After six months of development, the release of the GNOME 40 desktop environment is presented. Compared to the last release, more than 24 changes have been made, with the participation of 822 developers. To quickly evaluate the capabilities of GNOME 40, specialized live builds based on openSUSE and an installation image prepared as part of the GNOME OS initiative are offered. GNOME 40 is also already included in Fedora 34 beta builds.
The project has moved to a new version numbering scheme. Instead of 3.40, release 40.0 was published, which made it possible to get rid of the first digit "3", which has lost its relevance in the current development process. Interim corrective releases will be delivered under the numbers 40.1, 40.2, 40.3β¦ Significant releases will continue to form every 6 months, i.e. GNOME 2021 will be released in autumn 41.0. Odd numbers are no longer associated with test releases, which now use the alpha, beta, and rc tags. It was decided not to use version 4.x in order to avoid confusion and intersections with GTK 4.0.
Key innovations in GNOME 40:
- The organization of work in the interface has been significantly redesigned. The vertical orientation has been replaced with a horizontal one - virtual desktops in the Overview mode (Activities Overview) are now laid out horizontally and are displayed as a continuously scrolling chain from left to right. Horizontal orientation has been found to be more intuitive than vertical.
Each desktop shown in overview mode has a visual representation of the available windows, which are additionally provided with an application icon and a title that appears when you hover over the cursor. Dynamic panning and zooming is provided when the user interacts with window thumbnails in overview mode.
The navigation in overview mode and in the application selection interface (App grid) has been changed, providing a seamless transition between the list of programs and virtual desktops. Navigation is done in XNUMXD space - swipes right and left are used to move between virtual desktops, and up and down to switch between overview mode and the list of applications. Additional desktop thumbnails are placed at the top of the screen, which complement the general ribbon with detailed information about the placement of windows.
- Improved organization of work in the presence of several monitors - when setting the display of the desktop on all screens, the desktop switcher is now also shown on all screens, and not just on the main one.
- Work has been done on honing the general style - sharp edges are rounded, clear borders are smoothed, the style of side panels is unified, the width of active scroll areas is increased.
- The appearance of many programs, including Files, Web, Disks, Fonts, Calendar, Photos, and System Monitor, has been modernized with a new style of lists and switches, as well as rounded corners of windows.
- After loading, an automatic opening of the overview is implemented, which helps to get used to the environment.
- The list of applications clearly separates running applications from the category of favorites and other programs.
- GNOME Shell introduces GPU rendering for shaders, updated avatar styling, and added support for three-touch screen gestures.
- The application for displaying the weather forecast has been completely redesigned. The new design supports the adaptation of the interface to window resizing and includes two views of information - an hourly forecast for the next two days and a general forecast for 10 days.
- The section for keyboard settings has been improved in the configurator. The input source options have been moved from the "Language and Region" section to a separate "Keyboard" section, which collects all keyboard-related settings, updated the process for setting up hotkeys, and added new options for setting up the Compose key and entering alternative characters. The Wi-Fi settings section ensures that known wireless networks are pinned to the top of the list. The About page shows the laptop model.
- In the application installation manager (Software), the appearance of application banners has been improved and their automatic cyclic rotation has been provided. The new version information dialogs for each application provide information about recent changes. The logic for working with updates has been changed to reduce the frequency of displaying reminders. Added information about the installation source (Flatpak or packages from the distribution). The organization of presentation of information about new packages has been redesigned.
- Added support for sorting files by creation time in the Nautilus file manager. The xdg-desktop-portal component is used to set the desktop wallpaper. Updated settings dialog. When setting desktop wallpaper from the file manager, the ability to preview before applying the change is implemented. Improved accuracy of forecasting the execution time of operations. Added support for running text files via the "Run as a Program" item in the context menu. Improved conflict resolution due to file name intersections during copying or moving. Added support for extracting information from password-protected archives. In the input line of file paths, the ability to autocomplete the input by pressing the tab key is implemented.
- In the application for installing add-ons, the ability to filter the output has been added.
- Support for two-factor authentication and connection multiplexing for sftp has been added to gvfs.
- Improved support for XWayland in the Mutter composite manager.
- The Epiphany browser has a new tab layout and the ability to quickly scroll through tabs. Added a setting to control whether the display is turned on while typing search suggestions from Google in the address bar. Due to a change in Google API access rules, phishing protection is disabled by default, which was implemented through the use of Google safe-browsing technology. Changed dialogs for selecting search engines and data synchronization, as well as context menus. Added Alt+0 to display recently viewed tabs.
- New pop-up boxes have been added to the GNOME Maps mapping software to show a summary of information about a place from Wikipedia. The interface is better adapted to different screen sizes.
- Improved interface for using the Compose key - sequences are now shown as you type.
- In the document viewer in side-by-side view of two pages at once, double thumbnails are shown in the sidebar.
- Switched to the GTK 4 branch.
- The libhandy library has been updated to version 1.2, offering a set of widgets and objects for creating a user interface for mobile devices. The new version adds new widgets: HdyTabView and HdyTabBar with the implementation of dynamic tabs, HdyStatusPage with a status page and HdyFlap with sliding blocks and sidebars.
Source: opennet.ru