GNOME, the popular free open-source Linux desktop environment, finally released new major 47 version a day ago on Wednesday!

If everything goes well, the new GNOME 47 desktop will be default in upcoming Ubuntu 24.10 and Fedora Workstation 41, and optional in Arch, Manjaro Linux, etc.

The new release features accent colors in the “Appearance” settings page. With it, user can change the Default Blue color of toggle buttons, slide bars, check-boxes, selection borders, etc., as easy as a single mouse click.

Ubuntu has the feature since 22.04. It has 10 colors while GNOME 47 has 9. They include Blue (default), Teal, Green, Yellow, Orange, Red, Pink, Purple, Slat. And, so far the accent color does NOT apply to the folder icons.

The new desktop improves support for small displays with low resolution. The spacing in the overview screen now is dynamic. And, the dash (app grid) shows large icon size for small displays.

GNOME 47 also features significant improvements to GTK rendering. For older hardware and mobile devices, users will notice a more responsive and visually consistent experience.

For Intel and AMD graphics card, screen recording now features hardware encoding for smoother performance and less impact on system resources.

screen recording features hardware encoding support for Intel/AMD GPUs

The open and save file dialog has been redesigned in the release. The new dialog looks quite similar to the “Files” (Nautilus file explorer) window. It moves the “open” button to the bottom right, and allows more operations, such as rename/ remove files, zoom the view, change the order, etc.

New “Open / Save file” dialog

Other changes in GNOME 47 include:

• Persistent remote login session, allows re-connecting from where you left off.
• Update dialog windows to be more friendly for smartphones and compact laptops.
• New “activate windows on hover” option in Settings.
• Option to preview input sources from the add input source dialog.
• Different set of suspend times in Power settings for mobile devices.
• Add mail, calendar and contact integration to Microsoft 365 accounts in Online Accounts.
• Ability to play games that uses Virtual Reality (VR) headsets (Wayland only)
• Enhance fractional display scaling feature (experimental) for better X11 apps support.

For more changes about GNOME 47, see the official release note.

Get GNOME 47

As mentioned, GNOME 47 will be default in Ubuntu 24.10, Fedora Workstation 41, and optional in Arch, Manjaro, etc.

Besides waiting for one of the Linux Distribution releases above, you may try GNOME OS Nightly in either virtual machine (GNOME Boxes) or real machine.