Orinda, CA– The GNOME Project is proud to release GNOME 3.12 today. The next milestone release in the GNOME 3 series includes many new features, enhancements and updates, as well as new capabilities and APIs for application developers. The new version continues to improve the GNOME 3 user experience and includes many small bug fixes and enhancements.
Speaking on behalf of the GNOME Release Team, Matthias Clasen said “This is an exciting release for GNOME, and brings many new features and improvements, including app folders, enhanced system status and high-resolution display support.” He also thanked the GNOME community for their work on the release, saying that “This six months’ effort wouldn’t have been possible without the whole GNOME community, made of contributors and friends from all around the world”.
The latest GNOME release has been met with anticipation by the project’s partners. Christian Schaller, manager of Red Hat’s Desktop Team, said: “Red Hat is very pleased to see the GNOME community continuing to push the GNU/Linux desktop forward. We are looking forward to the innovations in GNOME 3.12 arriving in future versions of Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.”
GNOME 3 is already in use by many companies who will benefit from the improvements in the new release. Arun S A G, Software Development Engineer at Yahoo Inc said “GNOME is the desktop environment of choice for many Yahoo developers. It provides a stable foundation for GNU/Linux power users to get things done, from reading emails to writing code.”
Seth Schoen, Senior Staff Technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, also commented, “EFF is proud to use GNOME. Personally, I look forward to checking out the new features and fixes in the release.”
Major new features for this release include a significant update to the experience for finding and installing applications, as well as major facelifts for the Videos and gedit applications. Those who have high resolution displays will benefit from greater support, and users will experience better start up times as well as more efficient resource usage. They will also be able to quickly organize their applications with the new application folders feature.
Other highlights for GNOME 3.12 include:
- A big update to the GNOME web browser, with improved performance and UI enhancements.
- Three new preview applications – Logs, Sound Recorder, and Polari – a new IRC client for GNOME.
- Photos has been updated with new Facebook integration.
- A new search feature for Terminals.
- Integrated Google Cloud Print support.
- A revamped Initial Setup Assistant.
- The use of the new popovers widget in a number of core applications.
3.12 is a major release for developers, and comes with a host of new APIs and widgets. New GTK+ user interface widgets include GtkPopover, GtkActionBar and GtkFlowBox, and provide exciting new possibilities for application developers. A new API provides integrated support for desktop notifications. 3.12 also includes a powerful new process launching API. Finally, much of GNOME’s developer documentation has been improved for 3.12, with enhancements to structure, formatting and content. For our BSD friends, GNOME has enhanced portability, with over 150 FreeBSD issues fixed and test builds running regularly. Work for other operating systems is ongoing.
More details about GNOME 3.12 can be found in the release notes. A pack of screenshots is also available.
The GNOME Foundation thanks all of the contributors for their hard work, perseverance, and vision in this release.
About GNOME
GNOME was started in 1997 by two then-university students, Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena Quintero. Their aim: to produce a free (as in freedom) desktop environment. Since then, GNOME has grown into a hugely successful enterprise. Used by millions of people around the world, it is the most popular environment for GNU/Linux and UNIX-type operating systems. GNOME’s software has been utilized in successful, large-scale enterprise and public deployments.
The GNOME community is made up of hundreds of contributors from all over the world, many of whom are volunteers. This community is supported by the GNOME Foundation, an independent non-profit organization that provides financial, organizational and legal assistance. The Foundation is a democratic institution that is directed by its members, who are all active GNOME contributors. GNOME and its Foundation works to promote software freedom through the creation of innovative, accessible, and beautiful user experiences.