.

DotNET

The DotNET group received a request regarding the collection of the group's data for an LLM-powered weekly report known as "This Week in Fedora" (this page). The author is seeking permission from the group to gather activity data from their mailing lists, meetings, issue trackers, and the public Matrix channel. The goal of this data collection is to help newcomers catch up and to provide visibility for the group's work.

Learn more about the DotNET team.

Go

During the Go SIG meeting, which was lightly attended due to a US national holiday, it was announced that Go 1.26 is already available in Fedora 43. Additionally, updates for Go 1.27.1 and 1.26.8 are currently pending in Bodhi.

On the mailing list, a prospective packager reached out for assistance to finalize the adoption of the orphaned "fx" package. While the package review has successfully passed, the contributor is looking for a sponsor to grant them packager permissions so they can officially request the repository.

Contribution opportunities

• A sponsor is needed to approve packager group access for Emanuele Petriglia, which is required to complete the repository request for the newly reviewed "fx" package.

Learn more about the Go team.

Perl

During the week of September 7 to September 13, 2026, the Perl group's activity consisted entirely of routine package maintenance on Fedora RPMs. Michal Josef Špaček successfully opened and merged multiple pull requests focused on version bumps and license additions across several Perl libraries.

The updates included version bumps for perl-Locale-Codes, perl-Text-VCardFast, perl-Mail-JMAPTalk, perl-Net-DAVTalk, perl-Net-CardDAVTalk, and perl-Net-CalDAVTalk. A missing LICENSE file was also added to the perl-Mail-JMAPTalk repository.

Decisions

• Updated perl-Locale-Codes to version 3.91.
• Updated perl-Text-VCardFast to version 0.12.
• Updated perl-Mail-JMAPTalk to version 0.19 and added a LICENSE file.
• Updated perl-Net-DAVTalk to version 0.25.
• Updated perl-Net-CardDAVTalk to version 0.12.
• Updated perl-Net-CalDAVTalk to version 0.18.

Learn more about the Perl team.

Ruby

Volunteer testing for Fedora 45 Beta 1.3 revealed a deployment issue when following the Ruby on Rails 8.1 change documentation. A tester encountered a dependency error involving rdoc and rbs, which maintainers identified was caused by inadvertently installing a newer version of RDoc directly from rubygems.org rather than relying strictly on Fedora dependencies.

In response to the feedback, maintainer Vít Ondruch tested the deployment in a clean environment and subsequently updated the Fedora 45 change page. Notably, bundler-audit was removed from the instructions as it is unavailable on Fedora, helping to streamline future testing and prevent disruptive surprises for users deploying Rails applications on the upcoming release.

Decisions

• Updated the Ruby on Rails 8.1 change page to remove bundler-audit from the deployment instructions since it is not available on Fedora.

Contribution opportunities

• Volunteers are encouraged to continue testing the Ruby on Rails 8.1 deployment for Fedora 45 using clean environments (such as Mock or by clearing .local/share/gem) to ensure documentation accurately reflects necessary dependencies.
• Users testing the Ruby on Rails deployment are requested to provide feedback on environmental setup steps to help make the change documentation more welcoming and accurate for newcomers.

Learn more about the Ruby team.

Rust

This week, the Rust group discussed a proposal to include their communication channels in an LLM-powered weekly report called "This Week in Fedora" (this page). The author proposed collecting data from the mailing lists, Discourse, the issue tracker, and the public Matrix channel to help newcomers understand the group's current activities and foster participation. While members were generally accepting or neutral toward including data from the mailing list, Discourse, and issue tracker, multiple members expressed opposition or reservations regarding the ingestion of Matrix channel history.

Learn more about the Rust team.

