14 DAY TRIAL // While many of you are still enjoying the recently released GNOME 3.16 desktop environment, the GNOME developers have started working on the next major version, GNOME 3.18, due for release at the end of September 2015.
Therefore, we announce today that the GNOME 3.18 release schedule has been published on the GNOME Wiki. While GNOME 3.16 will have a second maintenance release (GNOME 3.16.2) on May 13, 2015, the first development release of GNOME 3.18 will be available for testing next week, April 29.
The GNOME 3.18 development cycle will use the GNOME 3.17.x tag for all milestones. After GNOME 3.17.1, we will be able to test GNOME 3.17.2 in May 27, GNOME 3.17.3 in June 24, and GNOME 3.17.4 in July 22. Then, all members of the GNOME Project will gather together at the GUADEC 2015.
This year's GUADEC developer conference for GNOME developers and contributors will take place between August 7-9 in Gothenburg, Sweden. There, users can attend workshops and constructive discussions related to the ongoing development cycle of the upcoming GNOME 3.18 desktop environment.
The many features of the GNOME 3.18 desktop environment
After GUADEC, the development of GNOME 3.18 will continue with the first Beta release on August 19, which will be followed closely by GNOME 3.18 Beta 2 on September 3, and the GNOME 3.18 Release Candidate (RC) version on September 16. GNOME 3.18 will arrive on September 23, 2015.
As expected with each new release of the acclaimed GNOME desktop environment, the GNOME 3.18 update will include many new features, some of which have already been revealed. These include the possibility of a full Wayland session, further improvements to the GNOME Calendar app, as well as enhancements to the Calendar applet and the GNOME Shell user interface.
Of course, almost all of the GNOME core components and applications will get improvements and new features in GNOME 3.18, which will have, as usual, two official maintenance releases. The first one, GNOME 3.18.1, will see the light of day on October 14, 2015.