How to Download Fedora in 2026: Fedora 44, the 45 Beta, Media Writer and Safe Install

To download Fedora, go to the official site, fedoraproject.org, and choose an edition. For a desktop PC or laptop, that is Fedora Workstation (GNOME) or Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop. Then download the ISO, or Fedora Media Writer, which downloads the image and writes a bootable USB drive for you on Windows, macOS or Linux. As of October 2026, the current stable release is Fedora 44, released April 28, 2026. Fedora 45 Beta came out on September 15, 2026, and the final Fedora 45 is scheduled for October 20, 2026. Fedora is free. The beta is generally usable but can have bugs, so pick Fedora 44 for a PC you depend on. A beta install updates to the final release through normal updates. Download only from fedoraproject.org, and check the checksum.

Ethan's son wanted to try Linux on his old laptop for a programming class, and a search for "Fedora download" turned up a page of mirror sites, torrent listings and a few download portals with large green buttons. He picked the biggest button, and Ethan, watching over his shoulder, stopped him and called Jake. Jake opened fedoraproject.org instead, picked Fedora Workstation, and downloaded Fedora Media Writer. It fetched the current release and wrote it to a spare USB drive in about fifteen minutes, with no separate ISO step. They booted the laptop from the drive, tried Fedora live without installing anything, and installed it once the Wi-Fi and touchpad were confirmed working. The whole job took an afternoon. This page covers where to download Fedora safely, which edition and version to choose, whether the beta is safe, how to make a USB drive and verify the download on Windows, and how to install, dual boot and keep Fedora up to date.

What Fedora is

Fedora Linux is a free, open-source operating system built by the Fedora Project, a community sponsored by Red Hat. It is known for shipping recent versions of software, close to what developers write, while staying stable enough for everyday use, and many of the technologies later adopted across Linux appear in Fedora first. Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, has used Fedora on his own machines, which is often mentioned when people describe its developer appeal.

Fedora releases a new version roughly every six months, in spring and autumn, and supports each one for about 13 months, so you always have time to move from one release to the next. It is the upstream for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which means features tested in Fedora later appear, in a more conservative form, in the enterprise version used by businesses.

Fedora is free in every sense: free to download, use, copy and modify, with no paid edition or license key. Software comes from Fedora's own repositories and, if you choose, from Flathub and other third-party repositories that Fedora can enable during setup.

It suits developers, students, people who want a clean and current desktop, and anyone curious about Linux who is comfortable with a bit of learning. For those who want the very gentlest start, Linux Mint or Ubuntu are sometimes recommended instead, and the comparison section below covers that choice.

Current Fedora versions in October 2026

Fedora's release schedule moves quickly, so it helps to know where things stand. This table shows the releases that matter in October 2026.

Release dates can slip by a week or two when the Fedora Project finds blocking bugs, which it does openly. Check the front page of fedoraproject.org for the current release when you read this; the download pages always offer the newest stable version first, with the beta clearly labeled.

Fedora 45 Beta includes newer toolchains and libraries, such as Python 3.15 and GCC 16, which matter to developers who want to test their software against what is coming. For everyone else, the difference between 44 and 45 is mostly newer desktop and app versions, and waiting for the final release costs nothing.

Older guides, including the 2019 version of this page, pointed to Fedora 31 Beta. Releases that old are long out of support and should not be installed on a PC connected to the internet; the Fedora archive keeps them only for historical and testing purposes.

How Fedora's release cycle works

Fedora aims for two releases a year, one in late April or May and one in late October or November. Each goes through a predictable sequence: a period of development called Rawhide, where new software lands continuously; a branch for the coming release; a Beta, about a month or two before the final date; and the final release, once the release criteria are met and no blocking bugs remain. The project holds formal go or no-go meetings before each milestone, which is why dates sometimes slip by a week.

Each release is supported until about four weeks after the release that comes two versions later, roughly 13 months in total. In practice, that means every Fedora user upgrades about once a year at minimum, or twice a year to stay current. Upgrades in place are routine, as described below, so this is less work than it sounds.

Rawhide, the rolling development branch, is available too, but it is for Fedora developers and testers who accept daily breakage. It is not a beta and not a sensible choice for a working PC.

Should you wait for Fedora 45?

