Just in time for the 25th anniversary of the project, the Gnome community released the first beta of their new desktop Gnome 43. The latest edition of the working environment includes support for Progressive Web Apps (PWA), even more consistency and web extensions for the in-house browser Gnome Web.
The Gnome Project is celebrating its 25th birthday
In August 1997, the free Gnome project was created by Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena and was designed as an answer to the K Desktop Environment (KDE). The first official version was Gnome 1.0, which was released on March 3, 1999 and was replaced by Gnome 2.0 in June 2002.
Gnome 1.0 from 1999 (Image: Gnome, CC0 1.0)
While Gnome 2 was further developed as a MATE desktop, Gnome 3 (2010) was followed by the current Gnome 40 (2021), which is now entering the next round as Gnome 43.
< h2 class="text-width text-h2" id="section_gnome_os_get_gnome_43_beta">Gnome OS gets Gnome 43 Beta
Experienced users or developers who already want to take a look at the beta version of Gnome 43 can do so with Gnome OS Nightly (ISO). The detailed Gnome OS Installation Guide will help you get started. The highly experimental distribution is for this testing purpose only.
Gnome OS Nightly Gets Gnome 43 BetaThe following innovations and optimizations are highlighted by the developers of the free desktop as highlights of the upcoming release.
- GUI with even more consistency
- Support for Progressive Web Apps
- Gnome Web will be extensible like Firefox and Chrome
- More accessibility, more Rust, more Wayland
- Improved privacy settings
- New and optimized GTK 4 apps
- Optimizations for WireGuard
Regarding some innovations of Gnome 43, the developers are already gone into more detail.
GUI with even more consistency
So far, very little was known about Gnome 43, only the optional alignment of the file manager Nautilus to mobile devices and form factors and a new image viewer written in Rust and GTK 4 called “Loupe”, which also uses the central GUI design concept of the in-house library ” Libadwaita” has leaked to the public so far. But in the meantime some other innovations have become known.
All relevant Gnome design concepts are brought together in the Libadwaita GUI library. It also includes new widgets and existing content from Libhandy and the Human Interface Guidelines.
Gnome Web extensible like Firefox and Chrome< /h2>
In the final version of Gnome 43, which will be released on September 21 of this year, all extensions for Firefox and Google Chrome should also work with Gnome Web. The website itfoss.com has already tried some of them successfully.
More accessibility, more Rust, more Wayland
Corrections for more accessibility should also be included in the release and a Disk Usage Analyzer rewritten in Rust, which has so far used the Vala programming language, as well as optimizations for the free VPN service WireGuard.
The Disk Usage Analyzer is to be given a new programming language (Picture: Gnome)
Gnome 43 is to be released on September 21
The public beta is to be followed on September 3rd by the first release candidate, which is intended to represent the expected end result of the developments. The final release is scheduled for September 21st.
The “9to5Linux” website has already looked at Gnome 43 Beta in detail and provides the corresponding impressions.