GNOME Software 3.21.4 is now ready for public testing

Jul 25, 2016 00:20 GMT  ·  By

The GNOME 3.21.4 desktop environment was released last week, which means that many of the default applications and components were updated with bug fixes and various enhancements.

GNOME Software is an essential app distributed as part of the GNOME Stack, used as the default graphical package manager by numerous GNU/Linux operating systems, including the popular Fedora and Ubuntu distributions, and it has been updated to version 3.21.4, a development build that adds major improvements.

As usual, we've managed to get our hands on the internal changelog (attached at the end of the article), and it looks like GNOME Software now supports installation of Flatpak repository files in the .flatpakrepo format, launching of apps using the appstream:// URL, as well as installation of universal binary apps as Snaps.

Additionally, there's also authentication support for plugins, a "Cancel" button and information about installation progress in the Details page, and it looks like a new dialog lets users confirm the removal of upgrades. The Overview page has received a new-style category list, and star ratings are being displayed in more places.

Bug fixes, lots of bug fixes

Sandboxing information is shown for certain apps, along with origin information when apps are available from more than one source. Of course, numerous bugs reported by users since the 3.21.3 development build have been fixed for the upcoming GNOME Software 3.22 release, which will hit the streets on September 21, 2016, as part of the GNOME 3.22 desktop environment.

Again, we recommend checking out the full release notes below if you want to know what exactly has been changed in this new development version of the GNOME Software package manager. In the meantime, you can download the GNOME Software 3.21.4 sources right now via our website and take the application for a test drive on your GNU/Linux operating system of choice.

GNOME Software 3.21.4 Changes