GNOME 3.8, the latest version of the popular free desktop environment, has been released.
The fourth major update to the GNOME 3.x line, GNOME 3.8 brings many new features and functionality to its users, including enhanced applications and a focus on privacy.
Notable features:
- New Settings Panes for Privacy & Notification
- New ‘GNOME Classic’ mode
- Revamped Search features in Activities Overview
- New App Launching
- Improved default apps
- Two new ‘Preview’ Apps – Weather and Notes
We listed 10 of our favourite new features in this release earlier today – go check them out.
For more information on the release be sure to check out the official release notes.
Getting GNOME 3.8 in Ubuntu
The bad news is that getting GNOME 3.8 in Ubuntu isn’t easy.
Ubuntu 13.04 ships with GNOME 3.6 by default, the same version as available in Ubuntu 12.10. The good news is that much of the desktop can be upgraded to version 3.8 by adding the additional GNOME PPAs.
But if you’re using a release prior to that it’s unlikely that GNOME 3.8 will be ported backwards.