The latest release of the de facto default desktop of most Linux distros brings some new features – but the GNOME 4x transition isn't done yet.
GNOME 47 was released last week, codenamed "Denver" after the venue for this year's GUADEC event. This release returns some touches of customization that had gone away, brings some long-wanted functional improvements, and a few new components.
Both Ubuntu 24.10 and Fedora 41 are in beta testing, and both should arrive in the middle of October with GNOME 47 as their default desktop environments. You can't fully judge GNOME 47 from Ubuntu "Oracular Oriole," though. Canonical tweaks the GNOME desktop environment a little with some pre-installed extensions to make it a little more familiar to long-term Ubuntu users. For instance, Ubuntu's default GNOME desktop has desktop icons, notification icons in the top panel, a permanent dock along the left screen edge, and a tool to assist with tiling windows. Fedora eschews these changes and ships a largely unmodified version, so it's much closer to the stock appearance.
GNOME 47 lets you set your own highlight color, so you're free to pick clashing combinations if you like – click to enlarge
The new feature that receives top billing in the version 47 release notes may thus seem a little puzzling to Ubuntu users: customizable accent colors. This is the color tint that's used to call out or highlight parts of the desktop, such as the current tab or the default button. Ubuntu users already had this, and if you're using GNOME 43 to 46 on a different distro, you can get this via an extension. Now everyone gets this option.
This is noteworthy because since GNOME 40, the environment doesn't permit users to customize their themes. As we described when we looked at GNOME 42, there is one official theme, "Adwaita," and both developers and users are meant to leave it alone, which has proved to be controversial. The Reg FOSS desk tends to leave theming to the professionals, and GNOME has some of the best in the business. GNOME designer Jakub Steiner's level of attention to detail can be discerned from his blog post about the wallpapers in GNOME 47.
In contrast, we feel that the default themes included with KDE are ugly and inconsistent. For us, only Red Hat Linux's Bluecurve theme made KDE 3 look good – but it did so by making it look like GNOME 1, to which the KDE folks at the time strongly objected, leading to one Red Hatter quitting.
If there's one conclusion to take away, it's that good looks are subjective. Themes are not back in GNOME 47, but you can at least choose some elements of your color scheme – nine choices are included by default, and they can be changed.
There's a new layout for dialog boxes with a number of functional improvements – but it does mean that other GNOME-based apps must now adopt this, so it will take a while for them to catch up. Even so, there are worthwhile improvements.
Files (née Nautilus) now lets you customize your sidebar, along with many other refinements – click to enlarge
The GNOME file manager, still called "Nautilus" under the hood but officially "Files," has had quite a few updates. The Places sidebar has been revamped: you can customize it, and it can now show physical drives too. Files also has a new Network view, the pathbar scrolls vertically as well as horizontally, you can drop file icons onto its chooser file selection dialog, and it can now provide the Open and Save dialog boxes for GNOME apps. While thumbnails in the file picker appeared in GNOME 44, this means that now you can change their sizes as well.
Gedit is dead, long live Text Editor, now with integrated spellchecking – click to enlarge
The new Text Editor app, which replaces the venerable Gedit, gets better printing and spellcheck. The new GNOME Console terminal emulator has more settings, such as scrollback size. GNOME Maps now has route planning, thanks to the external Transitous service. GNOME Calendar now has drag-and-drop import of ICS files for events, and better network calendar support. GNOME is still one of the best-of-breed FOSS environments for supporting network interoperability with cloud services, and this version gets better support for IMAP config, WebDAV, Microsoft 365, and more efficient Kerberos authentication. The Remote Desktop Connection app can now handle persistent sessions, meaning that it can resume a disconnected login session.
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Although we suspect most people probably use Firefox or Chrome, GNOME's Epiphany web browser has a bunch of new features. Now it can do automatic form filling, has better bookmarks, improvements in the handling of text boxes and the address field, as well as passwords, image contrast, setting wallpapers, and more. Sadly, though, support for Mozilla's Firefox Sync, missing for a few releases, hasn't returned yet.
The GNOME Circle set of accompanying GNOME apps continues to grow too.
Many more changes are under the hood and less visible – unless it means improved support for kit that you use, such as VR headsets, which get better Wayland support. There's improved handling for graphics tablets, including customizing button actions and pressure sensitivity. Graphics acceleration has also improved, especially on Nvidia GPUs, and there's better handling of machines with hybrid graphics. Interop with X11 apps is better, with drag-and-drop, improved fractional scaling – but if you're one of the people who wants to banish X.org forever, GNOME can now be compiled entirely without X11 support.
Especially now with the return of limited custom color selections, and Files' expanding functionality, we sometimes get the feeling that after GNOME 3 got started by removing a large range of functionality, over the years since the team has been gradually adding it back, piecemeal. The growing functionality of some of its accessory apps also makes us wonder if the project might not save itself some work by cooperating more with existing external projects. However, public disagreements with both Pop!_OS developers System76 and also comments from the Linux Mint team would seem to suggest that's not the GNOME way.
Whatever the reasons, it is the flagship desktop of most Linux distributions today. It's the only choice on both SUSE and Red Hat's enterprise flavors, as well as being the default in Debian, Ubuntu, and many others. As such, long may it grow and flourish. ®