Other Discussions

• On the forum, a user observed that ~2,300 Fedora/EPEL security tracking bugs became private on Bugzilla, impacting downstream security tooling that builds update-to-CVE mappings, and asked if this change was intentional.
• A discussion arose regarding the F45 Change Proposal: Enable Shadow Stack by Default on x86_64 (system-wide), with developers working to ensure compatibility for packages like Rust and Ruby by transitioning handwritten assembly to ucontext.
• A thread highlighted that GMail will remove the ability to send email from @fedoraproject.org addresses soon, prompting a debate about potential alternatives, such as setting up an authenticated Fedora SMTP gateway, though concerns were raised about abuse and maintenance burdens.
• Miroslav Suchý asked developers to donate 1 minute to test upgrades from F44 to F45 by running a dummy dnf distro-sync command, leading to several contributors reporting dependency resolution failures for orphaned or retired packages.
• Gordon Messmer proposed integrating got-audit as a generic Fedora CI test to detect ELF namespace tampering, prompting feedback from the CI team about generalizing the tool for systemd services and adjusting it to handle legitimate runtime patching.
• On the libteam mailing list, a patch adding a per-runner col_dist_decoupled option to the LACP runner was submitted and reviewed, which decouples the collecting and distributing states to allow an external control plane to drive the data path.
• Miro Hrončok proposed to remove the "Tracking bugs" section from the "Fails to build from source" page, as the documentation hasn't been updated since Fedora 34 and the policy already explains bug alias formats.
• A contributor requested a review for a dist-git PR fixing a btop crash for rocm-smi, noting that the lack of NDEBUG on the compile line causes the shipped library to abort on unexpected sysfs data.
• Joaquín Daniel expressed interest in adopting the orphaned gnome-shell-extension-openweather package and was advised that since it has been orphaned for over a year, it must go through the standard new package review process.
• A contributor encountered a 404 error using fedpkg request-repo for an approved package, which was quickly identified as being caused by an outdated fedpkg version trying to create issues on pagure.io instead of forge.fp.o.
• Other discussions included concerns that the Mangohud package seems to be unmaintaned, requests for review swaps, the agenda for the Fedora 45 Blocker Review Meeting, an invitation to join the new Fedora Crystal SIG, further replies about testing F44 to F45 upgrades, a notification about Perl modules relicensing, a non-responsive maintainer check for amigadave, and the Fedora Council Bi-Weekly Agenda.

Orphaning packages

• Following a non-responsive maintainer check, Qiyu Yan stepped down and orphaned the ddcutil package.
• On the devel-announce mailing list, a weekly automated report of orphaned packages looking for new maintainers was published, noting numerous packages nearing their six-week retirement deadline.
• Hussein orphaned three related packages: rust-jql, rust-jql-runner, and rust-jql-parser, noting that any interested adopter must take over all three simultaneously.
• Antonio Murdaca announced the orphaning of golang-github-vbatts-tar-split, noting the devel subpackage currently fails to install in F45.

Package updates

• Gordon Messmer announced on the forums, as well as the devel and nodejs mailing lists, that Electron has landed in Fedora Rawhide for x86_64 and aarch64, and shared experimental builds for ppc64le.
• Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski completed the ffmpeg upgrade from 8.1 to 9.0 via a side tag, coordinating with package maintainers to resolve build failures.
• Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek managed an update of libxml2 and a mini mass rebuild in a Rawhide side tag, addressing various dependency issues and coordinating with GNOME 51 RC updates.
• Xavier Bachelot announced a libnfs 7.0.0 soname bump, asking dependent package maintainers to rebuild their packages in the provided side tag.
• José Expósito proposed updating mesa to 26.2 in Fedora 44, and after positive feedback from RPM Fusion maintainers, submitted the update.
• Kaleb Keithley created a side tag for a libarrow (Apache Arrow) SONAME bump in rawhide for version 25.0.1, coordinating the rebuild of hard dependencies like ceph and gdal.

New contributor introductions

• On the Sway mailing list, Damian Daniel introduced themselves and expressed interest in joining the Sway SIG to help package SwayFX and other wlroots-based compositors.

Contribution opportunities

Testing and Quality Assurance Skills There is a massive need for community testing, which serves as an excellent entry point for non-group members. Contributors can participate in dedicated events like the KDE Plasma 6.7 Test Week, the Fedora 45 i18n test week, and the tentatively scheduled F45 Fedora CoreOS Test Day. Independent testing is heavily requested for the proposed Google Drive integration in GNOME, the KDE Plasma 6.8 Beta, and the Ruby on Rails 8.1 deployment. Contributors with minimal time can simply run a dummy dnf distro-sync to test F44 to F45 upgrades, while those with debugging experience can help reproduce a systemd-oomd failure on Fedora Kinoite or review bugs using the QA blockerbugs app.

Writing, Documentation, and Research Skills If you have writing skills, several groups need help drafting community-facing materials. The Fedora Magazine needs authors for the "What's New in F45" articles covering Workstation and Server. Newcomers are specifically encouraged to help update the Fedora 45 Beginner's Guide. More experienced writers can shadow the Mindshare committee to draft a standardized event report template or review the MATE Desktop migration article prior to publication. For those preferring research over writing, the Design team needs help researching Jekyll themes to inspire the Project Resistor design, and community opinions are widely sought on the Flock to Fedora 2027 CfP Themes and the Fedora Privacy SIG scope.

