14 DAY TRIAL // GNOME Project's Michael Catanzaro just informed us via an email announcement that the first unstable release of the upcoming GNOME 3.26 desktop environment is out now for public testing and early adopters.
Yes, we're talking about GNOME 3.25.1, the first development in the release cycle of GNOME 3.26, which is currently scheduled to launch later this year, on September 13. Being the first unstable release and all that, GNOME 3.25.1 doesn't ship with many changes, and you can check out the CORE NEWS and APPS NEWS for details.
However, it is important to mention here that this is the first release to port some of the apps and components of the GNOME Stack to the Meson build system. Also, it looks like the GNOME Music and GNOME To-Do apps were moved to gnome-core from gnome-apps.
"This is the first release where some applications are now only buildable using the Meson build system. GNOME Music and GNOME To-Do have migrated from gnome-apps to gnome-core, and a new app, Recipes, has been added to gnome-apps," said Michael Catanzaro on behalf of the GNOME Release Team.
GNOME 3.25.2 milestone coming May 24, 2017
Those of you eager to try the first unstable release of the GNOME 3.26 desktop environment can compile GNOME 3.25.1 by using the JHBuild modulesets available at https://download.gnome.org/teams/releng/3.25.1/. The source packages are also available to download, here and here, if you fancy compiling them yourself on your favorite OS.
However, please try to keep in mind that this is a pre-release version that shouldn't be installed on a production machine as some bugs are present. Due to build failures, the GNOME Software and network-manager-applet packages have been downgraded, and GNOME System Monitor, GNOME Photos, and GEGL can't be built.
The GNOME 3.26 desktop environment will sport many new features and improvements, some of which were revealed in our previous reports here and here. The next milestone in its development cycle is GNOME 3.25.2, currently scheduled to hit the streets next month of May 24. Fedora 26 and Ubuntu 17.10 will use GNOME 3.26 by default.