Fedora Rawhide

Fedora Rawhide
Name	Fedora Rawhide
Developer	Red Hat
Family	Linux
Source model	Free and open-source
Latest status	Development branch
Kernel type	Monolithic (Linux)
Ui	GNOME, KDE Plasma, Xfce, Cinnamon, LXQt
License	Various free and open-source licenses

Fedora Rawhide is the rolling development branch of the Fedora Project, maintained by contributors from Red Hat, the Fedora Project, and the open-source community. It serves as the integration and testing ground for new versions of Fedora Workstation, Fedora Server, and Fedora Silverblue, receiving continuous updates from contributors working on Fedora, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, GNOME, KDE, and related ecosystems. Rawhide interacts with a wide range of upstream projects and distributions, providing early access to toolchain, desktop, and server innovations while feeding stabilizations into Fedora releases.

Overview

Rawhide functions as the continuous integration tree for Fedora contributors including Red Hat engineers, Fedora Council members, and maintainers of projects such as GNOME, KDE, Systemd, and DNF. It aggregates work from upstream projects like Linux kernel, GCC, LLVM, Mesa, Mesa 3D, Mesa drivers, PipeWire, Wayland, X.Org, systemd, NetworkManager, and PulseAudio replacements. Contributors coordinate via platforms including Pagure, Git, Bugzilla, Fedora Magazine, Fedora Discussion, and Fedora Join SIGs. Interaction with wider ecosystems such as Debian, Ubuntu, SUSE, Canonical, LibreOffice, Mozilla, Chromium, and OpenSSL helps Rawhide test interoperability before features reach Fedora Workstation, Fedora Server, Fedora IoT, and Fedora CoreOS.

Development and Release Model

Development follows a rolling model similar to Arch Linux and openSUSE Tumbleweed, with continuous updates merged into Rawhide branches on Fedora’s dist-git and layered through Koji build system and Fedora koji. Package maintainers, Fedora Ambassadors, Fedora Project Board members, and Fedora Engineering Steering Committee participants submit updates via Fedora Account System and Fedora Infrastructure. Builds are orchestrated using koji, koji web, mock, and Copr for isolated builds, while CI services like GitLab CI, Jenkins, and Fedora CI handle automated tests. Integration points include upstream projects such as LLVM, GCC, Python, Ruby, Perl, Node.js, Docker, Podman, Kubernetes, OpenShift, Ansible, and QEMU, ensuring compatibility across cloud platforms like Amazon EC2, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, OpenStack, and VMware vSphere.

Features and Packages

Rawhide carries cutting-edge packages and toolchains from projects including Linux kernel mainline, Mesa, Mesa RADV, Mesa ANV, AMDGPU, Intel Graphics, NVIDIA drivers, Nouveau, X.Org Server, Wayland compositor projects, Mutter, KWin, Plasma, GNOME Shell, GTK, Qt, and QtQuick. Desktop environments and applications arrive from projects like GNOME, KDE Applications, KDE Frameworks, KDE Plasma, Xfce, LXQt, Cinnamon, Budgie, LibreOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, Chromium, Evolution, GIMP, Inkscape, Audacity, VLC, FFmpeg, PipeWire, NetworkManager, systemd, PolicyKit, Flatpak, and rpm-ostree. Server and cloud stacks include PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, Redis, NGINX, Apache HTTP Server, OpenSSH, OpenSSL, BIND, Samba, D-Bus, SELinux, AppArmor interactions, Podman, Buildah, Skopeo, Kubernetes, and Ceph. Developer tooling features contributions from GCC, Clang, LLVM, Rust, Go, Meson, CMake, Ninja, Python packaging, Perl CPAN, RubyGems, Maven, Gradle, LXC, LXD, QEMU, KVM, Libvirt, and systemtap.

Stability and Testing

Stability is evaluated through automated test suites and human QA involving Fedora Quality Assurance, Fedora Test Days, Fedora QA volunteers, Fedora Labs, and Fedora Spins maintainers. Continuous integration pipelines run tests originating from upstream projects such as Kernel Selftests, LTP, Autotest, Phoronix Test Suite, oss-fuzz, AddressSanitizer, Valgrind, GDB integration, unit tests from GNOME, KDE, LibreOffice, Chromium, Mozilla, and packaging tests for rpm and DNF. Bug tracking and triage happen across Bugzilla, Bodhi updates, Pagure issues, GitHub, and GitLab, with incident response drawing on input from Fedora Council, Fedora Engineering Steering Committee, Red Hat Product Security, and CVE feeds from NIST NVD, Mitre, and security teams at Canonical and SUSE.

Installation and Usage

Rawhide is installable via dnf from official Fedora Rawhide repositories, via boot.iso images, Anaconda installer, or through rpm-ostree rollouts for Fedora Silverblue and Fedora CoreOS streams. Users may run Rawhide in containers with Podman, Docker, or systemd-nspawn for development and CI testing on platforms such as VirtualBox, QEMU/KVM, VMware Workstation, and cloud providers including Amazon EC2, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, and OpenStack. For desktop testing, users switch desktops among GNOME, KDE Plasma, Xfce, Cinnamon, LXQt, MATE, and Budgie while leveraging Flatpak from Flathub, Snapcraft alternatives, and toolbox environments. Documentation and community help appear on Fedora Docs, Fedora Magazine, Ask Fedora, Fedora Classroom, IRC channels, Matrix rooms, and Fedora Meetup events.

Contribution and Governance

Contributions come from package maintainers, Fedora Ambassadors, Fedora Council, Fedora Engineering Steering Committee, Fedora Project Board, and working groups including Fedora IoT SIG, Fedora Server Working Group, Fedora Desktop Working Group, and Fedora Security Team. Governance links to organizations and standards bodies such as Red Hat, IBM, CentOS Stream, Linux Foundation, Open Source Initiative, Free Software Foundation, Apache Software Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, Eclipse Foundation, and contributors from universities and research labs. Contribution workflows involve Fedora Account System, Bodhi for updates, Pagure for source hosting, Koji for builds, Fedora CI for tests, and Fedora Awards and Fedora Badges recognizing contributors. Security response coordinates with Mitre, NIST, CERT, Red Hat Product Security, and community triage via Bugzilla and CVE processes.

Category:Fedora