Packaging and System Administration Skills The project currently has a high demand for packagers to take over orphaned packages, most notably dozens of packages formerly maintained by gui1ty (Issue #3678), as well as specific software like mcelog (Issue #3665), python-anytree (Issue #3681), mangohud, and ddcutil. Sysadmins and infrastructure-minded packagers can assist by fixing EPEL's Alma Kitten mock configurations (Issue #126), building missing packages for the Mailman RHEL 10 migration, or diagnosing a 404 error affecting libnsm on the Packaging mailing list. Those looking for new collaborations can join the newly forming systemd-sysexts SIG, the Crystal SIG, or the Sway SIG.

Software Development and Automation Skills Developers are needed across multiple languages to build and maintain Fedora's tooling. Python and Matrix developers can help rewrite the Standupbot using the Maubot framework, while web developers can explore adding an interactive dependency tree to packages.fedoraproject.org. Automation engineers are requested to help automate Testcase_base_update_cli for Cloud tests (Ticket #938). Go developers can review CoreOS Tracker Issue #2184 to ensure readiness for the new golang version, and anyone familiar with metrics can help define "abnormal" triggers for Infrastructure's new Zabbix Varnish monitoring template. Finally, a quick Git pull request is needed to remove totem-video-thumbnailer from the Silverblue image (Issue 129).

14 Sep 2026 2:52pm GMT

After years of technical research and foundational work, the Fedora Badges application service has been rebuilt from the ground up, and it is heading to production. Whether you have been collecting badges for years or you are brand new to the Fedora Project community, here is what is waiting for you there.

Completely modernized user interface

The archaic server rendered pages are now gone. The Fedora Badges application service now runs on a modern single page application. This provides you with a much faster and more responsive experience, while functioning across various screen sizes and devices types, all without full refreshes or front-end reloads.

Navigations have been revamped as well. But do not worry at all - if you have bookmarked any old service links, they should redirect you to the right place.

Colour schemes, Dark mode

You can now customize the look of the Fedora Badges application service choosing from eight colour schemes. Your choice flows through the various elements of the front-end - from navbar to borders, from charts to accents, etc. The dark mode and light mode switch respects your system preference and can also be toggled.

Your choices are persistent across visits residing in your session storage. As long as the same session is used, the colour schemes and dark mode settings stay.

Revitalized badges collectathon experience

Not only does the profile page show your precious badges, it also shows a radar chart that maps your collection across categories. This is a rudimentary method to gauge your progress and discover the areas you have not explored yet. Giving a means to diversify the activities, this encourages more people to join in.

The refreshed history page also adds a collection time-line chart showing yours (and your friends') contribution activities over months and years at a glance.

Compare (or compete) with your friends

The renewed difference page lets you compare your badges collection with those of your friends' possessions. See which badges you both share, which ones only you have, and most importantly, which ones they have earned that you have not yet. It's a fun way to discover new badges and unearth new ways to contribute.

You can also reach out to your fellow community members for potential mentoring opportunities, based on their contribution activities and collected badges.

Explore badges by rarities

Every active badge now has a rarity tier based on how many users currently hold it:

• Fedorable - Unobtanium stuff
• Legendary - Mythical prestige
• Epic - Serious bragging
• Rare - Principled hustle
• Uncommon - Striving future
• Common - Warm greeting

You can now browse active badges by their rarity tiers, making it easy to hunt down the ones that fewer people have earned. Not only does it allow you to find new pathways for contribution, you also get a sense of the impactful work and relevant tracks that are waiting for you in your community activities.

Involved semantic collective lookup

Departing from different searches for badges and users, the search bar now helps unified lookup across both badges and users. Start typing and results start appearing immediately after - with better lookup results. These will appear when the query is general enough to return more than eight results.

To save server resources, the asynchronous search request begins only when at least four characters are entered into the search bar for the query.

Leaderboards with time navigation

Departing from the restricted rankings page, it is now possible to request custom period filtering on the leaderboards page. Filters can be based on days, weeks, months, and years. One can see who has been earning most badges in those times, and generally look back at the community's evolving progress over a time period.

The rankings are deterministic and can be shared with others, using the sharing link that inherently applies the same filters. This creates a reproducible resource.

Clearer badge activity lifecycle

Badges can now be manually marked as legacy (retired, unobtainable) after they should no longer be awarded to the users. For instance, the badges for joining the Fedora Linux Release Party 42 should no longer be available to new users in 2026. Hence, they should not be accounted for while computing rarity tiers.

And nope - we are not taking awarded badges away from users who have already earned them. These retired badges are still going to be visible in the history.

Stronger foundational supports underneath

You see, the revamp was not just about the front-end. The data layer that powers the application service got a major overhaul as well. The Database Library project, which handles all database operations, saw 105 commits across 7 contributors during the same period, pushing from version 1.4.1 to 1.5.5.

