The GNOME 3.31.90 packages are now available for testing

Feb 7, 2019 01:20 GMT  ·  By

The GNOME Project announced today the release of the first beta version of the upcoming GNOME 3.32 desktop environment for Linux-based operating systems.

The GNOME 3.32 Beta release (GNOME 3.31.90) is right on the schedule and it's now available for public testing. It's a major milestone in the development cycle of the GNOME 3.32 desktop environment updating numerous components and apps. A detailed changelog is available here.

"This is the first beta release for GNOME 3.32. To ensure the quality of the final release, we have entered feature freeze, UI freeze, and API freeze, so now is a good time for distributors planning to ship GNOME 3.32 to start testing the packages," said Michael Catanzaro in an email announcement.

GNOME 3.32 Beta 2 expected on February 20, final release arrives March 13th

If you want to test this first beta release of the upcoming GNOME 3.32 desktop environment, you can use either the official BuildStream project snapshot, which is the recommended method as it runs regardless of your host system, or the source packages. Either way, be careful that this is a pre-release version.

The next step in the development cycle of the GNOME 3.32 desktop environment is the second beta version, GNOME 3.31.91, which is currently scheduled for release at the end of the month on February 20. After that, an RC (Release Candidate) version will be released on March 6, and the final release arrives March 13th.

The GNOME 3.32 desktop environment is expected to introduce numerous improvements and new features, including a slightly revamped default theme and icons. It will have two point releases, the first one, GNOME 3.32.1, being scheduled for April 10, 2019. GNOME 3.32 will be used by default in the upcoming Ubuntu 19.04 "Disco Dingo" operating system.