GNOME 42 Desktop Slated for Release on March 23rd, 2022, Comes with Dark Style Preference

GNOME 42 Desktop

While some of you are still waiting for GNOME 41 to arrive in the stable software repositories of your favorite GNU/Linux distributions, work has started on the next major release of the popular desktop environment, GNOME 42.

The GNOME devs have recently published the release schedule for the GNOME 42 desktop environment, which is slated for release next year on March 23rd. It will be the second major update in the GNOME 4x series and development slowly kicked off this month.

GNOME 42 will stick to the same routine as in the GNOME 40 and GNOME 41 development cycles, which means that public testers will be able to take the Alpha, Beta, and Release Candidate (RC) milestones for a test drive on their personal computers. Here’s the official GNOME 42 release schedule:

  • GNOME 42 Alpha – January 8th, 2022
  • GNOME 42 Beta – February 12th, 2022
  • GNOME 42 RC – March 5th, 2022
  • GNOME 42 Final – March 23rd, 2022

So GNOME devs have about three months to implement new features until we’ll be able to get out hands on the first development release, the Alpha version. The UI Freeze stage is set after the release of the Beta version in mid-February, which means that no significant UI changes will be made.

Meanwhile, the GNOME developers and users will be able to attend another important event, GNOME Asia Summit 2021, which will take place online next month from November 20th to November 21st.

As for the new features in GNOME 42, there will be a system-wide dark style preference similar to what we can experience these day in Android, macOS, iOS, and other modern operating systems. As you might have guessed, there will be a switch in Settings or GNOME Shell to quickly enable or disable the dark/light mode.

In addition, the new system-wide dark style preference will support day/night scheduling with automatic synchronization of the wallpaper, but the developers noted the fact that this feature won’t be forced on all apps.

As you can imagine, it’s too early to talk about the new features in the upcoming release, but rest assured that you’ll be the first to know what’s new in the GNOME 42 desktop environment as more details become available until the final release hits the streets on March 23rd, 2022.

Meanwhile, if you’re using the GNOME 40 or 41 releases, make sure that you keep them up to date with the latest maintenance updates. GNOME 40.6 and GNOME 41.1 are both scheduled for the end of October and should be coming to your favorite GNU/Linux distributions in early November.

Images courtesy of Alexander Mikhaylenko

Last updated 2 years ago

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