GNOME 46 Desktop Environment Is Now Available for Public Beta Testing
Highlights of GNOME 46 beta include many GNOME Shell and Mutter improvements, a dedicated Global Search mode for the Nautilus (Files) file manager, a new upgrade plugin for the openSUSE Leap distribution in GNOME Software, support for PKCS #11 smart card authentication and closing behavior for pinned tabs in Epiphany (GNOME Web), and a GTK4 port of GNOME Tweaks.
It also adds a modernized properties dialog for GNOME Bluetooth, the ability to save difficulty levels in GNOME Sudoku, a Preferences dialog for GNOME Music, drop shadow support for file property dialog icons in Nautilus, a Microsoft 365 provider and GTK4 port for GNOME Online Accounts, and an improved default background that now uses less lens distortion.
UbuntuHandbook:
-
GNOME 46 Beta Released for Testing
GNOME 46, the default desktop environment for next Ubuntu 24.04 and Fedora 40, now is in Beta stage. It’s now the best time for developers to test their applications and shell extensions.
Gnome 46 features explicit Global Search for the Files, redesigned Privacy settings page, added new System panel in Gnome Control Center, and support headless remote login. See more new features about GNOME 46.
The Register:
-
GNOME 46 beta has more tweaks than a coffee shop
GNOME 46 has entered beta testing, and is expected to be released in just over a month.
The new version of the GNOME desktop is nearly ready, and the release of the finished GNOME 46 is scheduled for March 20. The project just announced the beta release, with a lengthy change list.
The list of changes in this release is less dramatic than in some recent releases. We suspect that this is partly because some dust is still settling from the big changes in GNOME 40. That introduced version 4 of the desktop's underlying toolkit Gtk, and a controversial new theme system. Some sub-components are still being integrated with this, which will coordinate their look and feel with that of the underlying desktop. This now includes GNOME Music and the GNOME System Monitor – the latter of which is always handy for chasing down slow performance.