If you are installing Fedora in early October 2026, the final Fedora 45 release is only a few weeks away, which raises a fair question: install 44 now, or wait? For most people, installing Fedora 44 now is the better answer. It is stable, well tested, and fully supported until several weeks after Fedora 46 arrives in 2027, and upgrading to 45 later takes an hour at most, through the Software app.

Waiting makes sense mainly if your hardware is very new, since newer releases carry newer kernels and drivers, or if you specifically need software versions that only 45 has. In those cases, the beta in a virtual machine or on a spare drive is a good way to check your hardware now, then install the final release when it ships. If your hardware works well in the Fedora 44 live session, there is no reason to wait.

Which Fedora edition to download

Fedora comes in several editions and variants, each built for a purpose. For a desktop or laptop, the choice is mainly between two editions.

Fedora Workstation uses the GNOME desktop: clean, modern, with an activities overview and a focus on simplicity. It is Fedora's flagship desktop and the default recommendation, and it is what Jake installed for Ethan's son.

Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop uses KDE Plasma, which looks more like Windows out of the box, with a taskbar and start menu, and is highly customizable. It became a full Fedora edition in 2025, on equal footing with Workstation. People moving from Windows often feel at home in it faster.

Beyond those, Fedora Server is for servers, Fedora IoT for small devices, Fedora Cloud for cloud images, and Fedora CoreOS for container hosts. The Atomic desktops, such as Silverblue with GNOME and Kinoite with KDE, are versions where the core system is read-only and updated as a whole image, with apps installed mainly as Flatpaks; they are very robust and easy to roll back, but work a little differently from traditional Linux. Spins offer other desktops, such as Xfce, Cinnamon and LXQt, and Labs package Fedora for purposes such as games, design or security testing.

All editions share the same Fedora base and package repositories, so software available on one is generally available on the others, and you can install another desktop later if you change your mind.

Fedora Atomic desktops explained

Fedora's Atomic desktops, Silverblue with GNOME, Kinoite with KDE, and others, take a different approach to the operating system. The core system is an image that is updated as a whole, like a phone's operating system update, rather than as hundreds of individual packages. The system files are read-only during normal use, so neither you nor a misbehaving program can break them, and each update is installed alongside the previous version, so you can roll back by choosing the older version at startup.

Apps are installed mainly as Flatpaks, which run separately from the core system, and development tools go into Toolbx containers. Traditional packages can still be layered onto the image when needed, though the Atomic approach encourages keeping that to a minimum. The result is a desktop that is very hard to break and very easy to recover, which suits people who want reliability above all, and also families and schools.

The trade-off is a learning curve for people used to installing anything with dnf, and occasional software that expects a traditional system. For a first Fedora install, Workstation or KDE is the simpler start; if you later find yourself valuing stability over tinkering, Silverblue or Kinoite is easy to try in a virtual machine.

How to download Fedora safely

1. Open fedoraproject.org in your browser. Type the address yourself rather than clicking search ads, which sometimes lead to imitation download sites.
2. Choose your edition, for example Fedora Workstation, and select its download button.
3. On the download page, choose Fedora Media Writer for your operating system if you want the easiest path to a USB drive, or download the ISO for your PC's architecture, almost always x86_64 for Intel and AMD PCs, or AArch64 for ARM devices.
4. If you downloaded the ISO, also download the CHECKSUM file listed next to it, so you can verify the download.
5. Save the files somewhere easy to find, such as Downloads.

The download comes from the Fedora mirror network, servers run by universities and companies around the world, picked automatically for speed. Those mirrors are part of the official system; it is third-party "download portals" that repackage or wrap the ISO in installers that you should avoid. Torrents are also offered officially on Fedora's site, for those who prefer them.

The Workstation ISO is a few gigabytes. On a typical home connection, it downloads in minutes; Media Writer shows progress as it downloads and then writes the drive.

Make a bootable USB drive with Fedora Media Writer

Fedora Media Writer is the official tool for putting Fedora on a USB drive, and on Windows it is the simplest way. It downloads the right image, writes it, and checks the result.

