Draft Releases Article

The GNOME project had two major releases in the 2016 financial year: 3.20, released in March, and 3.22, which was released in September. These contained major improvements for the GNOME user and developer experiences, including some significant steps forward for the project.

Software, the application for installing and managing apps on your system, has become an increasingly important part of the GNOME user experience in recent years, and the 2016 releases saw it gain a number of important new features, including the ability to install operating system upgrades and user reviews of applications.

Files, the GNOME file browser, was also improved in 2016. New features included the ability to rename multiple files at the same time, and built-in capabilities to extract archives. Elsewhere, user experience improvements included updated mouse, touchpad and keyboard settings, image editing in Photos and media controls built into the calendar drop-down.

2016 also included major improvements for GNOME's developer experience. Builder, GNOME's IDE, made significant progress, with a new plugin architecture, user interface improvements and a built-in profiler. It was also a significant year for GTK+, with the release of a major update to its CSS machinery and the announcement of a new long-term support series, designed to provide a stable platform, while allowing major development work to continue.

Finally, 2016 was the year in which Flatpak emerged as a new framework for developing, distributing and installing applications. This technology developed important capabilities over the year, and GNOME pioneered Flatpak integration in a number of key areas, including the ability to build Flatpaks with Builder and install them with Software.

More details about GNOME 3.20 and 3.22 can be read in their release notes.

Written by AllanDay.