Ultramarine 44 "Flying Fish": Fedora's Friendliest Cousin Grows Up

Ultramarine 44 "Flying Fish": Fedora's Friendliest Cousin Grows Up

Table of contents:-

What's New Under the Bonnet

Hardware Support and the Road Ahead

In Conclusion

Ultramarine Linux has just launched its latest release, and it brings a genuinely meaningful shift in how the project ships new features, not just a fresh coat of paint. Built by Fyra Labs atop Fedora Linux, Ultramarine 44 (codenamed "Flying Fish") continues the distribution's mission of taking Fedora's technical foundations and making them approachable for everyday users, without sacrificing the parts that power users love to tinker with.

What's New Under the Bonnet

Ultramarine 44 is rebased on Fedora Linux 44 and ships with Linux kernel 7.0, bringing the latest upstream packages and security fixes along for the ride. The headline desktop story is KDE Plasma, which remains Ultramarine's recommended edition and now arrives at version 6.7, alongside the project's new "Union" theme engine and a batch of performance improvements.

The other editions have not been left behind. Budgie has finally completed its long-awaited move to Wayland, adopting the SDDM display manager and gaining a new Bluetooth application in the process. Fyra Labs notes this was the second-to-last edition still tied to the older X11 display server, so the switch marks a meaningful modernisation step.

Anyone upgrading from Ultramarine 43 will need to follow a short set of manual instructions on the project wiki to complete the transition to SDDM, since the team opted against an automatic migration for stability reasons.

GNOME Edition also picks up worthwhile refinements. A long-standing annoyance, the "Window is Ready" notification, has been fixed so that new windows simply focus themselves as they would in other desktop environments.

On the subject of trimming the fat, Pop!_Shell has been dropped from the GNOME edition entirely, as the extension is no longer maintained and saw very little real-world use. Those who still want it can install it manually via DNF or explore an alternative extension instead.

Perhaps the most structurally significant change in this release is Ultramarine's move to a new, semi-rolling release model. Major version bumps will still track Fedora's own release schedule, but rather than saving every improvement for the next big numbered release, the team now plans to ship smaller features and refinements throughout the year as they become ready. According to the project, this approach is designed to preserve momentum and avoid the stagnation that can build up between major releases.

The out-of-box setup tool, Taidan, has also been tidied up. Users can now set a hostname, enable the CachyOS kernel, and turn on MTU probing during initial setup, while the nightlight toggle has been removed and traditional installs have shifted back to bundled RPMs for a smoother, faster first-run experience. 

Command-line users get a new Nix installer tweak via the umcli tool, accessible with a single um tweaks enable nix command, and early groundwork has been laid for creating local bootc derivations for those experimenting with the upcoming Ultramarine Atomic edition.

Hardware Support and the Road Ahead

Ultramarine 44 also broadens its hardware ambitions. Fyra Labs has been collaborating with the ASUS Linux team, and Ultramarine is now recognised among the distributions recommended for ROG gaming hardware. Work is also underway on Apple Silicon Mac support, with the project adding tooling to convert an existing Fedora Asahi Remix installation over to Ultramarine, ahead of a hoped-for dedicated installable image. New wallpapers have joined the collection too, including an Earthset image captured by NASA astronaut Christina Koch during the Artemis 2 mission.

Looking forward, the team has flagged a public preview of Ultramarine Atomic and further hardware ports as priorities for the coming months, continuing the project's pattern of aligning major releases with Fedora's cadence while layering in continuous improvements between them. Existing users can move to Ultramarine 44 directly through their edition's app store, whether that's Discover on Plasma or Software on GNOME, Budgie and Xfce, though a backup beforehand is always sound practice.

In Conclusion

Ultramarine 44 shows a project that is maturing in how it works as much as in what it ships. The Wayland switch for Budgie, the polish across GNOME and Plasma, and the pivot to a steadier, more continuous release rhythm all point towards a distribution settling into its own identity: Fedora's technical rigour, wrapped in an experience built for newcomers and enthusiasts alike.

Disclaimer: All product names, logos, and trademarks mentioned, including Ultramarine Linux, Fyra Labs, Fedora, KDE Plasma, GNOME, Budgie, Xfce, and related marks, remain the property of their respective owners and are referenced here for identification purposes only. The Distrowrite Project has taken reasonable care to ensure the accuracy of this content at the time of writing, drawing solely on official Ultramarine Linux sources, but readers should verify details against the project's own documentation before making decisions. Always use open-source software responsibly and in accordance with its applicable licence terms.

References

• Ultramarine 44 release announcement

• Ultramarine download page

• Ultramarine Wiki, Welcome page

• Ultramarine community page

• DistroWatch.com, Ultramarine profile

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