GloriousEggroll has announced the release of Nobara Linux 41 based on Fedora Linux 41.
The base has been upgraded to Fedora 41, with the Calamares installer restructured on the KaOS Linux fork to enhance features and incorporate on-screen keyboard functionality. The network check has been eliminated, enabling the installation of Nobara offline from any downloaded ISO. The Mesa driver has been updated to include the latest stable Vulkan drivers, and libgallium has been divided into two distinct versions — mesa-libgallium and mesa-libgallium-freeworld. The Nvidia driver is now included by default, with manual adjustments necessary for older GPUs. The Nobara-Updater identifies the installation of htpc packages and deactivates the grub boot timeout to enhance the console-like experience. The system tray icon for the update checker has been updated to a streamlined black or white design, and click-to-install functionality for RPMs has been introduced. The Nobara-tweak-tool has been implemented to manage the auto-mounting of partitions, facilitate auto-updating on HTPC and handheld systems, and oversee input controller packages. The tweak tool has received updates that include bug reports and fixes, and it can be unchecked to prevent the automatic reinstallation of inputplumber.
Nobara Linux 41
Happy New Year!
Along with the new year comes a new version of Nobara! We’re happy to announce that Nobara 41 has officially been released.
We have yet another fun list of changes that hopefully benefit everyone:
Base:
- Nobara base updated to Fedora 41
Calamares installer:
- Rebased on top of KaOS linux fork for more feature options as well as on-screen keyboard functionality.
- Toggle added for on-screen keyboard
- On-screen keyboard now comes up within the installer instead of taking up half the screen
- Network check has been removed. Nobara can be installed completely offline from any ISO downloaded.
Mesa:
- We have noticed with a few benchmark videos throughout the past year that sometimes games may not run with Vulkan at all (very rare). This can happen as a regression because we shipped Vulkan built from git. Moving forward we have changed that. Nobara will now ship with the latest stable vulkan drivers that come with the latest mesa release, HOWEVER, we’ve added mesa-vulkan-drivers-git to the driver manager so users can easily swap back and forth between the two whenever they please. This should allow benchmarkers on a fresh install to have more stable results while still allowing users the choice of using drivers regularly built from git.
- We’ve separated libgallium into it’s own package which ships as two versions — mesa-libgallium and mesa-libgallium-freeworld. The reason for this is to fix a bug where if mesa is compiled without x264/x265 codecs and then you add the mesa-va/vdpau-freeworld packages that provide them, there would be tearing in the recording. With mesa-libgallium-freeworld compiled with the codecs and provided alongside the other freeworld packages the bug is fixed.
Nvidia:
- We now ship the open nvidia driver by default. If your GPU is older than turing but still supported by the closed driver you will need to make manual changes:
https://wiki.nobaraproject.org/en/graphics/nvidia/supported-gpusNobara-Updater:
- Detects if htpc packages are installed and disables grub boot timeout to provide smoother console-like htpc/handheld experience
- Corrects AMD ROCm packages to Fedora’s versions if installed. We now use upstream Fedora’s ROCm packages as they now work with Blender and Davinci Resolve
- We have changed the update checker systemtray icon from the ugly yellow to a simple black or white icon that users can change light/dark via its right-click options menu.
- We have implemented click-to-install on RPMs. If you download an RPM that is compatible with Fedora, double clicking it will now prompt the user with a very simple GUI for installing or updating the package.
Nobara-tweak-tool:
- This is a new tool that has been introduced which controls a few things:
- It is able to control auto-mounting of partitions with a simple click of a check box. By default Nobara will attempt to auto-mount any partition for common partition types (ext2/3/4, btrfs, xfs, ntfs). We originally introduced the automounting in N40 without a tool to control it, only a config file. Several months later we held an ongoing poll to see whether it was useful or detremental to users, at first most power users disliked it, so we disabled it for mounting by default, however as time went on more and more users voted for it on the pole. Ultimately after discussion with the community it was decided that it’s good to have the automount, but to have an easier way to manage it, so we introduced the tweak tool a a way to handle it via simple check box. Not only that but over the months of use the automount script went through several renditions thanks to great community members providing helpful bug reports and submitting fixes as well.
https://wiki.nobaraproject.org/general-usage/troubleshooting/mounting-automounting-disk-drives- It is able to control auto-updating on htpc/handheld systems. In late F40 we introduced an auto-update screen that runs auto-updating in the background. This is again for a more seamless console-like experience on the htpc/handheld editions. If you run one of those editions you can enable or disable auto-updates using the nobara tweak tool via check box.
