Fedora-based Gaming Distro 'Nobara 41' Releases With a New Tweak Tool and a Change for NVIDIA Users

Many gamers on Linux often choose Nobara as their distro of choice for gaming on desktops and handhelds, as it offers an accessible and user-friendly experience.

Based on Fedora, it comes preloaded with important tools like Mesa, Wine, Steam, Lutris, etc. so gamers can dive straight into action without needing to manually configure anything.

The Nobara team is kicking off 2025 by being the first to release a Linux distro this year with Nobara 41. Let’s check it out! 😃

🆕 Nobara 41: What's New?

a screenshot of nobara 41 with fastfetch output being shown

Based on Fedora 41, the Nobara 41 release is powered by Linux kernel 6.12.7-200.fsync.fc41.x86_64 and has arrived with a number of significant changes.

Some key highlights include:

Nobara Tweak Tool
Upgraded Packages
User Interface Updates

Nobara Tweak Tool

In a bid to simplify system management, the developers have introduced the new Nobara Tweak Tool, which can be used to manage things like auto-mounting of partitions for Ext2/3/4, BTRFS, XFS, and NTFS, auto-updates for HTPC/handheld systems, and auto-updates for Decky Loader.

Upgraded Packages

a screenshot of nobara 41 with the application launcher open and nobara driver manager being highlighted

Existing packages and core apps also see many upgrades, with Nobara's Calamares implementation now being rebased on KaOS's fork to take advantage of the on-screen keyboard functionality and other features.

Similarly, there have been improvements to Mesa, where the Nobara team tackled some regressions that caused games to not run on Vulkan. Earlier, they used to ship Vulkan built from Git, but now they are sticking to the Vulkan drivers that come with Mesa releases.

Users still have the option to switch between the two, though.

For NVIDIA users, Nobara now defaults to using the open source driver, with a cuda-devel option being made available via the driver manager for those who need additional CUDA package support.

Moving on to the core apps, Nobara-welcome now offers discord-canary from the Flatpak beta channel as the default Discord installation option to facilitate screen sharing on Wayland sessions.

Then comes Nobara-updater, which can now be used to install RPM files by double-clicking, features an updated system tray icon, and can detect if HTPC packages are installed to disable GRUB boot timeout for a smooth console-like boot experience.

Finally, there's Nobara-driver-manager, which now provides asusctl drivers for ASUS users, the xpadneo driver as a kernel patch for supporting Xbox Elite and Xbox Elite v2 controllers over Bluetooth, a Broadcom wireless driver, and upstream Fedora AMD ROCm packages.

User Interface Updates

For the KDE-Nobara theme (default one on the Official variant), the developers have replaced the win7showdesktop plasmoid with the vanilla KDE version and have tweaked it with a simple white outlined circle that changes state when toggled. The screenshot above shows it in its default state (in the bottom-right).

There are many new Nobara 41 wallpapers too. You can give the changelog a read if you want to dive deeper into this release.

📥 Get Nobara 41

This release of Nobara is offered in five variants: Official (with a customized KDE Plasma experience), GNOME, KDE, Steam-HTPC, and Steam-Handheld. There are some alternative ISOs for NVIDIA users too.

All of those can be downloaded from the official website.

Nobara 41

For existing users, they can follow the upgrade guide to switch to this new release. If you decide to do this, make sure to back up all your important data.

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