GNOME 3.8 Released | GNOME

The GNOME Project has officially released GNOME 3.8 today. This latest version of GNOME 3 delivers major new features, a brand new application and a host of smaller bug fixes and enhancements. Speaking on behalf of the GNOME Release Team, Matthias Clasen said, “We are excited to release this latest version of GNOME 3. It is an extremly strong release, and is a major update to the GNOME 3 experience. We would like to thank the entire GNOME community for their hard work and dedication.”

Highlights for GNOME 3.8 include:

• A redesigned application launching view, which makes finding applications easier than ever.
• Enhanced search, with an updated search results view and new controls for results.
• New privacy settings let you contol who has access to the content on your computer.
• A new classic mode for those who prefer a more traditional desktop experience.
• Improved animation rendering, resulting in smooth transitions and window resizing.
• A new Clocks application, which provides world clocks for different time zones as well as alarms, a stopwatch and timer.
• Heavily updated settings, with four new settings panels and major updates in many other places.
• Many of updates to GNOME applications, including major improvements to the performance of Web, UI enhancements to Documents and a new Contacts editing mode.

You can find out more about the many other improvements GNOME 3.8 in the release notes.

GNOME's partners have already welcomed the new release. Stefano Zacchiroli, Debian Project Leader, said “Thanks to GNOME, our default desktop since many many years, we have been able to offer to our users a free productivity environment which is both visually appealing and easy to use. I wish the GNOME community all the best of luck for GNOME 3.8, which we are looking forward to have in our development release.”

“We're really excited about the 3.8 release," said a statement issued by Igalia, "in part because Web, the GNOME browser, debuts its WebKit2 backend, something we at Igalia have been working hard on for years. WebKit2 delivers a state-of-the-art web runtime to our platform, with increased responsiveness, security and stability, making Web 3.8 and all the applications using WebKit much more pleasant and exciting to use.”

A press release also accompanies the launch of GNOME 3.8.