- It is able to control input controller packages on htpc/handheld systems. By default Nobara ships with InputPlumber enabled and used by default. This is the standard tool we use for handling handheld controls, but we enable it by default for normal systems as well because it has the capability to allow the users to fake a controller as a different type, which is very useful when you need to remap certain things or have offbrand 3rd party controllers. In the event that you decide you’d rather use something like HHD, nobara tweak tool has a box you can uncheck that will disable auto-reinstallation of inputplumber.
- It is able to control auto-updating of DeckyLoader. In the htpc/handheld editions of Nobara we have installed DeckyLoader by default as well as several useful plugins. DeckyLoader is able to update itself internally, but in the case that you do not want DeckyLoader installed, you can use the nobara tweak tool to stop it from being reinstalled. We plan to continue to expand the tweak tool as needed for user purposes and hope it will make things easier for new users moving forward.
Nobara-driver-manager:
- As mentioned, AMD ROCm packages (rocm-meta) have been changed from upstream official AMD to Fedora-shipped versions.
- mesa-vulkan-drivers-git option now available as a choice instead of force-installed.
- Nvidia users will now have a ‘cuda-devel’ option for additional CUDA package support. This will install all the additional CUDA support packages.
- asusctl now provided to ASUS users
- xone driver is currently limited only to the xbox one wireless dongle as it currently has a bug upstream with the gip module that causes a system freeze: https://github.com/dlundqvist/xone/issues/14
- xpadneo driver has now been integrated as a kernel patch and is limited to xbox elite and xbox elite v2 over bluetooth. All other xbox controllers go through the standard xpad driver.
- broadcom wireless driver option added to driver manager
Nobara-welcome:
- Now offers discord-canary from the flatpak beta channel as the default offered discord option. This is because the canary version from the beta supports screen sharing under wayland.
- Now offers blender from fedora repository because it now allows recording h264 via ffmpeg.
- The Davinci Resolve wizard has been completely reworked and should make it much easier for users to both install and/or update Davinci Resolve while automatically performing the required changes to run it.
Nobara-package-manager (yumex-ng):
- Nobara package manager is now able to easily search/install/remove/manage flatpaks without issue and has been able to do so since N40. This is meant as a desktop-agnostic replacement instead of relying on gnome-software or kde’s plasma-discover
Flatpak:
- Flatpak-beta channel now added to the list of default installed and enabled flatpak repositories
- On the very first user login a simple flatpak search will run in the background, this is done to populate metadata for Nobara package manager.
HTPC/Handheld:
- Now installs with auto-updating enabled and provides a simple loading bar screen when auto-updating is being performed
- Now installs with no boot grub menu timeout, you won’t see grub. Again this is done for a smoother console-like experience
- Now ships with InputPlumber installed and enabled by default. The default settings should be fine for most users however if you prefer to have more control we recommend installing opengamepadui and using the controller configuration frontend within it for use with InputPlumber.
- Now ships with DeckyLoader installed by default along with the following plugins: Web Browser, Decky Terminal, Wine Cellar, MangoPeel, ProtonDB Badges, QuickLaunch, SimpleDeckyTDP
- “Host Remote Play” has been removed as it never worked properly. Instead we’ve added Sunshine+Moonlight: https://app.lizardbyte.dev/Sunshine/?lng=en-US
Theming:
- In the KDE-Nobara theme we’ve retired the win7showdesktop plasmoid and returned to the KDE shipped version, however we’ve swapped the icon with a simple white outlined circle or white filled in circle depending on which mode is toggled. It of course also uses black for light modes. Part of the reason we did this is because with the update to KDE6 the win7showdesktop bar just looks awful due to changes in default bar margins and the floating mode. There’s no need for it anymore.
- New N41 Wallpapers have been added:
Kernel:
- As noted we’ve added the xpadneo bluetooth driver as a kernel patch, however it is restricted only to xbox elite and xbox elite v2 devices because those devices do not work with the standard xpad driver. All other xbox controllers still use the standard xpad driver when connected via bluetooth.
- The lenovo legion patches have been temporarily disabled as we’ve found they caused ASUS laptops to lose fan curve controls. If needed it is available via DKMS module: https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/mrduarte/LenovoLegionLinux. We may add it to the driver manager for easier use in the future.
Wiki:
We’ve dumped our old wiki and troubleshooting feed in favor of a new wiki which is hopefully easier to navigate, search, and use overall: https://wiki.nobaraproject.org. All information from the previous sources has been migrated over to the new wiki and updated to reflect the current release information.
