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GNOME 42 Desktop Environment Is Now Available for Public Testing
The GNOME Project announced today the availability for public testing of the upcoming GNOME 42
desktop environment series in an alpha state pre-release version.
GNOME 42 alpha is now ready for public testing to give the Linux and Open Source community
an early taste of what they can expect from the next major release of one of the most
popular desktop environments for Linux-powered operating systems, used on desktop and mobile.
The biggest changes in the GNOME 42 release around the GTK 4 and libadwaita components.
Some of the default apps distributed as part of the GNOME stack have been ported to GTK
4 for a more modern look and extra functionality.
Here’s a first look at some of them.
On the other hand, most of the GNOME apps were ported to libadwaita to implement a dark
style preference.
This means that all GNOME apps ported to libadwaita will be able to provide both a light and a
dark theme.
Another important change in the upcoming GNOME 42 desktop environment is the replacement
of the Gedit text editor, which severed many of us well for years, with the more modern
GNOME Text Editor developed by Christian Hergert, who is also known for developing the GNOME
Builder app.
Some other noteworthy changes include a revamped screenshot utility, a new Preferences dialog
for the GNOME Boxes app, dual-installation support for the GNOME Maps app, a much-improved
GNOME Software package manager with many great additions, a new Thermometer widget in the
GNOME Weather app, lots of Wayland improvements in Mutter, as well as improved fonts.
Those of you interested in trying this alpha version of the upcoming GNOME 42 desktop environment
can use an unstable distribution like Fedora Rawhide or openSUSE Krypton.
More advanced users who want to compile GNOME 42 alpha can use either the official BuildStream
project snapshot that they can download from here (recommended as it provides a sandboxed
installation that won’t affect your host system) or the independent source packages
from here.
However, please keep in mind that this is a pre-release version, primarily intended
for testing and hacking purposes.
Being an alpha version, you should expect a lot of bugs and missing features.
The next development release in the GNOME 42 cycle will be the beta version, currently
scheduled for release on mid-February.
The final release of the GNOME 42 desktop environment is expected on March 23rd, 2022.
:: More ::
GNOME 42 Alpha Released With New Look, New Apps + More
GNOME 42 Alpha There are a LOT of GTK4/libadwaita apps shipping
in GNOME 42, many of which are already included, such as Files (aka Nautilus) 42 which has
a number of major UX changes:
Depending on where you sample GNOME 42 Alpha you may see newly coloured folder icons:
The disk usage analyser, calculator, and desktop clocks app also get GTK4 and Libadwaita port
treatment:
GNOME 42 also offers a new ‘Appearance’ panel.
From here, you can access the new standardised dark mode setting.
Web 42 (aka Epiphany) is among a score of apps in this alpha that respect the prefers-dark-mode
setting:
Additionally, the webkit-based browser updates the built-in PDF.js tool, adds a new network
error icon, improves its syntax highlighting, and enables an accelerated compositing mode
always.
URLs can now be opened via desktop actions, the web app delete button is now red, and
there’s been some cleanup in prep for a GTK4 port.
GNOME Maps also supports the new dark mode setting, tweaks its initial zoom levels, and
can now show icons for u-turns in turn-by-turn direction mode.
And a big one: GNOME Maps can now handle URLs (acting as a MIME handler for addresses):
GNOME Software 42 continues to refine its newer (and much more engaging) UI.
App descriptions benefit from additional markup support, system update info is relayed more
concisely, and ‘add ons’ once again show up where relevant.
A crop of GNOME Circle apps are now promoted in the homepage carousel too.
The latest GNOME OS Nightly also includes a couple of new apps: a GTK4 text editor called
Text Editor and a new terminal emulator called Console.
Neither of these tools are are as fully-featured as the ones we’re more familiar with (Gedit
and GNOME Terminal respectively) but are still good for basic usage — and Text Editor in
particular has persistent saving, which is something I love in many macOS text editors:
There are naturally a ton of under-the-hood changes but with so many moving pieces I’ll
save covering those until they’re a bit further along and we can talk about them with
more certainty.
Devs aren’t finished yet, either.
There are some potential big features to come, including a interactive new screenshot utility,
firmware security panels in the Settings app and, maybe some changes to the way background
are handled.
Do check out the full GNOME 42 Alpha change-log for reams more detail, and download the GNOME
OS Nightly build to try it out in Boxes, the GNOME virtualisation app (though note that
.iso is a hassle to run elsewhere).
GNOME 42 will feature in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS when released this April — but not all of
it.
New GTK4 ports of default apps like Nautilus will not be included, though GTK4 ports of
non-default apps, like GNOME Maps, are likely to be available to install from the repos.
:: More ::
GNOME 42 Alpha Released With A Lot Of GTK4 Porting, Other Improvements
The alpha release of GNOME 42 is now available for testing.
GNOME 42 is working up to its release in March while out today is the "42.alpha" milestone.
GNOME 42 components have been seeing a lot of work porting from GTK3 to GTK4, beginning
to make use of libadwaita, support for the dark mode / dark preference option, and a
variety of other improvements.
Some of the specific changes worth noting with GNOME 42 Alpha include:
- The Baobab disk usage analyzer has been ported to GTK4 and libadwaita.
- GNOME Calls now shows avatars in the call history and call display.
- The Epiphany web browser now supports the system dark preference, updates its bundled
PDF.js, has memory leak fixes, now always enables its accelerated compositing mode,
and has other improvements.
Epiphany also has preparations for moving to GTK4.
- The GDM log-in manager has udev updates for the NVIDIA Wayland support.
- GNOME Bluetooth has been ported to GTK4.
- GNOME Boxes for virtualization has introduced a new preferences dialog, porting some widgets
to libhandy, and other improvements.
- GNOME Builder adds a BuildStream plugin, Rubucop support, an experimental Clangd plug-in,
Clang-Format integration, Language Server Protocol handling improvements, support for
Intelphense and Blueprint language servers, and a variety of other improvements to this
integrated development environment.
- GNOME Calculator adds support for Flatpak development builds, migrates to GTK4, and
other improvements.
- GNOME Clocks has been ported to GTK4 and libadwaita.
- GNOME Desktop splits libgnome-desktop into gnome-desktop, gnome-rr, and gnome-bg components.
- The GNOME Disk Utility now supports the dark theme preference, prepares for GTK4,
and other updates.
- Various improvements to GNOME Maps.
- GNOME Software updates various user-inteface elements, provides a more informed System
Update progress, allows searching for extensions, adds new GNOME Circle apps to the featured
carousel, improves metadata support for Snaps, and other improvements.
- The Nautilus file manager improves the design of the file renaming user-interface, improves
the visuals of the file conflicts UI, supports searching by file creation time, adds compressed
archives to recent files, and ports over to GTK4.
- The Totem media player adds support for MPL subtitles.
- The many GNOME Shell and Mutter improvements for 42.alpha.
The GNOME 42 Alpha release announcement can be read on the devel-announce-list.
GNOME 42 will be found in Fedora Workstation 36 this spring.
Ubuntu 22.04 LTS is also planning to pick up GNOME 42 components not depending upon
GTK4.
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