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Ubuntu GNOME 17.04 to Be Based on the GNOME 3.22 Stack, Now Ships Linux 4.9

Some of the apps are still from the GNOME 3.20 Stack

Jan 5, 2017 22:42 GMT  ·  By
Ubuntu GNOME 17.04
   Ubuntu GNOME 17.04

While the first Alpha development release of the upcoming Ubuntu GNOME 17.04 (Zesty Zapus) operating system was skipped, we'd like to tell you a little bit about what you should expect from the next Alpha build.

First things first, though, so we recommend reading our initial report if you want to familiarize yourself with the new or upcoming features of Ubuntu 17.04, but in this article we'd like to tell you all about the Ubuntu GNOME 17.04 flavor, which is now proudly based on the GNOME 3.22 Stack.

That's right, you'll be able to enjoy a modern GNOME 3.22 desktop environment on Ubuntu GNOME 17.04, but it looks like some of the pre-installed apps are still from the GNOME 3.20 Stack, including the Nautilus (Files) file manager and GNOME Terminal terminal emulator.

Flatpak and Snap support offered out of the box

Another notable change, besides the fact that Ubuntu GNOME 17.04 is powered by Linux kernel 4.9 and uses the latest Mesa 13.0.2 3D Graphics Library, there's also Flatpak and Snap support, offered out of the box in the latest daily build releases, which ship with Flatpak 0.8 installed by default.

Also installed by default is the GNOME Shell extension that integrates the Google Chrome web browser with the GNOME desktop environment, namely chrome-gnome-shell, and the Tracker search indexing engine is now sandboxed. An experimental Wayland session is also included, but not enabled by default at this time.

"The experimental Wayland session is included but is not the default. If your computer supports open source graphics drivers and you would like to try Wayland, log out, choose GNOME on Wayland from the gear menu below the password entry, and log back in," the release notes for the unreleased Alpha version read.

As expected, many of the bugs have been fixed since Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak), but it looks like Ubuntu GNOME 17.04 is shaping up pretty nicely. If you want to take it for a test drive right now, we invite you to download the newest Ubuntu GNOME 17.04 daily build ISO images right now from our website. Happy testing!