After six months of development desktop environment release . Compared to the last release, about 28 changes were made, in which 901 developers took part. To quickly evaluate the capabilities of GNOME 3.38, specialized Live builds based on ΠΈ . GNOME 3.38 is also included in pre-release Fedora 33.
Starting with the release of GNOME 3.38, the project began to form its own prepared under the initiative . The image is intended for installation in virtual machines running GNOME Boxes 3.38 and is mainly aimed at testing and debugging the developed features and applications, as well as experimenting with the user interface.
For the next release of GNOME number 40.0 instead of 3.40 to get rid of the first digit "3", which has lost its relevance in the current development process. Version 4.0 for GNOME was decided not to be used in order to avoid confusion and overlap with GTK 4.0. Interim corrective releases will be delivered under the numbers 40.1, 40.2, 40.3β¦ Every six months a new major release will be formed, increasing the number by 1. That is. GNOME 40 will be followed by GNOME 2021 in Fall 41, followed by GNOME 2022 in Spring 42. The use of odd numbers for experimental releases will be eliminated, and the proposed test releases will instead be offered as 40.alpha, GNOME 40.beta, and GNOME 40.rc.
All GNOME 3.38:
- Previously offered separate sections with all and frequently used applications have been replaced with a summary view that allows you to regroup applications and distribute them into user-created folders. Dragging applications is done by moving the mouse while holding down the button to click.
- An introductory interface (Welcome Tour) is proposed, which is shown when the user first logs in after completing the initial setup. The interface summarizes the main features of the desktop and offers an introductory tour explaining how it works. The application is written in Rust.
- In the configurator in the user management section, it became possible to set up parental controls for regular accounts. For a given user, you can prevent the display of certain installed programs in the application lists. Parental control is also integrated into the application installation manager and allows you to allow only selected programs to be installed.
- The configurator offers a new interface for scanning fingerprints for authentication using fingerprint sensors.
- Added an option to block the activation of unauthorized USB devices connected during screen lock.
- Provided the ability to display the battery charge indicator in the system menu.
- Screencasting tools in GNOME Shell have been redesigned to use a media server and the Linux kernel API to reduce resource consumption and improve responsiveness during recording.
- In multi-monitor configurations, when using Wayland, it is possible to assign different screen refresh rates for each monitor.
- Updated GNOME Web browser (Epiphany) with:
- Protection against tracking user movements between sites is enabled by default.
- Added the ability to block sites from storing data in local storages in the settings.
- Implemented support for importing passwords and bookmarks from the Google Chrome browser.
- The built-in password manager has been redesigned.
- Added buttons to mute/unmute sound in selected tabs.
- Redesigned dialogs with settings and history of visits.
- By default, automatic playback of video with sound is disabled.
- Added the ability to configure autoplay video in relation to individual sites.
- The GNOME Maps software has been adapted for use on smartphones. In the mode of viewing satellite images, it is possible to display labels. Added support for enabling map view in night mode.
- The dialog for adding a world clock has been redesigned, showing the time taking into account the time zone in the specified location. In the alarm clock, the ability to configure the duration of the signal and the time between repeated signals has been added.
- GNOME Games now displays search results in overview mode, allowing you to immediately launch the game you're looking for. Games can be grouped by collections or use predefined collections with favorite or recently launched games. Added support for launching games for Nintendo 64 consoles. Improved reliability - games are now launched in a separate process, and in the event of a game crash, the main application does not suffer.
- The interface of applications for creating screenshots and recording sound has been modernized.
- GNOME Boxes, a virtual machine and remote desktop manager, has added support for editing virtual machine XML files to change advanced libvirt settings that are not present in the stock user interface. When creating a new virtual machine, Boxes now allows you to manually select an operating system if it was not automatically detected.
- Calculator, Cheese webcam software, Tali, Sudoku, Robots, Quadrapassel and Nibbles games have new icons.
- The color scheme for text has been updated in the terminal emulator. New colors provide higher contrast and make text easier to read.
- GNOME Photos has added a new Trencin image filter, reminiscent of Instagram's Clarendon filter (lightens light areas and darkens dark areas).
- The Restart option has been added to the system menu, which can also be used to go to the bootloader management menu (when clicking with the Alt key pressed).
- Added a new edition of the search engine , to which most of the main GNOME applications have been translated. The new version includes changes to improve the security of Flatpak application isolation by allowing you to explicitly control what application data can be queried and indexed for search. Instead of a centralized database, a distributed model is used, which allows application developers to store data for the tracker in the local database of the application itself. The system FS index processed by Tracker Miner FS is now mounted in read-only mode. Added full support for the SPARQL 1.1 query language, including SERVICE {} expressions, which allows you to form queries from one database to another.
- Fractal, a client for the Matrix decentralized communications platform, has improved video playback when viewing the messaging history - video preview thumbnails are now shown directly in the messaging history and expand to the full video when clicked. The built-in sound player now has the ability to change the position in the file. Posts can now be edited in place, with an appropriate indicator displayed that the post has been edited.
- The libhandy library has been updated to version 1.0, offering a set of widgets and objects for creating a user interface for mobile devices. The new version adds new widgets such as HdyDeck and HdyWindow.
- The GLib, libsoup, and pango libraries have integrated sysprof tracing support.
Source: opennet.ru