The GNOME project has announced the release of a new version of their hugely popular open-source desktop environment.
GNOME 44 includes a number of core improvements spanning eye-catching new features through to more subtle enhancements and lower-level buffs. Last year’s GNOME 43 release was quite the instalment and everything shipping here, in GNOME 44 continue steadfast in the same direction.
I took readers through the best GNOME 44 features on my other Linux blog a couple of weeks ago. If you read that post — thank you 🙏 — you’ll be clued up on the core changes. If you didn’t read it, don’t worry: I’m about to run through most of the changes again.
And remember: GNOME 44 is included in Ubuntu 23.04, meaning you’ll be able to sample (almost) all of the awesome improvements you see below from next month, should you make the upgrade.
Let’s dive in! 🦶
GNOME 44’s New Features
If GNOME 44 is about anything it’s about refinement and improvement. Nowhere is that trend more evident than in the Quick Settings menu. This pod-based port-of-call makes has had a fabulous reaction since its introduction last year, and in this release it gets even better.
First up, you can now quickly connect or disconnect to bluetooth devices from Quick Settings menu, the same way as switching wired or wireless network. Now, you can’t pair new devices from this menu (use Settings > Bluetooth for that) but anything paired can be managed from here thereout — a blue-tiful (sorry) new feature:
You’ll notice two visual enhancements to Quick Settings toggles: features with sub-menus have a new split-button appearance (and both parts of the button are keyboard navigable separately, which is ace); and there are new pod subtitles to relay status, e.g., which Wi-Fi network is active, which bluetooth device connected, etc:
Finally, if you use Flatpak apps you’ll see a new Background Apps section in the menu whenever a compatible app is running with no window open. This section only appears when active apps are running, so don’t panic about it running your settings menu zen:
One final (rather minor) Quick Settings tweak I find myself using a lot: you can now click on the speaker icon to the left of the volume slider to instantly mute/unmute, or select it using keyboard navigation.
A miscellany of marvels
GNOME’s file chooser dialog can now display thumbnails (FYI: old GTK apps will still show the list-only one):
A slew of improvements are present in the Settings app:
- Redesigned Accessibility page
- Option to enable over-amplification
- Option to disable overlay scrollbars
- Improved sound test dialog
- Device security panel tweaks
- Share Wi-Fi networks using QR codes
- About section lists kernel version
- Thunderbolt settings only appears when relevant
- Support for configuring Wireguard VPNs
The Mouse & Touchpad settings have also been reworked and expanded with cute animated videos demonstrating what each of the mouse and touchpad settings options do, and there’s (after much asking) a toggle to turn off mouse acceleration, and grade markers on different sliders for more precise tuning:
Worthwhile additions to the Nautilus file manager include:
- Expandable folder option in list view
- Tabs can now be pinned
- Tabs support dragging items on to them
- The ‘goldilocks’ grid view size returns
- Ability to ‘paste’ clipboard images as new file
Other changes include:
- Larger user pods on login and lock screens
- Improved low battery power notifications
- Disable Settings results from showing in the overview
- Less buggy drag and drop in the app grid
There are also copious changes included in GNOME’s Core apps, which Ubuntu doesn’t included most of by default. The Web browser was ported to GTK4; Maps now shows Wikipedia entries for prominent landmarks; Contacts supports sharing via QR code; Weather sports a brighter UI; Console gains a new tab overview — and more!
Getting GNOME 44
The GNOME 44 desktop environment is available to download as source code from today, meaning Linux distribution maintainers can start packaging it up and pushing out to their users.
Ubuntu users need to upgrade to Ubuntu 23.04 to get GNOME 44. The update will not be back ported to existing versions (officially, at least). Other Linux distributions also plan to ship GNOME 44 soon, including Fedora 38 Workstation.
Rolling-release distro such as Arch, EndeavourOS, Manjaro et al will issue this update to their users sooner, though it might not be immediately (some prefer to wait until the first point release is made).
Finally, updated GNOME OS images are also available to download. Do keep in mind that GNOME OS is not a typical Linux distribution but more of a platform showcase. While you can install GNOME OS on real hardware this is not without caveat. GNOME OS works best when used a guest OS in the Boxes VM software, running on Linux hosts.