Fedora 45 Beta Benchmarks Have Been Published
Performance tests show the latest Fedora release alongside Fedora 44 on Threadripper hardware.
Updated on Oct. 1, 2026 in Computers
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Phoronix has released performance benchmark results for the Fedora 45 Beta, offering a direct comparison against the current Fedora 44 release. Both operating systems were evaluated on identical System76 Thelio Major hardware to isolate software differences.
Why it matters
These benchmarks provide early insight into how Fedora 45 handles updated core components, helping users and developers understand the performance impact of version-specific upgrades. Understanding these shifts helps gauge how newer software stacks influence system efficiency on high-end workstation hardware.
Testing on a 64-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9980X with 128GB of DDR5-5600 memory, the evaluation compared Fedora 45 Beta against Fedora 44. Both versions utilized the Linux kernel 7.2, Mesa 26.2, and GCC 16.2.1, with the software gap defined by GNOME 51 versus 50 and Python 3.15 versus 3.14.
The players
Phoronix
A long-standing publication specializing in Linux hardware and software performance analysis.
Fedora
A Linux distribution developed by the Fedora Project and sponsored by Red Hat that focuses on early access to new technologies.
System76
A hardware manufacturer that builds workstations and laptops optimized for Linux operating systems.
The details
The testing environment utilized a System76 Thelio Major workstation equipped with AMD Radeon AI PRO R9700 graphics and a 1TB NVMe SSD. Fedora 45 Beta introduces Python 3.15-rc2—a release candidate version of the Python programming language—and the GNOME 51 desktop environment. Both systems retained the Btrfs file system, a copy-on-write file system designed for high fault tolerance and storage management.
Timeline
September 23, 2026: Fedora 44 system updates were frozen for testing.
October 1, 2026: Phoronix published the Fedora 45 Beta benchmark results.
The Tech Race
This report follows the standard release lifecycle pattern of the Fedora Project, providing community data during the beta testing phase. These benchmarks allow users to evaluate how Fedora 45 integrates updated environments against the established performance baseline of Fedora 44.
Users can review these benchmarks to determine if the transition to GNOME 51 and Python 3.15 fits their specific workstation workflows. The software is currently in beta, meaning these results represent performance before the final stable release.
The takeaway
These early benchmarks highlight the performance profile of the latest GNOME and Python iterations on current high-end hardware. Interested users should monitor for the final production release of Fedora 45 to verify how these beta metrics translate into stable day-to-day operation.
Further reading
For additional context on operating system performance, visit /tech/computers/.
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Is now a good time for you to upgrade your primary computer to beta software?
