It's coming soon to a GNU/Linux distribution near you

Sep 12, 2019 17:27 GMT  ·  By

The GNOME Project announced today the release and general availability of the highly anticipated GNOME 3.34 desktop environment for Linux-based operating systems.

GNOME 3.34 is dubbed "Thessaloniki" after the host city of the GUADEC (GNOME User and Developer European Conference) 2019 event and it's a major release that adds numerous new features and improvements. It's been in development of the past six months and comes as a drop-in replacement for the GNOME 3.32 "Taipei" desktop environment series with many new features.

"The latest version of GNOME 3 has been released today. Version 3.34 contains six months of work by the GNOME community and includes many improvements, performance improvements and new features," reads today's announcement. "Highlights from this release include visual refreshes for a number of applications, including the desktop itself. The background selection settings also received a redesign, making it easier to select custom backgrounds."

Here's what's new in GNOME 3.34

Highlights of the GNOME 3.34 desktop environment include support for custom folders in the application overview, allowing users to create a new folder just by dragging an application icon on top of another, similar to Apple's iOS operating system. Of course, folders will be automatically removed once all application icons were dragged out of the folder.

GNOME 3.34 also introduces a better web browsing experience were web processes are now sandboxed, along with the ability to pin tabs and an improved ad blocking feature that now makes use of WebKit content filters. Furthermore, the GNOME Boxes virtual and remote machine manager now offers a much-improved assistant workflow and support for booting VMs from attached CD/DVD images.

Other noteworthy changes include support for saving multiple game states in the GNOME Games app, a revamped Background panel in Settings with support for previews, support for automatically updating sources in the Music app, the Photos, To Do, and Videos apps received new icons, and GNOME Terminal now supports right-to-left and bi-directional language.

Also worth mentioning is the fact that the Files app now warns users before pasting files into a write-protected directory, it's now possible to disable the Activities hot-corner, the Polari IRC client now shows users when they're offline, Pointer Location is now supported under Wayland, and a refined Wi-Fi list is available in Settings.

While the GNOME 3.34 desktop environment has been released today, it's only available to download as source packages that need to be compiled or a Flatpak runtime that makes the installation a lot easier. However, we recommend installing it from the stable software repositories of your favorite GNU/Linux distribution, but it will take up two weeks for most Linux OS vendors to update the packages.

GNOME 3.34 (4 Images)

GONME 3.34 released
Background panel with wallpaper previewsCustom folders in application overview
+1more