14 DAY TRIAL // After a two-day delay, the GNOME development team, through Javier Jardón, had the pleasure of announcing today, March 6, the immediate availability for testing of the second beta release of the forthcoming GNOME 3.16 desktop environment for GNU/Linux operating systems, due for release at the end of the month, on March 25, 2015.
The development cycle of GNOME 3.16 is now officially in "The String Freeze," which means that no string changes are allowed, unless they are confirmed by both the release team and the GDP (GNOME Documentation Project). Softpedia has published a large number of articles related to the GNOME 3.16 development cycle in the last couple of months.
Major highlights of GNOME 3.16 include a new GNOME Shell theme, a redesigned notification system, separate Wayland session login, new applications, as well as updates to all of its core apps and components, among which GNOME Shell, GNOME Music, Nautilus, Totem, Tracker, GNOME Documents, GNOME Control Center, etc.
Users can test GNOME 3.16 Beta 2 via an OpenSuSE Live CD
A Live CD based on the acclaimed openSUSE Linux computer operating system was made available for download on the official openSUSE download servers for users who can’t wait until March 25 and want to test the beta release of the upcoming GNOME 3.16 desktop environment right now. You can download it via Softpedia here. Live images are available for both 64- and 32-bit (i686) architectures.
The development cycle of GNOME 3.16 will continue with a Release Candidate (RC) version, which won’t bring any more changes to the controversial desktop environment. GNOME 3.16 RC will arrive in approximately two weeks, around March 18. The final release of GNOME 3.16 will be announced on March 25, according to the official release schedule. The first point release, GNOME 3.16.1, will be unveiled to users on April 15, 2015.