Qubes OS 4.2.0 release notes

New features and improvements since Qubes 4.1

Dom0 upgraded to Fedora 37 (#6982)
Xen upgraded to version 4.17
Default Debian template upgraded to Debian 12
Default Fedora and Debian templates use Xfce instead of GNOME (#7784)
SELinux support in Fedora templates (#4239)
Several GUI applications rewritten (screenshots below), including:
- Applications Menu (also available as preview in R4.1) (#6665), (#5677)
- Qubes Global Settings (#6898)
- Create New Qube
- Qubes Update (#7443)
Unified grub.cfg location for both UEFI and legacy boot (#7985)
PipeWire support (#6358)
fwupd integration for firmware updates (#4855)
Optional automatic clipboard clearing (#3415)
Official packages built using Qubes Builder v2 (#6486)
Split GPG management in Qubes Global Settings
Qrexec services use new qrexec policy format by default (but old format is still supported) (#8000)
Improved keyboard layout switching

For a full list, including more detailed descriptions, please see here. Below are some screenshots of the new and improved Qubes GUI tools.

The new Qubes OS Update tool:

The new Qubes OS Global Config tool:

The new Qubes OS Policy Editor tool:

DomU firewalls have completely switched to nftables. Users should add their custom rules to the custom-input and custom-forward chains. (For more information, see issues #5031 and #6062.)
Templates restored in 4.2 from a pre-4.2 backup continue to target their original Qubes OS release repos. If you are using fresh templates on a clean 4.2 installation, or if you performed an in-place upgrade from 4.1 to 4.2, then this does not affect you. (For more information, see issue #8701.)

We strongly recommend updating Qubes OS immediately after installation in order to apply all available bug fixes.