Features To Look Forward To In GNOME 3.12

Written by Michael Larabel in GNOME on 25 March 2014 at 12:45 PM EDT. 55 Comments
GNOME
GNOME 3.12 is gearing up to be released tomorrow, so here's a recap of features to look forward to with this next major GNOME desktop update.

Among the highlights to look forward to with GNOME 3.12 include:

- Proper HiDPI support for those with high-density displays, such as the Retina MacBook Pro or some new ASUS Zenbook models.

- Improved Wayland support but it's still a tech preview in GNOME 3.12 but looks like we should see stable Wayland support in GNOME 3.14.

- A brand new user-interface for Gedit, GNOME's text editor.

- Epiphany browser enhancements.

- GNOME Boxes is better for desktop virtualization management though I personally find virt-manager to be far superior.

- Improvements to its software center / App Store.

- Many additions to Clutter 1.8 for developers.

- Initial setup is much better and the process has been totally revamped.

- Google Cloud Print support in GTK. There's also a new popovers feature for GTK+, among other tool-kit improvements.

- Greater Facebook integration.

- GNOME's terminal finally supports text rewrapping on resizing.

- GTK's Broadway back-end now supports tablets for the HTML5-rendered interfaces.

With not only better Wayland support but also a ton of user-facing improvements and GUI enhancements, GNOME 3.12 is shaping up to be a super exciting open-source desktop update. Some of the other GNOME 3.12 changes are listed via the GNOME.org Wiki release notes.

Look for the official GNOME 3.12 release on Wednesday, 26 March.
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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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