Fedora Linux 45 has entered beta, bringing Linux kernel 7.2 and a release-candidate build of GNOME 51, alongside a notable change beneath the desktop: the legacy in-kernel text console has been replaced with kmscon, a userspace terminal emulator over a decade in the making. This matters because it modernises a part of Linux that has long lagged behind, adding better Unicode support, multiseat capability, richer colour display, and smooth on-the-fly text zooming, addressing long-standing limitations of the traditional console.

Kmscon was first announced in 2012 by developer David Herrmann, then kept alive for years by Peifeng Yu (Aetf) before the original team resumed work last year; it uses the kernel's DRM and KMS facilities to manage the display. Elsewhere, the release brings KDE Plasma 6.7, a browser-based installer with Stratis partitioning support, mandatory RPM package signing, vendor-consistent DNF5 upgrades, and updates to Fedora CoreOS including zram compression. A companion beta, Fedora Asahi Remix 45, adds preliminary support for Apple's M3-series chips, though 3D GPU acceleration and support for M4/M5 chips are not yet available.