Gnome 47 Brings Back Some Customization Options
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
The latest release of the de facto default desktop of most Linux distros brings some new features - but the GNOME 4x transition isn't done yet.
GNOME 47 was released last week, codenamed "Denver" after the venue for this year's GUADEC event. This release returns some touches of customization that had gone away, brings some long-wanted functional improvements, and a few new components.
Both Ubuntu 24.10 and Fedora 41 are in beta testing, and both should arrive in the middle of October with GNOME 47 as their default desktop environments. You can't fully judge GNOME 47 from Ubuntu "Oracular Oriole," though. Canonical tweaks the GNOME desktop environment a little with some pre-installed extensions to make it a little more familiar to long-term Ubuntu users. For instance, Ubuntu's default GNOME desktop has desktop icons, notification icons in the top panel, a permanent dock along the left screen edge, and a tool to assist with tiling windows. Fedora eschews these changes and ships a largely unmodified version, so it's much closer to the stock appearance.
GNOME 47 lets you set your own highlight color, so you're free to pick clashing combinations if you like - click to enlarge
The new feature that receives top billing in the version 47 release notes may thus seem a little puzzling to Ubuntu users: customizable accent colors. This is the color tint that's used to call out or highlight parts of the desktop, such as the current tab or the default button. Ubuntu users already had this, and if you're using GNOME 43 to 46 on a different distro, you can get this via an extension. Now everyone gets this option.
This is noteworthy because since GNOME 40, the environment doesn't permit users to customize their themes. As we described when we looked at GNOME 42, there is one official theme, "Adwaita," and both developers and users are meant to leave it alone, which has proved to be controversial. The Reg FOSS desk tends to leave theming to the professionals, and GNOME has some of the best in the business. GNOME designer Jakub Steiner's level of attention to detail can be discerned from his blog post about the wallpapers in GNOME 47.
[...] The new Text Editor app, which replaces the venerable Gedit, gets better printing and spellcheck. The new GNOME Console terminal emulator has more settings, such as scrollback size. GNOME Maps now has route planning, thanks to the external Transitous service. GNOME Calendar now has drag-and-drop import of ICS files for events, and better network calendar support. GNOME is still one of the best-of-breed FOSS environments for supporting network interoperability with cloud services, and this version gets better support for IMAP config, WebDAV, Microsoft 365, and more efficient Kerberos authentication. The Remote Desktop Connection app can now handle persistent sessions, meaning that it can resume a disconnected login session.
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