It still uses the GNOME 3.20 desktop environment

Sep 29, 2016 01:10 GMT  ·  By

As part of yesterday's Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) Final Beta launch, some of the opt-in flavors received their Beta 2 release, including Ubuntu GNOME 16.10, which we would like to tell you all about in this article.

We've already reported on the new features coming to the Ubuntu MATE 16.10, Lubuntu 16.10, Kubuntu 16.10, and Ubuntu Studio 16.10, so make sure that you read those articles if you're interested in any of them. As for Ubuntu GNOME 16.10, the Beta 2 milestone brings a healthy and well-tested GNOME 3.20 desktop environment.

Yes, we are aware of the fact that GNOME 3.22 is now the latest version of the popular desktop environment used in numerous GNU/Linux distributions by default, including Fedora and OpenSuSE, and so is the Ubuntu GNOME team, who managed to include many of the apps from the GNOME 3.22 Stack.

That's right, Ubuntu GNOME 16.10 Beta 2 ships today with GNOME Photos 3.22, Videos (Totem) 3.22, GNOME Books 3.22, and Disk Usage Analyzer (Baobab) 3.22. Some other components, like GNOME Maps, GNOME Initial Setup, and GNOME Characters, have been updated or included by default.

Most of the core GNOME components are at version 3.20

However, to offer users a more stable and reliable operating system, the Ubuntu GNOME team only added minor point releases to the core GNOME components, including GNOME Shell, GNOME Control Center, Nautilus, and GTK+, all of which are still at version 3.20.

Among other updated applications and components, we can mention that Ubuntu GNOME 16.10 Beta 2 includes the GTK3 version of the LibreOffice 5.2 office suite, an experimental Wayland session available as an option in the login manager, and support for viewing changelogs of PPAs in the Update Manager.

Last but not least, some things got cleaned up a little bit. For example, older WebKitGTK+ versions are no longer installed, nor is the Empathy instant messenger or any of the Qt libraries. New community wallpapers have been added in this second Beta release, which you can download right now via our website.