Here's what changed under the hood, and why it matters to you:

• Faster queries - Redundant database lookups were eliminated, foreign key indexes were added, and pagination now happens at the database level instead of in the application code. Pages that list badges or users load significantly faster, especially as the count of badges or users grow.
• Effective lookup - The search you use from the navbar section is powered by new search methods added to the API. This covers both badges and users. This not only makes the search noticeably faster, but the actual process is also more efficient on a synchronous database accessing layer.
• Rarity calculation - The rarity tiers you see on badge pages are computed every day by an updated algorithm in the API code. Various edge cases are now handled too. The fall-back is set to the common tier on zero available users who own the said badges at that particular time.
• Legacy support - A schema level change was made to introduce a new legacy column to the badges table to distinguish active badges from the retired ones. Filtering is built into the API code so the front-end shows them on separate pages when requested by the users.
• Categories normalization - Badge tags are now stored in their own tables instead of as raw comma separated strings. This makes category browsing reliable.
• Cascading deletions - Removing a badge when done in exigent circumstances now properly cleans up its assertions in the database purging orphaned data.
• Removing invitations - Invitations are soft deleted and not hard removed. This preserves access history while preventing accidental assertions.
• Quality assurance - Nearly every new feature ships with its test cases. Python < 3.9 support was dropped in favor of Python > 3.13.

Overall smoother authentication events

Authentication has been reworked. The old session-based login has been replaced completely with a modern token-based flow using OpenID Connect. The application service now has its own dedicated authentication client so logging in through Fedora Accounts is more consistent across other things.

If you are visiting for the first time, like it has been for years, your user account is automatically created without requiring any further steps.

Your privacy really matters

Email addresses are no longer visible across various API responses. They are hashed before being sent as an asynchronous response, for use by Libravatar. Users have the choice to opt out of the Fedora Badges application service entirely. In that case they will stop receiving badge awards for their community tasks.

RSS feeds are now limited to recent entries for performance and efficiency, so you can still stay informed about the latest incoming activities on the app.

For badge creators, maintainers and administrators

If you are a part of the team, the new interface gives you a full set of tools.

• Advanced database management front-end
• Creating and revoking awards from your users
• Creating and expiring invitations for the badges
• Creating and revoking authorizations from your users
• Creating and updating badges
• Creating and updating users

Access control is tiered - community members see the service experience, while authorized team members get the administrative controls they need.

Progress by the numbers

This revamp (codenamed स्वातंत्र्य or Svātantrya) represents a year of active work across the two repositories. These comprised 165 commits in Tahrir and 105 commits in Tahrir API. This occurred after many years of technical research and foundational work resulting in a leaner codebase with a net reduction of 13,320 lines of code.

Thank you to our amazing contributors

I mean it when I say, this revamp would have been dead in the water without the help of the following folks (in the alphabetical order):

• Akashdeep Dhar
• Aurelien Bompard
• Awwal Adetomiwa
• Chibuezem Marvinrose
• Daniel Mungai Chege
• Emma Kidney
• Gregory Sutcliffe
• John Iweh
• Joy Aruku
• Kevin Fenzi
• Michael Scherer
• Michal Konecny
• Olamide Peter Ojo
• Payal Sumbhe
• Shounak Dey
• Vanshikha Shri
• Yash Sheorey
• Xavier Lamien

And those, of course, from Flock 2026's workshop on the Fedora Badges Revamp Project.

• Ankur Sinha
• Cornelius Emase
• Emmanuel Seyman
• Guillermo Leiro
• Jakub Jelen
• Jona Azizaj
• Jonáš Hubený
• Justin Wheeler
• Mat Holmes
• Matthew Miller
• Misia Mary
• Shawn Dunn
• Vít Smolík
• Vittorio Cioe

This revamp project was in a development hell for quite some time. It was able to come out of it thanks to those listed above and countless others who have helped maintain the project for the past fourteen years or so. It is now time for me to pass this torch on to others who can help maintain this.

The project codebase currently lives on the Fedora Infrastructure's GitHub namespace. Please consider providing feedback and contributing changes to help maintain the projects. You can also hang out with us in the Fedora Badges chat room on Fedora Project's Matrix server to learn more.

Go on - give it a try!

The production deployment should be live by the time this article is publicly available. Head over to Fedora Badges to explore the refreshed experience. As it might be a little rough around the edges in the starting days, please bear with us while we hammer down the oddities with your useful reports.

Your input influences what comes next to the Fedora Badges application service. Please consider giving it a try right now and let us know what you think!

This article was originally posted on Fedora Magazine on 19 August 2026.

13 Sep 2026 6:30pm GMT

13 Sep 2026 9:55am GMT