On Gnome 3.36 (“Gresik”) and Gnome 3.38 (“Orbis”) as well as Gnome 40, which was only released in March of this year, the developers of The Gnome Project are now releasing the latest Gnome 41 Version of the Shell UX for free operating systems based on Linux and BSD. The new software store is also one of the highlights.
First revision of the new edition
With Gnome 40, the developers already presented a new desktop with a fundamentally revised user interface and a new generation of the GTK graphic program library on which the Shell UX is based in version 4, which also brought a new version.
After Gnome 41 was tried out as a beta since the end of August, the final version of the open source desktop has now officially appeared, which is currently with KDE Plasma 5.23 and Xfce 4.16 as well as the Cinnamon 5 known from Linux Mint 20.2 to the favor of Linux users.
In the last survey of the ComputerBase community, Gnome was in second place behind KDE Plasma.
New store and “Performance Boost”
The main focus of version 41 was in particular on the completely redesigned software store, a revised panel for multitasking and numerous optimizations that provide a “performance boost” through a “significantly” thinned program code should cause.
Almost every part of Software has been polished or improved in some way. This includes redesigned settings, more attractive layouts in the installed and updates views, better OS upgrade banners, and much more.
GNOME 41 also includes a fresh batch of performance boosts. Mother, GNOME’s window manager, has also undergone a “significant code cleanup”.
GNOME 41 – Release Notes
The official release notes also list improved power settings and the Connection app, a simple remote desktop client. In addition, apps like “Music” received an update and the file manager Nautilus received new tweaks.
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Revised energy settings in GNOME 41 (Image: The GNOME Project)
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Revised energy settings in GNOME 41 
The revised music app in GNOME 41 
The new software store in GNOME 41 
The new Connection app in GNOME 41 The theme used is the “Adwaita” design, which is displayed as the “Morning”, “Day” or “Night” variant by default, depending on the time of day, and which can be adapted to the user's exact daily routine using the optional night mode with a blue filter.
GUI is rendered faster
The GUI toolkit GTK4 also received a new GL Renderer that should do its work much more efficiently than its predecessor. Further information and first impressions are provided by a short introduction video by the developers.
In a twelve-minute review, the Linux and Open Source YouTube channel “The Linux Experiement” presented the new Linux desktop and its feature set just a few hours after the release by Gnome 41 already in detail and gives his personal assessment of the “redesign” of Gnome.
Download and compile or wait
The Gnome 41 source code can already be downloaded from the project page on the GitLab developer platform. The free desktop should also appear in the repositories of the popular Linux distributions that already have Gnome 40.x in their sources.
Gnome 41.1 is also the first one Point release of the desktop in the starting blocks and should appear on October 30th.