1. Download Fedora Media Writer for Windows from fedoraproject.org and install it.
2. Plug in a USB drive of at least 8 GB. Everything on it will be erased, so copy off anything you need first.
3. Open Media Writer and choose Automatic download, then select the edition and version. Or choose Select .iso file to use an ISO you already downloaded.
4. Select your USB drive from the list, then Download and Write or Write.
5. Wait for the download and write to finish. Media Writer verifies the data, and when it says it is finished, close it and remove the drive safely.

Other USB tools also work with Fedora ISOs, including widely used free image writers, as long as they write the image in its raw or DD mode. Fedora's ISOs are hybrid images designed to be written directly to a drive. Simply copying the ISO file onto a USB drive does not make it bootable.

After you finish with Fedora, the USB drive can be restored to normal use: Media Writer offers to restore it, or you can reformat it in Windows' Disk Management.

Verify your Fedora download on Windows

Verifying the download confirms that the ISO is exactly what Fedora published, not damaged in transit or tampered with. Media Writer does this for you; if you downloaded the ISO yourself, check it before writing it.

Open Command Prompt in your Downloads folder and run certutil -hashfile yourfile.iso SHA256, replacing yourfile.iso with your ISO's exact file name, which starts with Fedora and ends in .iso. Windows prints a long string of letters and numbers, the SHA-256 hash. Open the CHECKSUM file you downloaded, in Notepad, and find the line for your ISO. The two values must match exactly. PowerShell's Get-FileHash .\yourfile.iso -Algorithm SHA256 does the same.

The CHECKSUM file is itself signed by Fedora with its GPG keys, and verifying that signature proves the checksums came from Fedora. That step requires GPG software, which is standard on Linux and available for Windows; Fedora's download page links to the instructions and the current keys. For most home users, matching the hash and downloading from fedoraproject.org over HTTPS is already strong protection. Our guide to verifying ISO checksums on Windows walks through certutil in detail with another Linux distribution.

Is the Fedora beta safe to use?

Fedora betas are feature-complete previews released about a month before the final version, so that people can test them and report bugs. They are generally usable day to day; many Fedora fans run the beta on their main machines. But "generally usable" is not "safe for everything": betas can have bugs that crash apps, break hardware support for some PCs, or occasionally cause trouble during updates.

Use the beta if you want to try new features early, test your software or hardware before the final release, or help the project by reporting problems, and if you can tolerate fixing or reinstalling something. A virtual machine or a spare PC is the ideal place.

Use the stable release for a PC you depend on, a PC used by family members, or your first Linux install. Fedora 44 is the right choice for most people in October 2026, and Fedora 45 will be offered as a normal upgrade a few weeks after its final release.

If you do install the beta, there is a nice property: it becomes the final release through normal updates. You do not need to reinstall when Fedora 45 ships; running updates moves the beta to the released version. Keep updating regularly during the beta period, since fixes arrive frequently.

Will Fedora run on your PC?

Fedora runs on most PCs from the last ten years or so. For a comfortable desktop experience with Workstation or KDE, plan on a 64-bit processor, at least 4 GB of memory, with 8 GB or more recommended for modern browsers and development tools, and at least 20 GB of free drive space, more if you install many apps. Fedora no longer supports 32-bit PCs.

Fedora supports UEFI Secure Boot, so on most modern PCs you do not need to turn Secure Boot off. Wi-Fi and graphics generally work out of the box on Intel and AMD hardware. NVIDIA graphics work with the open-source driver included in Fedora, and many users install NVIDIA's own driver from a third-party repository, such as RPM Fusion, for better performance in games and some apps. Some Wi-Fi chips, particularly certain Broadcom models, need extra drivers from third-party repositories too.

The best test is the live session: boot from the USB drive, choose to try Fedora, and check Wi-Fi, sound, display, touchpad, webcam and sleep before installing. Ethan's son's laptop passed everything except the fingerprint reader, which he did not need.

Fedora on an older PC

Fedora can give an older Windows PC a second life, especially one that cannot run Windows 11. The main limits are memory and storage speed rather than the processor. With 4 GB of memory, Workstation and KDE run but feel tight once a browser has several tabs open; 8 GB is comfortable. A PC with a hard drive will be noticeably slower than one with an SSD, and replacing the drive with an inexpensive SSD is the single best upgrade for an old machine, under any operating system.

