It also includes better ownCloud support, infinite scrollback in Empathy, and more!

Feb 11, 2013 20:50 GMT  ·  By

Matthias Clasen had the pleasure of announcing on February 9 that the fifth development release of the upcoming GNOME 3.8 desktop environment is ready for testing.

After a four-day delay, GNOME 3.7.5 is now available for download and testing on the main GNOME FTP server, bringing lots of updated applications, new features, and numerous bug fixes.

“This release includes more of our planned features and goals: ownCloud support in gvfs, improved network configuration, infinite scrollback in Empathy, more complete classic mode, ... You should go ahead and download this release, build it, test it and let us know how you like it. Keep in mind that some features are not complete yet,” said Matthias Clasen in the official release announcement.

GNOME 3.7.5 comes with the following updated applications: Devhelp, Evolution, Empathy, NetworkManager, Epiphany, Nautilus, Tracker, File-Roller, Orca, Rygel, Seahorse and a couple of games.

Among the main components of GNOME 3.7.5, the following were updated: GNOME Boxes, GNOME Chess, GNOME Clocks, GNOME Color Manager, GNOME Documents, GNOME Klotski, GNOME Mahjongg, GNOME Mines, GNOME Calculator, GNOME PackageKit, GNOME Session, GNOME Online Accounts, GTK+, Glib2, Pango, PyGobject, Mutter, gvfs and a few other core libraries.

Softpedia covered some of the above GNOME packages in various blog or news articles during the first days of February 2013.

The next development release will be GNOME 3.8 Beta 1, which should be available for testing sometime by the end of the month, followed by a second Beta release at the beginning of March. The final release of the GNOME 3.8 desktop environment will see the light of day on March 27th, 2013.

Download GNOME 3.7.5 sources right now from Softpedia. Remember that this is a development release and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended to be used for testing purposes only.