Features To Look Out For With GNOME 3.16

Written by Michael Larabel in GNOME on 12 January 2015 at 08:12 AM EST. 16 Comments
GNOME
While GNOME 3.16 isn't set to be released until March, there's a number of exciting features building up for this next desktop release and if you're ambitious you can test them now with the GNOME 3.15.x development releases.


While GNOME 3.16 feature development isn't yet over, among the changes so far to look forward to with GNOME 3.16 include:

- GTK+ finally supports OpenGL and a new GL widget feature.

- SSL for Broadway, the GTK+ HTML5 back-end.

- Improvements to Nautilus, the GNOME file manager.

- GNOME Mutter improvements.

- High contrast theme improvements for the GNOME Shell.

- Foursquare integration and check-in support for Foursquare/Facebook with GNOME Maps.

- Overlay scrollbars are finally here for GNOME applications.

- Developers can expect to find many improvements to GTK Inspector, the relatively new GTK+ debugger.

- Other GTK+ improvements.

- Native monitor hot-plugging in Mutter to help support GNOME's efforts on Wayland. There's also various other GNOME software on Wayland improvements with the ongoing work to free up GNOME on Linux from being X11 dependent.

- Ctrl+Tab tab switching of windows in GNOME.

Some other proposed GNOME 3.16 work whose current state isn't entirely clear right now is:

- EBooks support within the GNOME document viewer for viewing EPub books, etc.

- Redesigning notifications for the GNOME Shell.

- Adding GNOME Taquin as an official GNOME module. GNOME Taquin is a picture sliding-block puzzle game.

The feature freeze for GNOME 3.16 is currently set for next month on 16 February while the official GNOME 3.16.0 debut is still penciled in for 25 March. The next GNOME 3.15 development release is GNOME 3.15.4 and it's due out next week. GNOME 3.16 will be found in Fedora 22 and other GNOME-aligned distributions updating closer to the summer -- or rolling-release distributions quite quickly.

Stay tuned for more GNOME 3.15/3.16 coverage as its development cycle progresses. Let us know in the forums what you're looking forward to seeing out of GNOME 3.16 or any feature wishes you have for this open-source desktop environment.
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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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