Gnome 3.36 (“Grasic”) and the current Gnome 3.38 (“Orbis”), which will also be used in the upcoming Ubuntu 21.04 (“Hirsute Hippo”), followed by Gnome 40, a new shell UX that everyone can try. From now on, after the first four months of development, the first public alpha is now available.

Shell UX redesign

In mid-December of last year, the GNOME project provided information Gnome Development Blog Regarding the goals set for the planned redesign of Shell UX by GNOME 40. The new “user experience” is primarily intended to offer improved spatial organization and observation as well as optimized operation using a touchpad. In addition, apps should be searched and started fast.

In the next “evolutionary phase”, the free desktop environment for Linux, Unix and BSD operating systems will move even more towards a horizontal orientation and operation, with a new spatial arrangement of different work surfaces at the center and a new realization of the application grid. (“App-grid”).

Mother and gnome get shell adjustment

Below the user interface was mainly GNOME Shell and Window Manager Mother Has worked, which is very deeply integrated into the shell and comparison K-win As a compositor for the display server protocol Wayland It works in the gnome.

In the new UX design of Activity Overview, the Gnome 40 also has four virtual desktops sorted horizontally and thus inherits vertical listings on the right edge of the screen, as users have been used with Gnome so far. All windows have icons and the full window title is shown via rollover.

Multi-display and optimized for touch

According to the new shell should be UX Zu gnome 40 Suitable for multi-display setup for productive systems as well as horizontal touch operation on mobile devices. The Gnome 40 retains the active corners of the desktop.

If the application is moved from one virtual workspace to another using drag’nildrop, the new UX activity exits the overview and shows all desktops to improve the observation.

Gnome 40 Alpha also comes with improvements Gnome web – First Epiphany – In-house browser of desktop environment, and GNOME Maps, which is now even better OpenStreetMap And can handle entries from Wikipedia.

GNOME 40 will be released in late March

Gnome 40 Alpha (TAR.XZ) Now available for download and can be tried by anyone. The final version of the redesigned desktop environment is expected to be released on 24 March 2021.

The editor would like to thank “Kim 88”, a member of the community who repeatedly referred to the topic of Gnome 40 and thus began this report.