For PCs with little memory, the lighter desktops in Fedora's spins, such as Xfce or LXQt, use fewer resources than GNOME or KDE and keep older hardware responsive. They are installed the same way, from their own pages on Fedora's site. The software available is the same; only the desktop differs.

Very old PCs with 32-bit processors cannot run current Fedora at all, since Fedora builds only for 64-bit systems. For those, a lightweight distribution that still supports 32-bit hardware is the only Linux option, though at that age, retiring the PC is often the honest answer.

Try Fedora without installing: live USB, virtual machine and WSL

Live USB. Booting from the Media Writer drive starts a full Fedora desktop running from the USB drive, without touching your hard drive. Changes are lost when you shut down, and it runs slower than an installed system, but it is perfect for checking hardware. To boot from USB, restart the PC and press its boot menu key, often F12, F11, F9 or Esc, depending on the manufacturer, or hold Shift while selecting Restart in Windows and choose Use a device.

Virtual machine. Running Fedora inside Windows with Hyper-V, available on Windows 11 Pro, or with free virtualization apps, is the safest way to explore it, or to test the beta. Give the virtual machine at least 4 GB of memory and 30 GB of disk, and point it at the ISO you downloaded.

WSL. Fedora is available as an official distribution for the Windows Subsystem for Linux, which gives you Fedora's command line and package manager inside Windows without a desktop. Run wsl --list --online in a terminal to see the Fedora versions offered, then install one by name with wsl --install. This is ideal for development tools and scripts. Our guide to installing WSL covers setup and common errors.

Fedora on ARM devices and Macs

Fedora is built for ARM processors as well as Intel and AMD, under the name AArch64. ARM images are offered on the download pages for Workstation, Server and other editions, and they run on many ARM single-board computers and servers, including popular Raspberry Pi models, with varying levels of hardware support; check Fedora's documentation for your specific board before buying hardware for it.

Apple Silicon Macs need special support because their hardware is undocumented. The Fedora Asahi Remix, produced by the Asahi Linux project in collaboration with Fedora, is the recommended way to run Fedora on those Macs, installed from macOS with the project's own installer, alongside macOS. Support for newer Mac models arrives gradually, so check the project's site for your model. Older Intel-based Macs can run standard Fedora from a USB drive like any PC, though some Wi-Fi chips in them need extra drivers.

Windows on ARM laptops are a newer frontier. Linux support for them is developing, and results vary by model; for now, a virtual machine or WSL on the Windows side is the more reliable way to use Fedora on those devices.

Install Fedora

Fedora's installer is straightforward. From the live session, select Install Fedora or the install option on the welcome screen. Choose your language and keyboard, then the installation destination: the drive Fedora should use. You can let the installer use the whole drive, which erases everything on it, or, for dual booting, use free space you prepared in advance. Set your time zone, create your user account and password, and start the installation. It usually takes 10 to 20 minutes.

After installation, remove the USB drive and restart. Fedora's first-boot setup may ask about privacy settings and whether to enable third-party repositories. Enabling them adds access to some popular software, such as certain drivers and apps from Flathub, that Fedora does not ship itself for licensing or policy reasons. Most desktop users enable them.

Back up anything important before installing, especially if you are resizing partitions. Installing an operating system is generally safe, but a mistake in choosing the drive can erase data, and a backup turns that from a disaster into an inconvenience.

Dual boot Fedora with Windows 11

Keeping Windows and adding Fedora alongside it is popular and works well, with a few precautions.

1. Back up your Windows files.
2. Save your BitLocker recovery key, found in your Microsoft account or in Windows under Manage BitLocker, since changes to the boot setup can trigger a BitLocker recovery prompt.
3. Turn off Fast Startup in Windows, in Control Panel, Power Options, Choose what the power buttons do, so Windows fully shuts down and does not leave its drive in a half-hibernated state.
4. Make free space in Windows: open Disk Management, right-click your Windows partition, and choose Shrink Volume to free at least 40 to 50 GB for Fedora. Leave the freed space unallocated.
5. Boot from the Fedora USB drive and install, choosing the free space as the destination, not the whole drive.
6. After installing, the PC shows a menu at startup to choose Fedora or Windows.

