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The GNOME Project released today the alpha version of the upcoming GNOME 43 desktop environment series to kick off the GUADEC (GNOME Users And Developers European Conference) 2022 event.
GNOME 43 alpha is the first major step in the six-month-long development cycle of the next major GNOME desktop release, GNOME 43, due out in late September 2022. The alpha version targets early adopters, but primarily for application developers who want to test their apps against the GNOME 43 stack.
GNOME 43 promises lots of exciting new features, including support for Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) in GNOME Software, new touch gestures, improved Flatpak support, improved Privacy settings, and support for WebExtensions and revamped web apps support in GNOME Web (Epiphany).
The upcoming GNOME desktop release also comes with a new Sidebar and the ability to zoom the Week view for GNOME Calendar, support for composite emoji in GNOME Characters, improved handling of VPN connections (especially for WireGuard), more Wayland improvements, and more GTK4 and libadwaita ports.
The GNOME 43 alpha milestone is here for GNOME users and developers who are gathered at this year’s GUADEC 2022 conference, which kicked off today, July 20th in Guadalajara, Mexico, as the first in-person GNOME event in the past two years. The event will end on Sunday, July 25th.
If you’re not attending GUADEC 2022, you can test drive the alpha version of GNOME 43 by compiling the official BuildStream project snapshot, which you can download from here. The GNOME devs also recommend using the GNOME OS install image in a virtual machine with EFI support to test the alpha version or for porting your extensions.
However, please keep in mind that this is a pre-release version, not intended for production use! The final release of GNOME 43 is expected on September 21st, but until then the beta development version will arrive for public testing after the GUADEC 2022 conference in early August.
Last updated 2 years ago
