In a new blog post published on its official website, Co-Founder and CXO of elementary OS Cassidy James Blaede has revealed some of the new features of the upcoming major release of the operating system. The latest version, elementary OS 6.1 was released in December 2021.
Based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
elementary OS 7 will be based on the next long-term-support version of the Ubuntu series; Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Canonical is currently working on the development of the new Ubuntu LTS version. Based on a highly stable Linux distribution, elementary OS 7 might be supported for several years with minimal updates.
One of the exciting parts of the elementary OS 7 is the GTK4 apps. Canonical, the developer of Ubuntu, has stated that they will be avoiding GTK4 apps in 22.04 LTS. However, elementary OS 7 developers announced that the operating system is based on Ubuntu 22.0 LTS and will natively come with GTK4.
Battery health and power management
The elementary OS team has also shared the new power management and battery health features in the blog post. Users will be able to choose power profiles and check their laptop batteries for helpful information such as maximum capacity and its condition.
The team has also started the development of a new Music app. The new app will be a simple and lightweight one for playing local files with drag and drop support. It will also support album arts when available in the music file.
Automatic background updates are coming
The final announcement of the blog post brings a new feature to the AppCenter. The application management system will be able to update all the apps in the background with the Automatic Updates feature. Blaede has stated that it is much less risky to update in the background now, thanks to Flatpak. Because the updates will not be applied until it is completed and the app is restarted.
The team is also planning to add a new feature for updating elementary OS itself to a new major release without downloading the related ISO file. This feature is currently in the planning and testing phase, so it might not be delivered with elementary OS 7.
The release date of elementary OS 7 is not announced yet. However, early access is available with daily builds. You can follow the link below to try early access builds of elementary OS 7.