Fast Startup and hibernation matter because a Windows drive left in a hibernated state should not be changed from another system; our guides to Fast Startup and hybrid sleep explain why. With those off and a backup made, dual booting is routine.

After installing: the first things to do

Start by updating: open Software in Workstation or Discover in KDE and install updates, or open a terminal and run sudo dnf upgrade --refresh, then restart. A fresh install often has a few hundred megabytes of updates waiting.

Next, install the apps you need. Fedora's Software app combines Fedora's own packages and Flatpaks from Flathub, if you enabled third-party repositories. Many people also enable RPM Fusion, a long-standing community repository that provides software Fedora cannot include, such as some media codecs and NVIDIA's driver; follow the instructions on RPM Fusion's own site. Browsers, office suites, development tools and media players are all a search away.

If you are new to Linux, spend a little time with the terminal basics: dnf installs and removes packages, and errors such as a package not being found usually mean a different package name or a missing repository. Our guide to "Unable to locate package" covers the equivalent problem on Debian-based systems and the reasoning carries over.

Gaming on Fedora

Gaming on Linux has improved enormously, and Fedora is a capable gaming system. Steam is available on Fedora through RPM Fusion or as a Flatpak from Flathub, and its built-in compatibility layer, Proton, runs a large share of Windows games on Linux. Many games run as well as on Windows; some, especially those with certain anti-cheat systems, do not run at all, so check a game's status on community compatibility databases before relying on Fedora for it.

Graphics drivers matter most. AMD and Intel graphics work well with the open-source drivers included in Fedora, with no extra steps. For NVIDIA cards, NVIDIA's own driver from RPM Fusion usually gives the best gaming performance; follow RPM Fusion's NVIDIA instructions carefully, including the step for Secure Boot, which requires signing the driver or enrolling a key.

Fedora also has a Games Lab, a version with a selection of open-source games preinstalled, which is a fun option for children's PCs. For a dedicated gaming PC, some people prefer distributions built specifically for gaming, which are often based on Fedora's Atomic technology, but standard Fedora Workstation or KDE with Steam is a perfectly good starting point.

Fedora for developers

Developers are Fedora's core audience, and it shows. Fedora ships recent versions of programming languages, compilers and libraries, so a new release usually brings the latest Python, GCC, LLVM, Go and Rust versions within months of their release. Installing them is a single dnf command, such as sudo dnf install python3 gcc golang.

Podman, Fedora's container engine, runs containers without a background daemon and without root access, and can run most Docker images and commands. Toolbx, included in Fedora Workstation and the Atomic desktops, creates containers that feel like part of your system, with your home folder and terminal, so you can install development tools in an isolated environment without changing the main system. It is especially useful on Silverblue and Kinoite, where the main system is read-only.

Popular editors and IDEs are available as packages from their makers' repositories or as Flatpaks, and Fedora's documentation covers setting up common languages. For students like Ethan's son, Fedora means the versions used in class are usually already there, without hunting for newer packages.

Upgrade to a new Fedora release

When a new Fedora version is released, you can upgrade without reinstalling. On Workstation, the Software app shows a banner offering the new release a few weeks after it ships; select Download, then Restart & Upgrade. On KDE, Discover offers the same.

From the terminal, the standard method is to fully update, then download the new release and reboot into the upgrade:

sudo dnf upgrade --refresh
sudo dnf system-upgrade download --releasever=45
sudo dnf offline reboot

Replace 45 with the release you are upgrading to, and run the commands only after that release is final, unless you deliberately want the beta. The upgrade runs during the reboot and takes from 10 minutes to about an hour. Fedora supports upgrading by one or two releases at a time; moving across more than that is better done in steps or by reinstalling.

Fedora vs Ubuntu vs Linux Mint

The three most common choices for a first Linux desktop differ mainly in pace and polish. Fedora ships recent software every six months, with a clean, upstream GNOME or KDE desktop, and is favored by developers and people who like current technology. Ubuntu offers long-term support releases every two years, maintained for five years or more, plus interim releases, and has the largest community and commercial software support. Linux Mint, based on Ubuntu, focuses on a familiar, Windows-like desktop and stability, and is often recommended to complete beginners.

None is wrong. For a student or developer who wants up-to-date tools and does not mind upgrading once or twice a year, Fedora is an excellent choice. For a parent's PC that should simply keep working for years with minimal changes, a long-term support release of Ubuntu or Mint has the edge. Ethan's son chose Fedora because his class used recent Python versions, and Fedora had them without extra steps.

Wayland, X11 and older apps

Fedora was one of the first distributions to use Wayland, the modern replacement for the old X11 display system, by default. Current Fedora Workstation and KDE Plasma run on Wayland, and recent releases have removed the separate X11 desktop sessions for GNOME and KDE. For users, Wayland generally means smoother graphics, better handling of high-resolution and multiple monitors, and stronger isolation between apps.

Older apps written for X11 still run, through a compatibility layer called XWayland that Fedora includes, so most software works without anyone noticing. A few specialized tools that capture the whole screen or control other windows behave differently under Wayland and may need updated versions or alternatives, which is worth checking if you rely on particular screen recording, remote desktop or automation software.

Getting help with Fedora

Fedora has an active community and good documentation. The official Fedora Docs site covers installation, upgrades and administration in detail, with guides for each release. The Fedora Discussion forum, linked from fedoraproject.org, is the place to ask questions, including an Ask Fedora section for user help, where volunteers and Fedora contributors answer.

When asking for help, include your Fedora version, which edition you use, your hardware for hardware problems, and the exact error message. For many problems, a search including the Fedora version and the error text finds an existing answer. Fedora's quick release cycle means old answers can be out of date, so prefer recent ones, especially for upgrades and drivers.

Older Fedora releases and why not to use them

Every Fedora release ever made is kept in the Fedora archive, so you can still find Fedora 31, the version this page once covered, and much older ones. They are there for history, research and testing old software, not for use on a PC you browse the internet with. An unsupported release receives no security updates, and its software repositories eventually move to the archive, so even installing apps becomes awkward.

If you have an old Fedora install, the best path is usually a fresh install of the current release, after backing up your home folder, since upgrading across many releases in steps is slow and more likely to hit problems. If you need an old release for a specific reason, run it in a virtual machine without network access where possible.

Avoid fake Fedora downloads

Popular free software attracts imitation sites, and Fedora is no exception. Fake download portals offer "Fedora download" buttons that deliver adware-laden installers or modified images, and search ads sometimes point to them. The defenses are simple: type fedoraproject.org yourself, use Fedora Media Writer, and verify checksums for ISOs you download manually.

Be equally careful with "Fedora for Windows" installers, which do not exist officially apart from Media Writer and WSL, and with prebuilt virtual machine images from unknown sources, which could contain anything. Our guide to installing programs safely covers spotting imitation sites in general.

A five-step checklist before you start

Before downloading, a short checklist saves most first-install headaches. First, decide where Fedora will live: a whole spare PC, a second drive, free space beside Windows, or a virtual machine. Second, back up anything on that PC you care about, and for Windows PCs with encryption, save the BitLocker recovery key. Third, pick the edition: Workstation, KDE Plasma, or a lighter spin for older hardware. Fourth, have a USB drive of 8 GB or more that you can erase, and an internet connection for Media Writer. Fifth, plan to test in the live session before installing, checking Wi-Fi, sound, display and sleep.

With those five done, the rest is the straightforward part: download, write, boot, test and install. Jake gives this list to anyone who asks him about trying Linux, and it has turned more than one nervous afternoon into a calm one.

Frequently asked questions

Downloading Fedora is simple when you stick to the official route: fedoraproject.org, the edition that fits, and Fedora Media Writer to make the USB drive, with a checksum check for any ISO you download yourself. In October 2026, Fedora 44 is the stable choice and Fedora 45 Beta is there for testers, with the final release due on October 20. Try it live, install it alone or beside Windows, and upgrade in place twice a year. Ethan's son finished his programming class on Fedora and now helps his friends install it.

Revision note. Written October 3, 2026, replacing our 2019 Fedora 31 Beta download page with a complete guide to downloading Fedora today. It covers current versions, editions, safe downloads, Fedora Media Writer, checksum verification on Windows, whether the beta is safe, requirements, live, virtual machine and WSL options, installation, dual booting with Windows 11, first steps, upgrades, comparisons and fake download sites. May your first boot find every driver.