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Introducing GNOME 3.28: “Chongqing”

GNOME 3.28 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 25832 changes, made by approximately 838 contributors.

3.28 has been named “Chongqing” in recognition of the team behind GNOME.Asia 2017. GNOME.Asia is GNOME’s official annual summit in Asia, which is only possible thanks to the hard work of local volunteers. This year’s event was held in Chongqing, China, and we’d like to thank everyone who contributed to its success.

Choose Your Favorites

GNOME 3.28 makes it easier to keep track of the things that are important to you, with two new features. In Files, it’s now possible to star files and folders. Once they’ve been added, starred items can be easily viewed in a special location that can be opened from the sidebar.

Favorites have also been added to the Contacts application, where they appear pinned to the top of the contact list — great for contacts that you often return to.

Personal Organization Improvements

GNOME’s applications that help with personal organization have been improved for 3.28. These improvements include:

More Beautiful Things

GNOME 3.28 comes with more beautiful things! First, and most significantly, GNOME’s default interface font (called Cantarell) has undergone a significant update. Character forms and spacing have been evolved, so that text is more readable and attractive. Several new weights have also been added — light and extra bold — which are being used to produce interfaces that are both modern and beautiful.

Other beautiful things include GNOME’s collection of background wallpapers, which has been updated to include a lovely set of photographs, and the selection of profile pictures, which has been completely updated with attractive new images to pick from.

New Boxes Features

Boxes, the GNOME application for using remote and virtual machines, has a number of new features and enhancements for GNOME 3.28. One major new feature is automatic downloading of operating systems, straight from the new box assistant. To create a virtual machine, all you have to do is pick the operating system you want to use, and Boxes will do the rest.

The new version of Boxes also makes it easy to transfer files between your computer and virtual machines. To transfer files, you can either drag and drop them on to the Boxes window, or select the Send Files option and select files to be transferred using a file chooser. In both cases, Boxes provides feedback about the progress of file transfers, so you know how long they are going to take, as well as when they have finished.

Media and Entertainment Features

Media handling and entertainment have gotten better in GNOME 3.28. Many of these changes are in Photos. It has a new import from device feature which makes it easy to add photos to your collection from removable media, such as SD cards and USB drives. This feature automatically detects devices that contain new images and it also allows organizing new images into albums as they’re imported. Other improvements in Photos include new editing tools for shadows and highlights and performance improvements.

Other media and entertainment improvements include:

All-New On-Screen Keyboard

GNOME’s on-screen keyboard has been completely rewritten for 3.28, and it is far easier to use than the previous version. The new keyboard automatically activates when a text area is selected, and the view is shifted to ensure that the text area is visible while typing. A variety of layouts are supported for different locales.

Meet Usage

Usage is a new GNOME application that is being introduced in 3.28 as a technology preview. The new application is designed to make it easy to diagnose and resolve performance and capacity issues. The initial version includes features for examining CPU and memory consumption. Problem areas are highlighted, making it quick and easy to identify the source of issues.

The Usage preview also allows disk usage to be examined. The interface for this highlights common sources of disk usage that can be cleared, such as the trash and temporary files.

More Usage features are planned for the future, including the ability to investigate network, power and data usage.

Extended Device Support

The latest GNOME release comes with extended device support. Most significantly, GNOME 3.28 comes with integrated Thunderbolt 3 connection support. This includes security checks that are designed to prevent data theft through unauthorized Thunderbolt 3 connections. Feedback is also shown in the top bar, to indicate when Thunderbolt 3 is active and when a connection is being established.

Other device improvements include:

And That’s Not All…

As usual, there are also many other smaller improvements in this GNOME release. Here are some of them!

More Information

GNOME 3.28 also has lots to offer developers, and is translated into many languages.

Getting GNOME 3.28

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 3.28 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 3.28 includes many new features and improvements for those working with GNOME technologies. Read on for more details!

Builder

Builder’s 3.28 release includes some handy new features, important refinements, and significant reliability improvements.

The navigation sidebar has had a number of improvements. The file tree is now monitored in real time, so that file changes are immediately reflected in the sidebar. It is also possible to move files using drag and drop, and Git status is shown, so it’s easy to see which files have been changed.

Builder’s Flatpak support has also been improved for 3.28. Progress feedback is now shown when building, SDK extensions are now supported, and flatpak-builder is bundled as part of the Builder flatpak, so that it doesn’t need to be separately installed.

Assorted other improvements in this release include:

Finally, the latest version of Builder comes with a technology preview of a new unit testing feature. This is being released for initial testing and improvements are planned.

Flatpak

Flatpak is the new cross-distribution, cross-desktop technology for application building and distribution. While it is separate from the GNOME project, Flatpak is central to GNOME’s developer experience plans.

Flatpak has made significant progress since the last GNOME release, with a total of 17 releases of its own. These have included a new 0.10.x stable series, which incorporates the enhancements in the 0.9.x branch. Many of the improvements have concentrated on reliability, performance and overall quality.

New features include GTK+ theme handling, as well as language configuration support, which ensures that application translations are automatically installed when required.

The Flatpak command line interface has also had many improvements, including:

Finally, significant progress has been made on Flathub, Flatpak’s new application distribution service.

Other Improvements

Other improvements in GNOME 3.28 include:

Internationalization

Thanks to members of the worldwide GNOME Translation Project, GNOME 3.28 offers support for more than 38 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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