- GNOME 44 Alpha arrives with many bug fixes and improvements to its WebKit rendering engine Epiphany, GNOME Maps, GNOME Control Center, Nautilus, and more.
- GNOME Initial Setup can now be built against the new webkitgtk-6.0 API from WebKitGTK 2.39.1, as well as webkit2gtk-5.0.
- Nautilus received many enhancements as well as bug fixes, such as graphical improvements and quality-of-life bug fixes.
GNOME is a desktop environment that provides a modern graphical user interface (GUI) for Unix-like operating systems. It is designed to be easy to use and integrate well with other open-source applications. GNOME 44 is now available for public testing one month after the GNOME 43.2 maintenance update.
What’s new in GNOME 44 Alpha
The GNOME 44 desktop environment’s alpha version includes numerous improvements and new shiny features. GNOME 44’s beta release is to be expected on Feb 11th, 2023 while GNOME 44’s final release is set for March 22nd, 2023. It should be kept in mind that the development of GNOME 44 is still at a very early stage.
GNOME 44 comes with big improvements to the GNOME web browser based on the WebKit rendering engine, Epiphany, including the GTK 4 port. This means that the stable release is going to include the GTK 4 port of the Epiphany rendering engine. Here are some key changes and improvements:
Epiphany
- Epiphany now uses GTK 4, libadwaita, and webkitgtk-6.0.
- Avoid deprecated GTK APIs.
- WebExtensions: Implemented support for special shortcut commands.
- Removed custom desktop notification implementation.
- Fixed some memory leaks.
- Updated icons.
- Duplicate the tab when middle-clicking on the Refresh button.
- Fix issues found by Coverity.
GNOME Control Center now has a redesigned accessibility panel, has fixed many consistency issues, and updated translations. GNOME Initial Setup can now be built against the new webkitgtk-6.0 API from WebKitGTK 2.39.1, as well as webkit2gtk-5.0. GNOME Maps has received lots of improvements too.
GNOME Maps
- Fixed broken long-press to bring up the context menu on touch screens.
- Fixed various issues left after the GTK 4 port.
- Fixed location service dialog.
- Fixed user location accuracy marker positioning.
- Implemented support for getting thumbnails and Wikipedia article extracts
from Wikidata.
Nautilus file browser also received some special attention with enhancements and bug fixes.
Nautilus Enhancements
- Enriched tab context menus.
- Allowed pasting image data into new PNG file.
- Added shortcut for Preferences.
- Reintroduced 64px icon size for grid view.
- Removed upper limit on thumbnailing file size range.
Nautilus Bug fixes
- Avoid many crashes.
- Fixed and improve autorun support.
- Fixed some drag-and-drop issues.
- Fixed some view focus and selection issues.
- Fixed memory leaks.
- Resolved some performance issues.
- Resolved stuttering scrolling.
- Stopped blocking on the tracker connection.
- Allowed opening current view in new tab from sidebar.
- Can now share settings with GTK4 filechooser.
– Drop workarounds for resolved GTK4 issues.
– Use fewer deprecated GTK 4 API.
– Don’t use deprecated GLib API.
You can find the entire log of updates here if you wish to take a closer look at the newest alpha release of GNOME.
Download GNOME 44 Alpha
You can download the alpha version of the GNOME 44 desktop environment to compile on your Linux distribution for testing purposes by following the link below:
Click here to download GNOME 44 Alpha
You can also use GNOME OS Nightly to see and explore the changes in GNOME 44 desktop environment, which can be downloaded by the link below: