Some of you out there are probably enjoying the recently released GNOME 44 “Kuala Lumpur” desktop environment, but the GNOME devs have just announced today the release schedule for the next major release, GNOME 45.
That’s right, this autumn we will enjoy another major release of the popular GNOME desktop environment, GNOME 45, which now has a release date “set in stone” for September 20th and an official release schedule that gives us details about the six-month-long development cycle.
The development cycle for GNOME 45 kicks off now, but the first testing version will be ready for public testing only in a few months from writing this article. Without further ado, here are the major milestones of the GNOME 45 development cycle:
- GNOME 45 Alpha – July 1st, 2023
- GNOME 45 Beta – August 5th, 2023
- GNOME 45 RC – September 2nd, 2023
- GNOME 45 Final – September 20th, 2023
As for the new features coming in GNOME 45, it’s too early to talk about them, of course, but according to some rumors and this merge request by Alexander Mikhaylenko, it looks like we will finally be able to enjoy native accent colors in GNOME Shell and GTK apps.
Support for accent colors is already possible in GNOME through extensions, such as this one, but it’s not a built-in feature, so GNOME 45 might change that, hopefully.
GNOME 45 will be codenamed “Riga”, after the host city of the GUADEC (GNOME Users And Developers European Conference) 2023 event, which will take place from July 26th to July 31st in Riga, Latvia.
Meanwhile, if you’re using one of the currently supported GNOME desktop environment series, look out for the first point release of GNOME 44 and the sixth maintenance update in the GNOME 43 series, both expected to land in the second half of April.
