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Introducing GNOME 3.18: Gothenburg

GNOME 3.18 is the latest version of GNOME 3, and is the result of 6 months’ hard work by the GNOME community. It contains major new features, as well as many smaller improvements and bug fixes. In total, the release incorporates 25112 changes, made by approximately 772 contributors.

3.18 has been named “Gothenburg” in recognition of this year's GUADEC organising team. GUADEC is GNOME’s main annual conference, and is only possible due to the hard work of local volunteers. In 2015, it was held in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Google Drive Integration

With GNOME 3.18, it is now possible to access Google Drive directly from the Files application, as well as from file chooser dialogs. To use the feature, simply add your Google account through the Online Accounts settings, and Google Drive will automatically appear in the files places sidebar.

Once set up, Google Drive behaves very similarly to the rest of your files and folders: files can be opened using your normal applications, and folders can be created just like regular folders. It is also really easy to upload files to Google Drive — all you have to do is move or copy them across.

Files Improvements

The files places sidebar, which is shown in Files and in open and save dialogs, has been reworked for 3.18. A new location, called Other Locations, has been added, which provides a useful overview of local and network locations. Many of these locations are no longer automatically shown in the places sidebar, which helps to avoid clutter.

Long-running operations (such as copying or moving large numbers of files) have also been improved: a button shows progress information in the header bar, which shows more detailed information when pressed. This allows you to easily see progress at a glance, and avoids progress windows getting in the way.

There have also been a huge number of smaller improvements to the files experience during the 3.18 cycle. Here are some of them:

Firmware Updates

In the past, it has been difficult to update device software (such as your computer’s BIOS) under GNOME. Now this has changed, thanks to a new initiative called the Linux Vendor Firmware Service. This aims to make it possible for hardware manufacturers to distribute firmware updates for GNU/Linux.

The Linux Vendor Firmware Service is fully integrated with GNOME 3.18, and works automatically. If an update becomes available for your device’s hardware, Software will automatically make it available to install the same way as other software updates.

This feature can also be used to update the device software on removable devices, such as monitors, USB hubs and color colorimeters.

New Calendar Application

Calendar is a new application for GNOME, which was initially introduced as a preview in 3.16. Designed to be consistent with other GNOME 3 applications, and to be fully integrated with GNOME 3, Calendar makes a great addition to the GNOME application suite. It is attractive, simple to use, and is fully integrated with GNOME Online Accounts.

The initial feature list is simple and straightforward, including month and year views, search, the ability to add calendars from files and remote calendars from URLs, online accounts integration, and event viewing and editing.

Automatic Screen Brightness

If your computer has an integrated light sensor, GNOME 3 is now able to use it to automatically control screen brightness. Not only does this ensure that the screen is always easy to see, but it also helps to reduce battery consumption. An option is provided to disable automatic screen brightness in the Power settings, should you want to turn it off.

New Characters Application

Characters is another new application that is being introduced in GNOME 3.18. It provides an easy way to find and use a variety of characters in your documents and communications, such as punctuation marks, bullets, currency and mathematical symbols.

Characters makes it easy to find interesting characters through different categories of characters. It also remembers which characters you have used in the past, in order to make it quick and easy to use them again. Other features include search, which can be accessed from the Activities Overview, filtering by font, and a section which shows locale-specific characters that are relevant to your input method settings.

And That’s Not All

There’s much more to GNOME 3.18. Read on to learn more…

Getting GNOME 3.18

GNOME’s software is Free Software: all our code is available for download and can be freely modified and redistributed. To install it, we recommend that you wait for the official packages provided by your vendor or distribution. Popular distributions will make GNOME 3.18 available very soon, and some already have development versions that include the new GNOME release.

About GNOME

The GNOME Project is an international community supported by a non-profit Foundation. We focus on user experience excellence and first-class internationalization and accessibility. GNOME is a free and open project: if you want to join us, you can.

Developer Information

GNOME 3.18 includes many new features and improvements for those working with GNOME technologies. Read on for the details!

Builder

Builder is the new integrated development environment for GNOME, which aims to make it quick and easy to do all kinds of development work, particularly application development. Thanks to a successful crowdfunding campaign, a huge amount of progress has been made on Builder since last release. While it is still under heavy development, it is already becoming an extremely effective tool.

A new workspace system has been introduced for 3.18, which allows different panels to be added and removed. Current panels include a file browser, build target list, searchable list of symbols for the current file, searchable documentation index, a terminal, and CPU performance graph.

Other improvements in 3.18 include:

Wayland

The journey to full Wayland readiness continues with GNOME 3.18. Significant progress has been made in this area, and the GNOME experience on Wayland is increasingly mature. Now is a great time to try GNOME with Wayland.

Human Interface Guidelines

GNOME’s Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) have received a major update for 3.18. Structure and navigation have been improved, to make the HIG quicker and easier to use. The guidelines have also been updated and expanded, with new patterns on in-app notifications, info bars, OSD controls and empty placeholders.

GTK+

There are a number of improvements to GTK+ in 3.18:

From 3.18, the GTK+ Inspector keyboard shortcut must be explicitly enabled. This can be done using DConf Editor, by checking enable-inspector-keybinding in org ▸ gtk ▸ settings ▸ Debug. Alternatively, you can run the following command:

Sandboxed Applications

GNOME’s new application sandboxing project aims to enable the creation of secure isolated applications, that can be installed on multiple distributions. Major progress on this technology has been made during the 3.18 cycle. XDG-App (the tool which allows runtimes and applications to be installed) is now an official freedesktop.org project, with releases in several distributions. Additionally, official GNOME runtime and SDK builds are now available at sdk.gnome.org.

The sandboxing aspect of this initiative is still incomplete, and will be the subject of future work. More information can be found on the application sandboxing wiki page.

GLib

Changes in GLib for 3.18 include:

Clutter

Clutter has a number of improvements in 3.18:

WebKitGTK+

The new version of WebKitGTK+ includes a range of new APIs and features:

For more information, a full list of new API is available.

Other Improvements

Other improvements for developers in GNOME 3.18 include:

Internationalization

Thanks to members of the worldwide GNOME Translation Project, GNOME 3.18 offers support for more than 39 languages with at least 80 percent of strings translated. User documentation is also available in many languages.

Numerous other languages are partially supported, with more than half of their strings translated.

Detailed statistics and more information are all available on GNOME’s translation status site. You can also find out how to help translate GNOME.

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