Well, it's here. GNOME 40 has been officially released, shortly after fifth maintenance release of desktop v3.38. The project has opened a page in which it shows us the most outstanding news, and the name implies that they are excited about this launch. The page is named after the renumbering, since they have moved from GNOME 3.x to version 40, partly to avoid confusion, since GTK was also going to go up to v4.
Speaking of the page they have opened, it is forty.gnome.org, and in it they tell us about changes such as the new general view, which we can also access with a gesture on touchpad. This will improve the user experience, something that we who have used macOS at some time know well. Below you have the rest of the most outstanding news that have arrived with the desktop that will use Fedora 34, but not Ubuntu 21.04.
Highlights of GNOME 40
- Performance improvements that make everything move smoother.
- Gestures on the touch panel that will allow us to access the overview / app grid with two fingers up (and exit with two fingers down) or switch between workspaces by sliding three fingers to the right / left.
- You can also switch between workspaces and access the overview with the keyboard, with the shortcuts Super + Alt + Up / Down and Super + Alt + Left / Right respectively.
- Switching between workspaces is also possible with the mouse wheel, but combined with the Super + Alt keys.
- New section in the dock separates favorite applications from those that are not when they are running.
- Improvements in the set of applications, such as a redesigned weather app, it is now easier to create keyboard shortcuts from Settings or that the selection and WiFi configuration have been improved.
- The dock happens to be at the bottom.
- The "About" section now shows vendor settings and model number.
- Zip files with password can now be opened from Nautilus.
GNOME 40 now has been officially launched, but the most recommended is that we wait until our distributions add it as an update. Ubuntu users will not officially receive it, as if nothing happens, they will jump straight to GNOME 41 next October. Canonical has decided to err on the side of caution and not move to GNOME 40 + GTK 4.0 because they believe that, in general, it is not as consistent as they would like.