GNOME 3.22 was released today, marking the culmination of 6 months work by the GNOME community. The new release introduces major new features as well as many smaller enhancements and fixes. Announcing the release, Matthias Clasen said: “This six-month effort wouldn’t have been possible without the whole GNOME community, made of contributors and friends from all around the world: developers, designers, documentation writers, usability and accessibility specialists, translators, maintainers, students, system administrators, companies, artists, testers and last, not least, users. GNOME would not exist without all of you. Thank you to everyone!”.
The latest GNOME release introduces comprehensive Flatpak integration for the first time. Flatpak, the next generation application framework for Linux, provides cross-distribution applications that are more secure than traditional Linux apps. GNOME 3.22 makes it easy to install Flatpak apps using the Software application. GNOME’s developer technologies also make it easy to take full advantage of Flatpak’s security features.
GNOME’s Files application has a wealth of improvements in 3.22. A powerful new feature allows multiple files to be renamed at once and compressed file functionality has also been integrated. There are also numerous other user interface improvements.
Other major new features for GNOME 3.22 include a new Photo sharing feature, redesigned keyboard settings, NickServ integration in Polari (GNOME’s IRC application), enhanced support for the Wayland display server, and a much improved Software application.
GNOME 3.22 is significant for developers, also. GTK+, GNOME’s interface toolkit, has introduced a new stable release series which will make it easier for application developers to use the many enhancements introduced during the 3.x series. GLib and GTK+ now provide transparent access to Flatpak “portals”, which allow isolated sandboxed applications to be developed.
Builder, the GNOME IDE, has a range of enhancements, including a new built-in profiler. Other improvements include the introduction of CSS blend modes in GTK+, support for OpenGL for Embedded Systems (known as OpenGL ES or GLES) in GtkGLArea and a comprehensive upgrade to GLib’s logging functions.
More information about the latest version of GNOME can be found in the release notes.
GNOME 3.22 is codenamed “Karlsruhe”, in recognition of this year’s GUADEC organizing team.
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